Intelligently Conservative

Peter Hitchens writes:

So now Meryl Streep is to play the Iron Lady, and the planned drama sounds as if it comes from Muscular Liberal Central. She is said to be portrayed (in the script) as filled with regret about various actions. Perhaps this is true. The former politician must have many unpleasant hours in which to reflect on errors and omissions. Actions which appeared at the time to be triumphs often crumble, over the decades, into minor events or even change their character altogether. Who'd envy an ex-Prime Minister? Only a superhuman could endure those years of powerlessness without some melancholy, after the zingy exhilaration of high office.

Personally, I should like to see a serious re-examination of Mrs Thatcher from an intelligently conservative point of view, unclouded by excessive admiration. John Campbell's superb and beautifully-written two-volume biography (which I commend to anyone interested) seems to me to come more from the Left, though Mr Campbell strives very hard to be fair. His preoccupations are not the same as mine.

I would like a conservative answer to these questions. Did the economic strategy work, as is now claimed, or was she rescued by circumstances? Did she actually defeat trade union militancy, or merely destroy all the industries where such militancy was possible? Did she simply forget the great issues of state schools, marriage, drugs, crime and justice? Or was she in fact in favour of much of the social revolution we went through during her allegedly conservative government? Remember, Alderman Roberts, her revered father, was a Liberal alderman, not a Tory one. And she married a divorced man.

Was she vital to 'victory' in the Cold War, or is that Anglocentric hyperbole? In any case, was it such a great thing that we won it at all? Did it take her too long to see the threat from the European Union? Was the Falklands War in fact largely her fault, because of the unwise naval cuts she approved - and which, if they had taken effect by 1982, would have rendered us incapable of retaking the Islands (as we are now, thanks to a new round of Muscular Liberal cuts).

Was she really brought down by the Poll Tax, the myth generally propagated by the BBC and much of the Tory establishment? Or was it her late but fiery realisation of the dangers of Brussels that led to her fall? How on earth was she so utterly fooled by John Major?

I want to know. I am lucky enough to have met her more than once, though not on equal terms. I lived through the whole era and was never exactly an enthusiast, though I have always felt it necessary to defend her against her stupider detractors. I am sure, for instance, that she is a personally kind human being - as is so often the case with politicians derided for their 'right-wing' and 'callous' views. And I do not doubt her intelligence or her willingness to learn (not all Prime Ministers have either).

I continue to find her very interesting as a person and her life in many ways rather touching.

Like C.P. Snow's underrated 'Strangers and Brothers' novels, which portray a lost England in which a man truly could strive his way from a lowly state school to the House of Lords, hers is a powerfully moving story of an ascent from provincial quietness by a person of great determination and a huge capacity for hard work, made even more admirable by the snobbish and narrow-minded prejudices against her sex and class which were always waiting to trip her up (and which lay behind much of the personalised hostility towards her).

I suspect that Ms Streep (whose portrayal of the cook Julia Child in 'Julia and Julie' was by contrast quite brilliant, and made me laugh helplessly) will not be helping me with any of these questions.