Maggie will be missed

A GREAT Briton passed away Monday. The world’s most famous grocer’s daughter, Margaret Hilda Thatcher nee Roberts breathed her last in London Monday morning. She lent credence to the folksy simplicity that running a country was like running a thriving corner shop in the UK heartland from whence she came. Good housekeeping and proper bookkeeping and lots of hard work without providential patronage or leg-up were key ingredients. Counting the pennies and an eagle eye on the accounts to keep the debit and credit columns balanced were the base for a strong business foundation. In running the country, she got Britain working again, rewarded industry with the role of the private sector the main driver.

She brought the Great back to Britain. Rising well above her station, she broke whatever glass ceiling in her path – not that she noticed one in any way.

News of her death immediately brought memories of the masterful performance of Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady. There the apparently nanogenarian Maggie was, looking at the sticker of a pint of milk, balking at the price. Wonderful pathos indeed, for we all know how as Education Minister with no hint of greatness to come, she removed free milk from primary school children and deservedly acquired the epithet; Thatcher the Milk Snatcher.

I just finished performing my maghrib prayers around 8pm on Monday evening when my colleague AK Shafizan shouted across the newsroom – “Maggie meninggal”. With KL being some eight hours ahead of GMT, we only got word of her demise late in the day as she had breathed her last at the Ritz – where she had been checked in as part of her recuperation process upon discharge from hospital at the end of last year.

Classy woman to her last breath, we all know of the rural Englander Margaret Roberts who went through life guided by the principles of hard work, determination and a belief that the world owes no one a living She married well, and became a Thatcher - Dennis, the perfect foil of doting, helpful husband who would make the perfect choice of husband in Negeri Sembilan where adat perpatih still holds sway. For the uninitiated, adat perpatih is the matriarchal practice brought from Sumatera by early settlers who made Negeri Sembilan and parts of Melaka their home. (Just imagine, if whichever ruler of the day had chosen to drive out the Sumaterans for whatever nationalistic considerations, then perhaps a certain minister, would now be Pertamina chief right now; with the still unresolved Lahad Datu issue in mind)

Having had written an obituary the previous week for veteran newsman Zainon Ahmad, I felt I had to ditch the column I was massaging for my Tuesday deadline to pay tribute, as this was Maggie, my Maggie, the UK’s Maggie, the world’s Maggie. We can’t just leave her be.

THE CONSUMATE POLITICIAN

I got to know about the nature of British politics from close quarters brushing up on ‘O’ and ‘A’ Level Economics while in the United Kingdom. Being one with a soft spot for the underdogs, I was never a fan of British Conservatism. Toryism was an anathema to my vision of a caring society.

My idea of good governance was more of a meld of what Labour parroted combined with the fruits of success the Tories made everyone worked towards. A bit like the carrot and the stick approach. For Maggie, it was the Tory way or the highway.

For her, the old ways of welfarism and the nanny state brought Britain to its knees. Men, they doth protest too much, spending too much time on the picket lines, preventing those who wanted to work away from their workshops. Maggie made them return to work with one of her Ministers – Norman Tebbit, himself from a working class background – famously telling his fellow Britons to; “Get On Your Bikes1”. Not for the Tories any form of financial mollycoddling methods of stuffing money in people’s pockets only for them to come back asking for more without moving a muscle.

She would balk at who would have to pay for the largesse, for her to go round carrying Santa Clause’s sack, making parliament the perfect stage where she would have tossed back the challenge to the opposition during one of the heated debates in the House of Commons.

It is during Prime Minsiter’s question time that she would be at her schoolmarmy best, wielding her order papers to drive home a point. Debate was her strongest suit, wielding the punishing put down in the great tradition of past orators that had graced the august house.

Armed with a quick mind and acidic tongue, she famously brought the house down during one Tory party conference when protestors started haranguing in the pouring rain and demanded to be let into the hall she was speaking. She deftly used the elements by saying how wet it was outside and that they were merely wishing to be warm inside, on the side of HER Tories! Wet after all, was the term she created to describe the more sloven members of her party who held the merest iota of socialist bent.

UNION BUSTER, WAR MONGER

Margaret was the leader who clipped the wings of its rampaging unions, got workers off their backs and made the wheels of industry turn again. Leftwingers and union hotheads like Arthur Scargill, Ken Livingstone and Derek Hatton would no doubt count her as their nemesis. On the other hand, media moghuls like Lord Beaverbrook, David Shah of the ill-fatedYou Magazine fame, Rupert Murdoch and perhaps even the great Socialist baron himself, Robert Maxwell would no doubt thanked her for breaking the power of unions on Fleet Street. To her, their traditions in ink and hot metal presses held no mystical value or contained practices worth preserving in her productivity playbook.

She took on the terrorists in Northern Ireland and almost paid the price when the hotel she and husband Dennis were staying in were bombed during a Tory party conference in the seaside resort of Brighton.

Quite isolated in the cabinet, she was the steely rock that insisted not to yield to General Galtieri. It was this time that she was described as the best man in her cabinet, dispatching a naval taskforce to more than give the nearest example a neo-fascist South American General can be a bloody beating.

This steely resolve earned her the Soviet ‘gallantry’ award; The Iron Lady, awarded for her resolute opposition to Communism, Marxism and anything that smacks of left wing ideology.

It is worth noting that as the young Margaret Roberts, she applied to join ICI in 1948 having earned a degree in Chemistry at Oxford University the year earlier. The personnel department rejected her application with the following assessment; This woman is headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated.” ICI, ICI, sigh…..

Husband, Sir Denis a successful businessman in his own right died aged 88 in 2003 was someone who expressed his wife’s profession with levity. When she won the elections and became Britain’s first ever female prime minister, he breezily mocked her naughtily by saying; “oh in a year she would be so unpopular and you would be wanting to vote her out.’

In the event, Thatcher the ultimate politician had to bow to political intrigue within her own party as her policies, towards the end of the 1990s edged out of synch with the prevailing social mood.

UK-MALAYSIA RELATIONS

During her galloping days getting Britain back to work and addressing its economic shortcomings, she imposed tuition fees on students. This also impacted foreign students who had been enjoying subsidized education. The results was that the cost of sending Malaysian students overseas increased. There was also a tightening of the rules on capital market transactions brought about by Malaysia’s ‘dawn raid’ that saw ownership of Guthrie secured into Malaysian hands in 1981. It piqued Dr Mahathir Mohamad no end which promptly led him to introduce a Buy British Last policy in 1993.

She mended fences with a visit to Malaysia in 1988 coming with a peace offering of British aid for the building of the Pergau Dam in return for Malaysia’s commitment to buy almost RM2 billion of armaments from the UK. There was also movement on the aviation front where she persuaded British Airways to allow an additional landing slot at Heathrow to the then Malaysian Airlines, the quid-pro-quo being the payment of some financial compensation.

Malaysia too asserted her dominance on issues like the return of Carcosa in return for another prime piece of property. On the whole though, both Malaysia and the United Kingdom can be said to have a rather ambivalent attitude towards each other – with perhaps only the British Premier League being the cement that keeps the socio-political adhesive irrefutably strong. After all she was a resident of Chelsea and perhaps with countless number of anti-Man U fans here in Malaysia, considered kindred spirits?

RAZAK Chik does not think Malaysia will ever have an Iron Lady in the Thatcher mould – yea or nay?