Don't judge a book by it's...title.

How I Killed Margaret Thatcher

Can re-opening old wounds actually be cathartic, make you think again about what’s going on now, be a good thing?

Anthony Cartwright’s book has a jokey title, but is an exploration of the damage done to families in the midlands by the Thatcher regime. Politicians tend to be self-important, tend to see themselves as God’s instrument on earth, tend to want everything their own way. The blessed Tone (son of Mags) sent plenty of young men and women to their deaths, guided by the God he imagines exists and informs his every move. The chapters start with quotes from the evil bitch, that reveal just what she and her sycophantic gang of brown-nose yes-men were all about.

The narrator tells his story as a boy (in italics) and as a man, in roughly equal parts. The man says:

“If you ask me now, I’d say there are lots of ways of making people poor. It’s not only about money. Thinking life is only about money is another way of being poor, a way of thinking you might arrive at by counting your coppers in your mean and draughty grocer’s shop, looking across the flat Lincolnshire land towards the hills and hating us.”

Thatcher said this:

“My policies are based not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police.”

A couple of things here:

1. That totally random ‘support the police’ at the end of list of financial items. She was the first to use the police as a private army, a sequence that is unbroken. See kettling and dead newspaper sellers.

2. That honest day’s pay: actually that’s a dishonest huge payday for bankers and others sitting in city offices, with a huge annual bonus, too; and a personal hatred for the physically strong and powerful, shutting down heavy industry and mining. She was like the people who mistakenly think their homes are more valuable because others are sleeping in cardboard boxes. Hungry for power, she had to see big strong blokes denied their right to earning a decent wage.

“From France to the Philippines, from Jamaica to Japan, from Malaysia to Mexico, from Sri Lanka to Singapore, privatisation is on the move…The policies we have pioneered are catching on in country after country.”

Another couple of things:

1. Three alliterative examples = elegant. Four = overkill. Signs of someone who’ll bang on too long. Bang on too long and, even if you had won the point, you go on to lose it.

2. Those policies have knackered the world, financially, and led to the global meltdown. Thanks. Bitch.

After she died (and I poured a glass of celebratory beer, to celebrate both her death, and that it came at a time when she’d seen everything she’d done discredited) a lot of the apologists and brown-tongues denied the ‘no such thing as society’ statement. This is what she said:

“And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.”

There it is. 25^th October, 1984, Birmingham Post interview. “There is no such thing as society”, preceded with that grating, irritating “and, you know”. Actually, you lunatic, I know no such thing. Robert Wyatt said:

You’re anti-social, and

you are too bloody lonely

for the likes of us

Her son Tone adopted a similar tic, his equally grating “look” at the start of every condescending point.

“I am very anxious about the West Midlands because I recognise that the people there think they have suffered.”

Not “have suffered” because the factories closed and there was no work to be had, they only think they have suffered. This next one says it all:

“Without order fear becomes master and the strong and the violent become a power in the land.”

Not the strong and violent. “…the strong and the violent…”. It’s a bad thing, in her eyes, the strong being powerful. Corrupted, utterly besotted by power, her solitary nature made sharing it unthinkable, drove her insane. The Belgrano and the Sheffield were casualties of a war fought to win votes and retain power. Lives lost to secure another term in office.

“We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty.”

That is, anyone in disagreement is an enemy to be fought, not someone to reason with, listen to, someone who may, actually, have a valid point. That’s the whole point of “the lady’s not for turning” being a joke. The only job politicians have is to debate the issues and decide according to the arguments. Not start and finish with fixed ideas according to their party’s instructions. A huge talking-shop, where no-one listens and nothing changes.

Anthony Cartwright was born in Dudley, and I suspect he lived there during Thatcher’s reign of terror.