As the mainstream media pens paeans to Margaret Thatcher, progressives have tried to question her true political legacy. Nation contributor Laura Flanders brings a critical perspective—formed by her own reporting from Northern Ireland, the Liverpool riots and the UK miners' strike—to an episode of Forum with Michael Krasny on KQED that also features a Thatcher specialist and a Hoover Institution fellow.
"I don't think most of the world is that bothered about whether the relationship between Reagan and Thatcher was close, very close or really, really, really close," Flanders says during a discussion of the ties between the two leaders. "I think most of the world is concerned about the relationship both of them had with torturers and human rights abusers around the globe."
Thatcher supported Augusto Pinochet, Afghanistan's mujahideen and the apartheid regime in South Africa almost until the end. Meanwhile, poverty and wage gaps grew under her deregulatory policies at home, Flanders notes.
—Alec Luhn
How did Margaret Thatcher win working-class votes while fighting against working-class interests? Gary Younge writes on Thatcher's populist appeal.
