Margaret Thatcher - Saint or sinner?

May 3 2009 by Michael Kelly, Sunday Sun

MARGARET THATCHER has always polarised opinion, nowhere more so than in the North. Tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of her becoming Prime Minister. Mike Kelly looks at her legacy in the region.

JUST before she walked into number 10 Downing Street on May 4, 1979, a well coiffured, blue-suited Margaret Thatcher turned to address the assembled media.

Her voice oozing with sincerity and earnestness, she famously said: “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.”

She was paraphrasing Francis of Assisi, who was later made a saint and in some political circles Mrs Thatcher is seen as a saint too.

But in the North, where industries like mining, shipbuilding and steel making were the main employers and took a hammering in her “modernising” programme, she is, to put it politely, less fondly remembered in many quarters.

Another of her well known sayings was “there is no such thing as society”, and the region paid the price for that ideal. Those at the sharp end might conclude that where there was harmony, Mrs Thatcher brought discord and where there was hope she brought despair.

But, according to her supporters, this is too simplistic an assessment.

Peter Atkinson, Conservative MP for Hexham, commented: “Mrs Thatcher has been demonised by Labour and its supporters in the North East for many years. But those in the region who think objectively about her period in Government will realise the enormously difficult financial decisions she had to take to rescue this country from another financial crisis.

“She actually laid the foundations for the revival of the region. The creation of the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation and the Teesside Development Corporation was a fundamental step in bringing new life back to the region.”

Mr Atkinson says a stroll down Newcastle’s Quayside would reveal a more fitting legacy of Mrs Thatcher, with its bustling eateries and bars, new flats and cultural centres.

One of the iconic images of her in the 1980s was her so-called walk in the wilderness by the River Tees, an area which has also been transformed.

Not surprisingly Davey Hopper, secretary of the North East area of the NUM, which went head-to-head with Mrs Thatcher’s Government in the year-long miner’s strike from 1984 to 1985 has a completely different take on her legacy.