RECENTLY I was invited to sign a 38 Degrees petition against building a Margaret Thatcher Museum. David Cameron has backed the project, of course, but the Maggie memorial is privately funded (it’s what she would have wanted, after all). And although I enjoy the petitioner’s spirit, I disagree with their aims.

I want a publicly funded Thatcher Museum, built in Scotland. In fact, I’m prepared to volunteer my services as curator.

Last week I took a non-political holiday to Berlin, which made me think about how we memorialise our national story in general, and its dark side in particular. You can’t visit Berlin as a tourist without confronting the city’s gloomy history.

Public monuments to the victims of fascism, to the errors of German imperial history, and to the Cold War are everywhere. The tone is apologetic, with a side helping of "never again".

Some of Berlin’s Cold War memorials combine garishness with self-flagellating propaganda. Take a trip to the GDR Museum, for example, and you’ll see a memorial to the Soviet satellite state that combines lectures on the evils of communism with a virtual-reality East German-engineered car that you can drive around concrete tower blocks.

Compare Berlin’s night-time kitsch to Britain’s vulgar tourist attractions, from the British Museum to Buckingham Palace. In contrast to the German capital, Britain’s museums present the public with a bloodless, self-serving version of history in which "we" are always the good guys. Yes, we Brits are a bit eccentric, these institutions seem to say, with a Royal Family who can barely muster an A-level between them, but basically we’re a harmless race of peace-loving people who only fight when provoked.

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if Britain was run by the modern Berliners. At least then we’d have real museums; museums that document the millions who perished at the hands of the British Empire. We’d have vivid representations of the Irish Famine, lamenting the indecency and cruelty of the men who ran other countries from London. The British Museum could be dedicated entirely to apologising for thieving all of its exhibits from other nations.

Glasgow could have 10 museums about slavery, rather than none.

These aren’t side issues. Public memorials and exhibitions are about how we present our history to outsiders, and, perhaps more importantly, to future generations.

If we want to say "never again" to the uglier parts of British history, we must memorialise them.

This brings me to Thatcher.

The 38 Degrees petition isn’t wrong to say that a £15 million Thatcher Museum would be offensive at a time of austerity. Of course it’s offensive. Thatcher’s every action was an offence to progressive opinion.

Her every decision was calculated to harm the poor at home and abroad. She was a class warrior for the strong against the weak. But the petitioners’ error is to assume that we should forget the offensive side of history. On the contrary, rather than shelter from potential offence, we should embrace it – by actively remembering the damage Thatcher did to this country.

So instead of questioning the need for a Thatcher Museum – the need is obvious – we should instead question what should feature in it. Let’s curate it ourselves.

Let me offer a few exhibits I’d like to see, presented in an overbearing, hectoring tone, with a gift shop for the bairns. It should be as tasteless as the Iron Lady herself.

Let’s curate an exhibit on North Sea oil. Let’s present a 3D physical map of Scotland, with an open wound, gushing out the black gold into Thatcher’s gub. And let’s have Thatcher’s dole-queue election poster, “Labour Isn’t Working”, in the background, as an ironic reminder that the commodity that should have made Scotland rich instead bankrolled mass unemployment.

Yuppies, of course, deserve to be immortalised as well. I’d probably remember these Thatcherite success stories with some creepy mechanical puppets. You could pull a lever to operate yuppie legs and boots, which would crush down on the remains of British industry, which they asset-stripped to the point of extinction. Meanwhile, speakers in the wall would pour out the white noise of business-speak babble: Buy! Buy! Buy! Sell! Sell! Sell!

For the public sector exhibit, I’d hire some out-of-work actors to portray shareholders. As soon as you enter the room, they would rob you, and then give you a lecture on the virtues of competition.

Of course, we’d need to remember Thatcher’s role in combating the worldwide evils of socialism.

So let’s get a puppet show of the various right-wing dictators she curried favour with, from General Pinochet and General Suharto to the Saudi royals and even Saddam Hussein. Let’s have them shaking little puppet hands with representatives of the British arms industry, the major success story of her time in government.

Let’s have a Spitting Image-style puppet of her son Mark Thatcher, made in her likeness: Mark, the war profiteer, who used government connections to sell weapons to mercenaries in Equatorial Guinea.

What about the victims of Thatcherism? The best memorial we can give them is to break up the imperial state she loved and reverse the policies she fought for. But one thing is clear: we must not forget what she did. That’s why opposing a Thatcher Museum is a mistake.

Let’s not confuse commemoration with veneration. On the contrary, let’s remember Thatcher, and together with her all the other dark parts of British history both recent and ancient.

And let’s learn to laugh at Thatcher. Her reactionary values were a ludicrous monument to the absurdity of mainstream politics. And despite her best efforts, women today aren’t simpering little housewives, and sexual minorities are growing in confidence. Britain is far more multi-cultural than when Thatcher took power.

Yes, British capitalism remains strong (albeit unstable), public industries have been flogged to rip-off firms, and the housing market, in particular, is a disaster. But her biggest political success, New Labour, is in crisis, and the British imperial state she loved is on the verge of breaking apart. Her project is dying on its arse. Let’s make sure our children know: Britain has made many mistakes – and we can’t allow it to happen again.