If the outpouring of praise for the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher seemed to ignore her complicated political history, allow Morrissey to offer a counterweight. In an essay posted on The Daily Beast, the English singer rips into Thatcher's legacy, lambasting her as "a terror without an atom of humanity."
Morrissey has long expressed his distaste for the politician known as the Iron Lady, most notably in the song "Margaret on the Guillotine" off his solo debut, "Viva Hate."
His letter on Thatcher's passing is unabashedly brutal:
Every move she made was charged by negativity; she destroyed the British manufacturing industry, she hated the miners, she hated the arts, she hated the Irish Freedom Fighters and allowed them to die, she hated the English poor and did nothing at all to help them, she hated Greenpeace and environmental protectionists, she was the only European political leader who opposed a ban on the Ivory Trade, she had no wit and no warmth and even her own Cabinet booted her out.
"Iron? No. Barbaric? Yes," the former Smiths frontman quips.
A number of other singers and bands came out against Thatcher during her lifetime. Frank Turner titled a song "Thatcher F--ked the Kids," The Beat released a track called "Stand Down Margaret" which described the Iron Lady as holding her countrymen's lives in her "cold grey hands," Bill Bragg's "Thatcherites" lambasts her anti-union stance and Herner's 2000 song "The Day That Thatcher Died" ends with an emphatic "Ding-dong, the witch is dead!"
Meryl Streep, who portrayed Thatcher in "The Iron Lady," released a lengthy statement praising her "personal strength and grit" but admitting they are only "evidence of some kind of greatness, worthy for the argument of history to settle."
Thatcher passed away Monday after suffering a stroke. She was 87 years old. For more, head over to The Daily Beast.
