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David Torrance: Did Thatcher get raw deal over her Sermon on the Mound?

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Published Date: 17 May 2008
By DAVID TORRANCE
Twenty years on, DAVID TORRANCE looks at the mostly negative reaction to the then prime minister's address
IN 1558, the Protestant reformer John Knox published The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. By regiment, he meant government, and the monstrous women he had in mind were the Roman Catholic sovereigns of the day, Mary ...



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  • Last Updated: 19 May 2008 12:08 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
 
1

Sean K,

Elgin 17/05/2008 04:19:49
David Torrance is energetically trying to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher, and her socially divisive policies. Those of us who were around during her period in office have better memories of the disdain which she and her Ministers regarded the low-paid and the unemployed.

Our objection to her "Sermon on the Mound" was to her making a virtue of policies that pushed millions out of work, closed down our coal industry, and alienated much of the lower paid groups. This ran counter to the long tradition of social concern and justice for the poor that permeated much of Scots society since the days of the moral philosophers, poets like Burns, and political writers like Tom Johnston.

To try to paint anti-Thatcherism as being similar to John Knox's diatribes against the excesses of Roman Catholicism in the early Reformation days, is quite dishonest and an obviously contrived slur.
2

frank mcbride,

lusitania 17/05/2008 11:51:14
#2. Hugh V McLachlan.

Your defence of Thatcher is your right.

However, please don't try to imply that anti-Englishness was the root cause of the approbrium cast upon her for her "sermon on the Mound"

To quote Paul in that speech, after invoking St. Francis in her election victory euphoria was shear hypocricy.

Indeed, in quote the egomanical Paul rather than Jesus, she exposed her lack of Christian values.

"If a man will not work, he shall not eat.", Paul, is in stark contradiction to the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the words of Jesus - who is my neighbour?

Christians, and indeed all caring people people, were outraged by Thatcher's hijacking of Christianity as an excuse for free market libertarianism.

As I have said, you have a right to defend Thatcher. However, you have no right to attempt to demean people, who still have a belief in common humanity, by suggesting that the reason for their antipathy to Thatcher, and particularly her "sermon on the Mound", was based on "parochial anti-Englishness".
3

Dr. James Wilkie,

Vienna 17/05/2008 17:32:58
Telegram from Downing Street to the General Assembly after the Sermon on the Mound: "Please consider renaming the High Kirk of St. Giles as The Cathedral of the Blessed Margaret."

Telegram from the Mound to Downing Street: "Several St. Margarets in calendar of saints. Which one do you mean?"

Downing Street to The Mound: "The Blessed Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister and Saviour of the British Empire, etc. Your answer please."

The Mound to Downing Street: "Agreed. Send the bones by return."

4

Conan the Librarian™,

17/05/2008 18:00:32
Being an atheist and a Nat,I say to David Torrance;

Go ye forth, and multiply.
5

EWB,

UK 17/05/2008 18:35:26
It was reported on Radio 4 News at 1 p.m. today that had Tony Blair delivered the same address to the same audience a few years ago, it would have been warmly received.

Iain McWhirter also commented on this "sermon" on BBC Radio and said that the mood in Scotland 20 years ago was so anti-Thatcher that even if she had merely read out from the telephone directory, she would have got a hostile reception.

Perhaps #3, the audience should have seen the Good Samaritan as an Englishman living in Scotland.

 

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