8th April. Dead But Never Forgotten

This is going to be predictable, but I've waited a very long time for this, three-quarters of my life in fact. MARGARET THATCHER IS DEAD and I for one am overcome with Joy. I'm not proud that I'm celebrating the death of a senile old woman but I am proud that I am celebrating the death of Thatcher.

I grew up between the steelworks of Sheffield and Rotherham and the ten coal mines of the Rother Valley. The sound of shunting trains at night lulled me to sleep as they moved steel and coal from the nearby marshalling yards. From the late 1970's this familiar environment gradually fell into decline. I'm not naive, I know that change was needed in many of these industries and often change can be unpleasant, but this was different. Throughout the 80's the Iron Lady brought misery to the communities of South Yorkshire . As a youth I witnessed the steel strikes and picketing miners at Orgreave. These weren't men striking for more money these were men fighting for their jobs and their right to provide for their families and you could and still can see it in their eyes. The Tories, with Thatcher at the helm, seemingly led a crusade throughout South Yorkshire to destroy the heavy industries that the largely socialist residents had their roots anchored in. In turn this destroyed the communities, something I saw particularly around Barnsley in the post Thatcher years.  She created  what we have now, a society where we're all in it for ourselves and community spirit is replaced by community service.

I wasn't brought up to hate Thatcher, It just grew inside me like a cancer. The very mention of her name in anything other than derogatory terms filled me with anger and anyone who didn't agree with me was either a Tory or a twat, or at least I thought so.  My family aren't socialists, I even suspect that they might have voted Tory at sometime, we were lucky my dad was a bus driver and apart from deregulation, survived the Tory slaughter. I'm not a raving lefty I just believe in a fair and just society and if you don't then you're either a Tory or a....

When I heard the news (thanks dad) I cheered, I smiled and something in me died.. all the hate that was left, that cancer that had grown deep in me vanished almost instantly, my demons were exorcised.

People will try and tell me how great Thatcher was, that she created this (not so) Great Britain. It won't wash with me I saw it through my own eyes and I didn't like it one bit.....

Billy says "good fucking riddance Maggie"