{"id":3292,"date":"2013-04-18T17:17:52","date_gmt":"2013-04-18T07:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/australiansforhonestpolitics.wordpress.com\/?p=3292"},"modified":"2019-04-13T23:24:16","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T13:24:16","slug":"using-thatchers-death-to-rewrite-history-past-and-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/using-thatchers-death-to-rewrite-history-past-and-present\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Thatcher’s death to rewrite history, past and present"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Thatcher-loc\"<\/p>\n

By\u00a0Sarah Capper<\/a>, Sheilas Editor<\/strong><\/p>\n

Source: Sheilas
\n<\/a>18 April 2013<\/p>\n

When Germaine Greer penned a piece on the late \u201ccrocodile hunter\u201d Steve Irwin<\/a> for the Guardian shortly after his death from a stingray puncture, it was followed by howls of protest from all parts of the globe. Greer ended her \u2018barbed\u2019 take on the much-loved \u2018Aussie legend\u2019 with:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin, but probably not before a whole generation of kids in shorts seven sizes too small has learned to shout in the ears of animals with hearing 10 times more acute than theirs, determined to become millionaire animal-loving zoo-owners in their turn.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, Greer was lambasted as insensitive, cruel and GASP, \u201cunaustralian\u201d for daring to write such a critique. Some called for her to be banned from entering the country again. The National Portrait Gallery replaced a picture of Greer with \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 Steve Irwin.<\/p>\n

In such situations, the assumption is that we should never speak ill of the dead, even if those who have died have been major public figures and divisive ones at that.<\/p>\n

Former British Prime Minister Baroness Margaret Thatcher was indeed one such public figure, who at the helm of the United Kingdom during the 1980s presided over policies which had huge impacts on the people she governed. Her passing last week led to a barrage of global tributes from political leaders of various persuasions.<\/p>\n

In response, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said that \u201cas a woman, I am admiring of her achievements on becoming the first woman to lead the United Kingdom\u201d.<\/p>\n

Locally, conservative columnists took the opportunity to elevate the memory of Britain\u2019s first and only female PM as a chance to sink the boot into Australia\u2019s first and current female Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

Under the headline \u2018JULIA\u2019S NO MAGGIE<\/a>\u2019, News Limited columnist Andrew Bolt lambasted Gillard\u2019s response to the news as \u201cpathetic and graceless\u201d, as \u201cThatcher never sold herself as a victim or just a representative of her gender\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bolt used his column to have another spray at Emily\u2019s List<\/a>, a terrible organisation in the eyes of the Bolt\u2019s of this world, which, god forbid, aims to support progressive women in political positions within the Australian Labor Party.<\/p>\n

Referring to an Emily\u2019s List function two years ago, Bolt quoted Gillard at the event as saying she \u201cdidn\u2019t get here [to be Australia\u2019s first female Prime Minister] alone \u2026 I think of all the women who made my journey possible \u2026 a century of activism by women of matchless courage and resolve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bolt wrote that, \u201cOne prime minister saw herself as an individual; the other as a member of a collective. Thatcher\u2019s strength, Gillard\u2019s weakness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uh huh. How dare Gillard pay tribute to the countless and nameless numbers of women who, over a century, have campaigned tirelessly for women\u2019s participation and representation in public life.<\/p>\n

In the longest of bow drawing, Emily\u2019s List seemed to cop an extra load of mud slinging, extended to peppering the commentary of Australian conservative columnists in their tributes to Thatcher.<\/p>\n

Miranda Devine joined Bolt, writing in the Daily Telegraph<\/a> that \u201cif the Australian Labor Party\u2019s affirmative action\/\u201dEMILY\u2019s List\u201d regime had been in place in Britain when Margaret Thatcher was making her rise, she never would have reached the top.\u201d<\/p>\n

Um, well, no, for a start, Thatcher was in the opposing major political party in a country on the other side of the globe, during the wrong decade. And notice how EMILY\u2019s List are suddenly responsible for a \u201cregime\u201d? Move over, Kim Jong-Un.<\/p>\n

Devine again: \u201cEven with a woman in The Lodge, EMILY\u2019s List continues to up the ante. Having almost reached its goal of 40 per cent of women in the parliamentary Labor party, it is pushing for 50 per cent\u201d.<\/p>\n

Fifty per cent!!!! Sheesh, we feminists ask for too much. Now that we\u2019ve got a female Prime Minister, we can fold up our purple, green and white ribbons and equal pay and political representation placards and pack them away for good. And God forbid the women of Australia would like their population representation reflected in the proportion of people elected to govern us.<\/p>\n

While the Australian\u2019s Niki Savva didn\u2019t draw EMILY\u2019s List kicking into her column<\/a> on the late Margaret Thatcher, she still found the opportunity to put the boot into Gillard.<\/p>\n

Savva pointed to Gillard\u2019s recent response at the Foreign Correspondents Association before departing to China, in which the Prime Minister was asked a question about the existence of misogyny in criticisms leveled against her. Savva quotes Gillard\u2019s response:<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what I would say about being the first woman to do this job is a broader point, which is it\u2019s not been ever the norm in our nation before for people to wake up in the morning and look at the news and see a female leader doing this job.<\/p>\n

For all of the years before, you would see a man in a suit. I am not a man in a suit, and I think that that has taken the nation some time to get used to.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s probably still taking the nation a bit of time to get used to. I think it\u2019s the same sort of journey that many other nations around the world are on, and it speaks really to the changing nature of our times, and the forward progress for women in societies like ours.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s got some uncomfortable moments along the way, there is no doubt about that, and I feel one of the things that will certainly happen, having had the first female prime minister, is it\u2019s going to be easier for the second and then it\u2019s going to be easier again for the third, and then everybody will get over it and forget about it and no one will even bother to comment any more whether the images of leadership in our nation that particular year are images of female leadership or male leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Savva then lists a number of non-western countries with women in leadership positions, who never \u201ccomplained they were the victims of sexism and misogyny\u201d, and speculates:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is impossible to imagine for a single moment prime minister Thatcher, or any of those other women leaders, saying anything remotely like Gillard said at any time and certainly not as they prepared to fly out to meet one of the most powerful men in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t you just love that last bit. Savva went on to conclude that \u201cGillard likes to talk tough, and there the similarity with Thatcher ends, because when it gets really tough, Gillard ends up hiding behind her own petticoat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huh? This last part is mildly amusing in that surely if anything, over the last few months in facing relentless criticism from all quarters, Julia Gillard has demonstrated she is one tough cookie.<\/p>\n

While it was ok to kick the first Australian female PM in many tributes to the late first female British Prime Minister, it was sacrilegious to say a bad word about one of the most divisive world leaders in modern politics.<\/p>\n

Cue Glenda Jackson. The British Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn and former actress (winner of two Academy Awards), caused a few waves last Wednesday when she delivered a scathing critique of the Thatcher years during a special parliamentary debate in Britain\u2019s House of Commons.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I made my maiden speech a little over two decades ago, Margaret Thatcher had been elevated to the other place but Thatcherism was still wreaking, as it had wreaked for the previous decade \u2013 the most heinous, social, economic and spiritual damage upon this country, upon my constituency and my constituents,\u201d Jackson said in launching her speech. She outlined social impacts of the Thatcher years, particularly in health, education and in homelessness.<\/p>\n

She also talked about the \u201cspiritual\u201d damage during Thatcher\u2019s decade of power:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cEverything I had been taught to regard as a vice \u2013 and I still regard them as vices \u2013 under Thatcherism was in fact a virtue: greed, selfishness, no care for the weaker, sharp elbows, sharp knees. They were the way forward \u2026 People saw the price of everything and the value of nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Jackson also warned that \u201cI\u2019m beginning to see possibly the re-emergence of that total traducing of what I regard as being the basis of the spiritual nature of this country, where we do care about society, where we do believe in communities, where we do not leave people to walk by on the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s captivating viewing, not least because the further Jackson goes in delivering her critique, the louder the jeers can be heard from the Conservative benches, and all the while Jackson remains cool and calm in her delivery.<\/p>\n

Watch the whole clip here.<\/p>\n