The death of Margaret Thatcher has brought to the surface some extremely hateful examples of the worst aspects of human nature.  People who should know better and set an example have allowed the vindictive politics of tribalism to take over when something more compassionate and considered was called for.

It is understandable that those whose jobs for life in the coal mines on a father-to-son basis were lost in the 1980’s should be unforgiving of the polititians who were seen to bring this about.  However, that understanding has to be tempered by three considerations.

The first is that in the 1960’s and 1970’s the trade unions used their power to bring this country to a pretty parlous state.  Those of us who worked through three-day weeks, rail strikes and electricity blackouts had to go to work regardless. We often trudged through streets stacked high with rubbish.  We who worked on through those days did not and still do not enjoy the inflation-proof pensions earned through those strikes.  Only those paid through the public purse and subsidised by those working in the private sector have that privileged status and that includes our members of parliament.

Secondly, when Labour returned to power after the Conservatives’ four terms in office, they chose not to revert to mining coal in this country, indeed they continued to close mines!

Thirdly, much was made in the 1970’s of the dirt and danger of mining in order to justify higher wages and protected pensions.  A generation later are there really advocates for resuming such activities?

My point is a simple one.  I do not care for bankers who never seem to be penalised for failure, whose rewards are obscenely out of proportion to the work they do and whose treatment of their ordinary staff leaves much to be desired.  They hold us to ransom for more money ‘or they will leave.’  Go, say I – please go.  So, equally, I did not and still do not, care for trade union leaders doing exactly the same thing.  To my simple mind Fred Goodwin and Arthur Scargill are just two sides of the same coin.  Each in his own way was in his own time guilty of using his power both unwisely and without regard for anything but narrow self-interest – ‘my bank,’ - ‘my members’ and nobody else matters just won’t do.

Furthermore, for people to rejoice in someone’s death reveals not only a shallowness of humanity but also a lack of thought that is quite breathtaking.  It is sad to realise that as a nation we appear to have made so little progress.

We live in one of the world’s richest nations; we are well educated and cosseted.  The poorest of our citizens is relatively rich compared with the poorest on the planet and yet we are prepared, some of us, to hold a party to celebrate a death while others seem to think that doing so represents some sort of humour.

Let’s be clear: over four hundred years ago John Donne made it easy to understand when he wrote that “Every man’s death diminishes me,” and, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”  We are all from the same thread and our actions have their effects and often do so far beyond our immediate imagining both in scope and time.

The unbridled greed of some in the sixties and seventies produced its counterbalance in the eighties.  In the same way the massive expenditure with borrowed money in the last decade is causing grief in so many ways now. 

We love to find a scapegoat and to say it is nothing to do with us.  I have no doubt that the miners who followed Arthur Scargill thought they were justified, but how many of them looked beyond their own heartland in order to see the impact of their actions on others.  Where was the compassion to temper those actions?  Equally, how many bankers, footballers or others with incomes of six figures or more stop to consider who pays for their lifestyles?

So what to do about it.  Well, let’s stop holding silly ‘parties’ for a start.  They are sick, not funny.  We should also realise that, as the world’s oldest current democracy, it is time for us to abandon the tribalistic and unthinking politics that passes for government now, and come up with a better model.  We can and should do better.  Political thinking (I use the word ‘thinking’ loosely!) is too polarised and self-interested in our land and we cannot and should not afford it.

Let us have far fewer MP’s but let us pay them well and get the best.  Let us select them rather than having them selected for us from the ranks of the politically ambitious who, often, have no experience of work or life outside their own little political bubble.

Let us develop a civil service free from trade unionism and awards that signify little beyond an ability to dispose of rivals more effectively than others.  Let us also take the National Health Service and Education out of the hands of politicians altogether.  Idealology ought to have no part in either.

Finally, let us try in this process to put some older, wiser and more experienced heads into the process of government to create a better balance in decision making.

We should remember we get the government we deserve.  We are all accountable.  It is time we started to make a change.