Watching Andrew Neil's programme of that title this evening, watch out for the fantastical exaggeration of Margaret Thatcher's humble origins, and particularly for the old canard, which she herself never quite uttered, that she went to a State school. In reality, her father was a prominent local businessman and politician who ran most of the committees and charities for miles around, sent her to a fee-paying school, and put her through Oxford without a scholarship.
She told us that "there is no such thing as society", in which case there cannot be any such thing as the society that is the family, or the society that is the nation. She turned Britain into the country that Marxists had always said it was, even though, before her, it never actually had been. Within that, the middle classes were transformed from people like her father into people like her son.
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I have no particular wish to defend Margaret Thatcher but I do get fed up with people who take selective phrases from anyone's mouth and use them to discredit the speaker when a full quotation proves their attack is groundless. This is what M T said in toto. Now tell me exactly what you disagree with? Still, as the best propagandists say, repeat something often enough and people will believe it.
ReplyDelete"But it went too far. If children have a problem, it is society that is at fault. There is no such thing as society.[fo 2] There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate. And the worst things we have in life, in my view, are where children who are a great privilege and a trust—they are the fundamental great trust, but they do not ask to come into the world, we bring them into the world, they are a miracle, there is nothing like the miracle of life—we have these little innocents and the worst crime in life is when those children, who would naturally have the right to look to their parents for help, for comfort, not only just for the food and shelter but for the time, for the understanding, turn round and not only is that help not forthcoming, but they get either neglect or worse than that, cruelty.
"There is no such thing as society."
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