Nothing new about the Left resorting to personal abuse
IT SOMETIMES seems as if our world is full of new problems, new issues and new dilemmas but there’s an old phrase that seems truer with every passing day and which puts all that in perspective: “There’s nothing new under the sun.”
It came to mind when I read yesterday about the abuse suffered by Baroness Thatcher during the 1987 election campaign.
There’s a lot of attention quite rightly being paid at the moment to the behaviour of the Corbynites, for many of whom truly foul abuse is a stock in trade. But Baroness Thatcher’s experience 30 years ago puts it in context. Appalling as the Corbynites’ behaviour is, it isn’t new.
We gained new insight into the abuse targeted at Baroness Thatcher yesterday with the release of a letter to her by Lord Powell, who as Charles Powell was one of her most trusted aides. Two days after her third successive election victory in June 1987 – with a landslide 100-seat majority – he wrote: “I hope that you will not put yourself through it again. The level of personal abuse thrown at you during the campaign was unbelievable and must take some toll, however stoic you are outwardly.”
He went on: “There comes a point when your reputation and standing as an historic figure are more important to your party, to your cause and to the country than even you yourself can be and it’s not right that you should be subjected to a further round like this time.”
THE intensity of vitriol directed against Baroness Thatcher throughout her ascendancy in the 1980s was shocking. She was routinely referred to as if she was inhuman and in some circles it was normal to talk openly about wanting her dead.
Some of this re-emerged when she passed away in 2013 – given a new push by social media, which didn’t exist in her heyday. Former Labour and Respect MP George Galloway posted the words “Tramp the dirt down” – a reference to an Elvis Costello song that had a line about jumping up and down on her grave.
Derek Hatton, the former Militant deputy leader of Liverpool city council, wrote: “The