From the Telegraph this morning:
Seriously, what did they expect?
Thatcher knew there was a such a thing as society, and she set out to harm, if not destroy it. Is Grantham seriously expecting anyone to be happy about their veneration of someone who did so much harm?
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
For a long time I thought that the only good thing about Grantham was the station where I spent many a happy hour watching Deltics and Sulzer and EE Type 4s blasting through (my father had A3s, A2/2 s, V2s and A4s for company plus the odd O2 was it on freight).
There once was an excellent buffet at Grantham with brass knobs on the door. Every time an express went through platform (on the down line) , those heavy doors would burst open and disturb the peaceful inner sanctum- it was quite funny really. You used to get a superb cup of BR tea reminiscent of our past glory and I never ever got a sandwich with curly ends either.
So, to see people throwing eggs and motorists winding down windows and swearing at the statue is quite heartening.
Margaret Hilda Thatcher – the high priestess herself of Neo Liberal Dogma, Randian Indifference and Right Wing Fascist Social Division.
Her biggest contribution and crime was to weaponise people’s ordinariness and use it against them.
You weren’t entitled to life unless you became grasping ‘go-getter’ willing to bullshit yourself up the social pole and/or tread on someone’s neck in the process. If you had any weaknesses – well sort them out yourself (it turned out that a lot of her cabinet had personal weaknesses too, being men of course but that was OK if you were ‘One of Us’).
Thatcher was a divisive character – the good Berger’s of Grantham should have known better. No doubt its all those Southerner’s who have invaded many a town on the ECML to commute to London may have influenced their decision.
So much for the ‘feminisation’ of politics eh?. She was nought but an avatar for male corporate and financial greed who was chucked away when they had no further use for ‘it’.
If you want a really good take down of her, look no further than a Tory no less – read Ian Gilmour’s ‘Dancing with Dogma’.
Now, where’s that spare tin of masonry paint that I had in the garage?
It’s a shadow of its former self now is Grantham station, but I change there sometimes, and still appreciate the ECML
An A4 would be good though, or even a K3
Given your love Great Northern motive power I can see why you like K3s – handsome, tidy engines those.
I’d love to see a V2 at full throttle – my father had a recording of one once – I think that were 3 cylinder – I’d never heard anything like it or since – what a performance.
3 cylinder with Gresley’s conjugated valve gear…
Good to see some former trainspotters on here! I grew up in Lancashire in the mid to late 1960s so saw the end of BR steam with Britannias, Black 5s and 8Fs and 9Fs when they were in a filthy, rundown state but regrettably never saw former LNER steam on the east coast main line. You were so lucky
Grantham erecting that statue is a provocation to all those people who suffered at the hands of her policies and still do today. Someone sooner or later will drive a 40-ton truck at it.
I did not see ECML main line steam – just too young
But it has never stopped me being a fan of it
Or owning the odd model or two of it
never seen a dialogue between two trainspotters before.. quite remarkable
You have not lived
Unbelievable, 35 years after she made her speech, certain people are still trying to mis-represent Thatcher’s quite about society to try and score political points.
I quoted appropriately as to her purpose
If Barnsley put up a statue of Arthur Scargill the Daily Telegraph would only be too pleased if it was pelted with eggs.
I predict that at some point the statue will be celebrated in song….. a la:
The Dubliners & “Nelson’s Column”
Grantham – the location in England where there are attempts to put a statue into orbit.
Tooraloora, tooraloora lay! 🙂
Me, I’m a Bristol boy so as all the trains stopped at Temple Meads, for me its the noise, the people, the sense of starting out on an adventure.
But, seriously though.
Whatever you think of her and her politics, even if like me you hate her with a vengeance, Thatcher was the UK’s first woman Prime Minister, and as with her Funeral, I think how we ‘memorialise’ her was something that should have been thought about a long time ago, ideally while she was still alive..
Recognising her importance irrespective of her politics
In the same way we will one day have the first ‘Black’ PM, indeed recently it looked like it might be a Black Tory PM, so in the same way we need to think about how we handle that.
Margaret Thatcher’s only achievement was to establish that a woman was just as capable as any man of ignorance, incompetence and a complete inability to accept that people who disagree with you are not the enemy within.
Right wing women, certainly, as is shown every day by the 25th rate females in this government. Truss, Dorries, Patel, Braverman and others have certainly shown that female right wing politicians can match their male counterparts negative qualities in every way.
It’s not the gender, but the ideas/beliefs they hold and then choose to act on.
I agree: we need a permanent reminder, for good or for ill.
There is a bronze statue of Thatcher in the Members’ Lobby, erected in her lifetime, beside Attlee and opposite Lloyd George and Churchill. And a marble statue in the Guildhall, the one that was decapitated. That would be enough for me.
I can understand why the burgers of Grantham want to claim her as their own, although she seems to have escaped from her home town: did she retain significant links to Grantham after she went to university?
She was controversial in life, and will remain controversial in death until the generations that suffered in the 1980s and into the 1990s are beyond caring. It was a generation ago, but many wounds have either not healed or the scars are still raw. Perhaps we will have greater perspective in another 30 years.
Quite right Andrew. Two statues in London is more than enough. I seem to recall that Thatcher couldn’t wait to get away from the place anyway; which was natural enough for an ambitious young woman. So why the council there chose to out one up seems a pretty poor decision, especially in light of the reaction it’s produced.
Grantham is a lot nearer the former coal mining areas she wrecked than London after all. It’ll serve them right if some enraged left wingers do an ‘Edward Coulston’ on it. Although on reflection it would be better if they had the good grace to admit it was the wrong thing to do and remove it and put it in a quiet field somewhere, rather like those statues of communist ‘worthies’ were in post Soviet Eastern European states.
Then her acolytes like Osborne could worship at her feet to their cold little hearts content. Because as PSR notes, its possibly been done as a deliberate provocation so the poor old right whingers could claim victimhood and justify the authoritarian laws they’re busy bringing in if it gets the Coulston treatment.
Actually it’s just hit me why they’ve done this at Grantham.
This is typical Fascist provocation: take a divisive character, promote them publicly; provoke anger, claim innocence and then point your finger at the people you’ve upset and tell everyone that they are the problem.
Damn it……………..we should have known!!! This is a fascist country after all.
John Boxall – railways ARE serious.
If you don’t know what loco Stanier designed as opposed to Gresley or Thompson or the difference between a Sulzer 12 cylinder diesel or an English Electric one or what the black diamond meant on the end of Southern Region third rail DC multiple unit then that is a very serious issue indeed Sir!
Thank you.
I fail on the black diamond
Shame on you!
The black diamond denoted which end the guard van was on a multiple unit.
Essential life affirming stuff like that is what makes a train spotter’s life rich and deep!!
BTW, did anyone notice how train spotting started to become a target for denigration in the 1980’s under Thatcher?
When you look back at the essentially harmless hobby in the steam heyday, stations were crawling with us and even in my era of the BR blue and the big modernisation diesels you were never on your own and a lot of those people went on to create websites and book publishers. People actually loved trains at one time – even my late mother in law admitted to watching trains go by with her mates because that’s were the boys they liked were!! But she ended becoming a fan of the A4 s and their hoot like whistle. Honest – that’s what she said!
Trainspotting was a social leveller – as a working class boy it was the only way in which I mingled with doctors, engineers, civil servants and the like. It meant that I was good at geography at school (I went everywhere in this country searching out locomotive depots and stabling points) and had grasp of engineering and I knew the 24 hour clock. It got me into photography and the way our railways have been mismanaged believe it or not got me into politics and economics which lead me to coming here eventually.
Yet under Thatcher we were derided – we should all have been out there making money it appears and looking seriously Fascist in our double breasted suits. But some of us were – there was and still is a whole micro economy of book publishers, tour operators and groups, web publishers actually contributing to the economy because of this hobby – Ian Allen Ltd, Oxford Publishing, Platform 5 – all viable businesses Mrs Thatcher making money.
John Boxall – I admit that a paddle steamer has a certain charm – no doubt about it, but watching one sedately plough by is not as dramatic as this:
Hearing the train bell at Grantham station ringing, seeing the down line MAS signal turning from amber to green; the sound of a school playground over yonder somewhere floating over – a slight air of expectation – AND THEN a noise on the rails before anything has appeared only to look North as a 5000 horse power Deltic toots as it comes around the bend and pass by on an Edinburgh – Kings Cross express treating the 8 coaches it is pulling with utter contempt; seeing the rear red light disappear to hear the cacophony as it enters 880 yard Stoke Tunnel at the South of the station.
And all this time of course, the buffet doors still flapping to a standstill and calm and gentle bustle coming back to the station. You sort of knew that you’d just seen something rather special.
If a paddle steamer could deliver that – I could be persuaded!
I was introduced to railways via railway modelling as a teenager. I read our Ipswich library on the subject, and then discovered inter library loans. And because I was fascinated by the social and economic consequences of railways I saw the power of regulation for society, and then learned about how accounting can add value by creating stability in markets. I git my career as a result.
@Pilgrim Sight
Railways are indeed very serious
Paddle Steamers and Turbines even more so!
🙂
I hope they didn’t use fresh eggs. That would be a waste.
@PSR “BTW, did anyone notice how train spotting started to become a target for denigration in the 1980’s under Thatcher?”
Good point there PSR, that sort of occurred to me as well though you’ve expressed it far better than myself. Then again, you are a train spotter, I’m not. I also think a lot of the piss taking of train spotters comes from the idea that it was only for nerdy, spotty teenage boys who had no chance of ‘bagging’ a girl.
Real ‘blokes’, like our oh so wonderful PM would of course be out chasing ‘skirt’ as Johnson seems to have spent much of his life doing. And who wants to stand on a station platform noting down train numbers and locomotive class and times when you could be boozing, shagging and wrecking restaurants? It might even give you the idea that details matter.
Whatever next? Who wants a PM who does detail, so they’d know what they’d signed in international treaties with the EU.