Even in life Thatcher was already immortalized, taken up as the patron saint of conservatives -- their "Iron Lady." After her passing even liberal commentators paid homage to her determined and what one might call roguish spirit that has come to inflame the popular imagination. One columnist even went so far as to wryly bestow upon her the title "perfect" inadvertent "feminist," explaining that while Thatcher vehemently denounced feminist politics she proved that a woman could play politics, a game that has generally been the purview of old white men.
In short, most coverage was either seeping with praise for the former prime minister or expressed mild amusement over the outpouring of such effusive admiration. Little to no substance concerning the practical effects of her policies found its way into the conversation. Warm feelings needed to be maintained, doting hagiographies sold and reality suspended.
Such benign coverage of Thatcher would be perfectly acceptable if it was simply meant to acknowledge her life and death as a private individual. What makes these sanguine or, when most honest, benign appraisals of her political legacy dangerous, however, is their contribution to the mythology of Margaret Thatcher. These substance-less memorials do not so much remember the life of a human being but of a god, adding to the narrative of a mythical leader who forges reality by their own will and oracular abilities.
The myth of the divinely-inspired politician is a dangerously deceptive one. It encourages passivity and obedience, the surrender of one's common sense for a warm and fuzzy understanding of politics which substitutes entertaining anecdotes for history, as well as soothing campaign slogans for substance. The creation of these simple narratives also serve to whitewash the past. Idiotic wars, criminal wrongs and disastrous mistakes are erased from memory.
Stripped of their human foibles these politicians become public icons, symbols devoid of meaning which can be freely manipulated by future politicians until they themselves fool the public into making them the latest icon for veneration.
While I do not intend for this post to throw muck on the grave of Thatcher, I do think that public officials owe it to the world to be held publicly accountable for their actions. Even more importantly, I simply cannot stomach the deification of another political leader, a practice which makes their partisans all too prone to the manipulative strategies of politicians of all shapes and sizes. Airy praise of a public leader's "iron" will, controversial tactics, or charisma in place of meaningful discussion over the effects of their policies simply adds to this false aura of divinity.
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And the legacy of Thatcher is anything but rosy. During her time in office she was a vocal proponent of deindustrializing Britain, a painful process which led to the crippling of workers' unions and the loss of countless jobs. In place of producing quality consumer goods the manufacturing capacity of Great Britain was retooled towards an emphasis on weapons production. Instead of producing useful goods the Thatcher government decided to manufacture death.
Yet to sustain this boom in weapons manufacturing new markets needed to be secured and old ones exploited with renewed avidity. British weapons were purchased by some of the most tyrannical governments in the world such as the Suharto government in Indonesia, a regime whose human rights record was one of the worst of the twentieth century. It is estimated that the Suharto government oversaw the murder of between one-half to one million Indonesians, many of whom were simply ordinary people caught up in an indiscriminate wave of terror.
The economics of the illegal arms trade which Thatcher tirelessly pursued are sickening. Poor countries like Indonesia coughed up the money to pay for these weapons by exploiting their own people. Once their citizens' pockets were emptied to pay for these implements of violence the governments used these very same weapons to kill them. In other words, helpless people were forced to finance their own executions so that the coffers of British corporations could be filled.
Margaret Thatcher and her son Mark had significant personal stakes in this dirty, bloody and thoroughly immoral business. As journalist John Pilger has noted, Mark Thatcher acted as an interlocutor for arranging many of these sales. Paid by commission, he made many millions of dollars -- the dollars of poor people, one must add -- by connecting governments to arms producers.
The fact that Prime Minister Thatcher's son was involved in this trade is disturbing for another reason, mainly that he was involved in government activities at all. His active presence in the halls of officialdom reveals the practice of nepotism under Thatcher, a macabre brand of favoritism that was as heinous as it was lucrative.
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There are many people who would like these details about the Thatcher administration, i.e., the policies and the facts, to be swept under the rug. Some will say that all politician's make "mistakes" and other will say that it is no good to throw mud on the names of the dead.
It is true that all politicians make "mistakes" and this is precisely why the facts must be remembered -- so that these same people are not turned into gods. Otherwise, the danger of past politicians becoming emotive symbols for engraining passive allegiance to another party or public figure becomes all too real.
To understand this danger one need only think of how the military now bastardizes quotes by the pacifist Martin Luther King Jr. -- the first major public figure to denounce the Vietnam War -- in order to lend a façade of legitimacy to its illegal wars overseas.
Saying that people should not throw mud on the names of the dead is also baseless when such accusations of mudslinging are made against people who simply cite the policies made by past public figures, whose positions are naturally meant to be subjected to public scrutiny. To claim that people should, in effect, forget the past is a frightening admonition. In any case, it betrays much about the legacy of a public figure if in order to honor their legacy you must first forget it.
At the end of the day Margaret Thatcher was a politician, probably no more moral or immoral than any other. Yet her life does teach us volumes about the nature of power, hubris and fame's wafer-thin patina.
I hope that Thatcher rests in peace just as I hope that the world may be at peace. To resign oneself to the absence of peace until death is as dangerous as placing one's hope for peace in the empty platitudes of politicians. Let us then not place are hopes in "iron" fictions that rust but instead choose to demand peace in the present.
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