All this week on the Blue Blog, the Conservatives have been publishing articles on various aspects of Conservative Party history. Today they have published a piece I have written on Margaret Thatcher, which you can read HERE. I thought you'd also be interested in some of the other articles...
Alistair Cooke introduces Conservative History Week and launches the History section on the party website.
Jeremy MacIlwaine on Margaret Thatcher's journey to the House of Commons.
Iain Dale on the legacy of Margaret Thatcher.
Geoffrey Howe on how the Thatcher government rectified Labour's economic mess.
Philip Ziegler on the rise and fall of Edward Heath.
Eric Pickles on Conservative Party chairmen in history.
Douglas Hurd on inter party foreign policy squabbles.
D R Thorpe on Macmillan's psyche.
Michael Dobbs on Winston Churchill & the lessons of history.
Andrew Roberts on the day Churchill became PM.
Alistair Cooke on Chamberlain's response to the invasion of Poland.
Lord Norton on the formation of the 1922 Committee.
Stuart Ball on the fall of the Lloyd George Coalition.
David Willetts on Disraeli's legacy.
Douglas Hurd on Sir Robert Peel.
John Cope on the formation of CCO.
Nick Gibb on the importance of history teaching.
9 comments:
Did she that do much really? Today the Welfare state is bigger than ever.She did nothing about the NHS,ditto the BBC and State education.She tinkered with the Socialist system but left it largely in tact.
Iain
PLEASE take a step back from your Thatcher idolatry! Your "I love Margaret" piece would really be better on your West Ham blog redrafted as a paean to, say, Bobby Moore. When you do your collected blogs in say fifteen years time I suspect that this won't be one in it! Thatcher wasn't a "Marmite" politician. That's far too simplistic and black and white. It is perfectly possible to admire her guts, her determination, her hard work and her initial anti-establishmentism. I do all that. Then I move on and see the disaster that was the coming to power of a person who was so narrow in her outlook and perspective, so bigoted in her views, so ignorant of the plight of the vast majority of the population. A person who trivialised international relations with a vulgarly narrow “Britain First” mentality that might even trouble UKIP today. A woman whose perspective barely moved from the Middle Class, Golf Club membership, private education favouring suburban micro world into which she moved when she married the ineffable Denis.
Thatcher had no feel for society at large – indeed she is on record as not believing in society at all. She was ill-read, culturally famished, ill-equipped at compromise, didactic, and in the end quite mad. She won’t be a footnote in history – but not because of her “achievements” but because of her malignancy - and because of the extraordinary poverty of the alternatives when Heath was ousted.
Why hasn't anyone mentioned The Suez crisis? 1956 and before?
I was a child out there in the 1950's . It was a badly handled affair.
My father served in the Fleet Air Arm during WW2- As a civilian afterwards , he worked all over Africa. My mother and sister and I were evacuated (24hrs notice) from Ismailia, a few days later my father and some 300 other Brit company personel namely Suez Canal Contractors and many other companies, including the company padre and various other other government officials were rounded up and interned for 3 months!(Badly!)
After we got back to the UK , we had no idea what had happened to Father or anyone else- it was a shambles.
I have the history by virtue of photos of sunken ships, and the release of all the men and the remainder of the pull out on troopships.
The History of the Conservative party is selective in what it wants to remember!
PS We were gluttons for punishment, at least the parents were because they continued later to live in various other parts of Africa enduring riots etc!
Then the debacle of Rhodesia arose, but that is another story!
I'd hoped to mark the Great Lady's birthday with an article on my blog on the 13th October. I'll be in the Canary Islands on that date; but I'll do my level best to remember Lady T by posting an article from the free computer in the Café-lounge Bar!
Tim
Is there nobody in the Conservative Party prepared to address the subject of the EU? FFS we are gradually being destroyed as an independent nation and it seems to be a taboo subject.
"Nick Gibb on the importance of history teaching" (Or should this be the importance of teaching history?)
I just read Nick Gibb's very disappointing article. The solution is extremely obvious to me: some core subjects - Maths, English, History, Geography, a language and a science subject must be achieved at GCSE before any child can go onto next level academic education.
How long has Nick Gibb been shadowing Education?
I'm afraid this post is completely redundant, Iain, because the whole series was covered exhaustively by the beeb - on both TV and Radio.
The Real Laugh about "Conservative History" is that they seek to claim Wm Pitt the Younger, who invented PROGRESSIVE Income Tax to fund the napoleonic Wars, as one of their own.
Pitt's ghost wants to sue, says he was an Independent Whig, not a tory at all:
[Irish Gaelic tóraidhe, robber, from Old Irish tóir, pursuit; see ret- in Indo-European roots.]
To'ry adj., To'ry·ism n.
I wonder if they will have the guts to publish how Heath and others committed Treason & Sedition in 1972? The facts of this outrageous and disgusting period in British politics have been continually ignored by all parties. Can`t think why, can you?
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