'I set my alarm early so I could hate Thatcher for longer,' union president Tosh McDonald tells Labour Party conference

Jacob Jarvis26 September 2018

A speaker at the Labour Party conference told crowds he loathed Margaret Thatcher so much he set his alarm early to “hate her for an hour longer” each day.

Tosh McDonald, the executive committee president of train drivers’ union ASLEF, made the statement on Tuesday.

When the former Conservative Prime Minister died, in April 2013, he said he stopped doing this.

But he told of how he still wakes up an hour before he needs to anyway.

Tosh McDonald addressed crowds in Liverpool on Tuesday
Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

Speaking to a crowd in Liverpool on Tuesday, he said: “I say this many times and it’s still true: I hated her.

“I wish I could be like Jeremy and rise above it but I can’t.

“I did set my alarm clock an hour earlier than I needed just so I could hate her for an hour longer.

“Since she died I don’t do that anymore, I just set my alarm at the right time.

“But I still wake up an hour earlier. I can’t help it.”

Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979
PA

Before delivering this line Mr McDonald, who described himself as a motorcyclist and Harley rider as well as a Union president on Twitter, told the crowd how Baroness Thatcher had come into power shortly before he began his work on the railways.

This is not the first time Mr McDonald has mentioned the anecdote, having done so in previous interviews.

ASLEF, which stands for Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, was formed in 1880 and has four delegates, including Mr McDonald, at the Labour Party conference.

After Mr McDonald’s speech, the group wrote on Twitter: “ASLEF President @McDonaldTosh gets not one standing ovation, but two telling conference to unite behind our leadership to end the scandal of privatisation of services.”

During Baroness Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister, from 1979 to 1990, a number of state owned businesses which were linked to the railways were sold off along with her policy of privatisation.

Then under her successor John Major the railways were privatised as part of the Railways Act 1993.

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