The venom unleashed

Although her enemies had long promised a party, the venom unleashed by Margaret Thatcher’s death still surprised many of us. Nothing has so divided the nation since the miners’ strike of 1984, but that event alone cannot explain the hate. The wounds of twenty-nine years may still be raw, but much of the vitriol comes from people too young to remember. Is it something else, something less political: her voice, her demeanour, her dress even, which has made Maggie the bête noire of so many people? Was it the fact that she so perfectly encapsulated the traits which we often attribute to the British lower-middle class: ambitious, forthright, house proud, vulgar, and strident? We seem still, to be very far from the “nation at ease with itself” which John Major promised when he replaced her.