Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

In Cuba we used to call her "La Dama de Hierro" and not precisely because of a particular leaning towards watercress and its benefits. The English "th" sound of her surname was pronounced as a Spanish "t". Aged ten or eleven, I remember being given a badge that read "Las Malvinas son Argentinas". At the time I didn't know that Las Malvinas were a group of islands off the coast of Argentina, nor that the English translation was Falklands. And stories abounded - apocryphal, probably - that she urinated whilst standing.

It's hard to find a more polarising historical and political figure than Margaret Thatcher in recent times. The middle ground is usually vacated when previous cabinet members, union leaders and analysts sit down to talk about her legacy. The Marmite effect could well be applied to this grocer's daughter who rose through the ranks of the Conservative party to become Britain's first female Prime Minister. You either love her or hate her.

It would be hypocritical of me, however, to say that she awakens those same kinds of sentiments in me. I was eight when she came to power and nineteen when she resigned. Her name and role were as alien to me during my childhood and adolescence as freedom of speech was in 1980s Cuba. Fidel didn't like her for obvious reasons: Maggie was a close ally of Ronald Reagan, the actor-turned-president who, according to Gil Scott-Heron's song "B" Movie, 'acted like an actor...Hollyweird' and tightened the screws on the economic embargo against Cuba during his administration.

But now, The Iron Lady is back in fashion, courtesy of Meryl Streep, who gives a tour de force in a film based on Thatcher's twilight years, more specifically her battle with dementia.

To an outsider like me, this fixation with the former PM is both fascinating and frustrating. The former, because it's one of those rare moments when the famous British upper lip disappears, only to be replaced by a passion hard to match. The latter because, argumentative as I can be sometimes, I have hardly any grounds to debate her premiership or her legacy. All I'm left with is the immigrant's perennial companion: the "what ifs". So, today, this will be a "what if" column.

In my time in the UK, I have met people who have either praised Thatcher for the direct benefit her policies brought them, or slagged her off for the havoc she allegedly wreaked. The first group is usually made up of rightwing politicians, businesspeople who took advantage of Thatcher's deregulation of the economy in the 80s and landlords who started their lives as working-class, council house dwellers but who managed to buy their own property after Thatcher relaxed the rules on social housing. I sometimes wonder whether, had I been born in 1961 instead of '71, I would have reaped the same rewards for becoming one of Britain's many entrepeneurs at the time. This idea is often offset against what I've learned from people living at the time in what they describe as a very volatile atmosphere full of riots and strikes.

The second group, those who criticise Thatcher, is composed for the most part of union leaders, public sector workers, left-leaning intellectuals and feminists. Given my political views, it's the sector of British society with which I feel more attuned. Would I have found the same common ground with them back in the 80s? I don't know, possibly. But then, again, possibly not.

There is, however, a third group that could be seen as a spin-off from the second one to which I referred above. It consists mainly of women who are not afraid of using the "f" word to explain their philosophy and creed : feminism. To them, Mrs T represented the ultimate betrayal of the principles of feminism.

Several questions arise from this attitude, though: are there any grounds for considering Margaret Thatcher a feminist? Did she ever ask to be addressed as one? Could she, perhaps, have been an unintentional one? If no to the previous three questions, why the fixation with Mrs T's lack of feminist credentials when she didn't run (and this, I know for sure) on a feminist ticket during the 1979 general election (or any election thereafter)?

The answers don't come easily. Yet, even the most hardcore Thatcher critic must acknowledge that by breaking through the political, gender and class glass ceiling she, unwittingly, paved the way for other women to, if not join the political arena, at least try to see female success in politics as an achievable goal.

On the economy, one of Thatcher's most contentious areas, she even clashed with her own party over certain policies whose aim was supposedly to level the playing field for the less well-off. I mentioned council tenants before. By being allowed to buy their own property they were also creating wealth. This had two effects: one was the emergence of a new middle-class and the other the privatisation of accommodation that had hitherto been government-run. The former didn't please the politicians occupying the upper echelons of the Conservative Party, especially the old fogeys who wanted to keep the status quo the way it had always been and who were not interested in consorting with people who until then had been seen as nothing more than plebs. The latter element widened the gap between rich and poor and had a knock-on effect on the UK property market in years to come. Still, I imagine that if I'd been a council tenant in the early 80s with enough cash to buy my own house, I would have probably taken a dim view of the criticism heaped on the person making my purchase possible.

This is one of the reasons why I think it's mistaken to lambast Maggie for her lack of feminist credentials. I don't think she ever set out to have any. It's a similar situation to what we've seen with Obama and issues affecting African-Americans. Narrow down your policies to just address problems within your own gender or ethnic group and you won't make it past the primaries.

There's been, however, an ironic twist of fate of late. Currently a group of female Tory MPs are trying to adopt the "f" word as part of their political raison d'être. All of a sudden what drives Louise Mensch, Theresa May et al is the need to tackle gender inequality. A laudable position indeed, until you scratch the surface and realise that their agenda is led by a firm belief that the free market is and will always be the great economic leveller. And yet, it was the unchallenged power of the free market that's took us down the path of financial crisis in 2008. Which culminated with Labour out of office, a coalition moving into Number 10 and the worst cuts ever to sweep through the public, statutory and voluntary sectors in living memory. And the most affected section of society? Women.

There is, I'm sure, much to complain about Margaret Thatcher's time in office. There was, as I understand, a lot of unemployment and social unrest throughout most of her premiership. Her Friedmanite approach to the economy, pioneered by her goverment in the 80s and supported by New Labour in the 90s and noughties, have left the UK dependent on investment banks and hedge-fund managers who hold everyone, including Westminster, to ramson. Not a lot is manufactured in the UK nowadays and the country has gone from being a major producer to being a major consumer.

Still, everytime I see a red bus with Meryl Streep's mug beaming down on me I can't stop thinking about the "what ifs" scenarios.Enough to make me feel frustrated, I can assure you.

©2012


Next Post: “Killer Opening Songs”, to be published on Wednesday 1st February at 11:59m (GMT)

Photo taken from The Iron Lady movie blog.

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

'I hate you English. With your boring trousers and your shiny toilet paper and your ridiculous preconceptions that Frenchmen are great lovers. I'm French and I'm hung like a baby carrot and a couple of petits pois.' Very rarely have wiser words been uttered than the ones that open this column today. They appear in one of the most profound and philosophical analyses on the human condition, namely, 'Blackadder'.

But also, what the quote above, rather facetiously, illustrates, is how our assumptions about other people and situations very often colour our points of view, regardless of whether the notions in question are based on fact or not.

It was these prejudgements that apparently led Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, to scoff at the idea of penning an autobiography. Too dull, he said. In reality, though, what he probably meant was that writing a first-hand account of his life and work would have necessarily involved revealing family secrets and indiscretions that would have affected friends. That would have been one option, though. The other one would have been to lie his way through his memoir.

One way of looking at biographies and memoirs is as myth-makers. They don't so much embellish their subjects, as go the extra mile and turn them into icons. In the process, they also serve as vehicles for adulation. A good example of this was Seumas Milne's review of Fidel Castro's self-congratulatory autobiography, 'My Life' three and a half years ago. Throughout his article the The Guardian's journalist exalts the Cuban leader's "capacity to reinvent himself and his undimmed focus on contemporary struggles". Sadly, Seumas was not involved in Cuba's 'Black Spring', the 2003 crackdown when seventy-five dissidents were arrested and imprisoned by government forces for daring to voice their opinions. So, he wasn't able to experiment in the flesh Fidel's "undimmed focus on contemporary struggle".

The other way of looking at personal accounts is as unfinished on-going projects. This approach is a more realistic one, but also more dangerous because of the different factors in play. There's the factual element, but sometimes this is inextricably linked to religious, racial and sexual (both gender and orientation) aspects. The more a researcher tries to stick to the truth when digging up new information about a famous person, the more he or she will have to fight against well-established canons. A case in point is Joseph Lelyveld's book "Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India". The Indian leader, architect of satyagraha (truth force), has always fascinated peace-lovers and opponents of colonialism and imperialism everywhere. His stand on non-violent activism continues to exert a huge influence even in today's contemporary society. But should this view be immutable? What lies beneath the myth?

Though I have not read the book yet, it seems to me that Lelyveld is more interested in showing a morally ambivalent human being than a deity. And that is perhaps his biggest challenge. More often than not history rewrites a person's significance and the outcome smacks more of hagiography than reality. In Lelyveld's book, Gandhi, the visionary, is also presented as Gandhi, the self-centred political behemoth. His undisputable honesty is placed next to the alleged manipulation of which sometimes he was capable. If like me, you first got a glimpse of the life of the Mahatma through Richard Attenborough’s 1982 biopic, this situation will probably leave you heading for the nearest One Pound store in your barrio in order to buy a sweatshop-produced, cheap halo to put back on the late Indian leader's head. If, on the other hand, you like your icons as imperfect as they come, then you will probably buy Joseph's book. Which I will. It's already in my amazon's list.

Yet, it's interesting to see that the furore caused by the volume (it has been banned in Gujarat) owes more to a reference to an alleged sexual - and platonic, by the looks of it - relationship between Gandhi and the German architect Hermann Kallenbach than to Lelyveld's vivid portrait of the Mahatma as a contradictory figure who shaped his political vision in South Africa, the country in which he lived for two decades.

It's not surprising to find that a slight hint of a homosexual liaison is enough to send the hagiographers up the wall. Another biography that's come out (pun not intended) recently and has also caused a stir, although not an outright ban, is that of Malcolm Little, otherwise known as Malcolm X. In his "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention", professor of history and political science at Columbia university, Manning Marable, offers a more nuanced view of Malcolm's life. Professor Marable, who sadly died a few days before the book's publication, aims to dismantle some of the myths surrounding the 'Detroit Red'. And one of the elements he includes in his biography is that Malcolm might have been a source of sexual entertainment for an older, white man. Strong stuff, if you like your icons to be macho and mean.

However, picking just on the homoerotic factor, whether it's based on reality or not, would be wrong. Because Marable also gives us the human behind the hagiography. The flawed hero who went on a pilgrimage to Mecca and returned thinking that his earlier inflammatory language had no place in the society of which he dreamt. The devoted husband who apparently had a fling with a female follower. The Nation of Islam member who drank alcohol occasionally. Manning's book doesn't destroy Malcolm, in my opinion, he makes it more believable, more human. Coincidentally, as it happened with Gandhi, my first introduction to the American civil rights leader was also via the medium of cinema: Spike Lee's 1992 Academy-nominated 'Malcolm X'. So, even before I picked up Alex Haley's highly influential volume, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X", I already had my own preconceptions. Needless to say, Mr Marable's book is in my to-buy list, too.

Between iconography and reality there lies a thin line which biographers and researchers are advised to tread cautiously. Yet, not so careful that we lose sight of the human and we make the mistake of putting him/her behind a high, electric, circular fence. Heroes are people, not saints and sometimes the hagiographic treatment works against them in the long term. Still, if, when the time comes to write Osama Bin Laden's biography, it is revealed that he was "hung like a baby carrot and a couple of petits pois", I don't think there'll be a public outcry. After all, even stand-up comics need to put food on the table everyday.

© 2011

Next Post: ‘Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts’, to be published on Wednesday 18th May at 11:59pm (GMT)