Did Thatcher Get The Trump Treatment?

I've been trying to follow the Trump visit over the last few days. However, I've been more preoccupied with events from the past. I've been watching quite a lot of documentaries about Margaret Thatcher. Both the BBC's Thatcher: A Very British Revolution series and also the Martin Durkin Channel 4 documentary Margaret Thatcher: Death of a Revolutionary.

(Fascinating TV)

Growing up in a very working class part of the north-east I was raised to despise Margaret Thatcher. She was the very devil incarnate. In my formative years I parroted this view and genuinely believed her to be an awful leader (and person). Over time though my views have softened, almost to the point of outright admiration.

It's difficult to judge these things though. I was born in 1982. So though I was born into, and lived through much of her period at the helm, I was far too young to make any sort of experienced judgement.

Looking back I think that perhaps the various adults in my life were a little bit wrong about her, but watching documentaries and reading history are no substitute for real lived experience. So who am I to say that she wasn't as bad as they seemed to think she was. Or that those days were weren't as hard and as unfair as I'm told they were.

Am I just being reactionary myself in swinging away from the view I was raised to have - that of complete and total sympathy towards the miners, etc.  To the exact opposite opinion. That the unions were a plague on the nation needing remedy, and that Thatcher was absolutely right in challenging them.

Like with Trump, I wonder if the media are partly to blame. Were the parents and teachers in my life encouraged to hate her like many today are encouraged to hate Trump? Again, it's hard to judge, and it's a little bit patronising and perhaps also naive of me to think or say, "You're wrong. You were just brainwashed by the media. They wanted you to hate her!".

Maybe I'm the one being brainwashed now by the media with these documentaries o_O

The true lesson I guess is that it's hard to ever have a balanced opinion. We naturally want to see people as either villains or heroes. Seeing a complex social landscape through the polarising lens of right and wrong.

So as I continue to delve into this history perhaps I should detach myself a little and be a little less quick in passing judgement.