THE BARONESS

Strangely, I always thought the news would make me happier whenever it finally came. After all, I was a child of the sixties, who became a teenager in the seventies, and transformed into both a student and, later on, one of the unemployed during the eighties. Not only that, but I spent pretty much all of that time living in either the North of England or South Wales, neither of which were areas which particularly prospered during her years in office, at least, not from where I was standing in line.

Once upon a long ago, when I was involved with the Student’s Union in a College in South Wales which was extraordinarily aware of the miner’s strike that was going on all around it at the time, I might very well have claimed that I would have quite happily queued up to piss on her grave. I could even claim that I began what was possibly the first ever “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie… Out! Out! Out!” chant ever heard in London because I happened to be in a decidedly non-political rally (for the Methodist Church no less) on the Saturday after she took office in 1979, and, as a fourteen year old who knew no better, I thought it might be a funny thing to do as we trudged down Whitehall waving our scarves and placards.

But now she’s gone and…

I don’t know, perhaps I’m just getting old, but I can’t bring myself to jump up and down and celebrate the death of anyone any more, even one who I once disliked so very much. When the news came through, more than anything else, it just sort of rather stunned me more than any other reaction that I might have had, like a huge chunk of my past had vanished in an instant, and my strongest feelings were that I began to dread the probably tasteless reactions to the story unfolding in the social media.

Perhaps, in the end, it turns out that we all need a despicable figure in our lives that we consider to be, in whatever shape or form, our own personal nemesis…

Perhaps I just felt that a chunk of what ultimately made me into stronger person has suddenly been ripped from me, and the odd sense of the loss of that figure was greater than any gain which I might have expected to get from hearing about it…

Perhaps I’ve finally come to realise that, in the end, she was just another old lady making her final journey into the great beyond, oblivious to my comparatively tiny bubbling lump of dislike, and that even she, when it came to it, was only human after all…

In the end, of course, any dislike I might have had for her was ultimately irrelevant, and I’m sure that she never knew or cared that it was there. I was just one of the masses, another voice amongst many of the other malcontents who never really understood her, and about whom she probably cared not a gnat’s whisker.

And, of course, despite everything, time marched on and the country (and the world) marched on into the future, and all of the cards fell as they did for her, as indeed they did for me.

She moved off into the political hinterland, the House of Lords, and her eventual demise, whilst a generation or more grew up not really understanding the horror that her name instilled into some of us whenever it was uttered. Not because of her gender, but because of her policies. And yet, even with her presence in my life, I managed to build whatever life I now have, possibly despite (and perhaps because of) her influence upon it and the myriad other factors which ebbed and flowed and made my world what it was I made of it.

Some of the policies she put into place changed things for the better, and some changed things for the worse. Some suffered under her and will never forgive her. Others profited and thrived on her watch, and for them she will always be a heroine.

I truly, truly despised her when I was younger, and the sound of her voice could still send shivers down my spine whenever it popped unexpectedly out of my television set or radio over the past few years, so I guess that I would never be a person who could claim that she might to be one of my favorite people.

Now, of course, there’s been a lot of tributes and talk about her memory and legacy, as well as a lot of spite and bile from those who disliked her, but, in the end she was what she was, and I am what I am, and the world turns, and history will make of her what it will.

I just thought I would feel something more when this day finally came, that’s all…