The Lady’s Not for Yearning

**In the last week, no subject has touched more lips than the death of former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Since her passing on 8 April, the response from the public was dramatically polarizing. Whereas many supporters spoke of her everlasting legacy, there was also a deafening retaliation from those who thought otherwise. But was all this reaction really necessary? And what does it say about us?**

On 14th April, ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’ was announced as the #2 song on the official UK music chart. Where did this come from? Well, a group of people on Facebook decided many years ago to launch this campaign upon Thatcher’s death, and so they did. But that wasn’t all that happened: over the course of 8th April, thousands upon thousands of tweets, news articles, blogs and status updates built up a wall of hate: angry messages celebrating Thatcher’s death.

For those who lived during Thatcher’s administration and were actually affected by it, it might be fair to say that their reactions were justified. For the years of suffering and anger, the death of the woman who started it all would have been an outlet for their emotions, a purging of all they experienced during that time. Everybody’s feelings towards a hate figure are usually exacerbated by their proximity to them: those who were not affected negatively or at all by Thatcher’s decisions would not feel this way. Yet for those people who couldn’t pay their poll tax or for those miners who lost their jobs, and to all those people who were related to them, the story is very different. However, their reactions do not change anything. Thatcher’s reign ended nearly twenty years ago and everything that happened, happened. There is nothing these people can do to change it. Celebrating her death, therefore, is perhaps pointless. Trashing her legacy is perfectly fine, but her death… it’s perhaps too much.

Living in a world which is so intensely saturated by the media and online opinions, it is difficult to obtain a true image of the past without the populist sentiments of the internet altering history. The way people talk about her nowadays is like she was a deadly totalitarian leader who brought the entire country to its knees, yet it’s important to establish that Thatcher wasn’t all bad. For example, her successful management of the Falklands War is certainly something to be remembered. And as for her being the first female Prime Minister – well, she may not have coat-tailed in more women to the cabinet, but she certainly showed us that it was possible.

The suppressive state of online social networking also brings about many dangers which came to light on her death. Nowadays, it is very easy to jump on a bandwagon, something which was quite different in the past. By reading just a few tweets on your feed or one news article on Google can completely change your point of view and betroth you with an opinion that is neither substantial nor sound. It is an unfortunate fact to administer, but this reveals many people in a very harmful and volatile light.

Seeing a flood of celebratory comments about Thatcher’s death was extraordinary, if not incredibly surprising. For somebody who did not live during her administration, it is difficult to see the extent to which it affected people, but for those who were affected, the distress must have arrived in truckloads. The online world’s reaction to Thatcher’s death was ominously enlightening: if this is how everybody reacted to Thatcher, it’s scary to think what Blair’s passing will be like.