R.I.P.

In death, as she had been in life, Margaret Thatcher proved to be a deeply divisive figure, with former opponents vocal in their criticism of her on Monday.

To no one's surprise, news of her death prompted expressions of satisfaction and even delight on social media. "May she burn in hell fires" tweeted George Galloway, who also quoted an Elvis Costello protest song, "Tramp the dirt down".

The Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, was among the first to react, offering a scathing assessment of Thatcher's political legacy. He said she had done "great hurt to the Irish and British people during her time as British prime minister. Here in Ireland her espousal of old draconian militaristic policies prolonged the war and caused great suffering."

No amount of genuine dismay at such sentiments within the rival family of Thatcher admirers – those new mobile classes of the skilled and the newly rich identified by the BBC's social survey only last week – or Fleet Street's synthetic finger-pointing could inhibit the toasts and cheers. Some people claim to have kept champagne bottles in the fridge for the occasion for decades.

Any satisfaction that Britain's first female prime minister – and their personal enemy – is dead mingled with burning anger and regrets rekindled in those who still feel that Thatcherism ruined their lives and wrecked their communities. The further north, the more visible it was among people who felt she cared nothing for them, their skills or values or for a slower, gentler world. In Scotland her legacy has crippled the Tory vote and may contribute to the breakup of Britain, one of many ironies for her own declared values.

David Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miners Association, now a shadow of its once mighty self, in part thanks to Thatcher's defeat of the miners union, spoke for millions – the white-collar teachers and clerical workers, nurses and bus drivers as well as former industrial workers – who blamed Thatcher for the loss of livelihoods that globalisation and technology might have taken anyway, but without her blunt coup de grace.

"It looks like one of the best birthdays I have ever had," said the ex-miner, 70 on Monday, who spent all of his working life at Wearmouth colliery. "There's no sympathy from me for what she did to our community. She destroyed our community, our villages and our people. For the union this could not come soon enough and I'm pleased that I have outlived her."

Thatcher supporters will recoil from such sentiments as unfair and blind to economic realities and the selfish, sectional stranglehold then exercised by unions on behalf of their members. In 1979 it could take several months to obtain a phone – a landline installed by a state monopoly, the Post Office.

But such talk will not sway the likes of Hopper."I imagine we will have a counter-demonstration when they have her funeral," he said.

"Our children have got no jobs and the community is full of problems. There's no work and no money and it's very sad the legacy she has left behind. She absolutely hated working people and I have got very bitter memories of what she did. She turned all the nation against us and the violence that was meted out on us was terrible. I would say to those people who want to mourn her that they're lucky she did not treat them like she treated us."

It was Thatcher's misfortune that her insights were not tempered with much sympathetic imagination for people unlike herself – "is he one of us?" in the famous phrase – or by humour or emollient wit, by homely style or evident personal weakness. She had tender feelings (her staff liked her), but rarely let them show in public until that last tear after her party ejected her from power with a crude, male brutality she had not expected.

Even among the party faithful it made her more admired than loved. On holiday among friends the restless workaholic was not easy company. Among those she worsted in political battles it all made it much easier to hate her. Few prime ministers in Britain have been burned in effigy.

The gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said Thatcher was "an extraordinary woman but she was extraordinary for mostly the wrong reasons. During her rule, arrests and convictions for consenting same-sex behaviour rocketed, as did queer-bashing violence and murder. Gay men were widely demonised and scapegoated for the Aids pandemic and Thatcher did nothing to challenge this vilification."

Ken Livingstone also offered a critical assessment. He blamed Thatcher for causing unemployment and leaving people dependent on welfare: "She decided when she wrote off our manufacturing industry that she could live with two or three million unemployed," he said.