When is there going to a statue of Jo Swinson?
Seriously, though, Victorians are one thing, but we are talking here about someone who as late as 1990 was using a prominent position on the world stage to agitate for South Africa to become an all-white state. Margaret Thatcher's position was more extreme than that, at the time, of the Herstigte Nasionale Party, those scourges of P.W. Botha's liberal softness and backsliding, who for part of her Premiership bankrolled her supporters in the League of St George.
Thatcher's position was more extreme than that of Franz Josef Strauss or Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. It made her by far the most racist figure to have held a national office of any prominence anywhere in the West since the 1950s. There will never be a statue of her in Parliament Square. And, as she herself might have put it, "that's that."
There ought, however, to be a triple monument to the working-class Suffragettes who fought on for another 10 years after 1918, to Women Against Pit Closures, and to the County Durham Teaching Assistants. The Durham Miners' Association should commission and erect that, to be unveiled by Jeremy Corbyn, quite possibly as Prime Minister by the time that it had been completed.
Or else I, as the Member of Parliament for North West Durham, would do so. If the DMA, which has slid back very publicly on support for the TAs since Davey Hopper died, had failed to do this, then it would only be giving you yet another reason to do everything possible to get me elected, including by voting for me if you happened to live here.
You know what you have to do, brothers and sisters. You know what you have to do.
Seriously, though, Victorians are one thing, but we are talking here about someone who as late as 1990 was using a prominent position on the world stage to agitate for South Africa to become an all-white state. Margaret Thatcher's position was more extreme than that, at the time, of the Herstigte Nasionale Party, those scourges of P.W. Botha's liberal softness and backsliding, who for part of her Premiership bankrolled her supporters in the League of St George.
Thatcher's position was more extreme than that of Franz Josef Strauss or Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. It made her by far the most racist figure to have held a national office of any prominence anywhere in the West since the 1950s. There will never be a statue of her in Parliament Square. And, as she herself might have put it, "that's that."
There ought, however, to be a triple monument to the working-class Suffragettes who fought on for another 10 years after 1918, to Women Against Pit Closures, and to the County Durham Teaching Assistants. The Durham Miners' Association should commission and erect that, to be unveiled by Jeremy Corbyn, quite possibly as Prime Minister by the time that it had been completed.
Or else I, as the Member of Parliament for North West Durham, would do so. If the DMA, which has slid back very publicly on support for the TAs since Davey Hopper died, had failed to do this, then it would only be giving you yet another reason to do everything possible to get me elected, including by voting for me if you happened to live here.
You know what you have to do, brothers and sisters. You know what you have to do.
"Seriously, though, Victorians are one thing, but we are talking here about someone who as late as 1990 was using a prominent position on the world stage to agitate for South Africa to become an all-white state."
ReplyDeleteCan you point to a speech where she said this?
Nice try. It became a matter of record earlier this year. As you know. Of course it had always been largely known. But now it is beyond doubt. She even thought that South Africa had been like that until 1910.
DeleteTony Blair's reputation, even among otherwise sympathetic people, will never recover from Iraq. Nor should it. And hers will never recover from this. Nor should it.