Funerals are emotional events. There is no justification in the arrogant cynicism of those who mock the shedding of tears at times of such emotion. Few can tell why George Osborne was caused to shed his tears. Perhaps it was no more the occasion itself or perhaps it was the reminder of some more direct and personal loss. In any event, he was entitled to a genuine expression of his feelings.
Likewise death provides no true cause for celebration. There may well have been good cause for celebration of her political demise, but Margaret Thatcher's influence on events had long since dwindled to nothing of significance. All that was left was the death of an 87 year old woman, and from her dying, nothing was gained.
But reason there certainly is to assess the history of her life and times and many now have done so with flowery, sychophantic rhetoric extending to irrational drivel.
We do not have Presidents in our constitution. Such reflection as takes place should be on the acts of the government in which she was Prime Minister, not reflections on the exercise by Margaret Thatcher of personal power. It was indeed she who, as Prime Minister, led a government faced with many problems, but though she clearly provided that leadership with strong opinions, happily, we the people did not then surrender to her as a dictator, nor should we think to have done so now.
In the 1960s, Britain blossomed out of austerity with enthusiasm and creativity. More and more of Britain's people escaped their dark, depressing tenements and villas and began to enjoy benefits previously reserved to the wealthy. But, as history has so often proved, the taste of a little wealth whets the appetite for more.
There was then more than one view of how the satisfaction of this appetite might be achieved. In 1979 a minority of the voting electorate turned to the party traditionally believed to be the party of wealth and enterprise, led by the upwardly mobile daughter of a small businessman from Grantham, Lincolnshire. The majority did not, but with three major parties in the British political race, Margaret Thatcher's Conservative party was, despite having only a minority of the popular vote, able to form a government.with an overall majority of 44 seats in the House of Commons in the UK Parliament.
That government was then faced with a people deeply divided about how to stay on that road to a greater well-being to be enjoyed by the mass of the people. Margaret Thatcher personally confronted it with the slogan "There is no alternative" to the policies of free market economics to which her governments were committed.,
She was wrong. There was an alternative. The route she chose struck discord in contradiction of the harmony she professed. It promoted greed at the expense of those who could not secure a foothold on wealth, and it led directly to the new crisis of capitalism, and the austerity which threatens a renewed impoverishment of large groups of us, the people. She relished being one of the world's chief exponents of Friedmanite economics, which now, worldwide, are being seen as a potentially catastrophic error.
Why then a state funeral in all but name ? Why the expenditure on £10 million in the same week that state benefits were cut laying down the gauntlet to the workless to find work as unemployment rises. Why then the military display - perhaps rooted only in jingoistic uncertainty over a war that served to win an election but which even the United States appears to have found unnecessarily belligerent.
Those who supported the late Baroness and her governments have their answers. As we are democratic, these are answers to be debated, but that in itself leaves one question hard to answer. The people are divided, but the state has taken sides. The crown has aligned itself, herself, with the celebrants not of Margaret Thatcher's death, but of her life. The British Broadcasting Corporation has succumbed mealy mouthed to censors against the protests of a large section of us, the people who, however tasteless their protest, have a greater right to liberty. These things should never be. The question is not how the reactions of the people should be rationally defined, but that they should not be suppressed, and that is by far the greater cause.
So then, this woman was no saviour of our country. This woman was no Churchill. There was reason to lay her to rest with that respect that is deserved by anyone who has achieved success in their own terms but no more. Though her governments did little for women, her passing may be marked as that of Britain's first woman Prime Minister - and even that without the patronising commentary of men marvelling at this achievement
Margaret Hilda Thatcher has been hailed at her death as a great champion of liberty. That is only praise for the victor by the victor's acolytes. It is an offence to those whose options were narrowed and whose choices were denied by the economics of the governments she led. The definition of liberty as the freedom to compete, to outdo, to defeat and ultimately to destroy is a definition of liberty only for the few. It is a definition that should now be buried plainly, without ceremony.
