Bob Young's strongest memory of Margaret Thatcher's time in power is the brown envelope he received in March 1985 two days before he was due back at work after the yearlong miners' strike.
The letter, handed to the Scot's then-12-year-old daughter, contained his P45, the form a worker gets in Britain when leaving a job or being fired. Young had been chairman of the National Union of Mineworkers at the Comrie colliery in Fife, eastern Scotland, and helped organize the walkout.
"I despised her during the strike and I'll never forgive her for what she's done," said Young, 69, now a local councilor for the Labour Party, the main opposition force in the U.K. Parliament. "I'm not glad someone has died, but she was on one side of the fence and I was on the other."