Lady Thatcher’s expensive militarist funeral

From daily News Line in Britain:

Thursday, 11 April 2013

Thatcher funeral–a state of siege!

THATCHER’S state funeral on April 17, is to be a Tory state provocation of the working class.

Her coffin is to be carried through the streets of London by 700 troops from units associated with the Malvinas (Falklands) war.

The great leader is so popular that the skies above her coffin will be defended by planes, helicopters and missiles.

All the drains, and other bomb friendly structures along the route, will be searched, sealed and guarded.

Barriers will be in place to prevent trucks or other vehicles being driven into the funeral procession.

Lists are being drawn up of people who have a record of active hostility to Thatcher.

Since large numbers of people are in this category, time is being spent on compiling a list of the ‘most dangerous’.

These are to be got out of the way for a number of days by house arrests, or illegal jailings, in fact kidnappings.

Troops from the SAS and Special Boat Service will be in the vanguard of the security operation, that signifies that the gloves are coming off in the struggle to smash the NHS and the Welfare State.

Special targets of the operation are Irish Republican and left-wing groups.

Detectives are monitoring social media, internet forums and Blackberry messaging networks in the expectation that attempts will be made to halt the funeral.

Yesterday afternoon, PM Cameron put himself forward as the heir of Thatcher and her chief mourner.

…

• Yesterday afternoon it was announced that the proposed one-minute silence at the Reading vs Liverpool football match this weekend to remember Margaret Thatcher was cancelled.

The cancellation came after the Hillsborough Families representative Margaret Aspinall said: ‘To have a minute’s silence for her at any football ground would be an insult to all fans‘.

Minute’s silence for Margaret Thatcher: Hillsborough group says tribute would be ‘insult to fans’; former sports minister warns silence would backfire: here.

This video says about itself:

Brendan Rodgers: Silence for Hillsborough, NOT Thatcher [11.04.2013]

Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers says the silence ahead of their game at Reading on Saturday is for the victims of the Hillsborough disaster and not for the former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher.

Reading chairman Sir John Madejski has called for football to mark the death of Baroness Thatcher with a one-minute silence but the Premier League and Football League will not be asking clubs to organise tributes.

Rodgers says remembering the people who died at Hillsborough is “the only remembrance there should be” and it will give Reading an opportunity “to show their support for the families and the 96 supporters who are no longer here”.

From the site of the Socialist Labour Party, the party of Arthur Scargill, National Union of Mineworkers president during the 1984-1985 miners’ strike, bloodily suppressed by the Thatcher administration:

April 2013 – A contrast of London’s historic funerals between those evoking love and admiration and those provoking mass hatred and disquiet.

The City of London is no stranger to large scale funerals for persons who have impacted greatly upon the Country’s historic events.

Back in the latter part of 1648, thousands of people marched on foot whilst others rode on horseback as they followed the funeral cortege of the great leveller leader Thomas Rainsborough. He had been assassinated a week before (30th October) at Doncaster, many levellers believing that Cromwell was implicated. They followed the procession going via Islington, St Pauls, Cheapside and through the East End to Wapping where he was interred. He had been the leader of the physical force New Model Army levellers, the Parliamentary naval Vice Admiral and had been a great Civil War commander. The followers wore ribbons of sea green (his own regimental colours) and black. From that time, sea green has been associated as the colour of incorruptibility. Indeed, French Revolutionary leader Robespierre was called the ‘sea green incorruptible’. There was nothing but affection for the deceased shown at this historic event.

Moving on in history, another great funeral took place in January 1806. The naval hero Admiral Lord Nelson had been killed at the battle of Trafalgar on October 21st 1805. Fatal casualties would normally have been buried at sea but in this case, his comrades decided to preserve his body in a barrel of brandy. His ship, the Victory arrived at Portsmouth on December 4th. The preparations for a state funeral were by then underway and the proceedings reached their peak over the days of 5th to the 9th of January 1806. The body was taken up the Thames on one of Charles the Second’s state barges and was eventually interred in St Paul’s Cathedral. Thousands of admirers flocked to the events. A monument to the hero, Nelson’s Column was constructed between 1840 and 1843 and is, of course, sited in Trafalgar Square.

We can compare these two outpourings of natural grief with the imminent event in London next week. Here, the forces and police are being deployed in huge numbers in the Capital and along the route in order to prevent hostilities aimed at the cortege. Already, the secret services are drawing up lists of those to be arrested and prevented from getting anywhere near this exclusive ‘Establishment’ function. Because there are so many hostile parties from throughout the World to the historical memory of the deceased, this is going to prove a very complicated operation. The cost of all the surveillance, logistics and event is going to be huge. The great insult to the British working class is that they are being asked to fund most of this (at a time of supposed austerity). Rarely in World history can we say that military might has been used to prevent a County’s inhabitants from venting their fury at a leader who left office such a long time ago! The irony is that some of this fury will be on public display in Trafalgar Square!

By Roger Bagley in London, England:

Here’s the real state funeral

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Easington Labour MP Grahame Morris told today why he would join an emotional ceremony next Wednesday to mark the destruction of 1,400 local miners’ jobs under vicious Thatcherite policies.

Mr Morris was among a large group of around 100 Labour members who disobeyed party whips and refused to attend today’s gruesome hours-long Commons session to pay tribute to Margaret Thatcher.

While the Establishment will bring London to a halt next Wednesday with an obscene Thatcher funeral spectacular, Mr Morris will be preparing for a special event to mark the 20th anniversary of the closure of his local Easington pit.

The event in Easington Colliery Working Men’s Club is expected to be a moving occasion, with sad memories of the pit jobs massacre mixed with emotional highs as Thatcher’s victims enthusiastically toast her demise.

Closure of the pit with the loss of 1,400 jobs under the post-Thatcher Tory government in 1993 devastated the local community.

Mr Morris said that the effects of coalfield and industrial closures in East Durham were “absolutely dire.”

He declared that it would have been “hypocritical” for him to attend the Commons today in view of the disastrous consequences of Thatcher’s policies for people in his area, including his own family.

Durham Miners chairman Alan Cummings, who will be hosting next Wednesday’s event, told the Star today: “I hated the woman. I think she was evil.”

The special recall parliamentary session today turned into a ghoulish ruling-class theatre of the absurd, in which the venomous and destructive Thatcher was portrayed as a great national figure.

Yawning gaps on the Labour benches took the shine off the event as Prime Minister David Cameron declared that “she made this country great again.”

Labour leader Ed Miliband jumped up on cue to describe Thatcher as “a great and towering figure” even though he “disagreed with much of what she did.”

One of the few dissenting voices was Labour MP David Winnick, who recalled that Thatcher’s “highly damaging” policies “caused immense pain and suffering to ordinary people.”

Former Labour minister John Healey was among MPs who refused to attend today’s parliamentary session.

He accused the Prime Minister of hijacking Thatcher’s death for political gain.

Mr Cameron was using the parliamentary session as “a platform for his party’s ideology, not just eulogy,” complained Mr Healey.

Miners’ MP Ian Lavery also stayed away, declaring: “I feel very personally about what Thatcher did to my family, my friends and my colleagues, not to mention the people I represent in Parliament.”

Another deliberate absentee was left-wing MP Jeremy Corbyn, who declared that the coverage of Thatcher’s death by most of the media was “beyond absurd.”

Parliamentary authorities announced that MPs returning from overseas visits for the Commons tribute to Thatcher would be able to claim up to £3,750 in travel expenses.

Next Wednesday’s costly ceremonial funeral for Thatcher in St Paul’s will be backed by a huge mobilisation of police and armed forces.

The processional route to the cathedral will be lined by personnel from army, navy and air force, with various military bands performing.

The coffin will be draped in a Union Jack and borne on a gun carriage drawn by six horses, while guns will be fired at one-minute intervals from beside the Tower of London.

From the Durham Miners’ Association in England:

After a full year, the miners were defeated but Thatcher did not have long to savour her victory as Prime Minister. Her pigheaded imposition of the poll tax moved a people weary of the politics of greed to revolt. She became an embarrassment to her party and they brutally cast her aside.

When we say we celebrate her death, we are reflecting the deep and lasting bitterness of our mining communities – and felt across the entire working class – at the ravages of her brutal policies which destroyed the lives and prospects of so many people.

Even today, we see the legacy of her policies in the continued vandalism of the Tory-Lib-Dem coalition, this time aimed at dismantling the Welfare State.

Thatcher infamously said, “There is no such thing as society”. She was the person who did her best to wreck it. We are the people who will rebuild it.

From the National Union of Mineworkers in Britain:

DEATH OF THATCHER

Margaret Hilda Thatcher (13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013)

The former UK Prime Minister who held office from 4 May 1979 until 28 November 1990 died 8 April 2013. To her family our condolences.

The legacy of what the Conservative Government did to British Industry under Thatcher is not one to be proud of if you really did want the best for the people.

Of course Thatcher was the symbol of “free enterprise” and set out to serve those whose interests were profit for the few.

The coal mining industry is not on its own in suffering the decimation of a world class industry in the name of the “free market”.

Thatcher lived long enough to see her beliefs demolished when the “free market” collapsed and came running to the State for support.

Unlike the Banks who gambled, cheated and were bailed out – Coal mines were closed and communities were left to suffer.

Margaret Hilda Thatcher is gone but the damage caused by her fatally flawed politics sadly lingers on.

Good Riddance.

Liverpool MP Steve Rotherham demanded yesterday that the government launch a real investigation into “sinister” changes made to the Hillsborough Wikipedia page from Whitehall computers. The Liverpool Echo has revealed that in 2009 the words “blame Liverpool fans” were added from government offices to the website’s entry on the tragedy in which 96 fans died: here.

Related articles

• In remembrance: Minute’s silence is for Hillsborough victims, not Margaret Thatcher insist Reading (mirror.co.uk)
• Football tribute to Thatcher would be a mistake, says Hillsborough relative (guardian.co.uk)
• Margaret Thatcher funeral: Family should pay bill NOT taxpayers, say three out of five in poll (mirror.co.uk)
• Honouring Margaret Thatcher before Liverpool game would be an ‘insult’ say Hillsborough campaigners (telegraph.co.uk)
• Taxpayers can ‘well afford’ to contribute to estimated £10m cost of Baroness Thatcher’s funeral, says William Hague (independent.co.uk)
• Final bill for Baroness Thatcher’s funeral revealed (independent.co.uk)
• Margaret Thatcher Day bill cut off after 87 seconds (metro.co.uk)
• Margaret Thatcher’s funeral cost taxpayers more than £3m (guardian.co.uk)
• Cops’ contempt for Hillsborough 96 (socialistworker.co.uk)