i Editor's Letter: Coverage of Thatcher's death
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And the letters just keep coming. The despair, resentment, blind anger and sheer hatred that balanced coverage of Margaret Thatcher provokes is startling, especially given that you sometimes admonish us for being too left wing. There have been just a couple of emails in her support. That said, it's heartbreaking to hear from so many former workers whose lives were ruined in her assault on the manufacturing sector.
All the more surprising then that some complained about how much coverage we gave her passing. Accompanied by a rant against her alleged faults and evils, they are a variation on this theme: I stapled together the first 13 pages of your paper yesterday because, apart from Owen Jones, I was sick of the sycophancy displayed toward "that woman". Which shows that you didn't really read before ranting and that one can't overestimate how obtuse people can be when they are sure they are right and everyone else is wrong.
I can't believe I have to write this, but it is unarguable that Mrs T was among the four most influential prime ministers of the past century - alongside Lloyd George, Churchill and Attlee. To state as much is not to endorse her or her policies, simply to state the obvious: she made a huge and lasting impact, for better and for worse.
It is not to defend Mrs Thatcher to point out that many of those hurling abuse at her for trucking no criticism and riding roughshod over reason and freedom are doing all of the above via the vituperative wildness of their hostility. It is as if the left's failure to defeat her through reason or at the ballot box is perpetuated beyond her dying. She is formidable, even in death.
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