Martin Kettle: This Thatcher-fest does not mean it's 1979 all over again
[Martin Kettle writes for the Guardian on British, European and American politics, as well as the media, law and music.]
She is back. And, what's more, it feels as though suddenly she is being treated a bit more sympathetically. This week the airwaves have been full of Margaret Thatcher, from Michael Portillo's idiosyncratic 90-minute documentary about the post-Thatcher Tory party on Wednesday to last night's brilliant BBC2 dramatisation of her 1990 ousting, starring Lindsay Duncan.
What exactly is going on here? On one level the answer is simply anniversaries. It will be 30 years in May since Britain's first woman prime minister arrived in Downing Street, read out her famous words about harmony in place of discord and began her 11-year rule. And it is 25 years this weekend since the country's coal bosses announced the closure of a south Yorkshire mine called Cortonwood, an event that triggered the disastrous and traumatic miners' strike of 1984-5.
These were nevertheless huge moments in modern British history. They resonate still, and Thatcher was at the heart of both. Her audacity in challenging Ted Heath in 1975 eventually made her our only female prime minister - with no sign yet of another (though Hazel Blears and Harriet Harman seem set on fighting it out one day to be Britain's second female opposition leader). The strike, meanwhile, was Thatcher's industrial war to end war, the western front of trade unionism, with lions led again by donkeys. Between them Thatcher and Arthur Scargill ensured that the unions would be marginalised in British life for a generation, perhaps for ever.
The real reason for this week's Thatcher-fest, though, surely lies in the present day. Unless conventional opinion has got it totally wrong - and there is no sign that it has - Britain is entering the end times of the Labour government. Some time in the next 15 months David Cameron may lead the Conservative party back into power. So, all of a sudden, Conservativism is significant and interesting again. It is not surprising that there is a revisiting of the woman whose career and legacy dominated the party for 30 years. Indeed, as Cameron told Portillo in this week's film: "I would say I am trying to learn the lessons of her success and apply them to today."..
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
She is back. And, what's more, it feels as though suddenly she is being treated a bit more sympathetically. This week the airwaves have been full of Margaret Thatcher, from Michael Portillo's idiosyncratic 90-minute documentary about the post-Thatcher Tory party on Wednesday to last night's brilliant BBC2 dramatisation of her 1990 ousting, starring Lindsay Duncan.
What exactly is going on here? On one level the answer is simply anniversaries. It will be 30 years in May since Britain's first woman prime minister arrived in Downing Street, read out her famous words about harmony in place of discord and began her 11-year rule. And it is 25 years this weekend since the country's coal bosses announced the closure of a south Yorkshire mine called Cortonwood, an event that triggered the disastrous and traumatic miners' strike of 1984-5.
These were nevertheless huge moments in modern British history. They resonate still, and Thatcher was at the heart of both. Her audacity in challenging Ted Heath in 1975 eventually made her our only female prime minister - with no sign yet of another (though Hazel Blears and Harriet Harman seem set on fighting it out one day to be Britain's second female opposition leader). The strike, meanwhile, was Thatcher's industrial war to end war, the western front of trade unionism, with lions led again by donkeys. Between them Thatcher and Arthur Scargill ensured that the unions would be marginalised in British life for a generation, perhaps for ever.
The real reason for this week's Thatcher-fest, though, surely lies in the present day. Unless conventional opinion has got it totally wrong - and there is no sign that it has - Britain is entering the end times of the Labour government. Some time in the next 15 months David Cameron may lead the Conservative party back into power. So, all of a sudden, Conservativism is significant and interesting again. It is not surprising that there is a revisiting of the woman whose career and legacy dominated the party for 30 years. Indeed, as Cameron told Portillo in this week's film: "I would say I am trying to learn the lessons of her success and apply them to today."..