By the way...
April 8 2013
Picture: openbuildings.com
Margaret Thatcher may have been a cheerleader for privatisation, but did you know that the only (I think) nationalisation she enacted was for Liverpool's museums and art galleries, in 1986? The Militant Labour council in Liverpool was threatening to close the museums, like the Walker Art Gallery above, and sell the contents. So she nationalised the lot.
Update - a reader provides more intriguing background to the case:
[...] let' s not forget that the NG and other art institutions refused the Liverpool local authority collections in 1986 to their discredit, so what option was there to preserve them but to make them a national collection. Should that have been done and did it skew other regional collections? Interesting on several historical points.
