A miasma of vituperation masquerading as opinion

I OFTEN think that if Margaret Thatcher should ever wish to compile a list of calumnious comments levelled against her, then she need do no more than to peruse the letters pages of the Yorkshire Post: a miasma of vituperation, masquerading as considered opinion.

The Left loathe her.

But the Left represents a virulent ideology, whose zenith was the 1970s, decade of destruction.

That was the crucible for the collapse of Britain’s old and ailing industrial base. It gave rise to a tsunami of national debt, hyper-inflation and mass unemployment.

The Left saw industrial strife as a precursor for revolution.

I know. I was there, I witnessed those events.

My academic discipline is modern world history. But throughout the 1970s, I was often reduced to writing papers and marking papers, by candlelight, because of recurring power failures. I was a Liberal. But what I witnessed, particularly during the “Winter of Discontent” (1978-9) changed me.

I saw strikebound railway stations and airports. I saw rat-infested rubbish piled high on the streets of Glasgow. I saw Sunderland shipyards standing idle, their gates bolted and locked and “guarded” by “pickets.” And, in Sheffield, I saw an aggressive, surging mob force out workers from the privately owned Hadfield’s Steel plant (which subsequently went into liquidation). A frightening spectacle.

But the Left met its nemesis in the form of a little lady. Margaret Thatcher did what all those craven men had abjectly failed to do. Through sheer force of will she restored the rule of law and curbed the union bullies by introducing legislation to hold secret ballots et al.

The Left was finally vanquished during the miners’ strike. Arthur Scargill sought to engineer a national strike to precipitate a general strike. He failed. Miner was pitted against miner in a bitter internecine conflict that ruined the industry.

Margaret Thatcher faced the invidious task of reconstructing a blighted nation during a world recession. But she prevailed.

The celebrated, political commentator, Paul Johnson, suggested that she was not so much a Conservative as a “Manchester liberal”. I agree. She embodied the spirit of laissez-faire and free trade between nations.

She possessed the courage to realise her vision of a thriving enterprise economy, and a property and share-owning democracy in which all could participate and prosper. The sluggish utilities were privatised and thereby re-capitalised and re-invigorated.

Margaret Thatcher redistributed “the family silver” among the members of the family! Eight million people became new shareholders.

Political ideologies like the Left are impervious to reason. But, ironically, it was the former Soviet General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev, who said that history would judge Margaret Thatcher more fairly than had her contemporaries.

Let us hope so, for no one is more deserving of our abiding gratitude than she.