Whilst I agree that respect is important, with someone like Thatcher there is bound to be a schism between the two sides. Whilst I'm certainly not suggesting that having parties etc is nice or respectful, it's not intended to be.
Look at it this way, from a far more extreme example, there was an awful lot of effort made to consolidate the pro- and anti- Gaddafi groups after the end of the civil war in Libya, both sides had their reasons to feel as they did, whether the other side or outside observers agreed with those opinions or not. However, what concerns me is that, in the UK, it seems to be put across purely as people doing it to be rude, and very little attention has been paid to why these people are acting as they do. There seems to be a general impression that they are just 'sore' because they got the ****ty end of the stick when Thatcher was in Office.
As you say, this isn't really about Thatcher, who left the Political scene decades ago, it's about the legacy she left behind. Of course the difference is that it is unlikely that pro- and anti- Thatcherites will start killing each other, but simply dismissing them as being disrespectful is, in my opinion, the worst way for the media to approach the problem. There is a lot of very strong feeling about the matter, and ignoring one side because their methodology might be offensive to the other may cause more problems than it solves.
