How my hatred for Maggie did a U-turn
“Maggie, Maggie, Maggie. Out, out, out.”
This was the stuff of nightmares. The angry derision flowing from the mouths of the men huddled outside the factory gates echoed through the plush boardroom. Never did I believe it would happen, but I actually felt embarrassed for her.
She sat opposite. If I was uneasy, then she was utterly unmoved. Most people shy from abuse while a few seem to almost lap it up as warm milk. Margaret Thatcher was of the latter grouping.
I had all of 10 minutes with her. Working for the Northern Echo newspaper, I was covering that rarest of all occasions in the Tyneside region of England in 1981 — a factory was hiring. A few dozen extra jobs was the limited good news, but so unusual that Thatcher herself was putting in an appearance. It was not a good time for her and it was a worse time for the country. She was floundering in public support, approval ratings around the 20 per cent mark, and in danger of being swept away as a footnote of British political history. Less than a month later, the Argentines inadvertently saved her by landing troops on a barren outpost in the South Atlantic, which the Brits called The Falklands. If General Leopoldo Galtieri had been in that boardroom, he would have thought better of it.
But that was a political lifetime away. For now, she answered my questions, and when the flavour became tart, she smiled that mirthless smile and began the answer with, “young man, do you not realize.”
Somewhat tongue-tied I may have been but, yes, I realized only too well.
This was the woman who was hell bent on destroying my family, my friends, my whole society. I was the son of a coal miner, the grandson of a coal miner and the great grandson of a coal miner. I’d managed to escape the pit, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t turn my back on my birthright.
The showdown was yet to come, but the course was clear, just like the voices of the men outside. They knew the score and they were losing and about to be counted out for good.
Soon I’d decide I must turn my back after all and escape to the best country in the world, knowing only too well left behind was economic and social devastation from which the region and the entire country would never recover. It was obvious.
Except I was wrong. By the time I went back, a decade later, she was gone from power — booted out by her own Tory party. The revenge of the “wets,” as she so dismissively called them. Of course they stabbed her in the back — no one would do it face on, that was for sure.
But in that time the place had been transformed. As a product of the ’70s, I could hardly recognize my homeland. My parents had bought their own home — Maggie’s policy of selling council houses to long-sitting tenants on favourable terms revolutionized the culture of the country — and there were jobs. Never as many as in the pampered south, but ones that would last and not maim you in the process.
She had become the Iron Lady, a name courtesy of a Soviet press, which hadn’t learned the lesson of those men outside the factory gates. She thrived on conflict because it made her stronger. She wore insults like she wore her hair. When the IRA tried to blow her up, she emerged from the dust and debris of that Brighton hotel declaring she would not budge an inch. She didn’t either, even as a dozen Irish hunger strikers died.
It is hard to believe she is gone. That 10 minutes I sat opposite her has stayed with me. My own water- shed and one the country at large would share.
So how do I reconcile Margaret Thatcher? How does her country?
How can you dislike someone — not quite hate but a few whiskies could get me there — yet also know that here was a leader responsible for transforming your dying country and making it proud once more? Here was a leader who didn’t run to the latest poll to learn her next move; who knew she was right and that turning was for the timid.
And here was a leader the type of which we will never see again.
That she never captured our hearts didn’t matter. She never wanted to.