More than two decades after a tearful Margaret Thatcher left 10 Downing Street for the last time, her legacy remains as divisive as ever. The passions she aroused from the day she took office are as live now as they were then, and the divide her 11 years in power opened up was sharply in evidence when her death was announced. It was a rare epitaph that was not prefaced with 'like or loathe her'.
Thatcher's fierce conviction, which contrasted with the muddle and depressed mood of the 1970s, was both her strength and her weakness. Without her single-mindedness, she would not have achieved sound monetary policy, popular capitalism, council house sales, or action on climate change. But her refusal to compromise often made her political life harder and eventually proved her undoing.
The Falklands War was perhaps her finest hour, but could it have been avoided? Could trade union power have been curbed without the trauma of the miners' strike? Might peace in Northern Ireland have come sooner? Her supporters say no; her detractors disagree. There is no meeting of minds even today, and a broad seam of bitterness endures close to the surface of British politics.
Her ordinary origins as a grocer's daughter and her gender made her a striver and an outsider, giving her a practical understanding of what motivated people. But this asset turned into a liability as she appeared to lose touch with Middle England. The poll tax riot forced one of the few U-turns from the lady who wasn't for turning, showing how detached she had become.
Many policies associated with her retain negative aspects. Council house sales depleted social housing stock; popular capitalism produced new shareholders but also losers when the financial crisis struck; the Big Bang deregulating the City is seen as the genesis of later excesses; and de-fanging the trade unions contributed to low-wage, low-productivity problems. Abroad, Thatcher was seen in a less ambiguous light, but at home, the divisions she created are still felt today.
