Why I don’t want Thatcher to die
It's funny, but the feeling that's crept across me over the past few days, upon hearing that Margaret Thatcher is ill and might not make it, is not one of joy. I thought it would be, but it isn't. No, the overwhelming feeling is something approaching disappointment, and sadness.
Sure, if you'd asked me a week or so ago whether I'd be happy at the imminent death of someone whose entire worldview and actions I find despicable, I'd have said yes. I'd have said more than yes; I'd have been dancing through the streets in a giant sombrero, shooting fireworks into the night sky, singing Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead. I'd have been delighted at the thought of Thatcher finally getting in a grave so we could all piss on it.
Not now.
Maybe I'm getting more mature in my 30s than I was when I was younger. Maybe I don't find the idea of an elderly lady snuffing it all that appealing. But I don't think that it's that, either. I still do wish ill and death upon people that I don't like, and I don't see anything tremendously wrong with that, and I don't think that's going to change. I've wished her, and others, ill in the past, and I don't really regret it, though that nastiness seems to be going away a little, the older I get, the closer I get to snuffing it myself, the nearer me and my friends and family get to an appointment with a furnace.
But there's more to it than that.
The reason why I feel sad is that I want Margaret Thatcher to live a long and healthy life - and I think all self-respecting lefties should, as well. And I'll tell you why. I want her to live, to see a day when the things she believes in are not just discredited, and despised, but overturned, and consigned to the wreckage of history.
I want her to live, to see a day when she is rightly regarded as a poisonous and terrible influence on Britain and the world - not just by the usual suspects, or by those who suffered at her hands and those of her friends Botha, Reagan and Pinochet, but by the vast majority of people.
I want her to live a long and full and healthy life where she can see that the things she did were truly disastrous - and, while, I don't wish ill upon the country and I hope that I'm wrong about the effect of her heirs' cuts on the country, I want her to live to see the day that her brand of me-first neoliberalism is shown to be a horrific stain upon the world, and not a solution to anything at all.
You might say I'm naive. I'm used to being called that. But I do think that, regardless of what I think of the vile woman, she believed she was doing the right thing. You might argue against that, and I don't mind, but if I'm right, and she did, and she could live long enough to be shown that everything she believed in was wrong, that would be better than her dying now, frail and old, in a hospital somewhere, to the ringing endorsements of right-wingers everywhere.
If she dies now, it's perfect timing, in a way. You can see David Cameron carrying on the torch from her at her deathbed. The cry of "Let's do it for Maggie!" will go up. The obituaries will be glowing towards the 'Iron Lady' and her legacy - I have a feeling they always will be, I'm afraid - in the newspapers who eagerly enjoyed her policies then, and who eagerly enjoy her successors' policies today.
No. I don't want her to die and I don't want her to suffer. I want her to live. I want her to live to see the day when she's proved wrong. I want her to suffer remorse and regret for the things she has done, not slip away from this life feeling free, with a sense of righteousness and vindication. I know that's probably a stupid thought, and one which is ridiculously doomed, but I don't care. I don't want her to suffer, and I don't want her to die. Not until the day she's shown to be wrong and acknowledged to be wrong by the vast majority of people.
And then she can go to hell.
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October 21st, 2010 - 15:27
She’s practically dead already – her dementia means that if she survives she won’t remember what she did or what she stood for or anything. It’s a pity – if she lives she’ll never realise that what she stood for is so discredited among anyone with sense, and if she dies it’ll be a relief. She’s in hell already, watching as everything she was boils off into nothing, as she becomes a shade, fading away.
October 21st, 2010 - 15:41
my dad thought in the falklands so i was brought up in a household hating MT. for reasons beyond the falklands as well obviously.
when it was the 25th memorial parade she was sat next to Blair and i felt so angry, two leaders discussing the unnecessary wars they had embroiled people in.
yes, i want her to understand what she did.
October 21st, 2010 - 15:41
that should say ‘fought’ not ‘thought’ d’oh!
October 21st, 2010 - 15:51
On an intellectual level I agree with you but I still have the childish desire to dance on her grave. I lived in a Nottinghamshire mining village during the strike. The splits she caused still exist – grandparents who have never seen their grandchildren because father and son were on opposites sides of the dispute. She is directly responsible for the death of the community I grew up in. Dementia is too good for her – and I say that believing it is one of the worst illnesses that a human being can suffer.
October 24th, 2010 - 16:20
But at the same time, Margaret Thatcher is not responsible for some people’s lack of ability to forgive and forget causing permanent rifts in families… it’s easy to blame someone else for a step you’re not willing to take yourself. The miner’s strike was 25 years ago. Call your mum and dad and say “I’d like to speak again” instead of blaming the then-PM.
October 21st, 2010 - 16:07
Ah, brace youselves for all the eulogising, the glowing praise and the fawning hypocrisy that’s imminent. I can imagine even sections of the left-wing press will be flagellating themselves, claiming, “But she did so much to ‘modernise’ Britain.”
October 21st, 2010 - 16:47
Problem is that by the time people realise that society would be better if we worked together instead of the every man for themselves mentality that she helped instil she’d be well into her hundreds. We’re on the brink of the second coming of Thatcherism. Years of unemployment, depression, protests and riots.
October 21st, 2010 - 17:03
Tony Blair’s eulogy will be a particularly horrible moment. I bet the bastard cries.
October 21st, 2010 - 17:03
“She was the People’s Prime Minister.”
October 21st, 2010 - 17:10
When she eventually expires I fear her many, many, many enemies will celebrate just a little too much, especially online. Which will just allow Tories (with Dale front and foremost) to bang on about how horrible and uncaring and intolerant and generally mean left-wing people are. So basically it will make us all look a bit childish. And Ed Miliband will be forced to go on TV and say nice things about her.
But even worse that, we’ll have to put up with a Diana-esque level of public “mourning”. And of course with Cameron in No 10 she’ll be assued of a state funeral, even though the last PM to get such an honour was Churchill.
October 21st, 2010 - 19:19
There was plenty of evidence at the time that her policies were making Britain a less pleasant place. When those still following her policies have turned Britain into a third world country, as they seem to be trying their hardest to do, what makes you think she wouldn’t look at that as a success?
October 21st, 2010 - 19:56
Nope. I hope she dies while I’m writing this – and comes back as a lump of coal, to be hacked at a repeatedly, then burnt. Is that irony or fate?
October 22nd, 2010 - 08:13
You owe me for a replacement to my tea splattered monitor. A lump of coal!
October 21st, 2010 - 22:56
Her imminent demise has thrown up a few quandries for me too. I thought I wished pain or death upon no-one but to my astonishment I have learnt that I want it for her. I feel callous, selfish and cruel for thinking such things, yet they won’t go away – I’d agree with you normally, Anton, about wanting to see her ideas trampled and ruined before her, so she can appreciate that her legacy is one of a divided and ruined Britain… and I agree that the fawning state funeral will be almost unbearable in it’s celebration of a viciously uncaring ideology, but I don’t care – I just want her to die, and I want to dance in the street along with the rest of my city (Sheffield) that saw their communities raped as part of her personal grudge match.
I never thought I’d write words like that, I never thought I’d be so unfeeling – this is a real person after all – but fuck her. She deserves worse.
October 22nd, 2010 - 09:21
Being the daughter of one of the 120,000 men that she effectively made redundant after the Devlin report into haulage on the Thames (also one of the reasons we have so many lovely lorries on the road) I sincerely hope that somewhere in eternity there is a private hell for those who needlessly inflict suffering, hardship and a generation of unemployment on entire communities.
Don’t waste your time waiting for her to be recognised for what she is – plenty already do, but those currently in power are never going to admit that. Some of what she did was useful, but she didn’t stop at trimming the fat and stripped it to the bone instead. We have no industry left except being the financial whore of the international community.
Do I wish her dead? No. State funeral when she goes? Hell no.
Do I sincerely hope that some trick of fate makes her live out her remaining days in the kind of poverty she created for millions of others? Oh, that would be nice.
October 22nd, 2010 - 11:25
I get what you’re saying. Trouble is, she’d never accept it. The whole world could turn to her and, in unison, say “we reject you and everything you stand for, everything you ever did and your entire worldview… and we have undeniable proof that you were wrong about everything” and she’d still think she was right. Like Blair. Like all of them. It’s impossible to prove a point to a sociopathic megalomaniac.
October 23rd, 2010 - 02:35
Funnily enough, on her birthday I wrote on my facebook how we should all come together to hope she doesn’t make it.
Yet about 10 minutes before reading this I changed it to something similar: I’d HATE her to die before we get chance to boot out her country-wrecking heirs.
And besides, I’m out of the country till March, she better cling on till I can celebrate properly.
October 23rd, 2010 - 15:14
We’re fucked one way or another, people who want to celebrate her death, or want to celebrate her suffering physically, or whatever, might as well go ahead and do it…the idea that there’ll ever be a time in any of our lifetimes – never mind hers – when Thatcherism is flushed down the toilet of history is hopelessly naive.
October 26th, 2010 - 19:29
I look forward to the opening of the ‘Thatcher’s Grave’ Discoteque.
Boogie on brother’s and sister’s.
October 27th, 2010 - 09:13
In my house the phrase ‘Hell won’t be full until Margaret Thatcher is in it’ was used quite a lot not because we live in a Nationalist community in Northern Ireland but because we were brought up to believe that anyone who inflicts suffering willingly on other people as she did deserves their spot in hell. She represents everything that is wrong with society at the moment and I 100% agree with you that she needs to stick around to see just how wrong she was.
October 13th, 2011 - 11:39
I don’t want her to die either, but for different reasons. I don’t think she’ll ever stop to think, under any circumstances, that what she did was wrong in any way, even if we end up being a third-world nation because of what’s happening under the Tories now. To her, and her like, it will always be the fault of the lazy, good-for-nothing, criminalised unemployed and poor, regardless.
I want her to live every single moment left of her life in abject misery and despair – in physical pain, mental distress, unable to do the things she occasionally remembers that she used to be able to do. I want her to feel every single ounce of pain her condition and age can cause her. And the longer it goes on, the more it will grind her down. But, please, don’t let her die yet. She’s not suffered enough… not nearly enough.
Ideally, she’d live for a while yet with just one nurse a day visiting her who’s only got enough time to wash her and make her bed before leaving her alone for another full day.
October 13th, 2011 - 12:03
My history’s not so good, but wasn’t it Michael Foot and the ideas of the hard left that were totally discredited? And abandoned? Even by “New” Labour?
If Thatcher had lost in 83 (hardly likely!) the likes of Bob Crow would be running – and holding the country – to ransom, instead of being the minor inconvenience they are.
Everything that has happened since ’83 has proved Mrs T completely and utterly right.
But let’s end on a note of agreement. Long live Maggie!