Though Cowards Flinch

A lot of barstool conversation has been devoted to the subject of whether or not Margaret Thatcher is likely to get a state funeral. Last year the tabloids hinted at it and the broadsheets repudiated such rumours; now it’s left to the Guardian and the Telegraph to report that actually Thatcher will be getting a state funeral. Official sources are still denying it of course – but no doubt no-one wants to rock the boat and upset people.

Regardless, people are upset. No few harsh words have been directed in Thatcher’s direction from among those people I frequently hear discussing any matters of the day – and these aren’t even people with whom I share political views. A lot of them are young and didn’t live through the days of Thatcher’s reign but the children of miners and other workers here in Kent have the memories of their parents.

Here, in the South-East of England, traditionally thought of as the heartlands of Conservatism, the memory of Thatcher casts a long shadow.

Whenever Ronald Reagan died, I was pleased and I said so in no uncertain terms. Whilst I am well aware that no individual can ever be held solely responsible for the crimes visited upon the global south or the Western working class, it’s hard to remember that whenever suddenly all around you go mawkish and sentimental about these people who were absolute bastards during their time in power.

The reaction I got from many adults was largely a moral reproach about how we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. Of the Americans I talked to, it was a variation on a theme of “he may have been a bastard, but he was our bastard,” which generally included comments on how the President, whoever he is, deserves respect. I fear that when Thatcher actually dies, the reaction is going to be much the same; simplistic nostalgia for an era that brought misery to millions.

It makes me sick to think that the government might allow a witch like Thatcher a state funeral, providing a grotesque opportunity for the media to recount what her ‘achievements’ were. Yet it is a fitting indictment of Labour tribalism, in an obscene sort of way. If one of the claims which Labour can make on popular support is that at least they aren’t Tory, someone somewhere should probably remember that actually Labour today is Thatcherist in a way.

All the same core truths are accepted, particularly the one about ‘the enemy within.’

Our party, far from offering any sort of alternative, has renewed its free-market credentials and may as well be led by J.R. MacDonald himself. Following recent Labour announcements about getting 90% of people off benefits, one might very well wonder if there is any longer a difference between Labour and Tory with the exception that one side at least has a history to be proud of – and which it not infrequently lauds whenever the current press cycle doesn’t seem to be going its way.

All of these problems with perception though are nothing compared to the woolly thinking of those who claim that Thatcher actually did something positive for the nation. I remember reading in one of Tom Clancy’s books that in Thatcher’s Britain it was common to wear Union Jack underwear and love your country, but even in more intelligent people, the idea that Thatcher did something for ‘the nation’ is persistent.

I was confronted with this just last week, at a garden party down here in Kent; one chap of about sixty years old commented that Thatcher might deserve a state funeral because she had done good things for ‘the nation.’ My rather caustic response was to query what this ‘nation’ might be and whether or not several million unemployed workers or the victims of a fast-rising crime rate were part of it?

Of course to that there is no answer; there is no such thing as ‘the nation’ because it consists of wildly disparate parts which have contradictory interests. Regardless of what branch of sociology one comes from, that idea is pretty much universally accepted outside of woolly thinking circles. From the point of view of a Marxist of course, ‘the nation’ consists of classes and whatever benefits the ruling class is unlikely to benefit the working classes who often have to suffer as a result.

I will be pleased when Thatcher dies and if Class War keep to their promise of a party in Trafalgar Square, I’ll be there to partake of it (in a responsible fashion of course). The image of that woman is instantly recognizable to millions as the enemy of working people – and at least by celebrating her death, we’ll expunge some of the shame that our generation, though it set out with such high hopes, has not been able to create the better world we hoped for.