“Thatcher described Nelson Mandela as a ‘terrorist.’ I was there. I saw her lips move. May she burn in the hellfires,” – Tweeter Comments of British MP George Galloway.

Margaret Thatcher was the most divisive and destructive Prime Minister of modern times,” said director Ken Loach according to a Guardian report. “Mass unemployment, factory closrues, communities destroyed — this is her legacy. She was a fighter and her enemy was the British working class … How should we honour her? Let’s privatize her funeral. Put it out to competitive tender and accept the cheapest bid. It’s what she would have wanted.”

She did make war on a lot of people in Britain, and I don’t think it helped our society,” Tony Benn, a 1970s’ labour minister and Thatcher’s political opponent, said in a Reuters report.

“What she did to the mining industry was unforgivable,” Chris Kitchen, secretary for the National Union of Mineworkers, told Sky News. “My sympathy goes out to the family, as obviously, it’s a bereavement. But [after] the disservice she did to the country, I won’t be shedding any tears.”

“Hmmm. Margaret Thatcher dies. Think I will stay off Twitter until all the ‘tributes’ are over,” tweeted Labour councillor Tina Bourne. “Ditto! Chin chin,” she then tweeted, responding to someone’s picture of a bottle of champagne to celebrate Thatcher’s death. She later said, “it was a crass insensitive thing to tweet, and I should know better.”

“Margaret Thatcher did great hurt to the Irish and British people during her time as British prime minister,” wrote Gerry Adams, president of the Irish party Sinn Féin, in a statement on the party’s website. “Working class communities were devastated in Britain because of her policies.

Her role in international affairs was equally belligerent … Here in Ireland her espousal of old draconian militaristic policies prolonged the war and caused great suffering. She embraced censorship, collusion and the killing of citizens by covert operations … Thatcher will be especially remembered for her shameful role during the epic hunger strikes of 1980 and ’81. Her Irish policy failed miserably.”

“My gut reaction now is what it was at the time when she said my father [former African National Congress president Oliver Tambo] was the leader of a terrorist [organization]. I don’t think she ever got it that every day she opposed sanctions, more people were dying, and that the best thing for the assets she wanted to protect was democracy,” said Dali Tambo in a report by the Guardian. “Many lives were lost. It’s a shame that we could never call her one of the champions of the liberation struggle.

Normally we say that when one of us goes, the ANC ancestors will meet them at the pearly gates and give them a standing ovation. I think it’s quite likely that when Margaret Thatcher reaches the pearly gates, the ANC will boycott the occasion.”

“She created today’s housing crisis. She created the banking crisis. And she created the benefit crisis. It was her government that started putting people on incapacity benefit rather than register them as unemployed because the Britain she inherited was broadly full employment. She decided when she wrote off our manufacturing industry that she could live with two or three million unemployed, and the benefits bill, the legacy of that, we are struggling with today. In actual fact, every real problem we face today is the legacy of the fact that she was fundamentally wrong,” former mayor of London Ken Livingstone told the Guardian.

Homages to Thatcher

More stories about the departure of Margaret Thatcher:

“But in the edgy south London neighbourhood of Brixton, sworn enemies of the former Iron Lady held a street party to celebrate the death of former prime minister.

Holding placards saying “Rejoice – Thatcher is dead”, around 200 people gathered in the neighbourhood, a hotspot of alternative culture, and toasted her passing by drinking and dancing to hip-hop and reggae songs blaring from sound systems.

“I’m very, very pleased. She did so much damage to this country,” said one man brandishing an original newspaper billboard from 1990 announcing Thatcher’s resignation.

Others scrawled “Good Riddance” on the pavement.

“We’ve got the bunting out at home,” said Clare Truscott, a woman in her 50s wearing a sparkly beret and holding a homemade sign reading “Ding dong, the witch is dead”.

“I’m from the north, where there were no jobs, where the industry was rapidly disappearing, and her policies ensured it went more quickly.”

Brixton was the scene of fierce riots in 1981, two years after Thatcher became prime minister.

Meanwhile, in Scotland’s biggest city Glasgow more than 300 people gathered to hold their own party.

Anti-capitalist campaigners shouted, “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie” while the crowd replied “dead, dead, dead”.

Coal miners were among Thatcher’s bitterest foes during her 1979-90 premiership — and for one senior mining official marking his birthday on Monday, her death was the icing on the cake.

“I’m having a drink to it right now,” David Hopper, regional secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in northeast England, told AFP with unabashed glee.

“It’s a marvellous day. I’m absolutely delighted. It’s my 70th birthday today and it’s one of the best I’ve had in my life.”

Others on the left also hailed Thatcher’s departure as a cause for celebration.

“We’ll be glad to see the back of her,” Judith Orr, editor of the far-left Socialist Worker weekly newspaper, told AFP.

“She ruined the lives of tens of millions of working class people in Britain.

“And she rejoiced in war.

“That was one of her most disgusting moments, but there is a long list of crimes.””

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