Bernard Ingham: Anti-Thatcher fanatics expose their own ugly ideology

I said I didn’t know what other countries did but he could be sure that this had long been the practice here.

I might have added that he should keep it in perspective. The exhibitionist wreckers are a small minority, fanatics of one kind or another who might benefit from a course of behaviour management, always assuming that their antics for the cameras are not synthetic.

Some seem to have a problem with their message rather than unbridled anger when they choose to celebrate the demise of another human being by ostentatiously quaffing champagne. If this is their normal tipple, they do not seem to have much materially to grumble about. And if they feel liverish, well, it’s their own damn fault.

But I digress. While saddened, I have not been surprised by the nastiness of the Left, the dissidents and the anarchists in our midst ahead of today’s funeral. So far it might have been worse in view of the stoking well ahead of Thatcher’s death.

It is, however, rather important that we try to understand why this minority behave as they do.

The first point is that they climb out of the woodwork because they can. They can make their point, such as it is, because of the blessed state of freedom in this sceptred isle. It may not be what it was because of all this confounded political correctness, but with the BBC’s help it amply permits them to strike their attitude and show the deficiencies of their upbringing.

I think we have to be very careful about censorship on grounds of taste lest our democracy becomes tasteless.

We must not interfere in the right of anyone, within the law, to exhibit their limitations. It is perhaps better that they let it all hang out.

We must also try to understand why many do not regard Margaret Thatcher’s premiership as something akin to Shangri La. Many lives were disrupted as mines and outdated industry closed and the cold draught of competition blew in. Official unemployment rose to more than 3m while the foundations for 20 years’ prosperity were laid.

All sorts from economists to union leaders, from lazy bosses to the already financially extended, were exposed as wanting.

The Labour Party was forced into a painful and unfinished adaptation. Why, even the Tories have never really known what they stand for since Maggie the tornado raged through the land. She shook us up.

But, with the exception of a small minority of Labour MPs, few of these people have vented their spleen against the convenient culprit. True, they have criticised her and held her responsible for most of the world’s ills – as is their privilege – but in generally restrained terms.

The real ugliness comes from such rot-in-hell posturers as George Galloway, the unlikely Respect Party MP for Bradford West, and Bob Crow, of the RMT union; the far Left; the professional agitators who take advantage of all democracies; and anarchists who may well have wanted but have fortunately 
failed so far to exploit Thatcher’s death with another crack at the police as representatives of authority.

We may be revolted by their viciousness, calculated disrespect and internet manoeuvres.

But, given that it exists, it is as well that, violence apart, it is on display. It tells us what sort of people lurk in our undergrowth.

Many, perhaps most, of them have no experience of the Thatcher years. They are motivated by the Left’s invention of the 1980s as a decade of lost souls. They are whipped into action by the peculiar disciplines of dissent. And they are controlled by a shadowy, manipulative politburo, mostly middle class, as arrogant as any 18th century aristocrat of unbounded privilege.

It is not for anyone to reason why they hate her. It is enough that they do because they know what is good for us.

They brook no dissent. They would have done well in the Soviet Kremlin – until perhaps the KGB shot them.

This past week we have seen the totalitarian tendency at work. It is no wonder they have danced on her grave and tried to traduce her works and her memory.

After all, she – a woman to boot – believed in political and economic freedom. For them, that is beyond the pale.