You actually took a strong dislike to the man simply because you saw a photograph of him standing next to Margaret Thatcher? Wouldn't you call that a bit... hasty? I mean, sure, if I happened upon a picture of Stoppard giving the thumbs up with his arm around, say, Charles Taylor, then I think my opinion would turn, but, uh, the Baroness? Different story. Fewer death squads.
I wouldn't say that I like Stoppard and his work expressly for his/its politics -- I can get that anywhere -- but I appreciate the fact that he's thought his political positions through before casting them into art which, as I doubt you need be assured, is not the case with every modern playwright. The promotion of human liberty is one of his chief drives, and, whether or not you or I agree with him, he's built a solid foundation of ideas using conservatism as a means to that end.
This recent Telegraph profile does him justice as well:And then, intriguingly, there is "Conservative Tom" - the bold exception to the arts world's monolithic Leftist orthodoxy, the admirer of Margaret Thatcher, and subtle baiter - most effectively in plays like Night and Day - of liberal vanities.
When Harold Pinter was lobbying to have London's Comedy Theatre renamed the Pinter Theatre, Stoppard wrote back: "Have you thought, instead, of changing your name to Harold Comedy?" His liking for Lady Thatcher appears to have a theatrical as well as ideological dimension, for he saw in her radicalism the seeds of great drama. "In the period before the arrival of Mrs Thatcher," he once said, "politics had been in such low esteem. Everything was so hedged, so mealy-mouthed. Then along came this woman who seemed to have no manners at all and said exactly what she thought. Everyone's eyes were popping and their jaws were dropping, and I really enjoyed that."
For all this, it might be fairer to call Stoppard a libertarian than a Conservative. In the 1970s, when the big names of British theatre - all of predictably uniform Leftist sympathies - reserved their denunciations for the United States and its supposedly nefarious doings in places like Nicaragua, Stoppard was quietly active among the dissident groups of the Eastern Bloc. In part this was attributable to his roots, but it speaks, equally, to the maturity of his thinking. For the record, I also think Havel is great.
I think you maybe don't understand quite how much opprobium a great deal of British people reserve for that woman. One of the reasons I moved back to the UK is so that I will (hopefully) be here to join in the celebrations on the day that she dies!
Oh, I understand the volume of opprobrium she gets. I'll never forget, for instance, the joy with which Richard E. Grant wrote in his memoirs about being free of the torturous Hudson Hawk and "her" on the very same day. I also understand the volume of praise she gets; I've met Brits and Yanks alike who consider one of the 20th century's greatest hero(ine)s. Naturally, because I'm interested in divisive figures, I'm interested in Thatcher, perhaps the ultimate one.
However, it may be wrong to say that I understand the opprobrium and praise; maybe I'm just familiar with both of them. After plowing through countless books and articles about the woman from every possible perspective, I can't say that I consider Thatcher to be a savior or a villain. Putting her on a pedestal of dizzying height shows a lack of perspective both politcal and historical, as does damning her name reflexively. For every person decrying her as a monster for revoking free primary school milk, there's another praising her for revoking free primary school milk, and yet another who mentions that she herself wasn't really behind revoking free primary school milk but had to push it for party solidarity, which was perhaps a greater good in the end. The story of her government is a complex, nuanced one, and truth is done a great disservice by characterizing it as absolutely good or evil.
I will say, however, that much of the modern criticism of her policies and character seems ill-thought out. Being a lifelong United States resident, I've come face to face with plenty of irrational hatred of government figureheads. Sure, there's Bush Derangement Syndrome, but there's Clinton Derangement Syndrome and Reagan Derangement Syndrome in equal measure. Having done my homework and then some, I have reason to believe that Thatcher Derangement Syndrome is alive and well. (Though, obviously, its has a counterpart in some sort of Thatcher Idolatry Syndrome.)
The worst thing about the demonization of the "Thatcher regime," though, is that it dilutes the condemnation so richly deserved by history's actual monsters. If you want to work up some opprobrium, do so at, say, the communist leaders with the blood of 100 million on their hands, not the Tories who've spilt some milk.
After plowing through countless books and articles about the woman from every possible perspective, I can't say that I consider Thatcher to be a savior or a villain.
To be honest this may not have given you much of an idea about what it was (and is!) like to live with the real consequences of her policies. She was a self-proclaimed class warrior against the poor, and there was a great deal more to her rule and her ongoing legacy than the abolition of free milk (eg. privatisation, the poll tax, the Miners' Strike, the opposition to sanctions for South Africa, the illegal murder of Irish republicans, the hatred of Europe and foreigners in general (except Americans of course), the Falklands War, the dismantling of public services, Section 28 etc etc etc ad infinitum) although that gesture in itself tells us a great deal about her agenda.
As you say you've lived all your life in the United States, so you may find it difficult to understand the glee with which people from this country will dance and piss and piss and dance on her grave when she is finally dead and buried. Mind you, she's not quite out of the picture yet!
Well, I did try to get a balance, which meant, of couse, trudging through both the oh-the-unimaginable-pain-I-lived-in-after-losing-my-entitlements and the everyone-who-hates-Thatcher-is-an-idiot sentiments alike, which were at, uh, roughly the same level of credibility. While I don't exactly buy that she saved Britain from crumbling to dust by dismantling national services better handled outside the public sector or not at all, I do think that British political history -- before her and since -- has vindicated many of the tough decisions she made.
I'm not sure I'd call privatization an inherently bad thing; if you want the lot of the poor to improved, you've got to generate maximum amount of wealth as possible, and that doesn't happen under public incentive structures. It just doesn't. (Take a look, for example, at which third-world populations are fastest being lifted out of property and how. It's not the ones with self-perpetuating bureaucratic institutions posing as altruists at the wheel.) While I'm for flat taxation in general -- I consider forcing different income brackets to pay different percentages of their income to be indefensible and borderline immoral -- the poll tax as applied left too much local autonomy. The miners' strike was a side effect of the end of coal subsidies, which I'm not sure how one could make a clear case to defend, either. To see the havoc wreaked to this day by similar undead subsidies, look no further than the ruins of the Doha round.
Taking a look at the distribution of prosperity now, it's at least clear that Thatcher foresaw that a nation built on entitlement programs was a nation living on borrowed time, and she took the popularity bullet to extricate Britain from arrangements that would have caused France-esque (or worse) problems in the decades to come. If anything, she seems to have done a bigger favor for Labour than anyone else. Without her government's effect on the political climate at large, I don't think we would've seen the emergence of a (relatively) more pragmatic, electable Labour. If not for her, they might still be stuck in the wilderness, helmed by a modern-day Michael Foot muddling his way through. All the better for Labour, I suppose, if Thatcher left a bad taste in the voters' mouths and put them off the Tories anyway.
I wouldn't say that I like Stoppard and his work expressly for his/its politics -- I can get that anywhere -- but I appreciate the fact that he's thought his political positions through before casting them into art which, as I doubt you need be assured, is not the case with every modern playwright. The promotion of human liberty is one of his chief drives, and, whether or not you or I agree with him, he's built a solid foundation of ideas using conservatism as a means to that end.
This recent Telegraph profile does him justice as well:And then, intriguingly, there is "Conservative Tom" - the bold exception to the arts world's monolithic Leftist orthodoxy, the admirer of Margaret Thatcher, and subtle baiter - most effectively in plays like Night and Day - of liberal vanities.
When Harold Pinter was lobbying to have London's Comedy Theatre renamed the Pinter Theatre, Stoppard wrote back: "Have you thought, instead, of changing your name to Harold Comedy?" His liking for Lady Thatcher appears to have a theatrical as well as ideological dimension, for he saw in her radicalism the seeds of great drama. "In the period before the arrival of Mrs Thatcher," he once said, "politics had been in such low esteem. Everything was so hedged, so mealy-mouthed. Then along came this woman who seemed to have no manners at all and said exactly what she thought. Everyone's eyes were popping and their jaws were dropping, and I really enjoyed that."
For all this, it might be fairer to call Stoppard a libertarian than a Conservative. In the 1970s, when the big names of British theatre - all of predictably uniform Leftist sympathies - reserved their denunciations for the United States and its supposedly nefarious doings in places like Nicaragua, Stoppard was quietly active among the dissident groups of the Eastern Bloc. In part this was attributable to his roots, but it speaks, equally, to the maturity of his thinking.
For the record, I also think Havel is great.
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However, it may be wrong to say that I understand the opprobrium and praise; maybe I'm just familiar with both of them. After plowing through countless books and articles about the woman from every possible perspective, I can't say that I consider Thatcher to be a savior or a villain. Putting her on a pedestal of dizzying height shows a lack of perspective both politcal and historical, as does damning her name reflexively. For every person decrying her as a monster for revoking free primary school milk, there's another praising her for revoking free primary school milk, and yet another who mentions that she herself wasn't really behind revoking free primary school milk but had to push it for party solidarity, which was perhaps a greater good in the end. The story of her government is a complex, nuanced one, and truth is done a great disservice by characterizing it as absolutely good or evil.
I will say, however, that much of the modern criticism of her policies and character seems ill-thought out. Being a lifelong United States resident, I've come face to face with plenty of irrational hatred of government figureheads. Sure, there's Bush Derangement Syndrome, but there's Clinton Derangement Syndrome and Reagan Derangement Syndrome in equal measure. Having done my homework and then some, I have reason to believe that Thatcher Derangement Syndrome is alive and well. (Though, obviously, its has a counterpart in some sort of Thatcher Idolatry Syndrome.)
The worst thing about the demonization of the "Thatcher regime," though, is that it dilutes the condemnation so richly deserved by history's actual monsters. If you want to work up some opprobrium, do so at, say, the communist leaders with the blood of 100 million on their hands, not the Tories who've spilt some milk.
Reply
To be honest this may not have given you much of an idea about what it was (and is!) like to live with the real consequences of her policies. She was a self-proclaimed class warrior against the poor, and there was a great deal more to her rule and her ongoing legacy than the abolition of free milk (eg. privatisation, the poll tax, the Miners' Strike, the opposition to sanctions for South Africa, the illegal murder of Irish republicans, the hatred of Europe and foreigners in general (except Americans of course), the Falklands War, the dismantling of public services, Section 28 etc etc etc ad infinitum) although that gesture in itself tells us a great deal about her agenda.
As you say you've lived all your life in the United States, so you may find it difficult to understand the glee with which people from this country will dance and piss and piss and dance on her grave when she is finally dead and buried. Mind you, she's not quite out of the picture yet!
Reply
I'm not sure I'd call privatization an inherently bad thing; if you want the lot of the poor to improved, you've got to generate maximum amount of wealth as possible, and that doesn't happen under public incentive structures. It just doesn't. (Take a look, for example, at which third-world populations are fastest being lifted out of property and how. It's not the ones with self-perpetuating bureaucratic institutions posing as altruists at the wheel.) While I'm for flat taxation in general -- I consider forcing different income brackets to pay different percentages of their income to be indefensible and borderline immoral -- the poll tax as applied left too much local autonomy. The miners' strike was a side effect of the end of coal subsidies, which I'm not sure how one could make a clear case to defend, either. To see the havoc wreaked to this day by similar undead subsidies, look no further than the ruins of the Doha round.
Taking a look at the distribution of prosperity now, it's at least clear that Thatcher foresaw that a nation built on entitlement programs was a nation living on borrowed time, and she took the popularity bullet to extricate Britain from arrangements that would have caused France-esque (or worse) problems in the decades to come. If anything, she seems to have done a bigger favor for Labour than anyone else. Without her government's effect on the political climate at large, I don't think we would've seen the emergence of a (relatively) more pragmatic, electable Labour. If not for her, they might still be stuck in the wilderness, helmed by a modern-day Michael Foot muddling his way through. All the better for Labour, I suppose, if Thatcher left a bad taste in the voters' mouths and put them off the Tories anyway.
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