The Catskill Chronicle

By Mort Malkin

Arriving at Heathrow on Monday morning, we boarded the train for a short trip to London and the British Museum, not for Lady Thatcher’s funeral on Wednesday. On the ride into London I noticed a few areas of land divided into cultivated plots as if they were community gardens. In London! Here, the People must count for something. My translator-companion told me they were called “allotments,” offered to residents in every city and town in England. Of course, there is generally a waiting list for allotments, but even so.

The magnificent British Museum had no admission charge, but donations are appreciated and memberships are offered. Special shows, such as Ice Age Art, however, require you to purchase tickets and make reservations. I suppose the Nanny State can offer only so much for free, but it is good to see that the government encourages museum attendance.

After two days of museum and two evenings of pubs, came Wednesday morning and a bonus event that is the subject of today’s essay: Maggie Thatcher’s funeral procession. We wended our way down to Fleet Street, newspaper row, where barriers kept pedestrians in their place, on the sidewalks. London Bobbies were everywhere along the procession route. As we walked along the sidewalks behind the two- and three-deep spectators, I noted that in many of the offices across the street, people at work were standing at windows watching. On a few rooftops, others had a bird’s eye view of the event. No roof top snipers were to be seen, though a couple of helicopters looped overhead.

At one point, a company of Welsh Guards in full attire with tall furry bearskin headdress (busbies) marched in formation to the commands of a sergeant major. The sergeant major wielded a great silvery sword, but the guards shouldered semi-automatic AK47s with multiple round magazines. Now, wouldn’t long bows and quivers of arrows have been more in keeping with English tradition?

The Welsh Guards were only one of the Foot Guards who participated in the funeral theatre. Also prominent in similar headdress were Grenadier Guards, Coldstream Guards, Scots Guards … But, it was the Welsh Guards who brought politics into the event. In Maggie Thatcher’s War — the Falklands War (Malvinas to Argentina) — British losses totaled 48 troops, of whom 32 were Welsh Guards.

The politics infused into the funeral came in from various directions. The Right Reverend Richard Chartres, held forth at St. Paul’s Cathedral. In 1982, Chartres had nothing good to say about the Falklands War, opining that war was always, in a sense, a failure, adding that British triumphalism and hubris needed to be tempered. In domestic matters he was an advocate for the environment and a severe critic of unfettered free market capitalism with its culture of greed. Needless to say, he and Prime Minister Thatcher were at opposite sides of the independence–interdependence spectrum. Although a Tory, Chartres became Thatcher’s nemesis. With this history, the Tories were apprehensive about what the outspoken bishop might say at the funeral service. But, Dr. Chartres was wise enough to deliver an eloquent sermon and cloak his critical opinion of Thatcher in great subtlety. He alluded to the sharp disapproval of her policies by many in Parliament and by many average Brits: “After the storm of a life led in the heat of political controversy, there is great calm.” The best he could say of her concerns about the well being of British workers and the average British family was to note her “personal kindness toward those who worked for her.” There was nary a word he could say about her non-existent kindness toward those she worked for — the British people. So, he spoke of her role as a wife, mother, and grandmother.

Less subtle was Glenda Jackson, the actress turned Parliamentarian. She gave Prime Minister Thatcher no credit for having achieved such a high political position: “The first Prime Minister of female gender, OK. But a woman? Not on my terms.” Jackson went on to condemn the ideology that became policy: “Thatcherism wreaked the most heinous social, economic, and spiritual damage on this country.” She also spoke of the economic starving of the schools for the most basic materials such as books, paper and pencils, and of local hospitals “running on empty.” She spoke of the increase in homelessness under Thatcher: The homeless “grew in their thousands. Across the whole country in metropolitan areas, every shop doorway, every single night, became the bedroom, the living room, the bathroom for the homeless.” She summed up: “Everything I had been taught to regard as a vice – and I still regard them as vices – under Thatcherism was in fact a virtue: greed, selfishness, no care for the weaker … it was the way forward.” The Tories were livid at Glenda Jackson’s lack of respect for the dead, but she reported that her many e-mails following the speech were running over ten to one in favor of her commentary. The British public must have memories that reach back past yesterday, remembering that Maggie Thatcher closed the mines of the north, sold off council houses (public housing), privatized British Rail, British Airways, and British Telecom, and restricted the right of the unions — all to temporarily increase government revenues but increase poverty, suffering, and homelessness in the longer term. In equal evility, she deregulated financial markets, and so, established a model for Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and and Bush & Cheney to follow.

The politics of the funeral went international when the White House declined to send an official emissary to the event. But, the US was not without representation — Dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger came over to celebrate the memory of the Iron Lady, both risking arrest warrants for alleged war crimes, from the International Court of Justice.

Back on Fleet Street, single file walking became gridlocked, and so we turned up Chancery Lane to make our way through Old London to Piccadilly Circus (Circle). We passed several illustrious institutions — the Royal Courts of Law, the Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales, the Church of St. Martin in the Fields, and a McDonald’s with small discrete Golden Arches. Also prominent was the world renown London School of Economics (LSE) which trains Brits for foreign service. Conspicuous in absence was any College of Diplomacy, Negotiation, and Statesmanship. Closest to the ideals of Athenian democracy and philosophic wisdom was Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park near Marble Arch. But there, you are certain to be recorded by one of London’s ubiquitous surveillance cameras. As bad in the nation of the Magna Carta, Great Britain has no First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech and freedom of the press to all people, there is only Parliamentary Privilege for MPs while Parliament is in deliberation.

At present, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, with the able assistance of the beloved Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, is continuing Maggie Thatcher’s work by trying to privatize the National Health Service. Lots of Luck, Mr. Cameron. If only Ed Miliband, the progressive leader of Labor, had more charisma.