Thanks to the TUC for reminding us just how disgusting many left-wingers are

The above T-shirt, featuring a gravestone with Mrs. Thatcher's name on it and the slogan "A Generation of Trade Unionists Will Dance on Thatcher's Grave", is apparently on sale at the TUC conference. It's one of two T-shirts being marketed by the Derbyshire Unemployed Workers Centre, where, no doubt,  the unemployed go to hear that their problems are entirely the fault of Tory toff bastards and The Cuts and bankers and everyone who speaks properly and private schools and businessmen and Mitt Romney and, of course, Baroness Thatcher.

The other T-shirt features Mrs. Thatcher's Spitting Image puppet and the slogan "Hey ho the witch is dead". According to the Telegraph: "Attached to the plastic is a notice urging the buyer only to wear when Lady Thatcher has died. It says: “In the event of Thatcher's death open bag and wear Tee shirt immediately." (Full story here.) The Centre gets £2 from each sale.

My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I'm pretty sure the TUC and the Labour Party are still quite closely linked - Ed Bollocks was at the conference this morning, talking mendacious gobbleygook as usual. The unions give a lot of money to Labour and retain impressive voting powers - after all, they're the reason Ed Miliband is the current Labour leader.

And yet, thanks in part to our current Home Secretary, the Tory Party is "the nasty party".

I first came face to face with Tory toffs and elements of the Hard Left at university. The Tories were mainly very silly but most of them were likable and recognisably human. In contrast, the Hard Leftists were invariably the most disgusting apologies for humanity I'd ever met - ugly, ill-dressed, hate-filled little demons with serious personality disorders, spitting hatred and rage, determined to destroy everything that was beautiful, noble, decent or useful - probably because those things stood as reminders of their myriad failings. For reasons I needn't go into, I once found a delegation of them in my room. After throwing them out, I seriously considered calling in an exorcist.

Naturally, no Trade Union leader or Labour MP has managed to bring themselves to condemn these vile artefacts, but Dan Hodges, a leftist commentator in the Telegraph with whom I frequently find myself in agreement, is very sound on the issue:

T-shirts glorying in the death of Mrs Thatcher are sick. Taking out your political frustrations on an ailing pensioner is cowardly. And the whole exercise is utterly devoid of any morality. 

So instead of the usual excuses, and caveats and deflections, why doesn’t the Left just break the habit of a lifetime, hold up its hands and acknowledge it's in the wrong? Let’s not have any emotive rhetoric about struggling miners and the oppressed working class. Or meaningless entreaties to “remember what she did to the country”. Or conspiratorial rambling about “stitch-ups” by the “Tory press”. 

The TUC should make a terse statement saying the T-shirts will be removed from sale. Brendan Barber should issue a short comment in which he makes clear the T-shirts do not reflect the values of his movement.

Well said. But the only problem, Dan, is that I'm not at all sure that these T-shirts don't  in fact reflect the values of the movement pretty accurately.

Whenever Mrs. Thatcher dies, I intend to avoid all forms of media for a week in order not to be sickened by hordes of frenzied goblins shrieking out incoherent messages of hate whose only real meaning is "I loathe the world because I loathe myself".