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We may never see the likes of Lady Thatcher again
DEAR EDITOR,
As with Julius Caesar, “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is often interred with their bones…”. So let it NOT be with Lady Thatcher.
PM Thatcher was a controversial figure, but let us not overlook the fact that, as an unswerving patriot, she restored the respect and status that Britain had lost over the years, mainly through ‘over-militancy’ in the workplace and other countries’ nervousness about doing business with the UK.
I saw union power close up. My (Public Service) workplace was highly unionised – in fact, a closed shop, except for the secretarial grades. I was appalled at work practices when I joined in the late 1970s.
For instance, two chaps were putting bookshelves on an office wall, one of them holding the shelf in place, the other fixing the brackets to the wall. While one was at lunch, the occupant asked the other to adjust a screw, to make the load-bearing shelf more secure. He said that he could not; his job was to hold the shelf in place, not to fix screws. One day, I asked a messenger to put my boss’s papers in the In-tray on my desk rather than in a general tray on a desk a few feet away. She had to report the request to the on-site union rep, so that he could visit and inspect, to grant permission or not. He then gave permission. To me, an unnecessary waste of time.
Shortly after Mrs. Thatcher became PM, our outfit was privatised, union power was curbed and several people lost their jobs. It was known as ‘reorganisation’. The unions, fighting for their own survival, could do very little to help. The jobs got done with half the staff. Not a pretty sight to see colleagues in despair about their livelihoods being in jeopardy. However, Britain was once again on the map, at the top of the list of places to do business with.
Many people are ambivalent about ‘The Iron Lady’. I think she meant well and was a breath of fresh air, with her ‘difference’. Incidentally, in her memoirs ‘The Downing Street Years’, she pays tribute to President Forbes Burnham, for explaining to her the term “consensus decision” at a conference abroad. As I recall, words along the lines of “Something you have when you cannot get full agreement”. In other words, to me, the majority view. She used the phrase subsequently when visiting another country.
We may never see her like again. She meant well. May her soul rest peacefully.
Geralda Dennison
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