KINGSTON, Jamaica – Britain will this week bury Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister who transformed her country, for better or worse.
Opinion polarises about the woman the Soviet press famously dubbed the 'Iron Lady'. On the Right, she is celebrated as the woman who took down the unions, breathed life into a moribund public sector, reinvigorated the economy and thus rescued Britain from her post-imperial descent into ignominy. On the Left, she is reviled as the person who shattered Britain's post-war social consensus, divided the society, injected ruthless competition into the economy and destroyed its manufacturing sector.
The funny thing is, they're both right. Britain in the 1970s was a decaying society. I recall underground stations that looked like World War II bomb shelters, with sooty walls dimly lit by dangling light bulbs. You waited months to get a phone installed. You could go without electricity for hours at a time. And when the unions decided to go out on strike, the garbage would pile up for days.
