In sticking with my theme of Big Beasts of the British Conservative Party in the 20th century, my hero of the day is Margaret Thatcher. I was inspired to write this after reading Daniel Hannan's column on his blog today. Hannan is always readable and makes you think, even if I don't always agree with him.
About Thatcher though he is spot on, and he made me think about that number of people who are anti-Thatcher without having any real idea of what she did. I know because I used to be one of them.
In many parts of the UK Thatcher is still regarded as one step from the devil. I was told horror stories from a young age about the destruction she had wrought on towns and families like my own in the 1980s. The father of one of my friends used to make a big point of spitting on the floor whenever she was mentioned.
When I moved down south at the age of 18, and then abroad three years later, and actually began to study the facts for myself objectively, my eyes were opened to a mass of information about the conditions Thatcher inherited and how much she did to create what we have today. There is no doubt in my mind today that she was a woman of extraordinary vision and resolve who did a great deal to turn around a clearly failing economy.
I suspect that Hannan's hypothesis of why she is hated so much by the left is correct:
"what Lefties (with honourable exceptions) find so hard to forgive is the lady's very success: the fact that she rescued a country that they had dishonoured and impoverished; that she inherited a Britain that was sclerotic, indebted and declining and left it proud, wealthy and free; that she never lost an election to them."
For Margaret Thatcher read the equally loathed (and often by the same group) United States, globalisation and Manchester United. There is nothing that inspires quite as much anger and derision as a competitor that comprehensively beats you time after time after time.
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