‘Milk Snatcher’ label left her shaken to the core

MRS THATCHER never threw off the jibe of being the ‘Milk Snatcher’. At her funeral, it was still being tossed contemptuously at her memory, 40 years after it was first coined.

The fact that it was never justified was ignored by her enemies.

The whole row about free milk and schoolchildren in 1971 when she was Education Secretary was artificial in its political substance. Labour had withdrawn free milk from secondary schools two years before with no fuss and no ill effects on the health of Britain’s children.

It was only logical to extend that to primary schools, where many of the archaic one-third-of-a-pint glass milk bottles went unopened anyway because children’s tastes had changed since the scheme was introduced in the Forties. As Mrs Thatcher argued, free milk was no longer a priority or a need.

But all hell descended on her head, with the ‘Milk Snatcher’ jibe launched by a floor speaker at the Labour party conference turning into the most pejorative and personalised campaign against her.

The Sun voted her ‘The most unpopular woman in Britain’, and asked readers: ‘Is Mrs Thatcher human?’

In the House of Commons, Labour MPs described her as ‘mean and vicious’, ‘Mrs Scrooge with the painted face’ and ‘a reactionary cavewoman’. Gerald Kaufman likened her to Attila the Hun. These exaggera- tions were mild compared to the offensive and obscene taunts I heard as an observer in the public gallery. ‘Ditch the bitch!’ was one of many insults from the Labour benches, along with repeated ‘Snatcher’ chants.

Margaret was unnerved by the abuse. One senior civil servant recalled her ‘shaken to the core’ and ‘temporarily unhorsed’.

The most hurtful aspect was the venom directed against her as a wife and mother, caricatured as a wicked witch who snatched milk bottles from the lips of young, thirsty innocents.

It was unmerited but it had a devastating impact on Thatcher’s reputation that never went away.