I'm not sure that I want to see this movie after its release on January 13th as it will no doubt remind me of the late 70s, which were grim times in Northern England. It shows former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep) in her twilight years as she battles Alzheimer's...just as she once battled the coal miners and Trade Unions. She was the daughter of a grocer who became the first female Prime Minister. President Mitterrand famously said: "she has the eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe". I remember being a student at Sheffield University when she came to power in 1979 and the symbolic struggle with the coal miners that ensued. Hundreds of miners lost their jobs....one small part of a globalization agenda which would eventually leave British industry and manufacturing in tatters. Jobs in coal mining, shipbuilding, motorcar and motorcycle manufacturing, steel and heavy industry were threatened. While a crippling VAT tax on small businesses forced many to close virtually overnight. Monetarism underpinned all Thatcher's policies including the privatization of utilities. Whole swathes of the North were economically "left for dead" leaving deep and visceral scars in northern cities and in Scotland.There's no denying that she was a smart woman who broke the glass ceilings of class and gender, but she appeared to have little compassion for us lesser mortals.
It's well known that Rothschild & Sons made several Billion US$ from the privatization of British state-owned industries they conducted for Mrs. Thatcher. Did she sell her soul and enter into some sort of Faustian bargain with them?
To give some idea of the special venom some people feel (or felt) towards Margaret Thatcher, here is a song entitled "Margaret on the Guillotine" by Morrissey from 1988:
Great photo of Margaret Thatcher greeting Ronald Reagan like a long lost lover:
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