Thatcher Dies: The Iron Lady's Divisive Legacy Endures

Margaret Thatcher died on April 8, 2013, at the Ritz Hotel in London after a series of strokes, and Britain immediately split into two countries: one that mourned a great leader and one that celebrated the passing of a destroyer. The division was genuine, visceral, and a final testament to a political career that had been built on confrontation rather than consensus. "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead" from The Wizard of Oz climbed to number two on the UK singles chart. Parliament was recalled for tributes. Both reactions were sincere. Thatcher arrived at 10 Downing Street in 1979 quoting St. Francis of Assisi about harmony and hope, then spent eleven years waging the most transformative and divisive premiership in modern British history. She broke the power of the trade unions, most dramatically in the 1984-85 miners' strike, when she deployed police forces against mining communities in battles that scarred entire regions for generations. She privatized British Telecom, British Gas, British Airways, British Steel, and the water and electricity utilities, creating shareholder capitalism on a mass scale while devastating communities that had depended on nationalized industries for employment. Her economic philosophy, labeled Thatcherism, combined monetarist economics, deregulation, reduced taxation, and hostility to the welfare state. Unemployment peaked above 3 million during her first term, and entire industrial cities in northern England, Scotland, and Wales were hollowed out. Her supporters argued that the pain was necessary to modernize a sclerotic economy; her opponents saw deliberate class warfare against working people. The poll tax, a flat-rate local government charge that hit poor households disproportionately, triggered riots in 1990 and contributed to her removal by her own party. On the world stage, Thatcher was formidable. She won the Falklands War, forged a partnership with Ronald Reagan that helped end the Cold War, and was among the first Western leaders to identify Mikhail Gorbachev as someone she could "do business with." Her opposition to European integration anticipated debates that would dominate British politics for decades and ultimately produce Brexit. Her funeral at St. Paul's Cathedral drew 2,300 invited guests. Along the procession route, some mourners stood in respectful silence while others turned their backs.