Thatcher introduced the Disability Living Allowance in the early nineties believing that those with genuine impediments may require extra financial support for everyday requirements, such as heating and adapted equipment. In recent times the coalition Government has set plans in motion to cut the allowance by 20%. But for once let’s set our political beliefs aside and focus on the day when he heard Thatcher had a disability herself and one that is wasting her away.
Back in 2008 Thatcher’s daughter Carol, whose most recent claim to fame was eating animal testicles in the jungle for a popular reality television show, published a memoir revealing her mother had been showing signs of dementia since the late nineties.
The former PM confused the Falklands and Bosnia when holding a conversation about the war in Yugoslavia, she would forget her late husband, Denis had passed away and she also suffered minor strokes. Carol also expressed the mental effects she has when being forced to remind her mother about her father’s death and the sadness she bears when she is asked if she witnessed her husband’s death when he passed away in 2003.
Carol went on to reveal her mother increasingly found it difficult to communicate to those around her; she even found it difficult sometimes to remember her own daughter.
Despite her mental illness Thatcher can still remember events which happened in her childhood and teenage years. She recalls her role assisting her father in his local grocery shop in Lincolnshire, tell you cost of butter & sugar in 1938, yet struggles to be able to tell you what day of the week it is.
Margret Thatcher is now 86, yet the first signs of her Alzheimer’s can be traced back to when she was 75.
We are not trying to portray the former PM in a good light – we are human after all! But back in the nineties she made a difference for disabled people, whether her actions were right or wrong at the time is there for others to judge. But there was little point asking Thatcher for a statement as she has probably forgotten all about it!
The Iron Lady is now at local cinemas across the UK.
