Margaret Thatcher included alongside Osama Bin Laden and Hitler as ‘villain’ in V&A exhibition

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Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was described as a “contemporary villain” alongside Osama Bin Laden and Adolf Hitler in an exhibition on the V&A.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London named the late Mrs Thatcher alongside the terrorist and the dictator as an instance unpopular public figures portrayed by Punch and Judy through the years.

The exhibit, which reveals two puppets made in 1975, appeared to elucidate how Punch and Judy caricatures have modified during the last century.

The description learn: “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 tv present Spitting Image can be included in the comedy exhibition on the London establishment.

The publicly-funded museum has confronted indignant backlash from Conservative MPs, who described the comparability as “ill-thought” and “mendacious”.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith mentioned: “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.”

Nile Gardiner, a former aide to Baroness Thatcher and director of The Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom, mentioned: “Disgraceful from the Victoria and Albert Museum. It should be stripped of public funding.”

According to 2022-2023 figures, the museum acquired most of its earnings, greater than £67million, from the taxpayer by way of the Department of Culture.

In 2015 the V&A was broadly criticised for refusing to simply accept a collection of her fits and purses. The museum was approached for remark.

Her household supplied a whole bunch of things, from her marriage ceremony gown to her purple prime ministerial dispatch field, as a result of they needed them saved collectively on public show somewhat than auctioned off and scattered internationally.

But, in line with experiences, the museum “politely declined”, saying it collected solely objects of ‘outstanding aesthetic or technical quality’ somewhat than these with “intrinsic social historical value”.