Rejoicing in death. Why is the Left so full of hate?

Blackleaf · Rejoicing in death. Why is the Left so full of hate?

The Guardian newspaper, famous for its Left-Wing views, was full of members of the public pouring venom on former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher - even wishing her death.

What is it that makes Lefties - such as these Guardianistas - so angry compared to the Right?

QUENTIN LETTS: Rejoicing in death. Why is the Left so full of hate for Lady Thatcher?

By Quentin Letts
22nd July 2008
Daily Mail

The Letters page of The Guardian, seldom the sanest of arenas, has this week descended to virulent venom.

In place of the customary corduroyed bores calling for unilateral disarmament, rainbow-nation multiculturalism or celebrations of Castro's Cuba, there have appeared several letters which gloated at the prospect of Margaret Thatcher's death.

Their vengeful tone, though hurtful about the still very much alive Lady Thatcher, has been instructive. It was a timely reminder that no one does viciousness quite like the Left. Far from the Conservatives being 'the Nasty Party', Labour's preachy brothers and sisters have long deserved that title.

In good health: Margaret Thatcher enjoying the Wimbledon Tennis Championships earlier this month

The Guardian letters were sparked by reports that Lady Thatcher will be given the rare honour of a state funeral. Even to discuss such arrangements is, let us be honest, a difficult matter. The widowed, octogenarian Lady T is in fair health. Long may she remain so.

Some Guardian readers have taken a markedly less charitable line towards the former Prime Minister. Typical of the response was that of one Chris Gibson, who said that on seeing the headline about a state funeral for Lady Thatcher: 'I thought that the week had got off to the best possible start.' Charming.

Another contributor, Chris Hardman, wrote: 'Just a couple of questions: 'Does that include the grave/dancefloor combo?' and 'When is it booked for?'

Guardian reader Rob Watling suggested that the contract for any state funeral should be 'put out to compulsory competitive tender and awarded to the lowest bidder'.

On one level, these letters are merely the prattish words of small minds - people unable to accept that many of the battles of the Eighties were lost for good by Labour and that Lady T was a remarkable election winner whose titanic will reversed Britain's post-war decline and, incidentally, destroyed the class structure so loathed by the Left.

But the fact such horrible letters were written, let alone published in a national newspaper, tells us something else.

The vituperative tone was even less restrained on The Guardian's internet website, and those of other Left-wing publications such as The New Statesman.

It is all of a piece with other instances of shrill intolerance by the Left. Why is it that socialists, in contrast to their professed humanity and Methodist origins, are so remarkably malevolent? Why is the Left so mean?

Look at the way Labour hardliners reacted to the idea of Boris Johnson becoming Mayor of London. A moderate Tory, socially liberal, urban, pro-gay, generally pro-minority, he has more in common with middle-class London Labour than he does with old-fashioned provincial Tories.

Yet the last days of his campaign saw near apoplexy among Left-wingers - not least with some ludicrously skewed coverage in The Guardian. Genial Boris was depicted as little short of a rapist and Ku Klux Klansman.

Quentin Letts: 'The fact such horrible letters were written, let alone published in a national newspaper, tells us something else'

Look at the way Labour portrayed Edward Timpson, Conservative candidate in the recent Crewe and Nantwich by-election. A barrister specialising in family disputes, an area of the law which exposes practitioners to terrible examples of social breakdown, Mr Timpson is no goose-stepper. He is a well-informed Centrist from a family which has done much charity work in Cheshire.

So how was he depicted by the caring, sharing Left? As an early 20th century fop, a political opportunist, a figure to be hated. A hit squad of hecklers was hired to pursue him. Labour spent thousands of pounds on negative campaigning.

Left-wingers like to talk of ' progressive politics', by which they suppose they mean open-mindedness, but historically they are far more dogmatic than the Right.

Factionalism and drunken intrigue were rampant in the trades unions of old.

On immigration, Left-wingers have been exceptionally illiberal. Commentators and politicians who questioned the pro-immigration consensus were shouted down as racists.

The thoroughly decent former Tory leader Michael Howard was cast as something close to a Nazi for daring to suggest that immigration was becoming a problem. His assailants were not shamed by the fact that Mr Howard is of Jewish émigré stock. He'd had the temerity to oppose the Left. He had to be destroyed.

Tony Blair's regime was infamously unpleasant to people who tried to stand in its way. Government scientist David Kelly paid for his independence with his life - suicide, we were told, although he was pushed into any such suicide by Labour-ordered briefings.

Other refuseniks, from Cabinet ministers who refused to do grubby deals or military commanders who questioned bad orders, had their reputations traduced.

Civil servants who did not 'fit' were sacked by Blair's thugs. Some people tried to claim smiling Tony's nastiest piece of work, Alastair Campbell, was no worse than Sir Bernard Ingham, Mrs Thatcher's press spokesman. But Ingham never wielded the power - or malevolence - of the spitting, table-thumping Campbell.

How depressing it is that even now Blair has gone, the Labour Government continues to show a vindictive streak. The treatment of General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of General Staff, is the latest example of a good public servant being shafted by rancorous Leftists, furious that an 'old school' figure should try to oppose their sway.

One of the Left's great propaganda achievements over the years has been the idea that it was somehow kinder to support Labour than to be Conservative.

Think a little harder, though, and you may start to see that Left's attitude depends on the suppression of tolerance.

It demands communal conformity rather than independent freedom. It seeks to dictate supply rather than allowing the market to find a level. It places the state above the citizen.

Here are the philosophical roots of the harshness of discipline which fuel the unpleasantness. Those Guardian letters spring directly from Left-wing orthodoxy. It is hard to imagine any Conservative worth that name rejoicing at the death of a Labour opponent. The Tory instinct does not work like that.

When the then Tory party chairman, Theresa May, told her activists they were 'seen as the nasty party' she was probably right - even though it was unfair.

Labour's cleverness has been to hide its vindictive streak. If anything, the Tories have not been nasty enough. Let's hope it stays that way. I'd hate to think any of us would descend to the level reached by the Left - the REAL nasty party.

The venom poured on an 82-year-old by Guardian readers

I don't care what method people use to celebrate the fact that the bitch is dead. But for most people it will be a celebration. Dancing on her grave? Too bloody right, I will.
yeractual, Guardian online.

A 19-GUN salute? Only if they were all aimed at her.
imasmadashell, Guardian online.

I rather like the suggestion that whatever happens she is going to be buried at sea, by the time everyone has finished p***ing on her grave...
greymatter, Guardian online.

State funeral! She should be burned at the stake!
4danglier, Guardian online.

Thatcher should be allowed a state funeral only if the contract is put out to compulsory competitive tender and awarded to the lowest bidder. Any offers?
Rob Watling, Guardian newspaper.

‘The country owes her a 19-gun salute.’ Yeah, but we’re not cruel, she can have a blindfold as well!
BurgermaS, Guardian online.

I liken Thatcher’s rule to a surgeon finding gangrene in the little toe and amputating above the knee.
Green Lake, Guardian online.

The reminder that Charles Darwin received a state funeral underlines the grossly offensive nature of the proposal that Mrs Thatcher should be similarly honoured. Darwin’s magnificent insight liberated and broadened our thinking. Thatcher’s offensive bigotry destroyed much that was good in our society, narrowing our vision.
John Baker, Guardian newspaper.

A state funeral would be a farce. But how about nationwide street parties or perhaps auctioning coffin nails? I’d pay good money to hammer the lid down.
Ifweworkers, Guardian online.

The headline ‘State funeral planned for Lady Thatcher’ is deeply irresponsible. When it appeared, I honestly thought that the week had got off to the best possible start.
Chris Gibson, Guardian newspaper.

I'll be there protesting and throwing eggs even if they promise to extraordinarily rendition me. Never. It’d be a crime to honour this self-serving, divisive politician who governed with minority support and who created the s*** we live in today. She did more to destroy ‘the family’ than a hundred Roy Jenkins ever could. No, no, no. Just throw some petrol on the corpse, chuck a match and let the wind do the rest.
bass46, Guardian online.

Just a couple of questions: ‘Does that include the grave/dancefloor combo?’ and ‘When is it booked for?’
Chris Hardman, Guardian newspaper.

I'd go along with it on three conditions: 1) The son Mark is stripped of his hereditary baronetcy. He has done nothing to deserve it and everything to lose it. 2) We can get it over with as soon as possible. Friday week would be good for me. 3) We do a special offer (Buy One Get One Free) with the current Prime Minister. The fact that both of them are still breathing should be no obstacle.
EastFinchleyite, Guardian online.

Announcing the Great Thatcher Awayday. On the day of her state funeral, I’ll book the Eurostar and Guardian readers are cordially invited to join me in Brussels to toast her passing with great Belgian beer. The famous bar Morte Subite (Sudden Death) will make a good starting point.
Roger Protz, Guardian newspaper.

She deserves the admiration and respect of every exploiter and authoritarian in the world.
Gegenbeispiel, Guardian online.

Since Thatcher is loathed and despised by a large proportion of UK citizens, may we suggest that her state funeral takes place at Port Stanley, where presumably her popularity remains undiminished?
Lucy Birot, Peter Mackridge and Jackie Willcox, Oxford, Guardian newspaper.

I cannot believe that I am alone in feeling total disgust that there are plans to honour Margaret Thatcher with a state funeral. I would also take issue with the view that she ‘reversed the decline in Britain’s post-war fortunes’. The fact that No 10 appears to have condoned the plans sums up how bankrupt this government has become.
Dr Terry Allcott, Guardian newspaper.

When Margaret Thatcher was Minister for Education, she took away free milk from schoolchildren. I created the slogan ‘Thatcher, Thatcher, milk snatcher’ and put it on a wanted poster with her picture. When she became prime minister, we wrote to her from the Chiswick Women’s Aid refuge and asked her what she would do for victims of domestic violence. A minion replied on her behalf and said that she was ‘not interested in women’s issues’. A state funeral would be an insult to this nation.
Erin Pizzey, Guardian newspaper.

Give her a nice marble tomb — in the shape of a public toilet.
anstruther, New Statesman online

State funeral? A televised public execution would be far, far too good for her.
RoyalFamily, Guardian online.

There should be a nationwide procession so the public can show their appreciation by throwing anything they like at her — and I do mean anything.
Carl Jones, New Statesman online.

I hope she lives long enough to see her son go to prison for his crimes in Africa. I hope she lives long enough to see 'actual' democracy come in the UK in the form of electronic democracy and local communities. I hope she lives long enough to see the mass ownership of companies by the people (not the feudal few). I hope she lives long enough to see Britain stop being the Americans’ poodle, and I hope she lives long enough to see the ‘New Labour project’ overturned by some REAL social democrats. Then I hope she comes back as a poor child in the Third World.
gnuneo, New Statesman online.

Why waste money when half the country will be having a party to celebrate her demise, anyway?
NemesistheWarlock, Guardian online.

Where's she being buried? We could graffiti her tombstone.
RosaLuxemburgII, New Statesman online.

dailymail.co.uk

Aventinian

Just shows the sort of loonies that hang around on newspaper websites, desperately hoping someone will read their comments...

Yes, that's right, you know who you are!

Alasdair

You would hope that these people don't really mean what they say, but then why would they say it. Don't get me wrong, I won't shed any tears for her but I wouldn't wish her (or anybody else) dead.

Dave Coull

I find that English Daily Mail article (I am assuming, almost certainly correctly, that it did not appear in the Scottish Daily Mail) strange. One of the strange things about it is the sheer hypocrisy. Another is the equation of the Labour Party with "the Left".

Well I'm no fan of the Labour Party, but let's just consider for a minute their greatest prime minister, Major Clement Attlee. Major Attlee was leader of the Labour Party longer than anybody else. He was Deputy Prime Minister during the Second World War. Whenever Churchill was elsewhere (which happened quite frequently) Attlee chaired the meetings of the War Cabinet. He had a huge influence on the conduct of government during that war. He made sure that the Beveridge Report was accepted and hundreds of thousands of copies of it circulated to every serving member of the armed forces, on land and on sea, in Europe, Africa, and the Far East. When Churchill called a general election after VE Day, but while the war against Japan was still going on, he expected to win easily (in those days before the invention of opinion polling). Huge numbers of men (and women) were still in the armed forces. Churchill thought they would vote for him, as the war leader. He was wrong. One of the many new Labout MPs elected was Major Dennis Healey, fresh from commanding a tank force in North Africa and Italy, and still wearing his uniform. Attlee won a very big majority. His government founded the National Health Service at home, and NATO abroad. They embarked on a huge programme of house building so that there could be no question of returning soldiers returning to squalor. There were some very big egos in that government, but Attlee kept control of them all. He was a man of few words. When he sacked one cabinet minister and the surprised man asked him why, he replied simply "Not good enough". Yet this man of few words still has massive influence on all of our lives to this day.

Whether you approve or disapprove of the things Attlee did, by any standard, he was one of the most successful prime ministers of the 20th Century. But just imagine the reaction if there had been a suggestion, during the later years of Attlee's life, that he should receive a State Funeral. The Daily Mail and other Tory papers would have been livid, and their readers would have expressed themselves in terms no less vindictive than the Guardian readers.

State funerals are a bad idea. Only one prime minister out of 20 British prime ministers of the 20th Century got one, and that should be the LAST one. The attempt to resuscitate this Nineteenth Century bad idea should be buried.

Dave Coull

The Daily Mail is the newspaper which, in the 1930s, supported the British Union of Fascists, whose leader, Oswald Mosely, wanted to become a dictator like his heroes Musolini and Hitler. The Daily Mail's most famous front page headline of all time, at a time when “leftists” were seeking to prevent fascists from marching through Jewish areas of East London, was “HURRAH FOR THE BLACKSHIRTS!”.

For this disreputable rag to criticise another newspaper is sheer hypocrisy.

Nevertheless I am pretty sure I’m right in thinking that Quentin Letts article did not appear in the Scottish Daily Mail, but only in the English Daily Mail.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the things that article says.

“The Guardian letters were sparked by reports that Lady Thatcher will be given the rare honour of a state funeral."

A “rare honour” is putting it mildly. The ratio is 1 out of 20 prime ministers. Why Thatcher and not Attlee, for instance?

“Even to discuss such arrangements is, let us be honest, a difficult matter.”

It might suit both Gordon Brown and Quentin Letts for it all to be settled behind closed doors by a State Committee, sworn to secrecy under the Official Secrets Act, consisting of members of the Government, senior Whitehall mandarins, and representatives of the chiefs of the Armed Services and the Police, but the plans being made by this secret state Committee did leak out, and it is right and proper that the plans they are making should be discussed publicly. The secret plans being made to revive the Nineteenth Century bad idea of having State Funerals for politicians were always bound to be controversial. The controversy arises, not out of the REACTION to this bad idea, but out of the (extremely expensive) secret plans being made by unelected officials in our name.

“The widowed, octogenarian Lady T is in fair health.”

Many people make some sort of plans for their own funerals, while they are still very much alive. In Lady T’s case, I think we can assume she is aware of the plans being made for hers, and apparently approves of this huge expenditure of taxpayers’ money on a State-sponsored-political-demonstration.

“Tony Blair's regime was infamously unpleasant to people who tried to stand in its way.”

Indeed it was. And as Tony Blair himself never ceased to emphasise, he was a true heir of Margaret Thatcher, who fought many battles against “the Left”, both those inside his own party and those outside.

Dave Coull

Two of the more interesting comments from that Guardian site. First, Erin Pizzey:

"When she became prime minister, we wrote to her from the Chiswick Women’s Aid refuge and asked her what she would do for victims of domestic violence. A minion replied on her behalf and said that she was ‘not interested in women’s issues’."

True.

It was very noticeable that Maggie liked to be surrounded by fawning MEN in her cabinet. Other women, such as Edwina Currie for instance, she regarded very coldly, as rivals.

Next

"I hope she lives long enough to see her son go to prison for his crimes in Africa."

Some think it's only her influence that has kept her wayward offspring out of prison so far. I suppose they might let him out of jail to attend the funeral.

But it ought to be a private funeral, for family and friends. The idea that all of us should subsidize a huge State-sponsored-political-demonstration when she dies is just ridiculous.

Dave Coull

I've just noticed this bit in that article by Quentin Letts: "many of the battles of the Eighties were lost for good by Labour".

Well, I'm no fan of the Labour Party, and, so far as today's Glasgow East by-election is concerned, I would be happy for folk to vote for ANYBODY but the Labour Party; but Thatcher lost one extremely important battle of the 80s, namely, the poll tax, which was introduced in Scotland in 1989.

I took the initiative in seeking to form a local anti-poll-tax group, committed to refusing to pay the tax, in March 1988, over a year before the tax was introduced. By the time it was actually introduced, we were quite well organised, and ready to back people in refusal to pay, and had established links with other such groups throughout Scotland, and had begun to establish links with folk in England who were also prepared to oppose the tax. By the time the tax was introduced in England and Wales we had been refusing payment for a year. I went down to London for the big anti-poll-tax demonstration. A friend of mine from the North East of Scotland got his photo splashed all over the front page of the "Sun" on the Monday after that riotous weekend in London, with the message "REWARD OF £500 IF YOU CAN IDENTIFY THIS MAN". Without even having time to change his clothes, he got back to Scotland just in time to go to his work on Monday morning, where a woman reading the "Sun" during lunch break in the canteen looked at the photo, and looked at him, and said "That's you!". But she didn't turn him in for the reward. And that's how my friend first got to know his future wife. Strange but true. The anti-poll-tax campaign was a very significant battle of the late 80s and early 90s, against what Maggie Thatcher described as her FLAGSHIP policy, and the fact is, we sunk her flagship. That decisive battle was lost by the Thatcherites, and this was what led to her downfall as party leader and as prime minister.

But absolutely no thanks at all to the Labour Party, of course. They were about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.