Editorials
Have a heart
I grew up in a Welsh mining town during the 1984
strike, so you already know what I think of Mrs Thatcher. Just like
the recent obituaries that only told you which side of the
political line their authors fell, it was difficult to pretend to
arrive at a nuanced conclusion after that. Policemen in funny
accents waving money at us on the school bus. Brothers and cousins
who couldn't afford their doctor's prescriptions. A sorry list.
Of course it was impossible to know whether the prime
minister was aware of how her forces were acting on the ground. But
the point at which those decisions become wilful community-breaking
acts is difficult to discern.
Mrs Thatcher began her political career as someone
who understood lack of privilege. Understood, as a grocer's
daughter, what it was to have to count pennies. Surrounded by
public school grandees in her party of choice - almost all men,
too, of course - as a grammar school girl she knew what it felt
like to battle through haughty condescension. It was from this
background that she realized, for example, that people in council
houses wanted to own their own homes. Had the same aspirations as
everyone else. At some point she had had a heart, and made it
hard.
But it is not our job, as followers of Christ, to
judge someone's heart. We can only try to take positions on whether
her policies were good or bad for the country - for the flourishing
of human development. But equally it is worth noting how even our
highest values, held as principles rather than in the operation of
compassion, can become millstones. Christian history is littered
with examples of how people, clinging to some deep-rooted piece of
theology, have overlooked their first law of love.
How wrong it would be, then, to forget it ourselves
when considering the life and work of a woman whom only God can
judge. Whom God loved and held dear. I cannot pretend to hold Mrs
Thatcher dear. But we must continue to hold to a power that
did.