Speaking ill of the dead.
I’m sure some people will be shocked and even disgusted at the joy being shown at news of Margaret Thatcher’s death, at the lack of respect to our former prime minister. Even those at the top of the Tory party and the tory media, who will feign horror at the comments and posts celebrating her death cannot be insulated enough from the real world to be unaware of the hatred in which the woman was held by so many. I share in it, and do not feel guilty in the slightest. This is a woman who did an enormous amount of damage to this country, who provoked a war for political gain (and then went against expert military advice to send a ship, the HMS Sheffield, forward of the fleet and can be held directly responsible for its sinking and the deaths of those sailors and soldiers on board) and who, in being idolised by the political right in this country, has influenced political policy and rhetoric since - all of it harmful and divisive. While she has not been a part of public life for some years and her death actually changes nothing, I and many millions are glad to see the back of her.
However, it must be remembered that in her many years in office she probably did less harm to the UK - to the poor, to the working people, to everybody except the most wealthy - than Cameron, Gove et al have done in less than a single term of government. I know it is a forlorn hope that they will see the reactions of so many people, expressed in terms well argued or simply emotional, and fear at the reactions to their own demise. I try to believe that almost all politicians do, on some level, what they think is for the best, however wrongheaded and misguided, but I cannot look at the ruin that this government is making of our welfare state, at the divisions deliberately sown amongst those hardest hit by the changes while they line their own pockets and those of their rich friends, of the utter contempt they show to hardship and suffering and believe that they are anything short of evil.
