For some dumb reason, the British Conservatives are trying to forget their glorious past. According to this article, it is now the American conservative movement that is ensuring the Thatcher legacy. Shame. (Thanks to Peter Ryan for forwarding):
IN BRITAIN the Tories may be trying to escape the shadow of Baroness Thatcher. But in the United States any right-thinking Conservative, including the three Shadow Cabinet members who arrived here this week — is still seeking to bask in her reflected glory.
David Cameron, the new Tory leader, may be publicly distancing himself from his predecessor, seeking to brand himself the centrist “heir to Blair”. But such is the former Prime Minister’s enduring popularity in America that her political legacy has now been exported across the Atlantic.
In Britain the Thatcher Foundation closed down two days after last year’s general election: funding had all-but dried up. The Margaret Thatcher Charitable Trust shut up shop in 2003, having not reported any trading activity since the end of 1999 when its gross income was just £299.
In Washington, by contrast, the right-wing Heritage Foundation recently set up the Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom endowed with a $3 million (£1.7 million) gift that the US-based Thatcher Foundation had raised from American admirers. Heritage promises to raise an additional $6 million for the centre and has received $4.3 million of this from more than 30 wealthy benefactors.
That means the only significant Thatcher legacy left in Britain — apart from the former Prime Minister herself — is the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust, which manages her papers stored at Churchill College, Cambridge. It is now cross-subsidised by the Thatcher Foundation in America.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 8:09 PM
