Margaret Thatcher protest ring leader cashed in on right-to-buy scheme
Romany Blythe, the woman behind an internet campaign to “celebrate” Margaret Thatcher’s death, made a sizeable profit from the Iron Lady’s right-to-buy scheme by purchasing her council house, it has emerged.
Thatcher protest leader Romany Blythe's former home in Islington, North London Photo: National Pictures / Johnathan Adam Davies
By Victoria Ward
8:49AM BST 19 Apr 2013
The 45-year-old drama teacher made £150,000 when she sold her Islington flat four years after buying it from the council.
Lady Thatcher created the right-to-buy scheme when she came to power in the early 1980s in a bid to increase home ownership.
Council house residents were offered the chance to purchase their properties at low prices from local authorities.
Miss Blythe, from Worthing, West Sussex, purchased the leasehold of a flat in a pleasant Victorian town house for £141,000 from Islington Council in June 2006.
Four years later, she sold the North London property for £298,000. If she had sold it within three years, she would have had to repay some of the proceeds to the council.
Miss Blythe spoke about the scheme at a party to mark Baroness Thatcher’s death last Saturday.
She said: "The council houses were sold, what a wonderful thing to be able to own your own home and I have no problem with poorer people being able to buy their own home but that money went straight to central government.
"It wasn't used to build more council houses for people for affordable rents. Teachers have to come in to work from miles away. People can't afford to live in central London."
She added: "I think Thatcher was a despot. She was cold, calculating and she knew exactly what she was doing.
"I don't care about Thatcher, I didn't care about her dying, I don't care about celebrating her death. I care about the issues and I care about being able to mark that.
"I am not interested in celebrating someone's death, I am interested that there is a whitewash of who she was, and that she is not made out to be some wonderful woman.
"History does not forget"
Miss Blythe rallied fellow protesters by creating a Facebook group called The Witch is Dead, which attracted more than 5,000 members and called for “demonstrations of disapproval” across the country.
A number of places listed on the site were locations of riots and demonstrations that took place last week, including Bristol city centre and George Square in Glasgow.
The University of East London graduate teaches drama and arts and has worked with a workshop company that visits secondary schools.
She specialises in “facilitating workshops for young, excluded and potentially criminalised individuals and uses drama techniques she has developed to explore resolution of conflict and oppression”, according to the company’s website.
Miss Blythe told The Daily Telegraph that her dislike of the former prime minister came from being told she might never find work on leaving school in 1984.
