I'm not usually a commenting-on-current-affairs-kind-of-gal, at least not in a blogging sense (I may get heartily opinionated about things I know precious little about on Facebook comment threads, though). This is mainly because, largely, current affairs contentedly pass me by whilst I'm buried amidst a pile of early modern printed books. However, not even I could have missed the news, and the ensuing social media explosion, announcing that Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, died today.
Now, I don't have any particularly vitriolic opinions on the woman myself. I studied her for A Level history and came to the conclusion that she made a lot of different decisions, some with good results, others with bad - and some whose long-term effects are still not entirely clear to us. As (if I had to declare any form of political allegiance) I would probably define myself as a socialist of some form, I disagree with a lot of the ideology behind the decisions she made whilst in power, but I have no especially strong feelings with regards to her.
I've found the discourses surrounding her death, however, really quite fascinating in terms of how it intersects with my current study which, theoretically - it is on early modern scholarly debates about mountains - is as far removed from the reaction to the death of a twentieth century politician as possible. However, many of the scholarly texts I'm currently reading (dating from between 1680 and 1700) often begin by declaring the ways in which the emotional reactions of their opponents are inappropriate; anger, passion, and temper, are all decried as 'unscholarly', even whilst those making such accusations give in to the temptation of such influences in their own contributions to the debate.
I have noticed many people - friends on Facebook and strangers on Twitter - declaring that the reactions that some have had to Thatcher's death are 'inappropriate'. Those criticising her should, some say, remember the old adage of not speaking ill of the dead, whilst those expressing happiness or joy at her departure from this mortal coil are seen as disrespectful, even disgusting. These two criticisms are obviously slightly different - I feel that this article says everything I feel is pertinent to the former (Thatcher was a public figure who divided opinion in life: in death public reaction should not be shackled by a refusal to point out the bad elements of her policy, or barred from providing a variety of views) - but the latter is, I think, a more complex issue than it seems at first sight.
I think that there certainly is something odd about a young person of, say, my generation and family background (as far as I know I do not have any immediate family members affected by Thatcher's policies during her time in power), feeling and expressing joy or satisfaction at the death of an old woman who is really by this point more a part of modern history rather than an active political player. I might disagree with what she did but it has long happened, and although perhaps her economic policies might be pointed at by some as the cause of the current recession, she never directly impacted upon my life. Politicians (or political activists) from relatively well-off families who were likewise relatively unaffected by her during her lifetime, but see her death as an opportunity to 'gloat' simply because a significant figure from the Tory past has died I also find difficult to understand. But castigating all who genuinely feel, and honestly express, relief and a sense of schadenfreude at the passing of someone who had a negative impact on the lives of thousands of people, disregards the very real impact that the actions of politicians can have on the lives of everyday people.
I say this for two reasons. The first is that I know, in a much smaller-scale way, how it feels to be negatively affected by what is nominally the decision of a single politician. If something you care about - your work, your freedom, your ability to live - is under threat or taken away, it is human nature to try to find a target for all the anger and hurt and hate that such a change causes. When governments decide things that directly affect you, you can feel completely powerless, a pawn tumbled around by a faceless, conglomerate entity. Easier by far to pick a face, a name, to impotently rage against. It is easy to look at the facts of history and say: Margaret Thatcher damaged the lives of many. But how would you, or I, feel if ours had been one of the lives damaged?
My second reason is that I always try to empathise with the emotions or passions of the historical figures with whom I'm working. To a modern eye, the debates which I'm studying seem faintly ludicrous, and it seems excessive that those involved in them should become so consumed by their arguments that they insulted one another in published works across the years and even decades. But for them, at the time, these debates questioned the very veracity of the Bible itself - and thus, in turn, the veracity of the doctrine of salvation. For these men it was an issue of life or death. Of course they were angry. For the miners whose mines closed down under Thatcher, what happened must have struck them with a similar force. Whatever the wider economic arguments for what happened, as far as such individuals were concerned, those closures had the potential to ruin their lives and those of their families. Of course they hated Thatcher, the face of that policy, and continued to hate her throughout the years. Human beings, whether in 1690 or 1990, have always been emotional creatures.
In an ideal world, would there be people such as the one my history teacher told us about during our Thatcher classes, a man he knew who kept a bottle of champagne in the fridge for the day Thatcher died? Of course not. But in an ideal world, there would also never be social injustices. Thatcher was a politician, and she made hard decisions which had benefits for some, and disastrous results for others. Some today will grieve her death, and laud her memory, but others will not. Those who are truly joyful today will be those for whom she symbolised a time of real suffering in their lives. Criticising their emotions as improper, invalid, or even immoral is to deny how much power politicians can wield, for good or ill, in the lives of the people they serve. And just as I think that historians should try to bear in mind that the passions of the past were once real and vitally important to those who felt them, so too do I feel that this is something that modern citizens would do well not to forget.
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