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.
Climate change *is* politics. Those whining about this piece have forgotten that. We are not all engaged here because of climate change – we are here because of the politics of climate change. Remember that well.
Spending money on a crowned family who lives in crowndum for the rest of their lives is all well and good if a majority of voters wish to do so. But those very same voters then need to take in a lot of foul-tasting governmental decrees that go along with that. My thought is to put up or shut up.
As for our own government in the good ol’ US of A we have our own “crowned” entities for life that have created entitled behavior, even among the well heeled. For example, all kinds of folk, rich and poor, are lamenting the proposal that snail-mail delivery and pick-up on Saturday needs to end in order to balance the government-sponsered postal service budget. Boo hoo. All that catawalling is because of entitlement behavior. Can you imagine the uproar that would happen if the government got out of the postal service all together to let local private business fill the hole? Oh my gosh! Such wailing would drown an infant-filled maternity ward!
But the current system will continue in its crowned capacity, creating entitlement behavior and making unfathomably silly decisions. To wit: mail that I wish to send to an address in my town must now be driven to Portland nearly 200 miles away then back again, to be delivered to a business less than a mile away from my home. Which proves that even I have been infused with entitled behavior.
Any politician who would champion the cause of, for example, me getting off my butt and delivering that piece of mail myself has my vote for a state burial.
Addendum: tis true that as far as academic acumen is concerned, compared to the level possessed by Thatcher, Reagan could indeed be described as having little to nothing between the ears.
I haven’t figured out the new comment moderation system. A previous short comment got in instantly, but a longer one later sent has not appeared. Maybe it’s the length?
In reading the many critical messages about Margaret Thatcher, I am reminded of the words of Carlyle:
`No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men`
Thomas Carlyle (1840)
For `men` read `women`
As a well-meaing proposal to appease all sides, may I suggest that she be given not a state but a continental funeral, arranged and paid for by leaders of the European Union?
I am not convinced that this is a suitable topic for WUWT. It is not that I have any objections to Baroness Thatcher being honoured in this way, indeed I hold the country owes her more than it is every likely to consent to, certainly in my case I fully recognise her overall contributions as being solidly in the national good, it is just that speaking of it here introduces a distraction to the real purpose and goals of this site. These modestly adverse sentiments have little to the do with any costs of arranging such an event, given the waste of public funds in modern Britain this would at least be money spent for good intent, but really what I prefer to see here are articles about the climate, even is sometimes this link is tenuous. Irrespective of that view I thank all those who have taken the time and trouble to add some reflections of this distinguished lady’s life, the world is a poorer place for her passing.
Politics defines climate science like cancer defines the human body. It is something to be reviled, railed against, caught as early as possible and removed. The claim that climate science IS politics is a dismal defence of the complicity here in the politicisation of the subject.
In common with Pamela and other posters I find short posting appear immediately, but longer one take much longer, if they appear at all. Am I missing something? is there a word limit or optimum size for a post?
We’re all still fighting Thatcher’s climate war, so Hell can have her.
I guess Gareth will be having steak too, stand back mr lefty, and see she was the first and only world leader to see through this scam, you know the scam that all of us humans here want exposed! So indeed she has a place here!
I join others in expressing my disgust of those that are celebrating the death of the Iron Lady. I note that most of the celebrants appear to be quite young, probably too young to have actually lived through the Thatcher years. Perhaps they have been informed by their professors that Thatcher destroyed the socialist movement, and that somehow that is a bad thing. Regardless, the celebrations are inappropriate at this time, and they demonstrate a complete lack of decorum and respect. I would like to believe that this type of thing would never happen in civilized society, at least not for the death of a duly elected and hard working patriotic public official.
Monckton’s eulogy for Thatcher doesn’t bother me much, though I almost totally disagree with what he said about her. As someone else commented, it’s Anthony’s blog and he can publish whatever he wishes on it. However, as the mixed responses show, by no means all of us AGW sceptics hold conservative or right-wing political views – unlike the warmists who are almost invariably on the left. I’d hate to think that anyone visiting WUWT would be turned off by an apparent bias towards the kind of politics represented by Thatcher (or Reagan). One of the things that made me initially wary about climate scepticism was that many of its proponents were right-wing advocates of unregulated free-market economics, so I assumed they had an ideological agenda which coloured their objections to the ‘consensus’ view. I got over that, and became a convinced sceptic on rational and scientific grounds, despite disagreeing with the economics and politics of many AGW sceptics. We have sound arguments which should appeal to any open-minded person of whatever political persuasion – let’s not nail our colours to the mast of any political or economic ideology, whether of the left or the right.
For those who blame Lady Thatcher for initially talking of AGW, let’s don’t forget that she did her homework and reversed her position quickly.
As far as a state funeral – I should think she deserves at least the same sort of tribute as was accorded Winston Churchill.
No great leader is perfect – Abraham Lincoiln wasn’t, Frankin Delano Roosevelt wasn’t, Ronald Reagan wasn’t, Winston Churchill wasn’t, and Margaret Thatcher wasn’t – but their achievements so far outshine the negatives that they will live on as the greatest political figures of the last two centuries.
NikFromNYC at 10:13:
What a nasty thing to say.
Thatcher was a victim of the activist/scientists like the rest of us. We all grew up trusting in science and Thatcher was herself a research chemist before becoming a politician. I’m guessing her experience in science was one characterized by adherence to the scientific method and integrity in research. I don’t think she understood the rules were changing and that post-normal science was becoming de rigueur.
In 2003, as noted above, she reversed course and refuted the theory of CAGW rather vigorously.
I’m sure God has forgiven her and that Satan will be left longing.
Learned a lot about MT, mostly that like all politicians, she had mixed success and depending on your lot in life or feelings for others (or not), as tp how the public felt about her endeavors. Enjoyed the “42 Reasons, Ding Dong” video, and also the article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/sundown-in-america.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&
Thanks. However this viewpoint may (hopefully) be tempered by the new regulations (not well known as they haven’t gotten much publicity) in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
As to:
“Good God … why is this crap on here!!!”
The same reason as Reality TV Shows or the National Enquirer (Inquiring Minds Want to Know), it gets the view rate/comment count up.
SamG Apologies, I re-read your post and realised my interpretation of it was wrong. I disagree with the article though on that here in the UK we think the USA should be the worlds police, we most certainly do not, we have our own armed forces and nuclear deterrent.
Under Margaret Thatcher capitalism flourished and state intervention decreased, property ownership boomed as did the ease that ordinary people can buy stocks and shares. By selling off British Telecom and British Leyland, she demonstrated the truism that governments should not be running telecommunication services or building cars.
Pamela Gray, I know in the USA many people find the idea of a ruling monarch a bit antiquated. The point is it works, after The Civil War when Charles I tried to become an absolute monarch and was executed, the modern British constitution was born. The police and armed forces swear allegiance to the monarch, so we cannot have a dictatorship by a government that wants to stay in power. Likewise the monarch cannot mobilise the armed forces to overthrow a government, because it needs an act of parliament to do so. The House of Lords is an unelected chamber that passes laws of they are sensible ones, if not they get thrown out, so an incumbant government could not pass a law to change the constitution without the approval of the Lords and the signature of the monarch. A second chamber, elected mid-term does not work because the voters usually vote for the oppostion which leads to conflict (as the USA had wrt the budget deficit). Ours isn’t a perfect sytem but it has kept people like Hitler, Mussolini, Franco out of office.
Eric Worrall said on April 14, 2013 at 3:00 am
“I know the temptation is to view the past through rose tinted glasses, but America was not always the friend Thatcher deserved. America refused to help Britain when Argentina invaded the Falklands. And America repeatedly urged a “settlement” with the Argentine aggressors.”
Not so. A number of US munitions and military parts factories went on to a 24 hour shift in order to ensure the British military continued to be supplied with whatever they needed. IIRC The then US secretary of defence (?) was given a UK honour for his part in ensuring that Britain received anything and everything they wanted for the UK military.
And as for politics and Climate science. The bottom line is not about the science much as it should be. Unfortunately the bottom line is about the politics, in the US it is about party politics since the Democrats are almost uniformly believers in AGW and the Republicans almost uniformly sceptics. In the UK virtually all politicians have been taken in by the AGW extremists.
It is the politicians who are damaging our economies in the name of AGW, and it is the politicians whom sites such as this need to reach.
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Hopefully one day politics will indeed form no part of climate science.
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Normally I would agree that ex Prime Ministers should not be given state funerals. But in this instance I think that Margaret Thatcher’s role on the World stage was such that she should most definitely be given a state funeral.
Regarding the auto-moderator, I’ve discovered there are some stop words that appear to land a post in the moderator’s pile. For example, “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” may land your post on that pile where “darned if you do…” won’t. My guess is there is a simple test that looks for known hot button words, possibly even a Bayesian test. That is how the spam blocker in our email readers works. With over a million posts there is certainly an adequate corpus to work from.
Grant,
“If anyone is to blame for the suffering of the working class, blame the post war Labour Party and the British people who who fell head over heals with socialism.”
Whilst true, it is incomplete. It was not only socialist Labour who preferred the status quo of subsidised rust belt industries, the pre-Thatcher conservative party was no different. Together they formed the post war consensus of maintaining state run industries and “managed decline”. For the left, it fitted in with their ideology that the working classes were hapless victims to be “protected” and “cared for from cradle to grave.” For the traditional Conservatives, they saw it as the embodiment of the class hierarchy. Workers at the bottom, given their low paid jobs, living in council estates, middle class professionals who owned their own semis in pleasant suburbs, and themselves, the ruling class.
Since Thatcher was of lower middle class, she was very much an outsider. Whilst her predecessor Heath was also from a similar background, he was her opposite – an apologist for the status quo and fully recruited into the post war consensus.
It was Thatchers job to return power to the working classes. And what power was unleased! Thousands of energetic wannabe entrepeneurs succeeded in becoming extremely rich, by the standards of the day. Charlie Mullins, a working class plumber from a council estate in East London, was a typical success story. Leaving school with no qualifications, he set up “Pimlico plumbers” and now lives in a mansion in one of the best neighbourhoods.
Imagine how that grated on the sensibilities of traditional Conservatives of the upper classes? To them, there is something distasteful and vulgar about an uneducated cockney-talking upstart coming into loadsa money, and horror of horrors, moving into their neighbourhood.
It was no wonder that the tradiional conservative grandees were uncomfortable. Whilst it is right and proper for someone with the right background, social skills and connections to gain wealth, they would prefer those of the great unwashed to remain in their place.
Therefore, the traditional conservative establishment (of Thatchers time), were not supporters of free market capitalism, for exactly that reason. Capitalism should be based on family connections and upbringing. After all, wasn’t that the point of sending ones progeny to Eton and Harrow? Social mobility was not a subject on their agendas.
So whilst Labour was the obvious enemy of social mobility, at that time conservatism was the less obvious enemy.
Thank you Lord Monckton for your article and thank you Anthony for putting it on WUWT. I believe a public figure is best known by those by those that hate them. As I look around these past few days and see the hate spewed at Lady Thatcher I can see she was a trully great person, much like Ronald Reagan. She must be in heaven ROFL at the all the haters and thinking “I must have done somethings right”
Quite. The cost of the funeral is largely policing, against the very people complaining about the cost.
Over all it compares well with the Philpotts. He so far has consumed 4 million plus of public money in cash and services. On top you’ve got the police investigation, the cost of jailing three of them, then there will be cost when they are released, because he’s not going to be working. No doubt, he’s then going to expect his pension on top, plus housing benefit, plus …
Hat tip RitchieP 3:16am
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2308783/PETER-HITCHENS-Lets-remember-Maggie-really–tragic-failure.html
Nearer to my view than Monckton’s uncharacteristically weak attempt at hagiography.
I said in the ‘open thread’ discussion that Maggie Thatcher was (uniquely) divisive.
I think both this thread and the other can be taken as proof of this proposition.
Hey! I’m even divided myself in my attitude to her!
I enjoyed Martin Durkin’s Channel 4 film Margaret: Death of a Revolutionary. Interesting hypothesis but some very special pleading at some points, and glosses over some major issues.
But, for the avoidance of doubt, I do wish that MT’s many fans would desist from putting up the strawmen. I’ve not spotted anyone here who confesses to being a fan of Scargill. Enthusiasm for the lamentable state of the UK in 1979 and the Winter of Discontent is, so far as I can see, entirely absent. And the argument ‘what would the UK have been without her’ is about as intellectually rigorous as the suggestion that we wouldn’t have had the 17 year warming pause if we hadn’t built all those windmills.
Personally, I’m not absolutely persuaded that an inefficient private monopoly is obviously superior to a comparatively efficient public monopoly, although a genuine free market alternative is likely to be significantly superior to both. And I suggest most people just want decent services and affordable, reliable goods, whoever produces them.
It isn’t as if the history of the last few years or consideration of outfits like Enron or Goldman Sachs or Lehman Bros. or HBOS leads to the conviction that Maggie’s legacy is beyond criticism.
By helping to end the Cold War, every Briton and every person in the world lives in a safer place. That alone should be enough to accord Margaret Thatcher the honor of a state funeral. Like Churchill, she left Britain largely free of an existential threat. I believe the Falklands War had a greater impact in the Soviet Union that in Argentina, because it signalled that the appeasement of 1939 was not going to happen again. I have greatly appreciated the discourse on this post and it is a tribute to WUWT that it has been so civilized. While remembering her history is appropriate, I disagree that her passing is an appropriate occasion to judge her. She has already been judged, which is what happens when one casts a vote. (For those of you who are Believers) Now she is in the hands of the Lord and she will be judged by Him, as all of us will be too. (For those of you who are not, please accept my words allegorically.)
I cannot express my sentiments better than John Donne in 1623 in his Meditation #17 from which Ernest Hemingway took the title of one of his most famous novels:
Putting aside Thatcher herself, it is worth recalling the circumstances that caused her to be elected in the first place.
Union officials, who were often not even representative of their members, attempted to usurp the authority and powers of the elected government for their political ends. They had brought down previous governments from both sides of the house.
That they also put almost religiously-held beliefs above common sense economics during times of economic hardship has a striking parallel in the anti-CO2 views of today’s political-environmentalists.
Today’s parliament would also do well to remember that without North-Sea Oil & Gas, the situation would have been far worse. Politicians would have found themselves facing an electorate in a very ugly mood indeed. I hope the lesson is not forgotten.
berniel says:
April 14, 2013 at 12:19 am
Fine for you to post this Anthony as it is your blog , and not just about climate etc. however, I recall a few years ago a shift into conservative politics that I sense you regretted…
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Nope, that’s on you, don’t attempt to transfer your feelings.
Nov 22nd 1990 was one of the finest days of my life. I took the afternoon off and went up the pub. Why you may ask? Simple, it was the day Thatcher got the ‘old heave ho’
She was no Iron Lady. She blubbed!