reply to shantam , unpublished from me on Sannyasnews

  1. prem martyn says:

    Your comment is awaiting moderation.

  2. shantam prem says:

    Martyn, you are the right person to tell, ” Why left wing radicals and youth are celebrating Margaret Thatcher´s death? After all celebrators are not sannyasins.
    Why so much hate for her?
    As an Indian I can count the list of politicians who will get the maximum votes from the citizens if there is a petition, which one should rot in hell, still I cannot imagine in India, people will celebrate so openly and walls will be painted with graffiti, ” Rot in hell Maggie Thatcher”.
    There must be some solid reason or is it a misguided propaganda to paint her in such a bad light?

    • prem martyn says:

      Your comment is awaiting moderation.

      Well that’s an interesting question from so many angles…Shantam…
      I will draw up a list of possible considerations..

      Do you have an hour spare to read…..?

      Objectively consider this, some history…
      1) As the British have a terrible interpersonal emotive fluency/ intelligence due in large part to a war mongering, patrician , lack of indulgent maternal-affective range or bonding in childhood, televisual domesticity, where interaction is sponsored by sterile tv drama and where the pirates get drunk at the weekends to connect with others, with fists not hugs, we then get Robots.

      2)In compensation we try to cathart the residue or frustrated puss through individual eccentricity, conviviality , music and well observed laughter-based rebellion to the world, as understood recently by the non english IrishScotsman Danny Boyle who sold the olympic Queen to the world.
      We as a culture have understood the need for deep unbridled satire since at least Shakespeare and on through the 17th century writers and pamphleteers, into the vegetarian scientists(Newton )and veg romanticists (Shelley ,Wollstencraft, Godwin. Keats ) and into women throwing themselves under horses for the right to vote before WW1.We thus led the world in different good ways too.

      3) After the two world wars the UK working class were no longer willing or able to take orders from a class elite. So a private professional army was eventually formed, like piratical privateers, and unions developed(to protect class) out of the Anarchist movements of the 19th century …which btw Churchill was adamant in destroying, including the shooting of miners at Tony Pandy in the 20′s on his orders and the suppression of Anarchist unions and the hanging of mutinous sailors, when he was lord of the fleet.

      Thatcher came in at the point of loss of faith in domestic markets and the opening up of the global capital markets to unfettered control by stock and banks.The UK was in an enviable position to re-organise its economy because of the billions coming in from oil. This was able to welfare pay support the closing ‘uneconomic’ coal and steel and manufacturing industries. The social networks of smaller vulnerable communities which had grown familiar with post war growth, and state socialist agreements were now being disposed of especially in the industrial north.

      Now step in Thatcher as the petty bourgeois ambitious girl inspired by Churchillian values to put the UK up for sale. She took elocution english lessons to transform her speech into middle english and all the post ww2 trauma emotionally traumatized boys lined up in her cabinet ,for this matron from their boarding schools to guide them into being proper prefects and administering the bitter medicine to the rest of the school.

      In return for disbanding union agreed five year collective bargaining pacts, some of the aspiring petty bourgeois public were given profits from multiple share deals which they had to buy to get rich quick, house prices rose then crashed and , you could buy then sell your council home, if you had a job to do that with, which was perfect for the richer south east and conservative heartlands.

      She also faced down a war with Argentine dictators who having been put there by Americans in ’76 wanted the oil under the Falklands . On winning the war , with the support of the US military satellites,she obviously achieved cult status. In the meantime her robotic emotionally traumatised but very typical english manner became divisive with further political losses including the Poll tax, and her distance from her own political cadres.The matron wanted now to be the headmaster, and this her public schoolboy cabinet resented, and eventually brought her down.She also had to make concessions in Ireland.She was very very lucky to have a man of the intelligence of Gorbachev to negotiate with as it was likely that Reagan could have pushed his paranoid predecessors into a North Korean type scenario.with her assent.

      So in 11 years a lot of internal confrontations, which led to the narcissism of Blair’ s Thatcherite policies (he was from Eton public school ) and uncontrolled wars. She epitomises the ruling political apparatchiks,who though they appease and manage and massage the voters are separate from them. What is less understood is how politics is the new religion which determines our cultural and intellectual and emotive interactions through defining how authority works and what is expected for social cohesion in a command type culture.

      When Oliver Cromwell died in the 17th century, his body was disinterred and his head removed from the skeleton in a symbolic judgement from the returning Royalty.Purges and hangings continued of Cromwell’s supporters.

      In the UK we have now become less radical in Parliament than ever our history allowed, so that our only green MP was voted in last year. This is partly the result of winning two world wars, where the society and political processes becomes comfortable with itself, not needing thought itself but simply the institutional reliable power of ‘due process’, without appearing to want to dictate to its electorate, Russian style,…. or removing the poor from believing in their own democracy American style, so that they end up not voting, or being able to organise. An average of 60% of the US votes, and for mainstream parties.The rest being effectively disenfranchised in cultural and real poverty.

      In the UK only around 40% were voting during for her during the Thatcher years with her getting enough significant territorial votes, but not in absolute voter numbers because of the UK system. 60-ish per cent wasn’t bothering to vote for her or at all, by the end of her term…(normally around 30 percent of the electorate don’t vote at all.) This is what happens when you remove the hope of change that democratic language bombast requires, for its legitimacy. Her confrontational style was therefore losing the legitimacy for her new world.The posts were shifting but she wasn’t.

      If the day ever comes when Bush and Blair are tried for War Crimes,i will be popping champagne. In personal terms I and my immediate world benefited from her economic policies, in small but significant ways,but it wasn’t through her employment policies but her financial ones.That is also as a result of being in the right place at the right time,or even luck of the draw, astuteness, and living in a world made by others coercion and gain , and having some left over too.
      Its all another era in my memory and not significant enough to even clap about.
      If you want to enjoy that period and understand its own forms of double speak, just sit back and tune into spitting image videos on you tube. Its like today’s Simpsons but much more relaxed and user friendly.
      Moral of story …
      If you use the police state and army to bolster your image in confrontation, ultimately you have to pay the price of disapproval, as when Blair had to resign quietly because his MPs would not further support a war mongerer, once they realised he had lied to Parliament over Iraq.
      Thatcher is an institutional target for all the lack of engagement people are forced to endure whilst being used . When I travel I often ask when will the war on terror be over , so I can pack my toothpaste normally. This is my my small attempt at not allowing political mindsets to cloud over our ability to engage and relate, and to remove the emotive authority the state fear depends on. I memorably brought the connecting bag check to a halt in a uk airport when some teenage spotty clown tried to tell me that my plastic see through box had to be replaced by a plastic bag for a £1 , having travelled as cleared by Prague airport security. I used big cathartic voice ,theatre style, to ask if the Germans had actually won the war and were we subject to military officers and law now ? About a huindred people were hushed in reverence at my clappable performance.

      Now then ask Parmartha why he won’t allow bare breasted Femen girls photographed shouting Putin is a dictator to him , the day before yesterday onto this site ? I’d be very interested to know the answer.

      Now Sting sings what I meant to say……

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