{"id":11135,"date":"2013-04-09T10:42:21","date_gmt":"2013-04-09T09:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=11135"},"modified":"2013-04-09T10:43:29","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T09:43:29","slug":"one-more-view-on-margaret-thatcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=11135","title":{"rendered":"One more view on Margaret Thatcher"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my time, I&#8217;ve met four British Prime Ministers. Given my politics, they were all Labour: Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.\u00a0I never wanted to meet Margaret Thatcher.<\/p>\n<p>This was not just a matter of ideology, but also an issue of personality. While I accept that she modernised Britain in some important respects, she increased economic inequality and excessively empowered the forces of raw capitalism. While I acknowledge her prodigious work rate, formidable memory and fierce will. I believe that she lacked understanding for or empathy with those who were less advantaged or strong-willed as herself.<\/p>\n<p>The woman, who stood on the steps of 10 Downing Street after her first General Election victory and stated <em>&#8220;Where there is discord, may we bring harmony&#8221;<\/em>, was a deeply divisive figure who actively promoted conflict at both home and abroad. She had a confrontational, even bullying, style of leadership that is not one I respect or practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my time, I&#8217;ve met four British Prime Ministers. Given my politics, they were all Labour: Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.\u00a0I never wanted to meet Margaret Thatcher. This was not just a matter of ideology, but also an issue of personality. While I accept that she modernised Britain in some important [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11135"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11138,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11135\/revisions\/11138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}