The official obituaries have been, as often happens, partial in both senses: sympathetic and incomplete. With regard to the divisive effect of her reign, one omission was significant and glaring: Section 28.
Lest we forget, this nasty, brutish and short measure of the third Thatcher administration, was designed to slander homosexuality, by prohibiting state schools from discussing positively gay people and our “pretended family relations”. Opposition to Section 28 galvanised a new generation of activists who joined with long-time campaigners for equality. Stonewall UK was founded, to repeal Section 28 and pluck older rotten anti-gay legislation from the constitutional tree. This has taken two decades to achieve.
Pathetically, in her dotage, Baroness Thatcher was led by her supporters into the House of Lords to vote against Section 28’s repeal: her final contribution to UK politics. She dies too early to oppose Parliament’s inevitable acceptance of same–gender marriage.
Thatcher misjudged the future when, according to her deputy chief whip, she “threw a piece of red meat (Section 28) to her right-wing wolves”. Some of these beasts survive her, albeit de-fanged. When, to take a recent example, a disgraced cardinal delivers anti-gay diatribes, the spirit of social Thatcherism is revealed as barren, hypocritical and now pointless….
Now the phone rang: “This is 10 Downing Street”. I thought it was a colleague having a joke but no: “The Prime Minister has been trying to reach you. She has it in mind (so the officialese goes) to recommend that the Queen give you a knighthood.” Flummoxed, I asked for time to think it over. Then, just as I put down the phone, the big black shiny door opened and the Thatchers emerged, she crying a little. It was if she had kept the world waiting until she knew for sure that I’d been contacted. Of course not. But nevertheless, I suppose the very last thing Thatcher did as prime minster was to organise my knighthood. Ding dong, maybe, but thanks all the same.”
— Sir Ian McKellen’s “tribute” to the late Margaret Thatcher.
niles
So he accepted a knighthood from someone he abhorred? Who’s the hypocrite here?
2eo
@niles: Not quite, the list is only people who are put forward, they are confirmed elsewhere.
Traditionally those who refuse awards [like myself in an alternate universe where I accomplished something] do so as a rebuke to the existence of the monarchy, not a stand against a parliament.
yaoming
The gay composer Benjamin Britton refused a knighthood… but that was because he was holding out for a peerage – which he later received, so instead of being Sir Benjamin, he became Lord Britton.
Kieran
Ian McKellan should have told Maggie to take her knighthood and shove it. “Sir” Ian just makes him sound like some pompous ass.