Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher

[marmar]

from In These Times:


Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher
The tall tales are all true.

BY Jane Miller


At the moment when it was announced that Margaret Thatcher had died, Prime Minister David Cameron must have been having breakfast and preparing to strong-arm Europe’s leaders into concessions for Britain, just as she had done years ago. He must have leapt, in mid-croissant, onto a plane for London, where—pink and puffed—he delivered his verdict on our “greatest peacetime prime minister,” who “didn’t just lead our country, she saved our country.” This was the message peddled by the BBC for most of the day. Britain was “a country that was on its knees” in 1979, despised abroad as “the sick man of Europe,” let down by its “failing state monoliths”: the remnants of rampant socialism at home. And then along came Thatcher. And look at us now.

The BBC did find an ex-miner from Durham who spoke of “a legacy of destruction” and a woman who believed Thatcher had “ruin[ed] the country,” and showed brief shots of people dancing in the streets of Glasgow and Bristol. Charles Powell, one of her advisers, has said that she’d have been disappointed if there had not been celebrations of her death.

The only time I ever saw her was during her “milk snatching” days in the early 1970s. As secretary of state for education, “Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher” abolished free milk for school children aged 7 to 11. I remember thinking her extraordinarily pretty.

She was, no doubt, accomplished. As a woman and a “grocer’s daughter,” she got to run the Conservative Party and to petrify a world of snobbish men in grey suits into doing her bidding and then spending the rest of their lives expressing their gratitude to her. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.org/article/14981/maggie_thatcher_milk_snatcher/

[GeorgeGist]

1. I remember thinking her extraordinarily pretty. ?

I think she meant extraordinarily petty.