Missing Maggie

On the day Mrs Thatcher announced that she was leaving Downing Street I travelled to Westminster from west London, where I was living at that time. A fellow student asked me on Richmond Bridge why I was doing so. “Because this is a historic day,” I replied. I don’t know whether she thought I was glad or sad about it – she probably thought I was glad – but I wasn’t, I was sad. Or at least, I was a little numb. I ‘accepted’ the resignation, it had felt inevitable for a week or so, and I was heading there on the District Line because I knew that it was a major event.

(I like that Dominic Sandbrook refers to Mrs Thatcher rather than just ‘Thatcher’ in his excellent book Who Dares Wins, out of gentlemanly respect, so I shall do the same here.)

I strolled around SW1, taking photographs. I didn’t see Mrs Thatcher herself, but I did see the likes of Cecil Parkinson, Roy Jenkins and David Owens on College Green. It all felt very English; there was no rowdiness. There were no aggressive protesters whooping and hollering or firing guns into the air like you’d get in faraway lands. Or present-day London, probably.

Enoch Powell sang in his bath after he had helped Edward Heath lose the February 1974 General Election. I cried in my bath a couple of days after Mrs Thatcher’s resignation (I’ve never told anyone that before). In a way, I wept because it was the end of an era: it was the final curtain falling on the 1980s, it was a part of my life that was no more and never would be again. (I had a similar feeling when the Queen died in 2022.)

The queen of British politics was slain on that day, 22 November 1990. The way she transformed Britain, almost entirely for the better, is best judged by not looking at the 1980s, but by comparing the 1970s to the 1990s. Thanks to the reforms she put in place, Britain became a job-creation machine which lasted until the 2008 crash (and beyond, arguably). Her economic reforms were necessary; they seemed harsh in part because of Left-leaning broadcast media: the BBC had Boys From The Blackstuff (just five episodes long, but it seemed to get an inordinate amount of attention), ITN News had a regularly shown map of the country showing where jobs had been lost or created (there were always more losses than gains, which is why they did it).

The flat above the shop that Margaret Roberts was born in, in 1925

Admittedly, unemployment was high, but this was because of the preceding thirty-odd years of soft and hard socialism of the Uniparty. Like Reform may have to do in three years’ time, she ripped off the plaster. The eventual result was a leaner, more dynamic, more enterprising economy where people found it a little easier to live their dreams. Her mistakes were the poll tax – which she was misled on by Oliver Letwin and company – and the speed of mine closures, perhaps. As even Norman Tebbit later admitted, that could have been done at a slower pace (but they did have to close – extracting the coal was costing more than it was fetching on the market).

Her foreign policy was immaculate. Her bravery in the face of constant hate and abuse from the Left – and murder attempts by the IRA – was astounding. She tamed the militant, tunnel-vision unions. She had wisdom and wide knowledge. Underneath her tough exterior, she was deeply humane.

The only town with signs for both Isaac Newton and Margaret Thatcher

A few years back, some ropey magazine publisher produced a bookazine titled something like ‘The Greatest Women Ever’ and on their cover, which featured several women from history, there was no Mrs Thatcher. Typical of my old profession. Google the phrase and you’ll see a list of women none of whom are anywhere near Mrs Thatcher’s greatness.

In 2019 I visited Mrs Thatcher’s grave. Don’t tell the Loony Left, but it was easy to do. I just turned up at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, asked security if I was alright to enter the garden and the guy said yes, fine. I’d visited Churchill’s grave in 2001 and Shakespeare’s in 2018 – this felt like the completion of the trilogy, possibly the third greatest Briton ever. I stood there alone gazing at it, filled with memories. Then I went to nearby Flood Street and had a nosey at number 19 where she lived for 18 years.

In 2023 I visited Grantham for the first time (and took the photos you see here). Nice enough town. And lots of Mrs Thatcher goodies for us Mrs Thatcher lovers. The pessimist/miserabilist in me wonders how long it will be before the Islamo-Leftist State will sweep all of this away, but for now a statue and several plaques remain. There were no mobs, either happy or angry, around the shop where she born, or by her statue close to the local Wetherspoon pub, an institution she surely approved of.

The Maggie statue in Grantham

An aligned friend said to me some years ago: “She was our mother.” Perhaps not quite. But at my school in the 1980s a few of us had an almost cult-like devotion towards her. And this was in north-east England. Beware tales now told that all Geordies loathed her: from 1983 to 1987 I had a Tory MP in my Newcastle Upon Tyne Central constituency. Nearby Hexham also had a Conservative MP, and there were a few more dotted around the region.

During the very brief time I was a member of the Conservative Party, about 17 years ago, I received an invitation to attend a dinner in Westminster at which Mrs Thatcher would be present. For various reasons – mostly laziness – I didn’t respond. Do I regret that? Sort of. But they say never meet your heroes (or heroines). I imagine, if anything, I would have been overwhelmed.

I do have a signed copy of her last book Statecraft though, which I bought on eBay for a princely sum. ‘Dispatched with Thatcherite efficiency’ I wrote for the seller’s feedback.

Why do I claim Mrs Thatcher was the greatest woman who ever lived? Because she rose from humble beginnings to become a giant on the world stage; she helped end the Cold War; she didn’t give an inch to terrorists; she put Britain back on the course to prosperity (since squandered); she eventually realised that the EU was an autocratic, wasteful, globalist organisation; she won the Falklands War; she stemmed immigration; she reduced the upper rate of tax from 98% to 40%; she gave women independent taxation. And she allowed pubs to stay open all day.

She achieved all this as a woman in a man’s world. For a man to have achieved what she achieved would have been remarkable – for a woman at the time to do this was doubly remarkable. She was an example to her sex, while never playing the feminist card. She was wise, principled, articulate and brave. She was a magnificent woman.

Russell David is the author of the Mad World Substack. 

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