Maggie Thatcher

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Maggie Thatcher

I was ecstatic, aged 17, that we finally had a female prime minister. I felt that women had finally broken through the glass ceiling.

I hoped that the world would change now.

That rapists would be convicted, children would be cared for, and young women on the fringes of society would have a chance in the workplace and the opportunity for higher education.

I felt really proud of her achievement.

Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher

After finding it an almost impossibility to get a job on my sudden cold-water immersion into adult life, and knowing that Thatcher was blamed for job shortages – I remember feeling shocked on discovering that she had also stopped free milk for primary school children.

I remember well getting milk at primary school, it was supposed to strengthen our bones and our teeth.

Maggie Thatcher – The Pits

My memories of her are of someone who was heartless and merciless. I hated her with a passion – she could have done so much good and yet Maggie Thatcher chose to be a dictator.

I understand that industries must change with technology.

What was wrong though with preparing the workforce for these changes? Why leave them high and dry, with no means of putting food on the table?

If you have worked for one company in one industry for your entire life, if that is what your father and grandfather did then to be told to get on your bike worse than insulting (okay so that was Norman Tebbit, but he was in her cabinet).

The slave who is not fed, because of some minor indescretion through no fault of his own – and has no other means of finding food.

That she went on to commit war crimes, ordering the sinking of the Belgrano, was no real surprise.

That was her real persona.

Maggie Thatcher – The Racist?

I visited my mother in South Africa in 1988 for six weeks with my children. We left a month before Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years, and I was gutted to have missed being there to celebrate.

While I was there I catalogued every brand which I recognised as British – toilet hand-driers etc. mainly as a stand against people I knew who who regarded Nelson Mandela as a terrorist.

At that time Maggie Thatcher had refused to impose economic sanctions against South Africa for continuing apartheid (a brutal system of racial segregation).

I wonder how she would have felt to see signs above lifts reading ‘Europeans Only’. Or to see women washing clothes in a stream in front of a tin house in a shanty town – the view of the neighbouring community across the road from sprawling mansions with swimming pools in the garden.

Maggie Thatcher and Scotland

The poll tax! This deserves a whole post to itself. This was the final nail in coffin as far as any sympathy toward my fellow woman was concerned.

The poll tax was introduced in Scotland before the rest of the UK.  We were guinnea pigs for her experiments.

Maggie Thatcher – The Homophobe?

Section 28. What can I say?

For those who don’t know, Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 is the most notorious piece of anti-gay legislation to have been enacted in the United Kingdom in modern times.

Basically it was made illegal for any gay child to receive emotional support through services having a duty of care.

How could a mother do that?

An all inclusive society

Well, whatever we want in life we have to get for ourselves.

You can’t rely on anyone else to have your best interests at heart. Some people, though, can be trusted – and some people will actually help you get there.

Have a look here to see that some people do care.

Thank you for visiting my Maggie Thatcher blog post