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Whether we like the title or not, many of us are Thatcher’s children because she was in power when we started to work.  Everything she put in place had an effect on all of us, in a way that no politician since has done.  What I find hard to understand is the rejoicing of the few at her death.  ‘Distasteful’ is far too polite a description.  She wasn’t a tyrannical despot, philanderer or a philistine.  She didn’t plunge us into unnecessary and costly (lives not money) wars.  She wasn’t a slippery crowd pleaser either.  She was a scientist and a mum who became a politician; she led from the front and was the driving force behind how this country works and how we are viewed on the world stage.  In case anyone’s in any doubt, much of this is for the better.

Even now there are a lot of people who don’t like change; Margaret Thatcher wasn’t one of those either.  She wasn’t interested in supporting the old ways if they were past their sell-by date; she was interested in exploring the new, even if it took her down a path that was unpopular.  You could never accuse her of courting popularity, but she was because we kept voting for her and she was the longest serving prime minister of the 20th century.

Her confrontation with the unions is something that always sticks out in my memory.  No, not because it was long overdue, and that no one had ever had the mental strength to grasp this political nettle in previous governments; it was because of desktop publishing.

Desktop publishing must sound so old today, but in the 1980s it was new technology that would revolutionise the speed in which newspapers and magazines could be produced.  This was the future and opened the doors for Wapping and the digital age of publishing a few years later.  Where technology steps in, less people are needed.  So, while “everybody out” was still ringing in our ears, thousands of pickets were surrounding the offices of Eddie Shah, who was launching a new national newspaper using this technology.  The pickets were there for months, it was violent and it was ugly, but the newspaper, Today, was published.  I know it’s difficult to imagine, but replace Eddie Shah and Today with Sergey Brin and Google.  Unthinkable isn’t it?

It’s hard to know what the history books will write about this time, but it’s more likely to be that Margaret Thatcher stood for progress and competitiveness while the unions wanted to prevent both to protect its members.  You can’t stop the future from happening  so you have to look forward and work collaboratively, but this was impossible for the unions to do then; they were locked in a time warp that thankfully doesn’t exist now, but it was a painful journey getting there.  But we did get there.

Better to think outside of the box and embrace the new than to keep your mind and spirit locked inside it.  That was Margaret Thatcher’s legacy and we should be rejoicing that we have it.