Of course, I’ve always been fascinated with politics and current
events, which doubtless was responsible for the fact that the commercial
made an impact on me. But in the aftermath of Margaret Thatcher’s
death, the commercial comes to mind once again. It comes to mind not
just because it was—and is—funny, but also because of the incomplete
nature of its message.
The joke in the commercial is straightforward: Margaret Thatcher was
such a polarizing figure that when she was little, even her own mother
blanched at the idea of Thatcher possessing political power. But of course, the commercial fails to point out that it takes two sides to contribute to
political polarization. Certainly, Margaret Thatcher did not evoke
neutral feelings on the part of observers. People either loved or hated
her. She possessed a fierce intelligence which she often turned on
lesser people, she was absolutely convinced that she was in the right
when it came to policy and political philosophy, and she had no patience
whatsoever for those who would have continued to allow Britain to
remain “the sick man of Europe,” which Britain undoubtedly was before
Thatcher came to power. Either this approach was one’s cup of tea, or it
wasn’t, and if it wasn’t, the hatred that would result would last a
lifetime.
But when one looks at the condition Britain was in prior to Thatcher
taking up residence at 10 Downing Street, one sees rather quickly—or
should, anyway—that Thatcher was entirely right not to have had any
patience for those who were willing to continue the policies that
brought Britain to its knees. I disagree with almost everything Andrew
Sullivan says, does or writes these days, but Sullivan has decided to
take a break from trying to convince is that Barack Obama is a secret
conservative in order to show us why Thatcher—a genuine conservative if ever there was one—was so desperately needed in Britain:
… Yes: the British left would prefer to keep everyone poorer if it
meant preventing a few getting richer. And the massively powerful trade
union movement worked every day to ensure that mediocrity was protected,
individual achievement erased, and that all decisions were made
collectively, i.e. with their veto. And so – to take the archetypal
example – Britain’s coal-workers fought to make sure they could work
unprofitable mines for years of literally lung-destroying existence and
to pass it on to their sons for yet another generation of black lung.
This “right to work” was actually paid for by anyone able to make a
living in a country where socialism had effectively choked off all
viable avenues for prosperity. And if you suggested that the coal
industry needed to be shut down in large part or reshaped into something
commercial, you were called, of course, a class warrior, a snob, a Tory
fascist, etc. So hard-working Brits trying to make a middle class
living were taxed dry to keep the life-spans of powerful mine-workers
short.
To put it bluntly: The Britain I grew up in was insane. The
government owned almost all major manufacturing, from coal to steel to
automobiles. Owned. It employed almost every doctor and owned
almost every hospital. Almost every university and elementary and high
school was government-run. And in the 1970s, you could not help but
realize as a young Brit, that you were living in a decaying museum –
some horrifying mixture of Eastern European grimness surrounded by the
sculptured bric-a-brac of statues and buildings and edifices that spoke
of an empire on which the sun had once never set. Now, in contrast, we
lived on the dark side of the moon and it was made up of damp, slowly
degrading concrete.
As Sullivan points out, Thatcher decisively changed Britain for the better:
Thatcher’s economic liberalization came to culturally transform
Britain. Women were empowered by new opportunities; immigrants,
especially from South Asia, became engineers of growth; millions owned
homes for the first time; the media broke free from union chains and
fractured and multiplied in subversive and dynamic ways. Her very
draconian posture provoked a punk radicalism in the popular culture that
changed a generation. The seeds of today’s multicultural, global London
– epitomized by that Olympic ceremony – were sown by Thatcher’s
will-power.
Making these changes wasn’t easy. Thatcher had to break the power of
government to control the most basic aspects of the lives of British
people. She had to crush—yes, crush—the authority of unions,
which repeatedly took Britain hostage by starting up crippling strikes …
until Thatcher smashed them once and for all. She had to combat the
nuclear freeze movement and convince the British people (and other
people in the free world) that the best way to convince the Soviets that
conflict and confrontation would get them nowhere was to show strength
in the face of their provocations. She had to convince a country that
was used to statist economic policies that the economic liberalization
urged by the likes of Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman was
infinitely preferable. She had to stand up for Britain’s interests in
the Falkland Islands against an authoritarian and militaristic Argentine
junta. She had to remake Britain entirely. All of this made
her look like a divisive and polarizing figure in the eyes of many
Britons.
But that doesn’t disguise the fact that she succeeded in meeting her
policy objectives. In spite of fearsome opposition, in spite of hateful
rhetoric, in spite of an IRA attempt to bomb her into oblivion, in spite
of Argentine intransigence which threatened her leadership, she
succeeded where so many other British politicians had failed. Her
singular intellectual gifts, her moral courage, her resolute and
steadfast convictions and her sheer patriotism helped bring Britain back
from the brink, and helped make her—along with Churchill—the greatest
and most consequential British prime minister of the 20th century. And
one of the greatest ever.
Obituaries about Thatcher’s life and career cannot help but capture
the epic nature of her life and career. Her personality and courage
shine through in the New York Times’s coverage, for example, even though the Times
also airs the views of Thatcher’s critics. No surprise; the critics
shrank before Thatcher while she was alive. They now shrink before her
memory as well.
So many hated her so much and for so long that her death is a cause for celebration for a number of Thatcher’s enemies. I suppose that one could get angry and outraged about this, but why bother? Consider that when
Thatcher-haters die, no one will much care. They failed to defeat
Thatcher at the polls, after all. Thrice. The Lady herself put it best:
I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding
because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have
not a single political argument left.
Of course, it wasn’t Thatcher’s enemies on the left, but rather, her
own Conservative colleagues who ultimately forced her from power. But
even in the act of leaving, she stood taller than did her detractors. In
the aftermath of her ouster, a no-confidence motion was put forth in
the House of Commons. Its passage would have meant the dissolution of
the government, and new elections. Thatcher might have had to personally
surrender power, but she would not put up with the notion of letting
the Tory majority in the House dissipate. Speaking out against the
motion, she put on perhaps her greatest oratorical performance:
