Winter 2009

 Comments

Margaret Thatcher straight up can be a bit much: all that certitude, all that intensity. The main title of Claire Berlinski’s most recent book, “There Is No Alternative,” a quotation from the Iron Lady herself, captures the problem well. For, in point of fact, there is always an alternative. For Thatcher, however, there are the strong-willed and the weak-willed, and although the strong-willed will not always be right, they will always prevail over the weak. When the strong-willed are wrong, as Thatcher decided was the case with the Argentine junta leader General Leopoldo Galtieri and the UK National Union of Mineworkers chief Arthur Scargill, the only thing that will stop them is a right-headedness that is even stronger.
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