The death of Margaret Thatcher has unleashed a torrent of criticism and protests in Britain. But for all the criticism levelled at Thatcher in the
wake of her death, it is worth remembering how she came to hold the position of prime minister for 12 years.
She
was democratically elected to parliament by the local residents of the Finchley parliamentary ward. She was later democratically elected to lead the Conservative party by the members of
that party and she held the position of Prime Minister from 1979 - 1990 by virtue of the fact that the Conservative Party won three successive democratic elections, securing more than 13 million
adult votes in each election.
It is not as though
Britain suffered under an authoritarian autocratic government between 1979 – 1990 in which political criticism was oppressed. The 80's is in fact a decade marked by strong awakenings to human rights and freedoms, including freedom of expression, led by the West where even the harshest of criticism was tolerated and, (as in the case of Diana Gould below), even publicly broadcast.
My point is not that the policies now known as "Thatcherism" should escape critical review but that the British public democratically endorsed those policies at the time.
The outpouring of criticism against Thatcher is therefore as much a criticism of an era as it is of its actors. Our current era might be destined for a similar fate because, as Joseph de Maistre wrote in 1811, "In a democracy people get the leaders they deserve".
True, but the media environment during Thatcher's time was very different too. I would be interested to see how widespread criticism of Thatcher was in the media at the time. Imagine Thatcher in an era of secret cell-phone recordings (step up Mitt Romney's 47%) and leaked documents broadcast over the net. Did she ever win by a considerable margin?
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