Oul' Maggie

Catching up with news after a couple of busy days, I read that Margaret Thatcher died. She reached a fair age, as they say where I'm from, and I'm sure I'm not the only one to have mixed feelings about her passing and yet hesitating to speak ill of the dead.

As a child of the '80s, Margaret Thatcher was an influential figure in my life. She was the enemy but she was also a woman who drove a tank past assembled troops standing to attention, while dressed immaculately. She was described by a leading IRA man, no less, as 'the biggest bastard we have ever known'. As an eight-year old feminist-in-training, I had to have a grudging respect for her. She and Ronald Reagan were the dynamic duo of world affairs, ubiquitous on the nightly news, it seemed.  I always remember their hair. He had jet-black, plastic Lego-man hair that never moved. She had russet bouffant hair, perfectly set, that never moved. Maybe their hair reflected their intransigent, conservative Weltanschauung.

In Irish nationalist households, Thatcher was hated for her hardline policy on Northern Ireland, her refusal to negotiate or even attempt to understand her opponents' point of view. When it came to relations with Ireland, Thatcher didn't want to know the background, the history, the reality of the situation. Her policies in Northern Ireland reflected her view that the IRA were just criminals, their political motivation irrelevant to their actions, and she pursued internment of any suspected terrorists without trial, a blueprint of George W. Bush's later War on Terror, and denied interned prisoners the status of political prisoners, even in the face of hunger strikes. Thatcher was British tyranny personified.

And yet, just as her profile was on the wane, that famous photo of her driving a tank past troops in Germany was all over the press. At the time, I was reading a book, possibly this one, called 'A Children's History of Britain and Ireland'. The 'and Ireland' was printed in smaller letters, which irked me immensely of course but after that initial upset, it turned out to be a good book. One of the stories I liked best was the story of Boadicea and her 100,000-strong army of men, waging war against the Romans to defend her territory. I loved the idea that there had been a military leader who was a woman so far back in ancient times and that her military success, such as it was, became noted in the historical works of classical scholars. It proved to my eight-year old self's satisfaction that women had been prominent in public life for centuries and had even led armies into battle. In my mind, Thatcher and Boadicea provided a counterpoint to the patriarchal Catholic culture around me, proving that, yes, women can be strong and can fight and be leaders, just like men. For me, Thatcher and Boadicea were both symbols of female strength and heroism, even if, in the case of Thatcher, the guns were probably pointed in my direction.