Community leaders in Brampton have spoken against Margaret Thatcher's ceremonial funeral tomorrow - almost 30 years after the start of the strike at Cortonwood.
Denise Fitzpatrick, 66, of Spring Drive, was secretary of the Women's Action Group following the outbreak of the 1984-85 miners’ strike at Cortonwood Colliery, touring the country picketing and raising money for those who had downed tools in the village.
Her reaction to the death of Lady Thatcher, who died of a stroke on Monday morning, was a far cry from the vitriol directed against her when in power. She said: “It's not going to make any difference now with the way things are. It doesn't change what happened.”
But with a husband and two sons employed in mining in the 1980s she said she could not forget the bitterness of the strike and that, although the former prime minister had died, her policies continued to have a crippling effect on Brampton.
Her recollection was not without its lighter points, however, and she remembers an amusing incident after being escorted by a policeman on her way to join the picket line.
The officer had asked if anyone wanted to get to the colliery - though Denise did not realise he meant to get through the picket line and work.
“My sons were in the picket line,” she said, “and one of them saw me so he shouted ‘that's me mam!’ But then the rest of them picked it up and, before long, there were about 100 miners all shouting ‘mam, mam’. For years afterwards there were men 20 years older than me calling me mam.”
Denise's daughter, Cortonwood Comeback Centre chairman and Brampton Parish Coun Denise Lelliott had a similar reaction to the news, though felt her division of the nation did not deserve the ceremonial funeral at St Paul's Cathedral she will be granted on Wednesday.
Denise, 42, said: “I've no strong feelings one way or another. I'm not glad she's dead because, at the end of the day, she's just an old woman who died.
"But I despise her and everything she did to this community and feel very strongly she shouldn't have any kind of special funeral. I don't think she deserves it. That's reserved for people who do a great service to the country but I think she did it a great disservice.”
But she added she was more concerned about the policies of the present government.
She said: “What the Conservatives did to our communities in the ‘80s angers me but what they’re doing now angers me even more because I think it's even worse than what Margaret Thatcher did.
"They created this culture of benefit dependency but now they're finishing them twice over.”
Coun Frank Hodgkiss, 64, is chairman of the parish council and was an engineer at Cortonwood from 1964-72 though he worked in the plant hire industry at the time of the strike.
He said: “She was certainly the devil of the time and there are a lot of happy people in Brampton this week. It wasn't nice seeing your community brought to its knees at that time but we went back with our heads high.”
