In deference to our Open Thread on Saturday, Monckton submitted this for WUWT readers. It is insightful and worth a read IMHO – Anthony
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, courtesy of wnd.com
It will be from Heaven that Margaret Thatcher, the greatest friend the United States ever had, will observe the now-inescapable disintegration of the dismal European tyranny-by-clerk whose failure she foresaw even as it brought her down.
Margaret was unique: a fierce champion of people against government, taxpayers against bureaucrats, workers against unions, us against Them, free markets against state control, privatization against nationalization, liberty against socialism, democracy against Communism, prosperity against national bankruptcy, law against international terrorism, independence against global governance; a visionary among pygmies; a doer among dreamers; a statesman among politicians; a destroyer of tyrannies from arrogant Argentina via incursive Iraq to the savage Soviet Union.
It is a measure of the myopia and ingratitude of her Parliamentary colleagues that, when she famously said “No, no, no!” at the despatch-box in response to a scheming proposal by the unelected arch-Kommissar of Brussels that the European Parliament of Eunuchs should supplant national Parliaments and that the hidden cabal of faceless Kommissars should become Europe’s supreme government and the fumbling European Council its senile senate, they ejected her from office and, in so doing, resumed the sad, comfortable decline of the nation that she had briefly and gloriously made great again.
Never did she forget the special relationship that has long and happily united the Old Country to the New. She shared the noble ambition of your great President, Ronald Reagan, that throughout the world all should have the chance to live the life, enjoy the liberty, and celebrate the happiness that your Founding Fathers had bequeathed to you in their last Will and Testament, the Constitution of the United States. I know that my many friends in your athletic democracy will mourn her with as heartfelt a sense of loss as my own.
The sonorous eulogies and glittering panegyrics will be spoken by others greater than I. But I, who had the honor to serve as one of her six policy advisors at the height of her premiership, will affectionately remember her and her late husband, Denis, not only for all that they did but for all that they were; not only for the great acts of State but for the little human kindnesses to which they devoted no less thought and energy.
When Britain’s greatest postwar Prime Minister was fighting a losing battle for her political life, I wrote her a letter urging her to fight on against the moaning Minnies who had encircled her. Within the day, though she was struggling to govern her country while parrying her party, she wrote back to me in her own hand, to say how grateful she was that I had written and to promise that if she could carry on she would.
I had neither expected nor deserved a reply: but that master of the unexpected gave me the undeserved. For no small part of her success lay in the unfailing loyalty she inspired in those to whom she was so unfailingly loyal.
Margaret savored her Soviet soubriquet “the Iron Lady”, and always remained conscious that, as Britain’s first woman Prime Minister, she must be seen to be tough enough to do the job – the only man in the Cabinet.
It was said of her that at a Cabinet dinner the waiter asked her what she would like to eat. She replied, “I’ll have the steak.”
“And the vegetables?”
“They’ll have the steak too.”
Yet her reputation for never listening was entirely unfounded. When she was given unwelcome advice, she would say in the plainest terms exactly what she thought of it. But then she would always pause. The advisor had two choices: to cut and run in the face of the onslaught, in which event she would have little respect for him, or to stand his ground and argue his case.
If the advisor was well briefed and had responded well to her first salvo of sharply-directed questions, she would say, “I want to hear more about this, dear.” She would tiptoe archly to the bookcase in the study and reach behind a tome for a bottle of indifferent whisky and two cut-glass tumblers.
At my last official meeting with her, scheduled as a ten-minute farewell, I asked if I could give her one last fourpence-worth of advice. She agreed, but bristled when I told her what I had been working on. “Don’t be so silly, dear! You know perfectly well that I can’t possibly agree to that.” Then, as always, she paused. I stood my ground. A salvo of questions. Out came the whisky from behind the bookshelf. I was still there an hour and a half later.
The following year, during her third general election, I told the story in the London Evening Standard. Within an hour of the paper hitting the streets, a message of thanks came from her office. Unfailing loyalty again. She won by a 100-seat majority.
To the last, her political instinct never left her. One afternoon, Sir Ronald Millar, the colorful playwright who wrote her speeches, took her onstage at the Haymarket Theater, which he owned. She gazed up at the rows of seats, turned to Ronnie and said, “What a wonderful place for a political rally!”
During the long speech-writing sessions that preceded every major speech, Ronnie would suggest a phrase and Margaret would rearrange it several times. Every so often, she would dart across to Denis, sitting nearby with a gin and tonic. She would try the line out on him. If he did not like it, he would drawl, “No, no – that won’t fly!”
A couple of years ago her “kitchen cabinet” invited her to dinner. For two hours she was her vigorous old self. I sat opposite her. Late in the evening, I saw she was tiring and gave her a thumbs-up. Instantly she revived, smiled radiantly, and returned the gesture – using both thumbs.
It was not hard to see why Margaret and Denis Thatcher were the most popular couple among the old stagers working at 10 Downing Street since the Macmillans. Now they are reunited; and I pray, in the words of St. Thomas More, that they may be merry in Heaven. They have both earned it. Let her be given a State Funeral. Nothing less will do.
I would like to know a lot more about Margaret Thatcher’s, and indeed her Chancellor Nigel Lawson’s, early views on climate science from the 1980s – but not this! Not on this site anyway…
And here’s me thinking this was a science blog and not just a climate blog.
As for Thatcher, she played a MAJOR role in establishing the mess we are in and so her demise is suitable for comment.
As for a state funeral…she was great, but I don’t think she was that great, and I think she would be the first to agree to that. Ever the ‘housewife’
I agree with A. Scott. I was touched by the reminiscences of Christopher Monckton. As I enjoyed reading the capers of Willis. Both distinguished members of this community. If you do not like their stories or opinions on other than strictly climate related issues, skip them.
I was but a wee nipper when Margaret Thatcher came to power.I was in the UK and we were suffering a ‘3 day week’. I remember having to sit around the kitchen table reading by candle light. Also rubbish was not getting collected, and strikes were occurring at a drop of a hat, the place was going to hell in a hand basket. I remember the BBC cutting the coverage of having to go Zurich to borrow money to keeping the economy afloat…
I have the up most respect for her and what she did. The miners had it coming to them for the utter arrogance of thinking they could hold a whole country to ransom and not pay the price for such a breach of trust in providing a critical service. They only have themselves to blame, If you get in the way of letting businesses improve effectiveness they soon loose their competitiveness and nobody has a job.
Yes, unions do have a place, but it is not to obstruct a business, it should be to help the employees help the business and win respect and compensation that way – the only way to sustainability earn more is to make the pie bigger for everyone – and that requires teamwork & commitment by all.
In a way we are fighting a similar battle with climate change, luckily it looks like that too has reached its ‘Zurich moment’.
@ur momisugly Village Idiot – If you read the links you attach, it is obvious that PM Thatcher had questions about the future and wanted to learn. Anyone who reads the speech (from 1989) can understand that. She mentions the ozone in the speech, and how long it will take to fix – shocks upon shocks, it didn’t take that long to shrink now did it? Trying to pretend that she “flipped” in her views is naive. It seems she simply paid attention to reality and saw that the warming movement was about control, not science.
@ur momisuglyGareth Phillips – actually, there have been a number of state funerals that were given to non-royalty. Churchill, Carson, Haig – to name a few.
Those points aside, I also agree with others on this site that I like to see the focus on climate science, politics relating directly to climate science, and other science-themed subjects concerning global warming and climate change. Understandably Monckton has passion for this subject, but I believe it belongs on another site.
If I saw it on another site, colour me in agreement with Monckton.
Funny how Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, as “one of her six policy advisors”, gently entirely leaves out the fact that Mrs. Thatcher was strong believer in human made global warming. No questioning of the IPCC. His very liberal political wievs, economically, are of course legitimate, but when he chooses this as a main point, the global warming issue should not be far to seek. But the global warming issue could of course be one of her weapons to fight the british coal miners. So now we are beeing political.
I like to read this site as scientific.
One of many examples: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/stories/margaret-thatchers-strong-stance-on-climate-change
Interestingly, having recently spent some time in the old East Germany, I was surprised at how much effort Thatcher put into opposing the wall being demolished, with the event only happening due to the refusal of Gorbachev to comply with Thatchers requests to intervene on the side of Erich Honniker. In reality, like most politicians, she did some good things, she also did some appalling things and towards the end of her term was becoming quite bonkers, possibly due to early symptoms of dementia. But one thing is certain, as a casual read through the posts above will demonstrate, she left a much more divided society in the UK and is appreciated in much more in countries outside the UK than by the UK citizens themselves.
Here is something for the left to contemplate: Nearly 33 years ago (May 4th 1980) exactly a year after Margaret Thatcher arrives at Downing Street on 4 May 1979, as the newly elected staunch anti-communist prime minister, she attends funeral (photo) of one, beyond doubt more popular communist leaders of East Europe J.B. Tito
If you aren’t willing to discuss politics, and more than that, to wade hip deep into the political swamp, what the hell are you doing here?
You are a political and scientific heretic, if you are active here. If you are a democrat or a liberal that makes you a traitor to your chosen partie’s long term political platform.
Make peace with yourself on that score, and shut up hippy!
Gareth Phillips, 1:39 am; you are obviously too young to remember.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9991843/Margaret-Thatcher-never-forget-the-chaos-of-life-before-her.html
I shall be there on Wednesday to give thanks for our delivery and pray for our future.
I will second the view that this is too party political.
We all know that Climate ‘Science’ has polarised along party political lines, with rationalists doubting the science, while the day-dreaming betwetters have greater ‘faith’ than the pope.
However, it would have been better to have had an inside account of how Thatcher was initially taken in by climate science (was this due to the coal miners dispute), but then she became very sceptical and rejected it way back in 2003 – long before most skeptics.
Now that would have been an interesting article. But a fawning eulogy and personal trumpet blowing is not what this site needs.
.
I’m happy to read about all topics that you find interesting – or ignore it if I like. It’s your site – your rules & I have no problem with views consistent or contrary to mine.
Michael
What does the extreme right wing politics of Margaret Thatcher have to do with the objective question of whether increased human produced CO2 will produce a serious climatic problem.
Thatcher is a hated figure in large parts of Britain.
A friend of Pinochet the fascist dictator.
When does political opinion decide scientific correctness.
Thatcher represented rob the poor to feed the rich politics.
Much the same as the present British Conservative coalition government.
This left – right split on Global Warming is largely a USA phenomina.
Here in the UK there are as many right wing alarmists making money out of the alarmist scam as right wing opponents of the scam.
What next?
Will we have a right wing – left wing split on whether there is a Higg’s Boson ?
Some posters here have decried the introduction of Thacher as a topic on the site. And certainly, Monckton’s tribute is from an entirely personal experience and identification.
She, as person and policy, was and is highly contentious. Loved and loathed. Which has to a degree been reignited by her death and has invoked a reversion to the personal responses held in those times which have been displayed on WUWT.
Those who do not want this raised here either see no point to it, or do not want their experience of the site polarised. This is understandable because these personal responses in themselves seem to add nothing, on the face of it, to wider issues including AGW.
However the existence of this issue at all cannot be divorced from people. And Thatcher was a significant part of this at a structural level.
What the responses to her death show is the depth of commitment or repudiation people can hold, persistent over many years, and into which many things are unreasonably incorporated to form a false coherence.
This issue of AGW was formulated and then given institutional life over the period that she was PM in the UK. Which she played a part in.
Through that time, AGW also became the prime vehicle for moral intent. A division between Good and Evil. Just as Thatcher is seen by many. A self-defining touchstone.
Her life, her policies, and the personal responses to these are therefore relevant. Both by what can be learnt – or can serve as a reminder – about the degree to which fixed positions can be entrenched at a level that is no longer obvious in subsequent decisions or outlook, and by allowing a view of the social imperatives which created AGW and the way that became established orthodoxy.
To deal with AGW is not simply a matter of science. Without understanding where this came from and what sustains it – apart from now comprehensive special interests in a venal sense, or questions of ego, reputation, or status – it will be difficult to achieve widespread clarity.
This kind of article gives pro-AGW wonderful arguments as to a big oil funded evil consersatve lobby who would not care about science but only about politics and about decreasing the role of the state.
Many left-wing people, who think the state may have an important role towards interpersonal solidarity, may be repelled from this site and the scientific point of view it uses to share. In particular, those who have suffered from the Iron Lady’s actions.
Mixing science and politics is precisely what you criticize the IPCC for. IMO, WUWT should remain as neutral as possible.
Just one example of how we are affected currently. She privatised the water industry that has not spent a single penny on anything but dividends. Now with the massive increase in population were are constantly being warned about “droughts being brought on by global warming” which is garbage. The water companies are being allowed to bleed this country dry and ship the money to their paerent companies in France and Germany and the population are paying more green taxes.
Unfortunately, just like roads, education and hospitals, environmental science has squarely entered the area of politics and opinion.
Whatever one may think of the late Margaret Thatcher,it is clear that those who followed her were more interested in running with the polls, than with scientific realities. This is partly because most of them have no scientific background.
If it is a weekend I have no problem reading about Thatcher. All the other sites I look at have something on about her.
Nigel S says:
April 14, 2013 at 1:51 am
Gareth Phillips, 1:39 am; you are obviously too young to remember.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9991843/Margaret-Thatcher-never-forget-the-chaos-of-life-before-her.html
I shall be there on Wednesday to give thanks for our delivery and pray for our future.
Hi Nigel, thanks for the compliment, but I was in the thick of it as a post grad student in Cambridge at the time. She did some good things like saving a small community of UK citizens from a predatory fascist regime in the south atlantic, despite her fondness for palling up with South American dictators and supporting the Apartheid regime, she also deserves credit for taking down some unbearable union leaders a peg or two. For all that, though, her greatest, single achievement, and it lives on strongly today, was shifting the narrative of popular discourse far to the right. Scape-goating the sick, the infirm, the disabled and the unemployed for the unparalleled greed of the crooks in the City and boardrooms is now the received wisdom. Get on your bikes, idle proles. Poverty is the fault of those labouring under it. The market is infallible and the state is evil and must be shrunk.
She had the essential ingredient of a good political career, she had luck. She had Gorbachev fighting her corner in the East, she had money from oil, she had a basis of the winter of discontent. Other politicians did not have these things, even less, but did well, even better. They have not been deified, I really don’t see the rationale for doing that for Thatcher. After all, apparently Tony Blair was the most successful PM of the last century, be honest, would you want a state funeral for him?
Margaret Thatcher was undoubtedly one of the most important people of the 20th Century and millions of people owe their very freedom to her, Ronald Reagan, and Pope John Paul. The world lost a giant when she died.
For those angry or disappointed that Lord Monckton’s article was reposted here at WUWT, all I can say is get a grip. Nobody made you read the article or take the time to make a post complaining about it.
[snip – totally ad hominem] ~moderator
@ur momisugly Gareth Phillips says:
April 14, 2013 at 2:25 am
“…I was in the thick of it as a post grad student in Cambridge at the time.”
You have just managed to demonstrate the entire basis for the distortion and perversion of reality that has permeated all levels of society.
You were IN THE THICK OF IT?
Attending university in an institution that forms a self-contained town which constitutes possibly the most REMOTE relationship with wider societal influences in the UK?
You were “in the thick” of NOTHING.
[snip – ad hom ~mod]
“Commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology and recent news” What part of this do those who protest about our host’s choice of topics not understanding. Now granted commentary on the death of Lady Thatcher is not particularly puzzling; but it is Anthony’s site and he can jolly well choose what to allow. If you really feel that strongly about it, start your own blog.
She was famous for refusing to U-turn but twice she did. According to Christopher Booker’s page today she recanted on the EU which she first supported, thinking it was to be just a trading base of nations, and also on climate change which she supported by helping to start the IPCC with Houghton the retired boss of the UKMO but later she came to think the whole thing a sham.
She is vilified for destroying the unions but truth be told the unions destroyed themselves and heavy industry in the UK by their continual undemocratic strikes. Union laws she introduced ensured that no strike could take place without a vote of all members producing a good majority for such action. She was a union member when she worked as an industrial chemist.
Great lady and we would do well to find another like her.
As a note to Andy above- yes she privatised water but as far as Anglia Water is concerned they are spending bi££ions on replacing Victorian cast iron mains which was a pressing job when nationalised but ignored. New reservoirs are being built, desperate before privatisation but again ignored. We will never know how desperate our water supplies would have been like had privatisation not happened but I guess far worse than today.
John Marshall
As a note to Andy above- yes she privatised water but as far as Anglia Water is concerned they are spending bi££ions on replacing Victorian cast iron mains which was a pressing job when nationalised but ignored. New reservoirs are being built, desperate before privatisation but again ignored. We will never know how desperate our water supplies would have been like had privatisation not happened but I guess far worse than today.
Indeed John, and look at how well the privatised gas industry is doing as well as railways etc. The reality is, if you privatise anything but do not ensure competition you just replace an inefficient state monolith based on service with a privatised monolith based on profit.
I lived in Britain through the whole of Margaret Thatcher’s Prime Ministership. It was a hard time, if you were a worker, or a woman, or not-white, or unemployed. Her (Conservative Party) campaign for the 1979 election was ‘Labour isn’t working’, attacking the level of unemployment at about 1.5 million in that year under the Labour government. In 1983, unemployment was at about 3.5 million, directly due to her and her government’s monetarist policies. I respect her leadership during the Falklands War (living in Mexico and speaking Spanish, I refuse to refer to those islands as ‘Las Malvinas’), but I utterly reject her posture after the victory, ‘We have defeated the external enemy; now comes the internal enemy,’ Meaning, the unions, and in particular the National Union of Mineworkers. Margaret Thatcher destroyed the coal industry in Britain for political reasons; Britain is worse off for that, not to mention the destruction of whole communities of people who lived from and for the mines. Statement of interest: my maternal grandfather was a miner in South Wales, and my posture about miners anywhere is that I support them, be they right or wrong.
Margaret Thatcher was the first woman Prime Minister of the UK; but she was certainly not a friend to women, cutting back on provision for child care, resisting EU directives on equal pay and opportunities, cutting back on various Social Security programmes that gave support to women, and so on.
She was right-wing, extremely so, in my view, but she was a democrat, in the sense that she respected parliamentary democracy; and so various critics are wrong in calling her ‘fascist’. But, she wanted to break the post-war consensus of the Welfare State; but when she went up against our National Health Service, she lost, and rightly so. Our NHS is one of the jewels in the crown.
It’s difficult to evaluate the effect or influence of a political leader; it requires time and thought and evidence. But, perhaps prematurely, I’d say that the effect or influence of Margaret Thatcher has been negative overall, in her (my) country and in the world.
Other note: I agree that this blog is mainly about climate, and not about political comment; Christopher Monckton has done much to criticise the AGW posture, and I’m grateful for that; but since he chooses to write a panegyric on Margaret Thatcher, I choose to offer a different point of view,