John Sainsbury: The Iron Lady's Soft Spot for the NHS

John Sainsbury is a professor of history at Brock University.

The Iron Lady, the much-heralded biopic about Margaret Thatcher’s remarkable political career — and, jarringly, her subsequent dementia — is dividing audiences in Britain along much the same regional and class lines as she divided the country during her 11 years as prime minister.

The film opened in North American cinemas on Friday, enabling Canadians to join the Brits in revisiting her epic battles.

Watch as Thatcher (convincingly portrayed by Meryl Streep) faces down the National Union of Mineworkers, goes to war against Argentina to recover the Falkland Islands, humiliates the Tory “wets,” and confounds Britain’s Europhiles and their unpatriotic enthusiasm for a common European currency.

Thatcher — despite invoking St. Francis of Assisi when she arrived at Number 10 Downing Street in 1979 — was a conviction politician, who was not afraid of making enemies. But there was one item missing from her list of targets: Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

Think about it: The doyenne of free-market capitalism accepted socialized medicine, and was even an enthusiast for it....