Margaret Thatcher was despised and loathed amongst many members of the British LGBT communities of the eighties and early nineties. What legacy has the late Conservative British Prime Minister left after her death last night from a stroke? Born in 1926, Margaret Roberts married Denis Thatcher in 1951. She became Conservative MP for Finchley in 1959. In the early seventies, she served as Minister of Education in the single-term Heath administration, before becoming Leader of the Opposition in 1976. The United Kingdom was caught in a mire of unemployment and economic stagnation, and Thatcher proved a ruthless populist, exploiting right-wing fears about immigration and law and order to win government in 1979 as the first female British Prime Minister. She disavowed feminism and feminists loathed her, although she did refer to individual experiences of sexism amongst her Cabinet and party colleagues. For a while, it seemed as if she would only last a single term herself, in the face of riots and escalating unemployment, but fortuitously, Thatcher was inadvertently assisted by the Argentine military junta of General Galtieri, which invaded the Falkland Islands in 1983. She exploited that as a nationalist set piece and won the 1984 General Election in a landslide, which she used to launch her privatisation and financial sector deregulation agenda, as well as crushing the Miners’ Strike in 1984-5. Next, it was the turn of the lesbian and gay communities. The Thatcher administration did finance mainstream HIV/AIDS prevention initiatives, but British lesbian and gay communities had to combat draconian censorship policies and a grossly unequal gay male age of consent at twenty-one, which hampered prevention efforts. Thatcher refused to relax either, except in the context of health promotion policy when it came to prevention of HIV/AIDS. It was still possible for nurses to refuse to treat people experiencing end stage AIDS and for them to be expelled from flats and rental housing during her term of office. The Labour-led Greater London Council was supportive of lesbian and gay rights and some of its boroughs provided inclusive secondary school curricular content. Thatcher abolished the GLC and introduced Clause 28 into the Local Government Act 1988. Clause 28 was never invoked, but it banned the 'promotion of homosexuality' through secondary school curricula and social service provision bans. Modelled on similar Austrian and Finnish legislation, it was subsequently abolished by the Labour Blair administration in 2002. Shortly thereafter, though, the stock market crashed and Thatcher's brand of acquisitive greed and obliviousness to social justice began to falter. In the late eighties, she introduced a highly unpopular poll tax and began to turn on her colleagues. The latter engineered a palace coup in 1990 and Thatcher resigned. Elevated to the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher, she encouraged Tory rebels out of resentment against John Major, her successor. With renewed recession, financial and sexual scandals aplenty, and rancorous European policy dissent, the Major administration won re-election in 1992 with a razor-thin majority, which was successively eroded. In 1997, the curtain fell as the Conservative Party was swept from power in a landslide. It was not to regain public office until 2010, albeit with the coalition partnership of the Liberal Democrats. Clause 28 had some beneficial results, prompting the formation of the Stonewall lobby group. Major was slightly more sympathetic to LGBT concerns and wanted to appear more centrist, so he supported a gay age of consent reduction to eighteen, but not to age of consent equality at sixteen. However, it was the Labour Blair administration that undid almost all the immediate inequalities that beset the lives of British lesbians and gay men, equalising the age of consent at sixteen at last, abolishing Clause 28, introducing anti-discrimination laws, civil partnerships and inclusive adoption reform. However, delayed age of consent equality may have led to the rise of greater exposure of that age cohort of gay men to HIV/AIDS in later life. Ironically enough, it was the next Conservative Prime Minister, current incumbent David Cameron, who is now presiding over the introduction of marriage equality into the United Kingdom, much to the anger and repudiation of some of his unreconstructed “Thatcherite" colleagues, a sign that Thatcher continues to inspire animosity, division and debate, even within her own party. Certainly however, Cameron is a resolute "Thatcherite" himself when it comes to central government spending cuts, welfare policy retrenchment, opposition to electoral reform, and other longer-lasting legacies of the Thatcher era. Thatcher's regime had other consequences for her own party, as I've remarked above. After 1997, the Conservatives were still engaged in interminable schisms over European policy, and populist initiatives over criminal justice, immigration and exploitation of religious social conservatism all came to nothing. The party elected a string of lacklustre leaders and its internal fragmentation kept it out of office until its leadership tentatively embraced modernisation under David Cameron in 2008. In 2010, it became the largest parliamentary party within the House of Commons, but was deprived of an absolute majority even despite terminal incumbency fatigue within the Labour Brown administration. Cameron's Tories were forced into coalition with the Liberal Democrats, but Labour usually leads it in most current opinion polls. It remains a deeply divided party. North of Hadrian's Wall, Scotland has only one Conservative MP left and its devolved, Scottish Nationalist-led Parliament is planning an independence referendum after the ordeal of economic stagnation and the demise of Scottish heavy industry under Thatcher. Thatcher lost her husband Denis in 2005and suffered from Alzheimer’s and recurrent cardiovascular problems for many years thereafter. While that added an element of pathos, many remember what havoc she wrought during her three terms of office, especially Clause 28 in the context of LGBT rights. It is difficult to raise much compassion for her passing yesterday, from a stroke, aged eighty-seven. Recommended: Tim Bale: The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron: London: Polity Press: 2011. Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques (ed) The Politics of Thatcherism: London: Lawrence and Wishart: 1983 [An assessment of Thatcher's 'authoritarian populist' approach to politics, including her embrace of religious social conservatism] Simon Watney: Policing Desire: Pornography, AIDS and the Media: London: Comedia: 1987 [A severe assessment of the failures of Thatcher era HIV/AIDS and antigay backlash from a leading AIDS activist of the era] Virginia Berridge: AIDS in the United Kingdom: The Making of Policy 1981-1994: Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1996 [An overview of Thatcher and Major era HIV/AIDS policies] Tara Kaufman and Lincoln Paul (ed) High Risk Lives: Lesbian and Gay Politics After the Clause: Bridport: Prism: 1991 [The effects of Clause 28 on UK LGBT rights activism] Hugo Rifkind: “Cameron is quite conservative, thank you very much” Spectator UK: 12.05.2012: http://www.spectator.org.uk/columnists/hugo-rifkind/7836208/cameron-is-quite-conservative-enough-thank-you/ [David Cameron is still a mainstream Conservative when it comes to Thatcher era economic orthodoxy] Not Recommended: Rachel Tingle: Gay Lessons: How Public Funds Are Used to Promote Homosexuality: London: Pickwick: 1986 [This author was one of the chief instigators behind the anti-GLC LGBT rights backlash that led to Clause 28) Stephen Green: The Sexual Deadend: London: Broadview: 1992 [British antigay activist Stephen Green was ultimately expelled from the Conservatives after attacking Major and gay Tory political candidates.] Politics and religion commentator Craig Young - 9th April 2013
Credit: Politics and religion commentator Craig Young
First published: Tuesday, 9th April 2013 - 9:34am