Shooting Thatcher
Sep. 22nd, 2014 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo"Imagine," says Stephen Glover in the Mail, "the response on the Left if a Right-wing novelist- not that there are many these days- imagined and appeared to endorse the assassination of past Labour figures such as Michael Foot and Tony Benn. Why there would be an uproar and the poor novelist would be torn limb from limb."
An uproar- just as is happening over Hilary Mantell's Thatcher assassination story? Yes, exactly like that.
Actually, I'm trying to imagine it and failing. No figure on the Left is as divisive and iconic as Thatcher was and continues to be. She has an era and a political philosophy named after her. Foot and Benn have neither. Foot was a place-holder leader of the opposition, Benn a political misfit who morphed into a national treasure. Foot is almost forgotten, Benn will be forgotten in a decade. They are historical footnotes- and it's hard to imagine anyone shooting them or writing about shooting them or kicking up a stink about a story in which they get shot. The only Labour figure who matters as much as Thatcher is Tony Blair- and the Left hate him as much as- if not more than- the Right.
Also the Left doesn't have a rag like the Mail at its disposal to confect outrage on its behalf.
I've read the story. It's not implausible. A middle-class woman, a little like Mantell, has her flat taken over by an IRA sniper with designs on Thatcher- and choses to assist him. It's both a thought experiment and a valid fictional reflection on a particular time. Yes, people hated Thatcher enough to want to kill her. That's an historical fact. Glover and his lot seem to want to rewrite the record and have Thatcher's memory be nothing but flowers and fruit.
An uproar- just as is happening over Hilary Mantell's Thatcher assassination story? Yes, exactly like that.
Actually, I'm trying to imagine it and failing. No figure on the Left is as divisive and iconic as Thatcher was and continues to be. She has an era and a political philosophy named after her. Foot and Benn have neither. Foot was a place-holder leader of the opposition, Benn a political misfit who morphed into a national treasure. Foot is almost forgotten, Benn will be forgotten in a decade. They are historical footnotes- and it's hard to imagine anyone shooting them or writing about shooting them or kicking up a stink about a story in which they get shot. The only Labour figure who matters as much as Thatcher is Tony Blair- and the Left hate him as much as- if not more than- the Right.
Also the Left doesn't have a rag like the Mail at its disposal to confect outrage on its behalf.
I've read the story. It's not implausible. A middle-class woman, a little like Mantell, has her flat taken over by an IRA sniper with designs on Thatcher- and choses to assist him. It's both a thought experiment and a valid fictional reflection on a particular time. Yes, people hated Thatcher enough to want to kill her. That's an historical fact. Glover and his lot seem to want to rewrite the record and have Thatcher's memory be nothing but flowers and fruit.
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no subject
Date: 2014-09-23 07:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-23 08:18 am (UTC)Well, watching the situation, I more often think like "Did those guys from Prolekult have a crystal ball with a vision in it?" Just because the hole-cover of record number 18 (KULT 18) depicts Blair and one of his opponents of the vote where he first was elected and it has two writings on it: "Zero difference" and "Fuck the vote". (Discogs' photos of the record:
http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=62543)
These days it seems like a very strange occasion.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-24 07:41 am (UTC)That other guy is John Major- who was Prime Minister in the gap between Thatcher and Blair.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-24 07:56 am (UTC)Things like these make you consider abroad that the tree's been burning in the UK for a very long time already.