Maggie, Maggie, Maggie. A time for respect?

Our French doctor looked almost like a miner as he pulled on a headlamp while trying to work out why his patient had stiffness and pain around the ear. "Ah, ces anglais," he said, referring not to the owner of the ear but to those rejoicing at Lady Thatcher's death.

If I had been the patient, I might have used the mining theme to explain the depth of feeling about her policies, the implacably divided nature of views on them and necessarily on her.

But I would not have defended the more extreme and, in truth, unworthy reactions to her death.

On French TV, we saw the wholly understandable hostility to the former prime minister from miners' leaders, such as there remain any miners to lead.

We also saw the "rejoice" placards, the young woman chanting "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie ... dead, dead, dead" - a cruel variation of the harmless original that ended "out, out, out".

On Twitter and Facebook, there have been streams of unpleasant messages, and indefensible abuse of those who chose to stick up for her.

Margaret Thatcher's politics were emphatically not mine. I could never warm to her, admire her, respect her in life.

There is no reason to rewrite history, change opinions on someone simply because they die, as we all do.

Death does not alter the reality as I hold it, that Thatcherism was a cold, nasty philosophy that paid no heed to ordinary people's needs and the pain it caused them and their communities, many of which can be said never to have recovered.

Lady Thatcher entered office spoiling for a fight with the unions and carefully orchestrated one with the most powerful of them.

She had more tanks at her disposal, metaphorically, than Arthur Scargill and she proved a better leader of her troops than he was of his.

As it happens, I never regretted the demise of coalmining, recalling the old pitworkers who told me during the closures of the late 1960s that they never wanted their sons to follow them down the shafts. There was difference then; there were other jobs to go to. The Thatcher assault on the British coalfield came at a time when there were few, least of all in the areas where her policies hit hardest.

It may be that change was necessary. The unions had a vital function but too often acted irresponsibly, even when Labour was in power. But so important to Lady Thatcher was the notion of crushing them that no adequate provision was made to ensure that the communities affected by her bitter medicine would not so much wither as die in agony.

Even so, these were political acts. I do not doubt that she believed she was doing her duty honourably and driving change for the greater good of the country. So while I heartily disapprove of what she did, I cannot bring myself to withhold, at the time of her passing, the respect she failed to earn from me in life. That seems a simple issue of human decency.

Most of us are, at some time in our lives, served by others as shabbily as the miners and others were treated by the Thatcher government.

I have attended far too many memorial services, in honour of departed colleagues, at St Bride's, the journalists' church off Fleet Street, but freely admit there are two or three still to come from which I would be sure to be absent. But even those deaths, if they occurred before my own, would not prompt me to uncork champagne or jump for joy. It smacks too much of the lip-licking crowds of gloating ghouls at public executions at Tyburn Hill or Concorde

I posted these thoughts at an e-mail loop to which I subscribe:

I loathed her ... I don't mourn her passing, would want nothing to do with silences or other tributes ... For all that, however, I would never "rejoice" in the death of someone whose politics I despised, even though those politics inflicted much misery. She is not in the same category as Hitler, Saddam and others who committed crimes of extreme violence against humanity. Some will disagree.

Some did disagree.

This was one response, from a highly educated man who grew up in an area ravaged by 1980s conservatism:

Colin said "She is not in the same category as Hitler, Saddam and others." In the context, culture and era in which she presided, I would put right alongside the names you mention. I agree that there is absolutely no point in trying to paint her in a better light because she is dead. She stood by her "principles" if we can call her dogma and doctrine of greed and evil principles at all.

Her death if nothing else is a timely reminder for decent people to stand against such dogma and I do disagree [on whether] her death is a cause for celebration. [It's] a catharsis for decent people to enjoy and revel in. Some evil has departed this world and that is a just cause for celebration.

Here in France, many find such views incomprehensible and at odds with the tolerance and le fair-play with which they associate Britain.

I prefer the verdict of Marie-Noelle, my newsagent: "I didn't like the manner in which she did things, but she was a formidable woman of conviction and strength, and deserves respect in death."

Over to the Salut! jury ....