Ghastly Anti-Social Glee

"The commissioner will not even think about taking a risk; he will not want to be found wanting. Costs will be high but every tactic that could possibly be used will be available.
"They will try to keep the visible presence down to avoid provocation but behind the scenes, you can bet they will be ready. There will be huge numbers on standby in every little side street.
"It will have been planned for a long time. It is not as if they didn't know it was coming and of course they knew she was a divisive figure."
London Metropolitan Police

The funeral has been planned down to the last detail. A funeral which Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip will attend, among many, many others; the guest list is long and demonstrative of the influence that the now-departed Baroness Margaret Thatcher, once Prime Minister of Britain, exerted on the global community, let alone her own country. Many declare her to have been one of a kind, the right person at the right time to save Britain from the despair of failure. Many more detest her memory.

The underbelly of society loves a celebration. Almost any reason will do; schadenfreude at the death of a national figure of great international prominence whose politics was controversially divisive, pitting labour against the conservative element of society's ruling class would be classed by the aggrieved as representing as good a reason as any to promulgate hatred long after the historical events, and to promote a ringing endorsement of further divisions between politics and union power.

A woman reviled by the working class, the very class she sprang from, only her portion of the working class revelled in hard work and the due compensation that resulted from it. Work and service to a community illustrated by the investment of time, effort and responsibility by a member of the working class who was self-employed and part of an integrated community. As opposed to those who grumble at their labour, agitating for greater recompense for less effort expended.

Margaret Thatcher, in her unsentimental, uncompromising, hard-headed view that government makes decisions to promote the welfare of an entire society rather than focus on ever-increasing demands for entitlements by a sector of that society, was a detestable figure disruptive of the union culture that pervaded Britain in a time of sclerotic enterprise and lax authority. Loathed then, when she imposed upon British labour conditions they felt intolerable to their cause, she remains now as she was then, the wicked witch of the west.



Liverpool fans hold up a banner commenting on the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, before their English Premier League soccer match against Reading at the Madejski Stadium in Reading, April 13, 2013. (Reuters)

The doltishly juvenile characterization of a fearless woman who undertook steps to change the political, social and business climate of her country, wobbling in a failed economy, held thrall to the power of demanding unions seeking ever greater entitlements for their members, while holding society captive, draining it of the will and the effort to forward momentum into the industrial future has captured the public imagination. Mobs always move to embrace the concept of blaming someone for the difficulties that assail society.

That most of those who come out to rail against Margaret Thatcher's time in office would hardly have any personal memory of that time is obvious; the unions have boosted their members to come out in force in a demonstration of power, as though to flaunt the very disempowerment she was responsible for, flooding back through her death notice. Society responds to the demands from within to make a spectacle of someone whom they must surely all detest, and they must, because they have been so informed.

Those who were her political peers will attend the funeral of Baroness Thatcher, along with representatives from abroad from the ranks of government, the peerage, and diplomats, along with corporate heads who all agree that her lack of temerity in solving broad financial and political crises was emphatically what was required in a bold vision leading to the future. Her spirit of enterprise and frank declarations of intent moved mountains of traditional convention out of the way, for the future to enter.

On the way to that future her decisions and her imposed conditions destroyed a carefully structured union dominance, allowing free enterprise and bold innovation of new working initiatives to flood into the vacuum. She will never be forgiven. She represents the quintessential witch, the she-devil who destroyed a social work culture. From hooligans and thugs to ordinary working people, there emanates a broad determination to celebrate her death.

"We live in a democracy where people are entitled to protest, where they are entitled to have fun and do what they want. What they can't do is, I think, is use the death of an elderly person to begin riots or affray or that sort of thing. So we're getting ready for all that. The police are obviously going to making sure that if people do break the law they will be properly dealt with," explained London Mayor Boris Johnson. Protesters intent on violence would be "properly dealt with".

Well, needless to say, it is not "an elderly person" that the mob will be railing against. It is the memory and the times of Margaret Thatcher, Iron Lady of British politics, who made common cause with the other unforgivingly upright union-bashing, socialist-amending nations of an era of great universal uncertainty during a cold war of labour unrest and a Cold War of political nuclear dimensions.

The British authorities are very good at mopping up that sort of public display. People have a right in a liberal democracy to vent their frustration, to display their annoyance, to demonstrate their anger and attitude toward controversial events but no one has the right to be offensively violent. Yet the groups involved, including the Black Bloc, All London Anarchist Revolutionary Mob, and Green and Black Cross, another anarchist support group are promising just that.

An effigy of late British former prime minister Margaret Thatcher is carried during an anti-Thatcher party celebrating her death in Trafalgar Square in central London on April 13, 2013. (AFP Photo)

Offensive and violent. They have planned to display an effigy of Baroness Thatcher with a stake through its heart. The head is to be used as a football, in an enthusiastic melee to kick it about as an obvious demonstration of contempt. Others plan to dress as undertakers to parade a coffin through the streets. "I think the idea is to fan the flames of anger and hate that people have for (Lady Thatcher) into something dangerous", wrote one participant in a brilliant diagnosis.

The demonstrations are creatively called "Thatcher Death Parties", and they illustrate convincingly enough the civil component within British society on the death of a 87 year old woman who served her country well enough, while in the process making more than any one single individual's share of enemies.