Dumping Granny
Reid, Stuart
Stuart Reid Dumping Granny For all her strength of character, Margaret Thatcher's legacy includes principles betrayed and an expanded welfare state. London The earth did not move at Maastricht,...
...Mrs...
...The only remotely thrilling thing Major did at Maastricht was to reject the provisions in the treaty governing workers' rights, which Mrs...
...Thatcher certainly shifted her ground when John Major returned from the summit to a hero's welcome, the likes of which had not been seen since Robert Maxwell arrived in New York to save the Daily News...
...John Major...
...She was deliciously rude about the French Revolution in the presence of M. Mitterrand and she treated the Commonwealth be less inclined to blame Mrs...
...Last year women from more than a hundred countries availed themselves of the state-of-the-art facilities in the capital's termination clinics...
...She has always been a strong believer in keeping religion out of politics...
...If Maastricht does not signal the end of the federal THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE T here is in the land a counterfeit education that takes its bearings from the passions of the moment, from the loudest and most implacable interest groups...
...But, hey, let's be fair...
...Less measured comment was to be heard in the corridors of Westminster and in every saloon bar and bingo hall in the land...
...Thatcher's judgment...
...In the spring of 1979, when Rhodesia was still a British colony, the Rhodesian rebel leader Ian Smith had reached an internal settlement by which blacks were given the vote in return for a constitution that entrenched white power...
...He was rewarded with as unprincipled a kick in the teeth as any politician has ever received in this country...
...a fig about the fetus...
...It is not the sort of thing that polite people discuss, far less agitate about...
...Finally, Mrs...
...Her government greatly increased public spending (by 16 percent in real terms), while pretending to do the opposite...
...Thatcher did support an amendment to the law, in a free vote, but it was undermined by members of her own government, among others, and it failed...
...But she was unquestionably a remarkable woman, the sort that every man dreads...
...William F. Buckley, Jr., speaking at a glittering social gathering in London toward the end of last year, described her as a "resolute figure, whose devotion to principle is unchallenged because it is, quite simply, unchallengeable...
...Al-ton's proposal was therefore a modest one...
...It was passed in early 1990 on a two-line whip (which means that any government minister who voted against it would have been forced to resign...
...Mary Whitehouse's campaign against dirty language on television got more coverage in the British press than abortion...
...She knew full well that her attack on Mr...
...No doubt if medical science could detect stutterers in the womb, they too could be aborted under the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill...
...The City of London will see to that...
...She's a most dreadful woman," says Phyllis Bowman, secretary of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children...
...In this day of academic dragons, let us make you a knight of reason and revelation...
...Arrogant...
...After campaigning on a traditionalist ticket in 1979, Mrs...
...After Mrs...
...She was respected by foreign heads of state—except when they happened to be her European partners...
...London The earth did not move at Maastricht, but Mrs...
...It equips him with the sword of Scripture and crowns him with the study of sacred theology...
...A hundred-headed Hydra spitting the venom of resentment and ideological cant, it has made its lair in the most venerable of our halls of learning...
...Britain was under no obligation to hand it over to China: Hong Kong was ceded to Britain in perpetuity...
...That was the only time Mrs...
...Respectable Britons are distressed when an unmarried girl becomes pregnant...
...They still have their swimming pools and BMWs...
...Is it really her wish to see her place in history stained by pettiness, by bitterness, by what the world is liable to perceive as belated barracking from the stalls...
...Far from being a true nationalist, she was hopelessly infatuated with the United States...
...Thatcher was among those who sat through the night to ensure its safe passage...
...Thatcher professed herself "thrilled...
...From Canada, call collect: (805) 525-4417...
...1 (800) 634-9797...
...only the mainly rural New Territories, whose lease falls due in 1997, had to be returned...
...Whitehouse...
...Men did not die at the Somme or at El Alamein," he wrote recently in the Sunday Telegraph, "with 'God and Governor of the Bank of England' on their lips...
...Thatcher's U-turn is that her 22 The American Spectator February 1992 advisers had been urging her to lay off the prime minister...
...What happened to her devotion to principle in the case of Rhodesia...
...She was loyal to South Africa at a time when most Western politicians (not least those in the Republican and Tory parties) found it prudent to parrot ritual condemnations...
...Hardly...
...A more convincing explanation for Mrs...
...Thomas Aquinas College, nestled in the coastal mountains of California, faithfully continues in the traditions of the West, the traditions of philosophy and faith...
...What irked the leader writers was that she had called for a referendum on monetary union during November's pre-Maastricht debate in the House of Commons, even though Major was known to oppose a referendum, and she herself had vigorously opposed Labour's 1975 referendum on continued membership in the Community...
...Thatcher was associated with any pro-life attempt to change the law...
...At any rate, that did it...
...f Mrs...
...The bill had a majority on its second reading but was talked out in a filibuster...
...Michael Harrington (not that Michael Harrington), a former Telegraphwith the scorn it deserves...
...It has not been such fun, however, for the uppity blacks of Nkomo's Matabele tribe...
...Thatcher was not, of course, a conservative...
...As she said of the National Health Service, it was "safe with us...
...26 The American Spectator February 1992...
...Yet Mrs...
...The neighbors will talk...
...She abolished punitive taxation, reducing the standard rate from 33 to 25 percent and the top rate from 83 to 40 percent...
...But it has not insinuated itself in every place...
...The revisionists are booting up their word-processors...
...Privatization must be counted a tactical political success, too, though whether it was an economic success is another matter...
...One reason is that the left-liberals, who The American Spectator February 1992 25 were her noisiest opponents, favor abortion, and therefore do no,t "challenge" her pro-choice "principles...
...It is not right...
...Victorian values were the values of the poorhouse, the crossings sweep, and the bordello...
...But let no one be fooled...
...Thatcher's record was no more reassuring on embryo experimentation...
...Thatcher's achievements are not to be sneezed at...
...The new act reduces the upper limit on abortion from twenty-eight weeks to twenty-four (Mrs...
...None of this mollified the underclass, who believed the early Thatcher propaganda that her administration was cutting public spending...
...This was not the call of a true democrat...
...it loves the richest and most ancient temples of academia...
...Thatcher herself, the lesson comes from her mentor, Enoch Powell...
...Unchallengeable...
...Perhaps the lesson for conservatives is this: never send a woman to do a man's job...
...Mrs...
...Another reason is that, even in conservative circles, abortion is not considered "relevant" to the political debate...
...Thatcher attacked it, however, and argued instead for a limit of twenty-four weeks...
...I'm absolutely thrilled," said the former prime minister, thus reversing her earlier position of outright hostility -to Major and all his works...
...She was a liberal capitalist and Little Englander who didn't deliver: the welfare state grew under her premiership and the march toward federalism continued...
...Thatcher's record in this matter is seldom remarked upon here...
...Thatcher's preferred limit), but this provision is watered down by so many exclusion clauses that it really imposes no restrictions on abortion, and indeed further liberalizes the law...
...Thatcher has since had second thoughts about the deal her foreign minister, Sir Geoffrey Howe, cut with the Chinese in 1984, but it was her first thoughts that mattered, and did the damage...
...S he was, however, tougher, or liked to have it believed that she was...
...Here again, though, the victory may prove empty: as with the single currency, Britain is likely to sign up when the others start implementing common policy on wages, equal opportunity, toilet facilities, and the like...
...The betrayal of Hong Kong was an act of political cynicism that even the French would have balked at...
...Pro-family groups would leader writer, challenged it in the Times Literary Supplement by putting the revisionist case against Thatcher in words A.J.P...
...In the eyes of Euroskeptics (a dwindling band, even on the right), the summit changed nothing...
...A monopoly is a monopoly is a monopoly, whether it is run by the state or by a private corporation...
...For example, under the new act abortion is allowed up to birth in the case of handicapped fetuses...
...And yet she seems not to give a . . . what's the word...
...So what's the difference...
...The ultra-Tory Mail on Sunday was blunter: John Major went out of his way to tailor his speech in the Commons to meet her worries [over federalism...
...But she went ahead and said her piece anyway...
...There are Tory MPs who privately share these sentiments...
...It is that all political careers end in failure...
...Save a lot of misunderstanding...
...The usual Thatcherite jibe is that he is gray, and glad to be gray...
...When something really mattered to her, furthermore, she ignored consensus thinking...
...Bishop Abel Muzorewa became prime minister, but the rival nationalist (i.e., terrorist) leaders Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe were excluded from the electoral process...
...London is the abortion capital of Europe...
...Even right-wing Tories were becoming embarrassed by her ill-concealed contempt for the prime minister—earlier in the year she had told a close political ally that "he stands for nothing, he is nothing"—and mainstream Tories were frankly disgusted and, more to the point, fearful that her interventions might lose them the election...
...According to a report in the Sunday Telegraph, her son, Mark, had asked her friends to persuade "Mumsie" to kiss and make up with Major...
...Abortion was legalized in Britain in 1967 when the Liberal David Steel's private member's bill was passed after an all-night session...
...Thatcher, African terrorists usually do...
...Taylor might have used: Far from being anti-European, Thatcher took Britain further along the road to federation than any of her predecessors...
...Thatcher's record "ghastly," she expresses a preference for Jo Richardson, Labour's spokeswoman on, women's rights: "Jo thinks that the unborn child has no rights, but at least she says so...
...Geoffrey Wheatcroft mocks the Thatcherite obsession with sovereignty and the pound sterling...
...The upper limit in Sweden is eighteen weeks...
...The tidy, cost-effective—in effect, Thatcherite—solution is to destroy the fetus, give the girl a nice cup of tea, and tell her to get herself fitted with a coil at the local government-subsidized family planning clinic...
...Of course, life for the whites under Mugabe has not been that bad...
...Thatcher's outbursts . . . the public might be forgiven for supposing that she shares this view...
...Thatcher gave Britain a place in the international sun...
...Thatcher still enjoys a godlike reputation in some quarters...
...Thatcher personally for the moral decline of the country during her premiership had she not gone on at such length about the importance of the family, or "Victorian values," to use her absurd shorthand for rectitude and probity...
...As expected, the treaty signed by Major allows Britain to Stuart Reid is assistant features editor of the London Sunday Telegraph...
...Thatcher's foreign policy has to be summed up as less than consistently conservative (there was, after all, the Falklands war), at least her social policy can be characterized positively: it was consistently liberal...
...Only Armageddon or a catastrophic slump can alter what the distinguished conservative commentator Frank Johnson, drawing on the distinguished Democratic commentator John O'Sullivan (1813-1895), now refers to as Britain's manifest destiny...
...But she did not destroy the welfare state, and did very little to modify it...
...Bad language is considered a pressing moral issue, because the British find it difficult to distinguish between morality and respectability...
...Furthermore, two days after the debate, in a television interview to mark the first anniversary of her fall, she had described Major's position on a referendum as "arrogant...
...She froze child benefits (they have since been unfrozen by Major), as part of her hard-nosed drive to destroy or modify the welfare state...
...It was a pretty fair deal under difficult circumstances, but it was not acceptable to the Third World, and the civil war was stepped up...
...The Tory backbencher Hugh Dykes said what was on many minds: "She seems finally to have flipped...
...Calling Mrs...
...She was a creature of the 1960s...
...This small, independent Catholic college trains the student in the sturdy old arts of logic and geometry, of music and astronomy...
...And yet Mrs...
...The Daily Telegraph, once the most Thatcherite of broadsheets, decided to dump granny: Throughout this year, there has been a small but vociferous Tory faction which believes that the soul of the Conservative party would profit from a period in Opposition...
...She led a party whose fondness for China's "good Communists" matches that of Bush Republicans, and she must take her share of responsibility for what happens when Red China, with its people's courts and execution squads, takes over Hong Kong in 1997...
...Thatcher liked to boast about having rolled back the frontiers of the state, especially when she was addressing obtuse foreigners...
...opt out of a single European currency, but if, as seems probable, the other eleven members opt in, Britain will surely follow suit...
...She introduced the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill...
...Can it have been, then, that the season of goodwill got the better of Mrs...
...Quite what had thrilled her was not clear...
...Post-Thatcherite conservatives are now beginning, albeit obliquely, to question the Thatcher legend...
...Talk of "ever-closer union" is precisely what has been bothering the anti-federalists since Britain entered the Community in 1972...
...Let the people speak, she cried...
...As in Rhodesia, she was influenced by the Foreign Office, but she is a strong-willed woman who surely would not wish us to make excuses on her behalf...
...Not even the loony left believes that the People's Republic represents progress...
...She destroyed the last vestiges of socialism in the Labour party, so that if Labour wins the next election Britain will be ruled by canting social democrats rather than by canting socialists...
...This was the caterwauling of someone who has lost the argument within her own party...
...Her tragedy is that she has compounded failure by refusing to accept defeat...
...It is, meanwhile, time to move on, and to leave Thatcherism, whatever it was, behind...
...For information or to arrange a visit, call or write Thomas Susanka, Director of Admissions, Thomas Aquinas College, 10000 N. Ojai Road, Box 105, Santa Paula, CA 93060...
...This love of respectability tells us much about British reactions to abortion...
...Britain is where she was before the twelve European leaders, their retainers, and their spin-doctors arrived in the Dutch industrial center in December: on course to become part of a loose federation of European states...
...In the days immediately before Maastricht the Tory press turned on her...
...24 The American Spectator February 1992 Nothing Mrs...
...The legislation does not define "handicaps," other than to say that they must be serious, but pro-life legal advisers believe that they can be taken to include hare lips and club feet...
...One former minister who fell out with Mrs...
...6 6 nu popular" does not begin to describe what the pro-life lobby thinks of Mrs...
...If there was an excuse for what happened in Rhodesia—the excuse being that "you can't stop progress"—there was none in the case of Hong Kong...
...Curiously, there is an abortion clause...
...Thatcher and others saw as a threat to the labor reforms of the 1980s...
...After all, she was merely following the progressive policies of the Labour and Tory parties over the past thirty years...
...Thatcher is a respectable woman and is known to admire Mrs...
...Valerie Riches, director of Family and Youth Concern, puts it this way: "She was no worse than her predecessors...
...Major and his European policy would exacerbate political difficulties...
...And what of Hong Kong...
...Under Foreign Office pressure Mrs...
...It was not in the original draft legislation but was inserted as an amendment, and carried on a free vote, in the hope, apparently, of satisfying MPs who had supported the Alton bill...
...just more hypocritical...
...Far from promoting personal freedom, she made the state stronger, except where she replaced state monopolies with private ones...
...She was in fact a centralizer, strengthening the power of the state as few before her had done...
...Thatcher did in office curbed the abortion laws, or changed London's grisly reputation...
...Again as expected, the reference to a "federal goal" was removed from the treaty, at Britain's insistence, to be replaced with the words "an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe...
...In the end she was not even a Thatcherite...
...Spending on the NHS increased by 50 percent, up from 4.5 percent of the GDP to almost 5 percent...
...The American Spectator February 1992 23 dream, it almost certainly signals the end of Mrs...
...Yet Mrs...
...The moderates lost and the terrorists won (as, to be fair to Mrs...
...For Mrs...
...Thatcher over abortion described her as a "ratfink...
...Thatcher agreed that a new settlement, acceptable to the Third World, would have to be imposed on Rhodesia, a settlement that brought the Marxist Robert Mugabe to power...
...In 1988 another Liberal, the pro-lifer David Alton, introduced a private member's bill whose purpose was to reduce the upper age limit at which abortions may be performed from twenty-eight weeks to eighteen...
...The new act provides for destructive experiments on embryos...
...the average upper limit in the European Community is twelve to fourteen weeks...
...CI The betrayal of Hong Kong was an act of political cynicism that even the French would have balked at...
...Thatcher as a political force, at least in this country...
...Her industrial reforms broke once and for all the malign power of the trade unions...
Vol. 25 • February 1992 • No. 2
