How to remember Maggie Thatcher at her funeral

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/15/lady-thatcher-funeral-arrangements-criticised

So Maggie’s gone. To anyone British born in the sixties this cannot be a trifling incident. She dominated the weaning of us, and so now it seems she still calls a certain tune. To foreigners, outsiders, who don’t know us, she has been spun as a kind of mother of the nation, who pulled us up by our bootstraps, boxed the ears of the bullies who would tease us and restored a certain pride and swagger to the family of Britannia. The conservative view is of course that she was a liberator, a housewife with a simple remedy of good sense to revive the calcifying rheumatoid carcass of socialist England (sic). This was an England (Wales and Scotland could go hang) in hock to the USSR, grown soft on the mother’s milk of Clement Atlee’s welfare state. Our nation's aristocrats had become feckless and weak, surrendering to provincial Marxists running trades unions. Hers was the voice of the meritocrat, the scourge of the State, the unleasher of a marvelous energetic force, springing from the very essence of the human spirit. Margaret Thatcher was the enemy of the dull, the champion of the creator who believed in the awesome potential of the individual. So went the spin. She put Britain back on the map.

This of course is and always has been the (self hating) conservative narrative in England, (the conservative narrative in Scotland and Wales, thanks to Thatcher, being a quaint extinct thing rejected forever by Celtic peoples). It is the narrative that English Tories love and seek to perpetuate. It is the narrative that today underpins the appropriation of millions of pounds of public funds by such conservatives to celebrate its legacy in a political funeral… and to foist it on us yet again.

The death parties celebrating Thatcher’s death are on the surface sad affairs. Do they diminish those who take part in them? A nasty, philistine (with apologies to Philistines), bigoted racist old woman has died. Surely we should let her cronies and those who will excuse her, have their mourning and even make a little noise? We should not demean ourselves with churlishness: that would be a victory for her values. But look closer. A Conservative party that has utterly lost its way has found itself again with her death. Today it wallows anew in the shallow bigotries of the past. The lies and platitudes have returned. The nation is bitterly divided, with large swathes of the country utterly unreconciled to the malice and cruelty that Thatcher represented. Today’s Tory Party once again wants to use the power and resources of the State to impose such dystopian values upon all of us, and outrageously, in our name.

Hers was no Halcyon Age. Thatcher’s approach to the diseased British economy was to amputate its four limbs. Her economic legacy is an economy entirely dependent on foreign manufactures for which we must exchange increasingly ephemeral “financial services”. She closed the workshop of the world and reduced it to rubble and call centres. Compared to Germany, Britain’s industry today is utterly irrelevant. Britain makes virtually nothing anymore, and what is more, never will again, thanks to Thatcher’s first term.

We remember her contrived victory in the Falklands. The manipulation of Royal Marines and Paratroopers, sent to their deaths to promote her political career, is one of the greatest historical examples of cynical deceit and betrayal. Giving the diplomatic nod and the wink to General Galtieri that the Falklands were there for the taking, she positively encouraged an Argentinian invasion. When Johnson referred to patriotism being the last refuge of the scoundrel, he clearly had this kind of thing in mind. And such a scoundrel was she! With electoral defeat an utter certainty she engineered war. Thence she murdered hundreds of Argentinian sailors on a ship sailing back to Argentina, and sent thousands of British troops to face death and injury in a war that Britain eventually only won through luck and the utter incompetence of their opponents. So skillfully could she deceive that Britain's “poor little street bred people”, to quote Kipling, cheered her as a victor when they should have hung her from the nearest lamp-post for her callous and murderous negligence and guile. Thatcher’s era was dominated by drug dealers selling smack to ordinary people. She sold political smack. She was re-elected on top of a pile of corpses. Even at the victory parade there was no place for soldiers who had been injured fighting her war, to dull the image of glorious Margaret. She really was the scum of the Earth, no more, no less.

This was the real Thatcher, the monster that anyone with the slightest decency hated. And we hated her so much that when our youthful idealism has dimmed now and our zeal has diminished with the years, we still hate her just the same. Tell me where the demo is and I’ll be there! When evil delineates itself so clearly, the response to it is both visceral and timeless. She appealed to the vacuous airheads, the sycophantic cretins, the morally lazy mediocrities, the me-first been-nowhere morons in Britain. She lacked Reagan's charm and generosity of spirit (in this latter quality she was as bankrupt as Sarah Palin); she was churlish to the end.The familiar battle lines that now re-appear in Britain clearly show what side a person is on and the choice is quickly made. Margaret Thatcher may have won elections but she never won the majority of the British people who voted overwhelmingly against her every time. No other Briton, other than serial rapists and killers, has been more despised in my lifetime.

Eventually her political and cultural hooliganism was defeated. Mining communities in great resistance to her police state thuggery, came together to build support and solidarity up and down the land. They lost their great battles but were the leading regiment in the war against her values. That war was won. Miners faced the erosion of ancient liberties, and were prevented by the forces of State from traveling the highways and byways of the land. They demonstrated and combined only to be criminalized and sequestrated for so doing. Thatcher mobilized a cretinous press, a cringeing judiciary and a bribed police force of slobbering yobs, to crush the resistance of old civilized communities that faced ruin and devastation and refused to stand for it. This has not been forgotten. Nor should it ever be until, to paraphrase Diderot, the last Tory has been strangled with the guts of the last Liberal Democrat.

What survived of that time? For me it was a strong belief in the potential of human solidarity and the real power of the individual human spirit that I saw in working class communities struggling to deal with a hostile State. I witnessed the verve, elan and creativity of mining communities coming together to struggle against real evil. I became and remain convinced of the enormous potential of human beings to adapt, organize and change to meet the forces of reaction. Strangely enough it was the awesome spirit of striking miners that convinced me of the potential of entrepreneurs, because in 1984 it was mining folk who were the real entrepreneurs, going across the nation to build support in an environment where all the forces of the State and Establishment were ranged against them. Here was a real expression of the awesome range of the human spirit, not the dumbed down grunts of Essex troglodytes patronized by Margaret Hilda Roberts who thought the limit of human aspiration was to own a washing machine (it is possible, I will concede, that in Essex this may represent the zenith of human ambition, which is why those numskulls voted for her). Here were thousands of working men and women who built support and solidarity for their communities, with the financial funds that flowed from that, based on nothing but their spirit, passion and argument.

And now we have brave new Tories wanting another go, saluting Thatcher as their spiritual leader. Do they still celebrate the racism of a Thatcher that saw Nelson Mandela as a terrorist and the apartheid rulers of South Africa as kindred spirits? Speak up at the back please Mr Cameron. Is the ten million quid funeral to remember that? Are the Conservatives still a bunch of sexually repressed nanny’s boys with their Section 28 homophobia? What say you Mr Osborne, are the sodomites still trying to corrupt our children? Is it still de rigeur to welcome Pinochet’s and his ilk as “one of us” and to mutter that good honest mining folk are “the enemy within”? What say you Mr Hague, the self proclaimed scourge of Syrian thugs? In such Tory ritual as this funeral can the true Tory soul be glimpsed. Such Tory pageant is one more example of the brutal Statism of a creed that claimed over and over again to be against the State and then used that very State to smash the resistance of good honest ordinary people. This is no private affair, of friends gathered to remember. It is her final political act, a parade of Tory cardinals lining up to canonize St Margaret. As such it demands that we not only oppose it, disrespect it, disrupt it and destroy it, but also that we are utterly clear that it is the destruction of Thatcherism, rather than its victory, that should be seen as Thatcher’s real historic legacy.

Who really won? As King Cnut wisely showed us, no matter how you try you cannot hold back the tide of history. Thatcher lost in the same way that those who demonized Harvey Milk lost in California. Who remembers Anita Bryant now, if any remember her at all, as anything other than a twisted bigot? Maggie lost in the same way that southern racists lost when Obama was elected. Her poll tax was defeated by the people, particularly the Scottish people. They drummed her out of office. The Social Democrats in Germany reformed Germany’s trades unions in the nineties without destroying German manufacturing. Her legacy to Britain’s economy is one of being sidelined in the big wide world’s industrial boardrooms. Gay marriage is here instead of Section 28, despite Thatcherite bigots who would have it otherwise. Black people can vote in South Africa and Mandela has paid tribute to those anti apartheid activists in Britain who kept up sanctions and boycotts, dominating the world-wide fight against that evil system (remember, in contrast, how Thatcherites wore “Hang Mandela” badges). Pinochet, the mass murderer, rape abaiter and child torturer who was Thatcher's close personal friend, was eventually humiliated by British Law Lords and was exposed to any but the most craven fascist as the grubby and evil little criminal that he was. The truth is clear: Thatcher lost. Her legacy has either been superceded or it lives on today as the permanent crippling of British industrial capability.

The visceral hatred of so many of us for Maggie – even capitalist lackeys like me – underlines that fact. Even the bit which people may still cling to – the strengthening of Britain’s financial industry – is fast unraveling as the populace bay for bankers’ blood as the spectacle of nincompoops with no talent and no clothes emerges. Tories still are grubbing about demonizing foreigners and poor people, and watching Britain’s soft power diminish again (British universities, the educators of the elites of the emerging Asian world are currently being trashed by racism and student immigration quotas - what do these Tories know of England, that only England know?). The vacuous inherited-it-all rich, the double chinned aristos and the cockney sycophantic arse-licking court jesters, create their ritual now in honour of this evil politic. Let’s forget niceties for a while as we watch this great funeral pageant of hatred and power. Christopher Hitchens commented on the death of Jerry Falwell that he only regretted that there was no hell for Falwell to go to. Such should be our sentiments now towards Thatcherism. There is no limit to the excrement that should be piled on her grave after the dancing has ground her bones to dust.

British decorum should have its place. Quiet funerals merit a quiet response. This is not such an occasion. In response to born-again Thatcherites imposing their will on the majority of the people, the disrespect should ring from every hillside and in every street. Ding Dong the Witch is Dead! Pull any statue down! Iron Lady, Rust in Peace!

 

Well first of all, I wont be celebrating the death of thatcher but i will celebrate when the last baby boomer socialist dies in Europe. That will be a truly happy day.

Secondly, there were a few errors in that. I'll correct a few of them:

1. Thatcher did not destroy british industry. The unions and the labour party did that. Closing down industries that cost money instead of producing it is not the same thing as destroying them. An industry is destroyed by those who make it uncompetetive, not by those who stop pouring government money in to them.

2. All nations defend themselves when under attack by a foreign power. The idea that thatcher should have abandoned the falklands is something that only a socialist parasite could believe.

3. She was right about South Africa. It was clear from the beginning what would happen if the whites were to fall under black domination. The results of that decision are painfully obvious in todays South Africa.

Im not saying that she was a perfect leader in any way. But i do think that europe needs leaders like her to counter the socialist scum that threatens to destroy western civilization.

 

You forget who it was that colonised Africa, enslaved its populations and routinely stripped it of its wealth. The white man. Black South Africa was not responsible for Apartheid, nor the atrocities associated with it. Africa should be dominated by blacks; it's their continent, not the white man's to plunder at will.
You forget that Thatcher was good friends with a notorious tyrant-Pinochet, and the human rights abuses, torture and murders his regime committed and all, it appears, with Thatcher's tacit approval.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet#Human_rights_violations
You forget the last Wall Street meltdown which, contrary to conservative thought, amply demonstrates what a disaster unregulated capitalism is. If you want even more evidence of the destructiveness of capitalism, cast your mind back to 1929. "Anyone who bought stocks in mid-1929 and held onto them saw most of his or her adult life pass by before getting back to even" Richard M. Salsman.

No, we don't need more 'leaders' like Thatcher; 'I've got mine, f*ck you' isn't the sort of attitude people recognise in a role model anymore. We're living in austere times, and guess what brought us here? Capitalism.

 

Jesus, huge wall of text. At least add a TLDR, op.

 

Oh that old familiar feeling...someone defending Thatcher by ignoring the arguments that are put and falsifying the position of their opponents!

I am no socialist. As to my ilk dying if you look carefully at government today you will see that the current government works on the basis of government / private sector partnership, so if you see that as socialism you will be waiting a long time!

A wilful misrepresentation of the argument against Thatcherism. No-one suggests (and I certainly did not) that Britain had no problems with its disease. In fact even Tories (especially Thatcherites actually) blame this on both political parties. The issue is whether British industry was killed by the cure. Anyone who has the slightest experience of manufacturing industry today will tell you that German Manufactuing industry, which shared the uncompetitiveness you described, managed to overcome its problems by weakening Trades Unions and ending subsidies but in a ciompletely different way than Thatcher did (ie gradually, skilfully and without killing the patient). German industry now thrives. British industry is dead.

See how I responded to the specific points you made there, rather than misrepresented them. Still your style of argument resonates with the easy lies and distortions that the Tory media used to shove down our throat.

Again you misrepresent. Nowhere did I say that the Falklands should have been abandoned. I think you may even find threads on here where I argue that Britain should defend the Falklands militarily today. At the time I supported the Labour Party's position in favour of a war. My argument was that Thatcher's government by removing naval power in the South Atlantic, gave a covert signal to Argentina that it was OK to invade. I remember listening to the Saturday broadcast from the House where Thatcher was slammed by all sides for her negligence and she threw Lord Carrington to the wolves as a scapegoat. In doing this Thatcher deliberately invited an invasion and therefore fabricated a war. She sacrificed lives for her political ambition. And her insistence on removing wounded soldiers from the victory celbrations was utterly disgusting. She was scum. Pure evil.

And it all comes out now. It's good that you acknowledge that Thatcher was a racist scumbag here. Thanks for that.

Mmm...Cameron, Merkel, Berlusconi, Hollande...? Socialist scum?

Maybe we could have PW Botha. Would that be alright for you? Mark Thatcher's vailable. We could launch a coup d'etat, make him King of Britain and have nice rightwing kaffirbaschers around forever!

Great to see the Thatcherites in all their glory!

 

White south africa is being destroyed as we speak. By mid century the only white people left in SA will be the rich ones. You know, the ones that can afford private security guards since south african police refuse to protect white people from black murderers.

Secondly, pinochet may have been a dictator, but as far as dictators go he certainly wasnt the worst one and because of him chile is the richest country in south america today. You can accuse him of murdering his political opponents but he saved a 100 times more people by creating economic growth (poverty kills you know)

 

Arabs...

 

Enslave black people and kill your opponents for economic growth. Nicely expressed description of Thatcherite extremism!

I love hearing from conservatives who think that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist who deserved to be in prison and who think that torturing parents in front of their children and then later dropping them from helicopters into the sea is the way to go.

Who is the enemy within who wants to erode the ancient liberties of Britons? Who's respect fro freedom and the rule of law is nothing but a filthy deceit? That was Thatcher. And her supporters. Nicely confrimed by you.

Thanks. Keep digging. Quod erat demonstrandum.

BTW I'll take "socialist" France's GDP per capita over Chile's any day (it's double). Or we could have Slovakia, Czech Republic, Croatia, Lithuania...all countries that existed under the dead hand of communism when Pinochet was in power...all with higher GDP per head and economic productivity than Chile today. That's the trouble with facts (source CIA factbook 2011 estimates). They get in the way of myths that justify the actions of butcherers and murderers.

(It's too easy. Are there any Thatcherites who can make this debate a challenge?)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcOXqFQw2hc Heres mr mandela singing a lovely song about killing white people. Yes he was a terrorist and the fact that we abandoned white south africans to the mercy of these savages is one of the most spineless things we've done (and thats saying something)

The reason why those countries are richer than chile is because they are white countries. White people have higher IQs and are therefore capable of producing more wealth. You need to compare chile with other south american countries, not european ones.

Incase i wasnt clear about this: im not making excuses for pinochet, im simply pointing out that all things considered, supporting pinochet certainly was not the worst thing that has happened and may well have been positive on balance.

 

Here is (by my recollection) a fitting tribute to a similar 'well-loved' piece of vomit:

'Posterity will never see
Another grave than this.
This is the tomb of Castlereagh -
Pause, traveller, and (*)(*)(*)(*).'

The asterisks stand for a common word meaning 'urinate'.

 

Racism and tacit support of murderous dictators, and all in one concise post. There is no positive side to supporting torture and murder, ever. Then again, Finland wasn't backward in coming forward when it came to supporting Nazism and collaborating with Hitler, so I'm not all that surprised, frankly.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1715905/posts

 

Having a finnish SS force was one of hitlers demands in exchange for military aid. There were SS soldiers from allmost every european country. Im not sure what all of them did but what i do know is that the finnish SS were purely combat soldiers. They did not kill civilians - jew or gentile. Jews served in the finnish army during ww2 just like all the other minorities (gypsies etc). Finland was not a fascist country.

And secondly, everything i said was factually correct. You can throw the racist card as much as you like but you should know that you've overused it so much that nobody cares anymore. I will much rather be called a racist than be mixed with socialist filth.

 

You may not care, but many more than you do care a great deal more than you may think. Racism is a nasty, insidious and infantile mindset.

 

I agree, which is why i hope that you would stop misusing it. You use it to silence the other side of the debate when it should be saved for the real racists.

 

It is true that supporting Pinochet isn't the worst thing that happened in the twentieth century. Supporting racial supremacy theories as you do here, was part of a much worse crime. I love your protest against interpreting theories such as yours as racist. Fancy suggesting that calling one race superior to another, and calling black people savages is racist!

I suppose you are having a joke there from your fine Nordic home. Even an Irish/Rroma (gyspy) mischling like me can see that you can't be serious. Especially with your marvellous, superior, aryan brain. Mind you, read the script. Are you really defending those untermenschen slavs, or is your suggestion that such sub-humans are superior to Latin races an indication of your contempt? One can only wonder at the hierarchy of races that you have in mind.

Why would anyone ever want to sing a story about killing white people after meeting you?

It would be nice to see some serious conservatives come and defend her. Even Thatcher, as much as I hate her, deserves a better defence than this.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

Educate yourselves.

And secondly, i did not say that black people are savages. People who sing songs about murdering minority populations are savages. If George Bush had been caught singing "lynch the (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)" do you think you'd be here defending him? This isnt about race, its about barbaric behavior and you're on the wrong side of history here.

 

Oh I don't know snake. The extension of lebensraum into Russian lands, and the extermination of the slavic people therein, seems to be a positive side for our Finnish friend. He is smart so I expect he know that the Finnish SS, as with all members of such a highly politicised force, were completely aware of the racial superiority theories of the Nazis and the plan during Operation Barbarossa, which of course they participated in, to exterminate Jews and slavs. They chose to fight in this unit, and were a key force in driving the Russians back to enable the genocide to start. Just because they didn't actually kill any civilians I am sure they are as innocent as Heinrich Himmler.

So there you have it: the positive side of supporting murder and torture. If you didn't actually shoot the children, but just spearheaded the military force that mopped them up behind you, then that was all fine and dandy apparently.

 

Mk.......... So i won the debate? -,-

 

Yes Munqi. You won the debate. The one in your head.

 

Thank you, thank you so much.

Godwins law never fails.

 

Ah but as your favourite source Wikipedia says:

This means that when you spout theories of racial superiority, it is perfectly reasonable to associate such theories with Nazism. Godwin's law clearly does not apply to your posts on this thread. Neither does it apply to Nick Griffin, Anders Brievik, Jean Marie le Pen...or any more of the vile reptiles who would prefer that their filthy Nazi beliefs could avoid comparison with those of such a poor PR guy as Adolf Hitler.

The world (and PF) is full of fine brave Nazis wanting another go. Often they assert that their is a hierarchy of races. Then they try and make a fine distinction between their position and that of Nazis. The distinction however is moot. Making an argument that one race is superior to another and that this is the main driver in the economic development of a nation, is a clear neo Nazi argument. Neo Nazis cannot deny their proximity to Nazism by citing Godwin's law.

Conservatives, such as Mrs Thatcher, clearly can. Mrs Thatcher was not a neo-Nazi. She was a racist but never explicitly suggested that one race was intrinsically superior to the other as you did. Arguments regarding racial superiority, such as the one you have introduced here, are not helpful to any discussion of Mrs Thatcher because she actually opposed neo Nazis such as the National Front. You may wish to create your own litte side agenda - it seems to be a popular one on this board that attracts a lot of Stormfront-type posts. It is not relevant to the discussion except as an acknowledgement of the fact that Thatcher supported murdering butchers like Pinochet. In that sense your intervention only supported the case I was making.

The neo-Nazi drivel you posted is merely fluff to be derided. You don't try and disguise the odium in your posts too much - there is nothing about all races being equal but happier separate which is the approach of some neo-Nazis, you just go for the straightforward hierarchy of races approach. Don't think I am taking it so seriously that I would want to enter into, let alone debate, any of the puerile hate filled rubbish you post.

There is a simple approach to deal with neo Nazi organizations and supporters. Expose them as the racists and Hitlerites that they are so that others can see their deceit and lies for what it is and then physically crush them as soon as their organization manifests itself. There is no point entering into any debate with them about why they think black people are monkeys and Jews are sub-human, or, as you post here, why slavs are a higher race than Latin Americans. One might as well take flat-earthers or seven day creationists seriously.

 

Are you quite certain that you understand Socialism ?

 

Especially the form of racism that says that since Mandela was black, he wasn't a racist white-hating pig. The ANC was a terrorist organization.

Today's racist left-wing media never discusses the success of Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

Then there's Obama's blatant racism. Really, his son would "look like Trayvon"? There are few examples of race baiting in US history more blatant than that, and all of them would be from racists like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Morgan Freeman.

 

Ding dong the Witch is dead was getting me arrested in Sydney Australia under Gillarrrrd!

Was arrested for being a militant uppity worker in self funded retirement .except street Popitics of a class character!

Class war Thatcher can ROT IN HELL,but more Down with Ye Tory\without Mandate Government of Cameron ,The Britsh working Class has many Class War allies ,as then as now ,TOUCH 1 TOUCH ALL,MAY1!

 

Fresh Meat ,goody Tory ,YUM!!!!

Only Politican more inept then Julia Gizzard ,is Big ears [TORY anti-Communist ]Abbottt.

Ex-DLP !

Down with the Capitialist duopoly! Din Dong John Howards Best Mate is dead ,ding bong thatcger is dead!

Hope john Used his international Travel voucher for life ,


- - - Updated - - -

Fresh Meat ,goody Tory ,YUM!!!!

Only Politican more inept then Julia Gizzard ,is Big ears [TORY anti-Communist ]Abbottt.

Ex-DLP !

Down with the Capitialist duopoly!