The nationwide reaction to Margaret Thatcher’s death is one of embittered polarisation

Loved and loathed. Adored and despised. Beatified by some, abhorred by others. The nationwide reaction to Margaret Thatcher’s death – if honestly viewed – is one of embittered polarisation.

Amidst the euologies and the condemnation, two truths emerge; the first is that Baroness Thatcher’s legacy will be forever contested. The second is that the British left must always recognise the pivotal role it played in enabling Margaret Thatcher to succeed and prosecute a political programme that damaged so many of the people that progressive politics exists to serve. The lessons of Labour’s failures during the dominant Thatcher-period are as relevant today as they were during her time in office.

A contested legacy was always inevitable. Many of the obituaries surfacing in recent days, were prepared years ago; the Guardian printed an obituary written by the late Hugo Young, who himself died in 2003. The settled will of the country with regard to the legacy of Baroness Thatcher was one of implacable division before the end of the twentieth century. This division is both undeniable and potentially irreconcilable. This is why it is unwise to try to make what John Healey has termed ‘narrow political gain’ from the death of the former Prime Minister, stating with reference to both the recall of Parliament and the planned ceremonial funeral that “Her impact and influence is indisputable, but her legacy is too bitter to warrant this claim to national mourning.”

The good advice for those on the right who adored the longest-serving Prime Minister of the twentieth century was surely to mark her passing and her achievements with a wisdom that guarded against partisan triumphalism, mindful of the full spectrum of opinion held within the country at large. The good advice for the left was to show precisely the restraint and empathy demonstrated by Ed Miliband.
Downing Street has described the ceremonial funeral as ‘a state funeral in all but name’ giving credence to Healey’s concerns.

Regrettably, and as widely reported, such a funeral risks depriving Baroness Thatcher of the solemnity and respect that any British Prime Minister deserves when laid to rest.

Thus the wounds of lingering national division are re-opened when they should be allowed to heal.

In any event, Margaret Thatcher’s political legacy seems set to be more bitterly contested following her death than it was in the years since she was ejected from Downing St, in tears; betrayed by the party she loved.

The second truth – and the most important element of the Thatcher period for progressives – is that the premiership of Margaret Thatcher was fostered, enabled and created by the British left. Since her death, nowhere amongst the admonition of the Thatcher period by left-wing critics is there any acknowledgement of the left’s failure immediately prior to and during the Thatcher years.

Honesty is a two-way street.

This week, I spoke with a veteran of that period who served in the trenches of Walworth Road. “I’ll never forget how we insisted on making it easy for her…” he told me. A pre-Spin Doctor press officer, he recalls spending days searching out officially sanctioned Labour Party election posters calling for unilateral nuclear disarmament, gleefully ripping them down and shredding every one he could find.

Equally, when trade unionists (I am proud to be one) recall the vituperative attacks upon them and all that then followed, they must also recognise the pivotal role of the trade unions in destroying the Callaghan government. Labour’s civil-war ushered in a period of Conservative rule lasting almost two decades; during which the party became the political equivalent of Pavlov’s Dog.

The painful truth of that period is that both the Labour Party and the Labour Movement was a wretched, shambolic, incoherent wreck which guaranteed successive Thatcher victories. For so many of us on the centre-left of British politics, the rightful denunciation of the economic and social suffering caused by Margaret Thatcher to so many millions of people in so many parts of our country – both North and South – must be accompanied by this acknowledgement: an unelectable Labour Party allowed this to happen.

Never again.

Margaret Thatcher is one of the principal reasons I chose to enter politics. Fear of the left’s amnesia in assessing the reasons for her electoral success is one of the principal reasons I seek to remain.

Before Baroness Thatcher is laid to rest next Wednesday, I will again read ‘In Place of Strife’ and think about what might have been.

Jamie Reed is the Labour MP for Copeland. A shorter version of this post was published by The Spectator