State of disbelief

1:20pm Thursday 7th August 2008

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I WAS outraged to discover that there are plans to give Margaret Thatcher a state funeral, costing £3 million.

There’s no getting away from the fact that, whatever your opinion of her and her policies, Mrs T was a formidable politician who changed the face of this country forever.

But I just don’t think she’s in the same league as Winston Churchill, who was afforded a state funeral when he died in 1965.

Winnie led this country through one of the darkest chapters in this country’s history when we and our Allies defeated the Nazis.

If Jesus is the son of God, I think Hitler was the son of Satan and he and his evil regime just had to be stopped.

Margaret Thatcher, on the other hand, presided over the destruction of this country’s manufacturing base, stripped the workers of their union rights and ordered the invasion of the Falkland Islands on the grounds that she was sticking up for its British residents. What baloney.

Just after we’d won the Falklands War the Labour MP Neil Kinnock said “Thatcher’s got guts and our lads had to spill theirs to prove it". He was crucified in the right wing press but a year later, Margaret Thatcher was re-elected to number 10 with a thumping majority.

Mr Kinnock had been spot on. In 1982 her popularity had been at an all-time low.

I’ve always been too self-conscious to go on protest marches - the only one I’ve ever been on was a fair grants march when I was a student in Sheffield. But if the state funeral goes ahead, I will give serious consideration to venting my spleen on the streets.

We live in a country of contradictions, don’t we? Many people who supported Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister would have decried those very same qualities in other foreign leaders. But I was lucky - I was spared the ordeal of trying to find a job when Mrs T was on the political throne.

Three million others weren’t quite so lucky.