After a prolonged illness Mrs. Margaret Thatcher died a few days ago. She is going to be buried this week with military honour. However, her long absence from British politics after her retirement from Premiership did not erase the bitter controversy over the political legacy she has left. The right wingers including Tory Prime Minister David Cameron paid tribute to her saying that "she saved our country and was Britain's greatest peace time prime minister".

But those people who did not like her anti people policies criticised her as a new guru of capitalist exploitation who promoted greed as an accepted norm of the society. For 11 years she was the Prime Minister of Britain, and was also the first woman Prime minister and one of the longest serving Prime Ministers of her country since Robert Banks Jenkins (1812-1827).
The number of her critics are also many. They did mourn her death but criticised her without mercy. The Dublin daily The Irish Times in their editorial commented on her death on April 9 Tuesday-'A deeply polarising figure even before she took office in 1979, yet Thatcher has promised on the doorstep of Downing street in the words of St. Francis of Ossisi, "where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth...and where there is despair, may we bring hope". It was not to be'. She left a crude capitalist ideological legacy that still shapes the future of Britain even after she left office in 1990.

After Second World War, a welfare state was built up in Britain on the basis of compromise between capitalism and socialism. A national health service (NHS) was created which covers the need of health care for rich and poor alike. The expansion of educational opportunity created an enlightened new middle class and they shaped the character of both the parties of ruling class- Conservative and Labour. In the winter of industrial upheaval of 1978 and 79 Mrs. Thatcher grabbed the opportunity and took the leadership of the Conservative party. After coming to power she started to disintegrate the welfare state and curb the benefits of public transport and National Health Service.

She was a disciple of the great monetarist of Chicago, Sir Keith Joseph. She disregarded interventionist Keynesianism and went for deregulation, low taxes, and her 'mantra' was greed is good and there is no such thing as society. Though she declared war against socialism and followed capitalism of a crude nature she termed her economic policy as 'people's capitalism'. This policy made the rich richer and poor poorer. The traditional coherence in British society started falling apart. People used to call her policies and politics Thatcherism.

I came to London in 1974. Mr. Harold Wilson the great Labour prime minister was then in power. During the later part of his premiership the industrial discontent started among the British working class. The rise of White collar working force threatened the ordinary people of working classes.
The Labour party also transformed from a real working class party to a party of white collar working class and its leadership was occupied by the new rich middle class. Wilson had to resign and Callaghan became the new prime minister. He could not remove the discontent among the ordinary working class nor could he satisfy the White collar working class along with the newly rich middle class. It was the time when Soviet Union could not bear the burden of the Afghan war and socialist countries were in disarray. Social democracy in Europe gradually became the ally of capitalism and China openly collaborated with America to disturb the Soviet influence over the world. This was a very fertile ground for the rise of capitalism again with its 18th century characteristics and America also got an ultra rightist president Ronald Regan who joined hands with Mrs. Thatcher to defeat socialism and the Soviet Union.

Perhaps it is a mystery in the history that whenever capitalism was in danger the saviours came either from the lower middle class or working class. Regan, the ex-president of America was a B movie actor and Mrs. Thatcher was known as the 'grocer’s daughter' but in the political life they became crusaders against socialism and the saviour of capitalism.

Mrs. Thatcher was known as 'Iron Lady'. This name was given by the Russian leaders. The newly powerful capitalist economy in America under President Regan was known as 'Reganomics' and Thatcher's economic policy of the same pattern though she called it 'people's capitalism' was known as Thatcherism. A combination of both these policies created the foundation of present global capitalism with its expansionism.

Living in Britain I have seen the great class war during the rise of global capitalism. The great miner's community in Britain under the leadership of Arthur Scargill fought very bravely against Thatcherism for almost 5 years. The printer's union in The Times and The Sunday Times fought against Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul to resist his anti union policy. Margaret Thatcher won the battle against the miners and succeeded in her union bashing policies by helping Rupert Murdoch to crush the strike of the printer's union. She fought for a long time against Ken Livingstone the-then Mayor of London to diminish the power of local self government and ultimately succeeded in demolishing the greater London council (GLC).

In dealing with Northern Ireland she allowed Bobby Sands, a newly elected member of the British Parliament to die in the British prison in his hunger strike and did not try to save him by accepting his demand to allow him to release him and allow him to sit in the Parliament.
With USA President Ronald Regan she helped the downfall and disintegration of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Her relation with America was so close that her critics said that it was almost blind loyalty. America helped her to win the Falkland’s war and on the other hand she allowed American soldiers to invade a commonwealth country in the Pacific without prior permission form the British Queen. The queen was so enraged that when Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister came to see the Queen in her regular audience that she did not ask Mrs. Thatcher to take a seat. Mrs. Thatcher remained standing all through her discussion with the Queen.

Mrs. Thatcher was consecutively three times Prime Minister of Britain. She won the elections but was not a very popular Prime Minister. She ran almost a presidential system of government not a government of Cabinet system. But she could not finish her third term in power. She introduced poll tax against the advices of her cabinet colleagues and there was a revolt among people against this tax. She had to resign her position in the party and her premiership. I saw this Iron Lady weep twice in front of the public. Once when her son Mark was lost in African desert in a motor race competition for a few days Mrs. Thatcher in her anxiety shed a few drop of tears for her son. Again when she lost the support of her parliamentary party and was going to tender her resignation to the Queen journalists saw her in tears in her car.

Though she was out of power for a long time she left behind an era which is still dominating British political life. Tony Blair, the three times prime minister of Labour government was known as her follower and the present Tory prime minister is a staunch supporter of Thatcher's policy which he wants to follow even more stringently. So, Thatcher is not in power but her policy or Thatcherism is still dominating not only Britain but the European political life.
Now the global capitalism which is the mixture of Thatcherism and Reganomics is in decline. Nowhere in the world can global capitalism come out from crisis after crisis. One day the world will accuse Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher for creating this global disorder and criticise them instead of praising their success.