Old lady abused on British television
I am known to watch television drama from time to time to time to time.
Recently, I’ve seen a couple of productions on our public broadcasting channel in which the name of a former UK Prime Minister has come up in the script, and has been the subject of unchallenged and uncountered verbal abuse. Yes, these are works of fiction. No, dramatic characters should not be given, of necessity, politically correct views. However none of that should give playwrights and producers the right to vent what is pretty obviously their personal spleen.
I’m not talking about Tony Blair here, by the way. It hasn’t yet become fashionable for Sue Johnson’s character in Waking the Dead and others similar, to vituperate against him, although if he lives long enough it will. No, I’m talking about Baroness Thatcher, an 82-year-old lady who is still alive and possibly in good enough health to hear what is being said about her, without the BBC’s drama department making any attempt to counter these slurs. Whether you liked her or not, and I didn’t find the few occasions on which I met her to be heart-warming experiences, she was elected Prime Minister three times, she was the subject of a brutal assassination attempt which she barely survived and which others did not, she oversaw a difficult military operation, in response to aggression, with no outside military assistance, and brought it to a swift and successful conclusion.
Maggie provokes extreme reactions, no doubt about that, in my country in particular. She is responsible single handedly for the destruction of the Scottish Conservative Party. But three times she was the people’s choice, and would have made it four for certain, if her party hadn’t been stupid enough to tip her over the side. No censorship in drama, no way, but when it’s publicly funded, let’s have a degree of respect.
I’m sure this post will upset a few people, the kind who consider her the devil incarnate, and view the nonentity that was Arthur Scargill as some sort of class warrior. Tough.
Quintin Jardine's blog 
It’s very strange the way that it’s become almost fashionable to insult her to such an extent, whilst conveniently forgetting, as you point out, that she was this country’s choice, and she handbagged a lot of people into line. It’s as if people are having the things such as the poll tax riots pointed out so that she can be villified, whilst ignoring the fact that she was very far from all bad. And this is coming from someone who really isn’t a political animal.