Former PM
still able to divide opinion

From: Clive Bailey, The Crescent, Carlton, Stockton on Tees.

THE impromptu street parties at the announcement of Baroness Thatcher’s death may have been seen as distasteful by some, but they demonstrated the depth of hatred still felt by the lower working classes, many of whom live in communities which, after 30 years, are still blighted by her policy of destroying the mining industry in order to make a political point.

It was not only coal mining Thatcher destroyed. By 1983 general manufacturing output had dropped by 30 per cent in the four years after she came to power.

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After three years in office, unemployment was over three million for the first time since the 1930s and it remained high, peaking at 3.3 million in 1984.

Her introduction of the poll tax in 1989 created more social unrest until it was finally repealed by her successor, John Major.

David Cameron has stated that Baroness Thatcher changed our country for ever.

She certainly did, but it is nothing to be proud of. She divided our society like no other Prime Minister before or since. She was divisive, headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated; qualities which finally brought about her downfall.

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From: John Sykes, Manor Road, Farnley Tyas, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

IN my early 20s, I was a fuel depot manager during the winter of discontent. I remember having to go on bended knee before a kangaroo court of shop stewards and beg their permission to allow oil deliveries across their picket line at Redfearn’s National Glass in Barnsley. Without it, the furnaces would have cooled and cracked, throwing thousands of working men out of a job.

On another occasion one of our drivers told me that his wife and children had received death threats because he’d delivered heating oil across a picket – to a hospital.

Later, in my early 30s, I went on a trip to Romania in 1990 where pictures of Mrs Thatcher adorned homes and business premises.

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That same year, I was free to walk under the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and bought a post card with her photo on it.

In my late 50s, I observe that some of the youngsters who publicly express their joy at her death are free to do so because of the values she stood for. She would have enjoyed the irony.

From: Martin Fletcher, Savile Close, Emley, Huddersfield.

I CAN understand why in Yorkshire a lot do not like what Mrs Thatcher did. They conveniently forget something though. The dinosaur unions were as much to blame and what about the public who stopped buying coal because they had gas central heating?

It’s a lot of those people who are moaning about Mrs T but they did their bit.

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I notice no strikes when Woolworths went bust or HMV, just like the mines. One rule for them and blow everyone else or even beat them up.

As for the person who said she sold off council houses to those who rented them, no one forced them to buy them. Yes, and were they pleased at the profit they made that they could pass on to their children?

So this person thinks that everyone should have a council home and of course every one else should pay for the people in them as well.

I am in a council property now myself... never seen one before 14 years ago. I pay for it myself and get no benefits because I worked all my life and left school at 15. I am not a high Tory but I fail to see why I should pay for the guys who stopped working 30 years ago when there was other work. And most of them have not worked since.

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From: Karl Sheridan, Selby Road, Holme on Spalding Moor, East Yorkshire.

THE recent demise of Mrs Thatcher has raised a considerable amount of dust whichever way you look at it, however I do think that certain anti-Thatcher groups have excelled themselves in bad taste by having celebratory parties.

I admit that she has indeed left a legacy, however I was never a fan of Thatcher and felt she did indeed ruin the country – not so much in breaking the unions, who in all fairness were getting too strong – but because she brought in the dreaded philosophy of privatisation, and as a result a nationwide greed took over.

Nevertheless, no matter what feelings in us she rouses the woman deserves to have a peaceful funeral, as we all do – but I do object to the Government giving her what is almost a state funeral at our expense. She was merely a politician and not Royalty: even though she thought she was.

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From: Malcolm Hanson, Southolme Walk, Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire.

YOUR correspondent Norma Bartle {Yorkshire Post, April 13) says that the House of Commons was “nearly empty” for the debate on the life and times of Mrs Thatcher. She should have pointed out that it was the Opposition benches that were mostly empty.

From: John F Wresdell, Driffield, East Yorkshire.

I HOPE the enthusiasm expressed by those “celebrating” the death of Baroness Thatcher will be as strong when asked to vote in a future election, either local or general.

I seem to recall the turn out for all elections continually declines.