Anger as V&A museum lists Margaret Thatcher as Punch and Judy villain - Daily Mail

• A puppet of Baroness Thatcher from Spitting Image is also in the exhibition 

By Liz Hull and Tash Mosheim

Published: 19:29 EDT, 17 March 2024 | Updated: 03:10 EDT, 18 March 2024

The Victoria and Albert Museum was facing calls last night for it to be stripped of its public funding after naming Margaret Thatcher in a list of 'unpopular public figures' alongside Hitler and Osama bin Laden.

Britain's first female prime minister is described as a 'contemporary villain' in a current display on British humour through the ages.

This appears under a set of Victorian Punch and Judy puppets with a caption headed: 'That's the way to do it?'

The words state: 'Over the years, the evil character in this seaside puppet show has shifted from the Devil to unpopular public figures including Adolf Hitler, Margaret Thatcher and Osama bin Laden, to offer contemporary villains.'

A puppet of Baroness Thatcher from the satirical television show Spitting Image is also included in the comedy exhibition at the London museum whose director is former Labour MP Tristram Hunt.

According to 2022-2023 figures, the museum received most of its income, more than £67million, from the taxpayer via the Department of Culture. 

What the sign says 

'Punch and Judy is seen as traditionally British, but it evolved from the 16th-century Italian street performance commedia dell'arte. 

Although aimed at a family audience, the original narrative in its Victorian heyday featured domestic violence, hangings and racist caricatures - a jarring and unacceptable combination for modern audiences. 

Over the years, the evil character in this seaside puppet show has shifted from the Devil to unpopular public figures including Adolf Hitler, Margaret Thatcher and Osama bin Laden to offer contemporary villains.'

Last night the V&A was branded 'disgraceful' and 'moronic' amid calls for ministers to axe its financial backing.

Sir Connor Burns, a former trade minister and Conservative MP for Bournemouth, said: 'Whoever wrote that caption should be called out publicly for being a moron, or perhaps more usefully sent to read a Ladybird book of modern world history.

'It is sadly symptomatic of the woke, luvvie-dom nonsense that persists in our public institutions.

'They should be given a serious rap across the knuckles and a clarion instruction to grow up.'

Former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith agreed.

'Given the fact that MPs are now regularly receiving death threats, myself included, from extremists and others, this V&A exhibition is ill-thought and mendacious,' he said.

'They must live in a bubble, away from the real world, to think that it is rational to propose that a politician of the stature of Margaret Thatcher would equate to any of those mass murderers and vile human beings.

'This sort of idiocy begs the question about funding. It would be a good idea if those who thought of this did a hard day's work in among the rest of us, rather than sitting on their lofty perch producing stupid ideas.'

Nile Gardiner, a former aide to Baroness Thatcher and director of The Heritage Foundation's Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, also commented. 

'Disgraceful from the Victoria and Albert Museum. It should be stripped of public funding,' he wrote on X.

Political commentator and businessman Russell Quirk told GB News: 'Thatcher was the mother of entrepreneurship. How anyone can say she was a villain – she was one of political history's heroes.

'She stood up against the militant unions to make sure they didn't destroy the economy and social fabric of Britain. She should be applauded rather than labelled a villain. She gave ordinary people access to wealth, aspiration and success, and for that she should be heralded a hero.'

It is not the first time the museum's treatment of Baroness Thatcher, who died in 2013, has provoked controversy.

In 2015 the V&A was widely criticised for refusing to accept a selection of her suits and handbags. 

Her family offered hundreds of items, from her wedding dress to her red prime ministerial dispatch box, because they wanted them kept together on public display rather than auctioned off and scattered across the world.

But, according to reports, the museum 'politely declined', saying it collected only items of 'outstanding aesthetic or technical quality' rather than those with 'intrinsic social historical value'.

Bosses later claimed no formal offer had been made. A year on, the V&A did put on an exhibition of some of the former Conservative prime minister's clothes, including the distinctive royal blue suit she wore as she voted in the 1987 general election.

At the time Claire Wilcox, senior curator of fashion, said this constituted 'a record of the working wardrobe of one of the most influential and powerful women of the 20th century'.

The V&A is the world's largest museum of decorative art and design with more than two million objects. 

It was contacted yesterday but no-one was available for comment.

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2024-03-18 07:10:41Z
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