SIR – Alan Holdsworth starts his letter “Ask any working class person what Mrs Thatcher did for them” (T&A, April 12).
Well, I’m working class, I left school at 15 and went to work as a farm labourer. I progressed to labouring in a slaughterhouse and by 1979 I was a roofer with a wife and two small children and, believe me, we were poor and becoming poorer.
Every site I was working on, be it Ford at Halewood and Basildon, NCB sites in Yorkshire and Wales, the Magnet Joinery in Keighley, we weren’t allowed through the gates because they were so heavily picketed.
We struggled on through those early Thatcher years, but by 1985, when she had crushed the unions, I was working seven days a week, had a car, a three-bedroomed house and earning upwards of £700 a week.
I salute Margaret Thatcher for giving everyone who wanted to work the chance, for taking on the unions and beating them, for taking on the Argentinians and beating them, for standing her ground with the IRA.
The lady marched head-on into cannon fire at every chance and the world’s a poorer place without her.
When she died, we celebrated her life, certainly not her death.
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