Ex-leader's legacy far from cast-iron

In power, or out of power, Margaret Thatcher always attracted furious controversy, even after her passing.

Within an hour of her death being announced, flowers were being left outside the London home she had become too frail to live in unaided.

At 10 Downing Street, where she lived longer than any other modern British prime minister, the Union Flag was lowered to half-mast - as were those above Buckingham Palace and many other landmark buildings across the United Kingdom.

The flag was flying at half-mast, too, at the visitor center in Port Stanley on the Falkland Islands, known as Malvinas Islands in Argentina, to where she dispatched a task force in 1982 to remove Argentinian forces.

While tributes poured in, she was still hated by some.

Crowds gathered in south London on Monday evening to celebrate her death with cans of beer, pints of milk and an impromptu street disco, playing soundtracks from her years in power.

According to local media, similar "street parties" were held in Glasgow, Bristol, west Belfast and other parts of the UK.

"Lady Thatcher was a politician with strong vision and principle," said Joseph Wu, who has lived in London for more than 10 years and works for the British Chinese Project - a non-partisan, volunteer organization that seeks to elevate the political presence of the UK Chinese community.

"She brought a new sense of purpose and direction to the people of the UK, but her single-mindedness was also very divisive and created tremendous hardship for those who missed out on her reforms."

A Guardian/ICM poll of 965 adults online, conducted in the hours after her death, found that half of all respondents looked back on her contribution as being positive for Britain, against 34 percent saying she was bad for the country.

A quarter rated her record as "very good", and most of her detractors, 20 percent of the overall sample, deemed it to have been "very bad".

Just 11 percent sat on the fence and said she was "neither good nor bad", while 5 percent said that they had no opinion.

As the grocer's daughter's story is hailed as a great success for working women, two-thirds in the poll said her example played an important role in "changing attitudes about the role in society that women can play".

Only half as many - 31 percent - believed that she changed little about gender relations in wider society "because she played by men's rules".

Contact the writer at zhangchunyan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 04/10/2013 page11)