Margaret Thatcher, “A woman, not on my terms”
Many MPs stayed away, as an understandable boycott on a point of principle.
Ed Miliband had a difficult speech, he had to be respectful yet critical. Perhaps it was disappointing, yet inevitable. He said,
In mining areas, like the one I represent, communities felt angry and abandoned. Gay and lesbian people felt stigmatised by measures like section 28, which today’s Conservative party has rightly repudiated. And it was no accident that when he became leader of the Conservative party, the right honourable member for Chingford wrote a pamphlet, called There is Such a Thing as Society. And on the world stage, as this prime minister rightly said in 2006, when he was leader of the opposition, she made the wrong judgment about Nelson Mandela and about sanctions in South Africa. Mr Speaker, debates about her and what she represented will continue for many years to come.
But Glenda Jackson stole the show. She spoke for me.
She talked of schools without resources, peeling paint and the homeless.
Just as I remember it Glenda. What a wonderful speech! “Aspirational society – they aspired for Things. They knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. We see the re-emergence of society today. Let’s not go back there. To see the extraordinary human damage and waste.”
Think Left 
She spoke for me, too. Every day of her twenty years in parliament was justified this afternoon. Long live Glenda Jackson! And long live the battered, demeaned and trampled idea that she has returned to us: that this country can be a better place and a better society for all its people.
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What a breath of fresh air. To hear such conviction and truth. For anyone who did not live there or then, believe it, she described it just as it was. Superb speech.
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she spoke for me as well, at last someone who has the courage to speak the truth that the media is quick to forget
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Pity she is standing down…truth is always the most powerful weapon, as the lowing beasts opposite quietened
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Well said Glenda, at last someone prepared to stand up and tell it how it really was. Sick of the glowing tributes being paid to this evil woman by hypocritical two faced liars who don’t even believe their own words. How can they when they are not true? Glenda Jackson for Prime Minister
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Bercow was pretty good too!
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Nervier was excellent at slapping down the Tory fool
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Glenda Jackson – you are a star!! Well said!! Well done!!! Fantastic Glenda Jackson! I was a teenager in the 80s & remember it all too well – Thatcher reaped pain & nastiness on my country & I will never forgive her or her cronies. I too, well remember the lack of text books; the unemployment; the hospital waiting lists; the annihilating, de-humanisation of a generation of working class families; the sheer nastiness of the greed & sod everyone else attitude – so WELL DONE GLENDA!!!! Hooray, hooray, hooray!!! Finally someone had the guts to stand up there & tell it like it was & is! And that creepy Tory-boy MP showed his true disgusting nasty ways. WELL DONE GLENDA!!
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Brilliant! Well said Glenda Jackson!!
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Hooray someone on the other side of the house had the balls to stand up and be counted. She spoke for me. You’re a star Glenda Jackson in every sense of the word.
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I agree totally with all that has been said – Pam you’re not doing too bad yourself another super post
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In retrospect, it had to be a woman speak those words to neutralise Thatcher’s posthumous power, so liberating both man and women from her hold. How wonderful, it feels. Well done Glenda, the country is so proud of you. To stand up against those despicable worthless greedy men on the government benches you were so very brave and John Bercow was impressive too.
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She spoke from the heart on behalf of everyone that Thatcher sought to destroy so thank you Glenda you spoke for me.
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It’s funny that today SkyNews (that bastion of liberal debate) has been leading with a story about rhinoceros in South Africa. This is something completely off the wall, as if Sky are interested in the plight of hunted animals!! However, being of unsound mind I couldn’t help but see this story as a metaphor for the events of yesterday and the indulgent and obnoxious waste of time and public money conjured up by the tories over thatcher.
The metaphor – well, think of the rhinos as representative of the dinasaurs on the tory benches praising one of their own whom they had stabbed in the back all those years ago. I understand that many tories had to be carried out of the chamber still blathering away 12 hours later about the pretty maid that led them to political oblivion ( sorry world domination and admiration) for years. No doubt cameron will have an enormous energy rush (orgasmic) and return to parliament even more intent on obliterating the population because he feels ‘entitled’
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Glenda Jackson has every right to express a widely held view in a Parliament that is meant to represent us all. What she might have added is that despite the sharp increase in nastiness and callous disregard for the worse off that is Margaret Thatcher’s legacy there is no evidence that she succeeded in even material terms. GDP growth did not increase:
http://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_kd_zg&idim=country:GBR&dl=en&hl=en&q=uk%20gdp%20growth
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Thanks for making that important point.. neoliberalism is not about making the 99% richer and better protected.
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Absolutely refreshing! As I wrote on my blog, I was absolutely fed up of only hearing polite tributes and sickening positivity about Thatcher, because “nobody must speak ill of the dead”. Thank you for posting. Glenda Jackson’s speech says it all.
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What do you think of the bombings in boston….I am a professor with interests in intensive care medicine….the Afgahnistan war vets who are to show up at the Harvard University Hospital emergency department have already got their prosthetic limbs. The Emergency Medicine team trade in Khazakstan and all around the globe so you can pretend that Blair and old Labour and the folks that sit in both chambers are ultra rich “socialist” who used a cross party electoral college to agree to a pay rise of £30,000 in one step when the rest of the public sector is in a 5 year pay freeze….how much do you get to lick their arses and be complicit with this…..perhaps they let you carry the bags on those 4 free trips to Europe which is there constitutional right every year. SHAME ON YOU ALL. Are you old and mature enough to avoid the draft when they burst the next economic bubble and the kids that have been all sold down the swannie get conscripted for one of these notional crusades.
George (Professor George Lees Kelso Scotland proud to have no party or mafia affiliation)
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