The title of this post sprang to mind when I was trying to find the best way to describe Margaret Thatcher. For all her rights and wrongs; her strengths and weaknesses, nothing in my view encapsulates Thatcher more than personal liberty and freedom. Upon her death, it is something that we might do well to remember and be grateful to her for, whatever your political persuasion.
A sense of shock overcame me as I heard the news yesterday lunchtime. This shock, although still with me as I write, is more likely a deep sadness in disguise, for we all knew very well of the ill-health that plagued Margaret Thatcher in recent years. Her time, like that of all of us, would eventually come; and come it did. Immediately the Pandora's box of political division opened, for there was little question that it didn't exist. Margaret Thatcher remained divisive because of the unique challenges she faced and her responses to them, and her death yesterday, a little more than 22 years after leaving Downing Street, reopened old wounds, and reignited the debate of her actions and legacy, both amongst those that lived through the Thatcher years, and those who have been politically-socialised since. Some people will now feel a release, and others will feel this as a sad and poignant moment that would be faced one day or another. I am part of this latter group.
I don't intend to follow too closely the structure of most of the other articles I have been reading in the past 24 hours, or interviews I have been watching. I do however want to acknowledge the divisiveness. Those on the Right have praised her relentlessly; those on the Left, whilst being polite and diplomatic for the most part in their tributes, have not hidden their continued contempt for her policies. In their name there have been parties on the streets, most notably in Brixton, but ironically, Thatcher embodied the freedom that allows such celebrations against her to take place. It's just extremely unfortunate and hypocritical that if it I wanted to celebrate the death of a terrorist-who-still-cannot-be-deported, I would be arrested for inciting racial hatred and offending a minority group. More on freedom later.
Essentially, the extent of polarisation is a fact that must be accepted but it shouldn't frame the entire debate.
Let's take a more pragmatist approach. Margaret Thatcher made some incredibly difficult decisions - and these decisions had incredibly difficult consequences. She was never going to be universally liked, but this is true of every politician. Every leader makes decisions that has a disproportionate impact on some parts of society more than others. She couldn't possibly have pleased everyone, and in the same way Blair didn't please many of us (initiating long-term deeply unpopular campaigns, particularly in Iraq vs. a short campaign in the Falkland Islands) we cannot as a nation continue to hold Margaret Thatcher solely responsible for many of society's ills. While she might in some cases be the root of a particular problem, her party ruled for 7 years after she left office, and then Labour for a whole new political generation of 13 years. She made difficult decisions, but there has been ample time for successive administrations to change those decisions if they wanted to attempt to reverse the consequences. The problem was, as we now know from today's wide press coverage, was that Thatcher's "greatest achievement," (as she put it) Tony Blair, didn't care to reverse her decisions or change the consequences of them.
Margaret Thatcher made such difficult decisions and stuck to them because she understood politics and her role within it. As Prime Minister and the personification of the executive power of the State, her number one priority was the defence of the realm. In the Falkland Islands did she demonstrate this, and upheld her duty. The primary task of Government was fulfilled. Then, throughout the 1980's as a whole, she demonstrated another major obligation she had to the country as the power behind the state, which was to make the nation prosperous - because she understood that only a strong capitalist economy could bring true wealth and prosperity, as supposed to the failed communist-planned ones, that brought nothing but shortages.
If that prosperity created happiness was not however in her remit for the state mustn't control every aspect of people's lives. She understood that her role was to create prosperity; to create opportunity, and then to give each and every individual and family the freedom to choose what they made of those opportunities.
To repeat and summarise this essential point, she simply understood that a real politician in public service defended their country, created wealth and gave people the freedom to make their own choices and build their own lives in a safe environment underpinned by the security and certainty of the rule of law. She passed all of these tests consistently with flying colours.
I am not masking her weaknesses, and I'm sure on many occasions, wrong decisions, but what she didn't do was ever lose sight of the fundamentals. Security, freedom and the rule of law are paramount precisely because without them, those who criticise her wouldn't have the freedom to do so today. Indeed, since she left office, successive governments have undermined all three of these most basic requirements - and our security today is seemingly constantly threatened by terrorism, our freedom severely undermined by the Labour years, and the rule of law overruled by the supranational European Union and other doctrines demanded by political correctness in a multicultural society. The earlier point of the celebration if the terrorist-who-we can't-deport died, and the subsequent probable arrest of the partygoers, shows that under such present-day circumstances, Thatcher reminds us of what is really important - and thus what was at the base of every political action she took.
Thatcherism produced both winners and losers, but the paradox is often ignored - there were winners who were ALSO losers, and vice versa. By focusing on how we won AND lost might go some way to dispelling the strength of polarisation that Margaret Thatcher brings. We hear a lot today about how the British public became wealthier through being able to buy their own council homes, and we won't forget of course the many thousands whose employment (and way of life based upon it - as mine was) was lost. But it was also those who lost their jobs, and were most likely affected by Thatcherism in its economic form, who also gained by being able to realise the dream of most Britons - home ownership. With the certainty that this brought, and the rapid economic growth that replaced the difficult decline of some sectors of the British economy, new opportunities arose. Those who lost, lost. But they also won. Would they care to deny it?
With opportunity, the other crucial issue of personal responsibility becomes central to any discussion of Thatcher. She committed herself to opportunity creation, but she cannot be held responsible for how people responded to those opportunities. It is individuals themselves. Thatcher believed in personal responsibility, with the state there both to facilitate the process, and to act as a safety net via the welfare system for those who sadly found themselves without work, or direction. The 80's were extremely sad for so many communities in this regard, but what more could we reasonably have expected from the Government? Did we really want Thatcher and her Government to continue with failed cradle-to-grave policies whilst demanding she take all of our problems away from us because "she" caused them? Ridiculous.
In my rather spiritual view, one of the fundamentals of the human condition is personal responsibility and Thatcher applied this to her politics. This basic knowledge and wisdom helped to create an empowered Britain, and since it was lost in 1990, we have lost sight of its importance to such a degree that we now live in the "benefits" Britain of 2013, which should tell us quite a lot about what happens if one doesn't take responsibility for bettering their circumstances. Finally, Thatcher understood that your position in life had to be earned on merit - indeed, she explicitly linked success to hard work and merit, and rewarded those who worked with her on merit.
In summary, her job was the creation of opportunity, yours as an individual was personal responsibility by taking advantage of those opportunities, and success and prosperity would come through hard work and the recognition of effort on the basis of merit. All of this though has been undermined since Thatcher's day, with the twin to "benefits" Britain - the Britain of "equal opportunities," underpinned by hundreds of pages of diktat legislating that opportunities have to be shared out, regardless of who should receive them on merit; thus placing positive discrimination above common sense. Jobs are not always earned anymore as much as they are given or "rewarded" to a candidate based on a raft of arbitrary criterion that have only served to undermine the ideals of the benefits of hard work, competition, and everything Thatcher believed in. Ultimately, we all suffer as a nation in the end, for our collective prosperity is eroded through a weaker economy.
To conclude my contribution to yesterday's sad news, I would reiterate my first observation that everything Thatcher did was for freedom, personal liberty and a society based on the rule of law. She loved Britain and what it stood for, and had a deep respect and appreciation for the struggles of British history which brought about the supremacy of parliamentary democracy. She understood her fundamental duties as a politician, and carried out her duty in good faith, not waning even in the most difficult, and sometimes cruel, consequences that emanated from her choices. Thatcherism made winners and losers of us all - and both winners who were also losers, and losers who were winners - which category we are most comes down to personal perspective. But I would say that for the prizes of freedom, personal liberty and the rule of law, tripled with economic prosperity and the security of the realm (not only by fending off Argentina but by bringing about the end of the Cold War) on balance we have been winners more than we have been losers.
Without the freedom that Thatcher embodied, I might not have been able to make these arguments at all. For that I am grateful, and I hope that you feel grateful too. Thank you Baroness.
