Margaret Thatcher, Who Defended Civilization, Finds Her Statue Defenseless

The only direct defense came not from friend but political foe, Neil Kinnock, former Labor Party leader. When your enemies respect you, it testifies to your character.

Via Wikimedia Commons
Prime Minister Thatcher with President Reagan at the Oval Office in November 1988. Via Wikimedia Commons

As vandals attack the statue of Baroness Margaret Thatcher, few have rallied to its defense despite her historical significance and the debt the world owes her for victories over communist tyranny in the Cold War and fascist Argentina in the Falklands. 

In her hometown of Grantham, a deputy director at the University of Leicester’s Attenborough Arts Centre shelled the statue with eggs. The school responded only that it “does not condone any form of defacement.” It has yet to take disciplinary action.

Other vandals splattered the statue with paint. Someone smeared on the fence protecting it a Soviet hammer and sickle. The only direct defense came not from friend but political foe, Neil Kinnock, former Labor Party leader.

Known to Americans as the man whose life story President Biden plagiarized in his 1988 campaign for the White House and to Britons for his epic debates with Thatcher in the House of Commons, he minced no words.

“The statue,” he said, “should be respected. Full stop.” When your enemies respect you — as the Soviets did in dubbing Thatcher “the Iron Lady” — it testifies to your character.

By rights, you’d expect to find the statue of the 20th century’s longest-serving British PM in Parliament Square alongside that of Winston Churchill, also targeted by vandals. Out of fear, the nation that once stood alone against Nazi Germany rejected Thatcher.

Since I’ve broken the “Fawlty Towers” rule against mentioning the war, I’ll point out that Mohandas Gandhi adorns the park unmolested, despite addressing Hitler as his “dear friend” and urging London to capitulate during the Blitz.

In nearby Trafalgar Square resides a man who committed treason against the crown: George Washington. He’s planted on a bed of dirt imported from America, as legend has it the general refused to set foot on British soil.

At Parliament itself resides the likeness of Oliver Cromwell, who seized power and whose bloody legacy is etched across Ireland. At this rate, London’s streets should be running yellow with yolks.

From someone’s perspective somewhere sometime, all of us have earned an omelet bath, yet civilization refrains because that road ends with the Taliban blowing up 1,500-year-old statues.

At a London art gallery in 2002 a man decapitated a different statue of Thatcher. Although the worst vitriol seems to be reserved for this woman, the self-appointed defenders of her sex stand mute.

Feminists have no place in their ranks for a conservative — even the first woman to lead one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — so, once again, Thatcher must go it alone.

In a democracy, the correct way to get rid of a statue is through legal means. If you believe that communism is superior to Thatcherism, then have the courage to make your pitch. Don’t hide behind paint and eggs.

The case for Margaret Thatcher is manifest on the world stage and is made on the domestic front by Edwin J. Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, who wrote that her “free-market reforms were revolutionary.”

“Using deregulation and privatization, she restored Great Britain, once dismissed as the ‘sick man of Europe,’ to its position as a world power,” inspiring others, including nations emerging from communism.

On a visit to Poland in 1988, she demanded the Soviet-backed government let her meet Lech Walesa and other leaders of the Solidarity movement, who said this was instrumental to throwing off communist rule. 

As Mr. Walesa said, “You didn’t say ‘no’ to Mrs. Thatcher.”  

The prime minister waded into many fights in her time and expected attacks. “I always cheer up immensely,” she said, when an insult was “particularly wounding because I think, ‘Well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.’”

Her father, she said, always taught her, “Never worry about anyone who attacks you personally; it means their arguments carry no weight and they know it.” 

An egg has very little weight, and it is as useless against a 10-foot statue of bronze as insults were useless against the Iron Lady herself. 


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