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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: The legacy of Thatcherism?
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Mark Betts
Ship's Navigation Light
# 17074
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:
With the greatest of respect (because he's Admin) I didn't realise Marvin was a tory boy - I thought all the atheists on here were guardianistas.
No offence! ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
Hey, I'm not an atheist so your presupposition can still stand for a while yet!
OK - it doesn't really matter, because nearly everyone else is a Guardianista on here, regardless of what they believe. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
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Mark Betts
Ship's Navigation Light
# 17074
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Posted
I couldn't resist posting this:
Margaret Thatcher left a dark legacy that has still not disappeared (The Guardian)
BTW. I don't remember Margaret Thatcher being particularly religious. Tony Blair was (is), as we all know - but I never saw that as a bad thing, whatever else might be said about him.
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"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
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Qoheleth.
Semi-Sagacious One
# 9265
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Posted
... and then there was the privatisation of the electricity industry and so-called "downward pressure on prices". So now we're reliant on a nationalised French nuclear industry and a nationalised Russian gas industry to keep the UK lights on. And the Americans and French to build any new kit when/if we get round to it. Post-Thatcher, no-one has the responsibility to keep the UK lights on.
Oh yes, and abolition of the GLC and the loss of any strategic planning of services and infrastructure for the capital. And then the abolition of ILEA.
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The Benedictine Community at Alton Abbey offers a friendly, personal service for the exclusive supply of Rosa Mystica incense.
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
You might be interested, Mark Betts, to hear that Maggie spoke quite highly of Orthodoxy in her autobiography - even though she found it baffling compared to the plain, no-nonsense Methodism of her childhood.
For some reason I feel that I'm going to regret telling you that ...
@Marvin - you're highly selective of course. I know people who had good jobs in the university sector only to have been booted out on their arses in recent years. I'm one of them. So fuck off.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
Hers was the politics of revenge. The miners brought down the Tories under Heath, ergo she buried the mines.
I remembered that in 79, the despair amongst my fellow students, that there was a sense of despair and last one out turn off the light. Who woud've know that in 2 or 3 short years those same people who be sellig out to embrace Maggie's Market?
Posts: 3845 | From: A new Jerusalem | Registered: Apr 2009
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I loathed her - but I don't think it is her 'fault' that things turned out the way they did.
If it hadn't been her, someone else would have been elected to take the line she did. The electorate wanted a strong leader who would turn the country around'. They were fed up with Edward Heath's seeming weakness.
Surely Leo, even you can remember that wasn't a choice the electorate ever got the chance to make. Mrs Thatcher won a leadership election against Edward Heath on a franchise of Conservative party MPs. The only choice the electorate got was between a Labour Party led by Jim Callaghan and a Conservative one led by Mrs Thatcher.
After that, she had an easy run against an opposition which then proceeded resolutely to commit hari-kari in public. The only thing that would have given Foot a remote chance in 1983 would have been if the UK had lost the Falklands War.
As it happened, the Labour Party in 1983 was saved from the wipeout which at the time it richly deserved by the country's bizarre voting system, which gave them on 27.6% of the vote, 209 seats and the Alliance on 25.4%, 23 seats. That was the moment which convinced me we need serious electoral reform. I still view with disgust anyone whom I discover voted against it in the referendum.
It's all very well the left moaning, but if they had been doing mature politics in stead of committing hari-kari, perhaps the years 1970-90 wouldn't have been something most of us non-politicals look back on as a disgusting nightmare.
Hawk says
quote:
If the electorate had been as sensible in '82 or '87,
The Electorate had no choice in 1982 and not much of one even by 1987.
I am not a supporter of hers, but she was neither as great nor as wicked as so many people maintain, and people piping and dancing in Glasgow when somebody has died is in bad taste.
And is, as one person has suggested, "her legacy the Hillsborough cover up"? That's a small piece of seamy underbelly, but it's hardly a legacy in comparison with recovering the Falklands (good), defeating Arthur Scargill (necessary but rough, as the alternative would have been worse) or wrecking the industrial base of large parts of the country (bad).
I sometimes wonder whether as the electorate, we got what we deserved. When Heath asked 'who governs Britain?' we gave an answer that made everything that followed inevitable.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
Hers was the politics of revenge. The miners brought down the Tories under Heath, ergo she buried the mines.
No, I don't think so. In fact, one could argue that she wasn't good enough at revenge, which was why she kept so many pro-Europe types in senior positions in her cabinet and didn't promote her own supporters very effectively, which led to the ERM debacle.
The unions of the 1970s had to be broken, so she did. She was ruthless about it, and entire communities still bear the scars, but the unions were clear that they weren't interested in cooperating in any kind of sensible reform. The Winter of Discontent wasn't exactly a high point for the union movement.
If the unions had had a more rational approach to the Callaghan government, it's even possible that he wouldn't have lost the 1979 election (although that's a bit of a stretch.)
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
These people were the remains of the vast unemployment caused by the closure of the steel mills by Margaret Thatcher.
The mills were already dead, all Thatcher did was turn off the (expensive) life-support machine.
And if a colonial can chip in, not just the steel mills but the coal mines and a lot more besides. For those who are interested, there is Anthony Robert's book Eminent Churchillians which discusses the lost years after WW II, when Britain failed to modernise its society and industry - leading to the near bankruptcy of the 70s. It was that delay in the change that made and makes Thatcher seem so brutal. And I say this as someone who has been a life-long Labour voter here.
On a thread a year or so ago, many in the UK spoke of not having a home telephone until the 80s, of either not having a car or else using a MIni as a family car until then, and so forth. The changes brought in under Thatcher brought about the sort of prosperity of which Marvin has written above.
There were very real downsides as well. There was a substantial decline in a range of basic public services. As tourists, we noticed that footpaths were dirtier, trains not properly cleaned, roads not as well maintained, all in a small and densely populated country where the burden of such services on individual taxpayers is not heavy. While more children remained at school, the quality of their education appears to have dropped, although that is a problem here as well.
Above all, Ms Thatcher showed no understanding of the pain and grief felt by those affected by her reforms. She showed no sympathy to them at all then or in retirement, but gave every impression of relishing it. That will be the memory she leaves.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
I should have checked before posting. It's Andrew Roberts, not Anthony. Andrew Roberts is the biographer and essayist; read The Holy Fox, his biography of Lord Halifax. Anthony Roberts is a very minor local politician.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
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Og: Thread Killer
Ship's token CN Mennonite
# 3200
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Posted
In this country, Thatcher is generally compared to Reagan.
Where Reagan is seen as a good consensus developing communicator who allowed others to implement his simplistic right wing views, Thatcher is seen as a divisive communicator who followed through on her simplistic views, to the point where a systematic theology developed around them.
She is the populist conservative blogger's star example of how to be a politician. Her approach begat what has become our renewed Conservative party. Even in her demise as PM, the lesson has been implemented in the form of a tight fisted control of all apparatus and views within the Tory party.
Her legacy can be found in every simplistic internet discussion. She is the angry internet troll's prime example of how their behaviour can be successful, if given power.
She changed the world more then any other person in the last two decades of the last century.
And we are not a better world because of it.
I feel for her family, as loss is never good.
![[Votive]](graemlins/votive.gif)
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I wish I was seeking justice loving mercy and walking humbly but... "Cease to lament for that thou canst not help, And study help for that which thou lament'st."
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
Personally, the only area that I think she did well was the end of the cold war and the thawing of the cold war with the USSR. I think the Soviets like a ''strong'' leader and there was a chemistry between her and Gorbachev. Reagan and Mrs Thatcher also got on well too.
Thanks Saul, the rest of this thread is really petty and parochial.
In the future, history students will be as bored by the issues being vented here as are students of nineteenth century history trying to recapture the passions surrounding free trade versus protectionism.
High-profile twentieth century politicians will be remembered above all things for their stance toward the century’s great threats to liberal democracy, fascism and communism.
As regards Pinochet’s Chilean fascism, which murdered about 3,000 victims, Thatcher was on the wrong side.
As regards communism, which murdered tens of millions of victims, she will always be remembered for being gloriously right.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Saul the Apostle
Shipmate
# 13808
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Posted
It has been mentioned that the ''Falklands Effect'' revived her fortunes.
Whatever our views most of us will understand what happened here and a fascist Argentine junta had negative resonance with British people.
General Galtieri was a right wing politician and this had echoes of the 1939 - 45 war, for many British folk. Many of whom still remembered people like Mussolini etc.
When ''plucky little Britain'' liberated the Falkland Islands long held patriotic views were released.
It was almost the last gasp of an imperial past that had pretty much slipped away.
Also, it was clear that the small number of Falkland Islanders were being occupied by a foreign power, against their wishes.
Was it Harold Wilson who said about the vagaries of politics? :
''Events dear boy, events.''
Thatcher played her card on the Falklands and she played it good (for her own and the Tory parties standing) it revived her flagging fortunes.
Events.
Saul the Apostle
PS Kaplan - the cold war and Thatcher's part in it is interesting. Reagan was popularly reviled, yet, he played his part in the downfall of the USSR as did Thatcher.
[ 09. April 2013, 05:49: Message edited by: Saul the Apostle ]
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"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
A commentator on the radio here pointed out that Thatcher was one of the first prominent politicians to warn (rightly or wrongly) of the dangers of global warming.
Greenies should also be pleased that she closed down mines producing that currently vilified global polluter, coal.
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
How did Thatcher significantly contribute to the end of the Cold War? My impression of the period suggests the Eastern Bloc was brought down by a.) courageous individuals within the Bloc such as Lech Wałȩsa and Václav Havel, b.) courageous mass protests such as the two million-strong human chain in the Baltic States, c.) Gorbachev's futile attempts to have his cake and eat it, d.) Boris Yeltsin's deviousness, and above all e.) the inherent contradictions in the Soviet system.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
How did Thatcher significantly contribute to the end of the Cold War? My impression of the period suggests the Eastern Bloc was brought down by a.) courageous individuals within the Bloc such as Lech Wałȩsa and Václav Havel, b.) courageous mass protests such as the two million-strong human chain in the Baltic States, c.) Gorbachev's futile attempts to have his cake and eat it, d.) Boris Yeltsin's deviousness, and above all e.) the inherent contradictions in the Soviet system.
That's how I recall it Ricardus. In world terms, that has been the biggest movement of my adult life.
The moment it really dawned on me the whole thing was on the skids was when the army took over in Poland. A Communist military coup!??
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Rosa Winkel
Saint Anger round my neck
# 11424
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
As regards Pinochet’s Chilean fascism, which murdered about 3,000 victims, Thatcher was on the wrong side.
As regards communism, which murdered tens of millions of victims, she will always be remembered for being gloriously right.
So on the one side you limit fascism to one example, while on the other side you look at communism as a whole.
If you were to look at communism in her lifetime, i.e. the communism she was worked against, you'd have different figures.
Not that she didn't benefit from the communism of Poland. She did a deal with the government here whereby coal was exported to GB in order to secure reserves during the Miner's Strike.
Oh, and mentioning the doubling of poverty between 1979 and 1990 is petty? So is the Battle of Ogreave? Hillsborough?
We really are seeing pathetic reactions from members of the right at the moment.
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The Disability and Jesus "Locked out for Lent" project
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Rosa Winkel
Saint Anger round my neck
# 11424
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
The moment it really dawned on me the whole thing was on the skids was when the army took over in Poland. A Communist military coup!??
The communists were already in power, so it wasn't a coup. Many here in Poland believe that Jaruzelski ordered martial law in order to stave off a possible Soviet invasion.
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The Disability and Jesus "Locked out for Lent" project
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Rosa Winkel:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
The moment it really dawned on me the whole thing was on the skids was when the army took over in Poland. A Communist military coup!??
The communists were already in power, so it wasn't a coup. Many here in Poland believe that Jaruzelski ordered martial law in order to stave off a possible Soviet invasion.
It may not have involved violence, cutting of telephone lines, field guns pointing at government buildings, but the military taking over from a civilian government and then the general going on television in uniform to explain what he's done, isn't the sort of administrative transition one normally gets in either a parliamentary democracy or a peoples' state.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
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Saul the Apostle
Shipmate
# 13808
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
How did Thatcher significantly contribute to the end of the Cold War? My impression of the period suggests the Eastern Bloc was brought down by a.) courageous individuals within the Bloc such as Lech Wałȩsa and Václav Havel, b.) courageous mass protests such as the two million-strong human chain in the Baltic States, c.) Gorbachev's futile attempts to have his cake and eat it, d.) Boris Yeltsin's deviousness, and above all e.) the inherent contradictions in the Soviet system.
Ricardus,
yes, absolutely, I agree with you. I said:
quote:
....the cold war and Thatcher's part in it is interesting. Reagan was popularly reviled, yet, he played his part in the downfall of the USSR as did Thatcher.
Thatcher (and Reagan) ''played their parts'', I think the factors you mention are wholly valid too and important.
Thatcher was perceived as a strong leader (as Stalin perceived Churchill in 1941 to 1945) and as a consequence, she was a part of that decline of the USSR and the Communist bloc.
The communist edifice was shaky and corrupt and the internal dissent stronger and stronger.
The international legacy of Thatcher and the break up of the USSR demands a book length reply ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
I'd certainly agree with the facts that you raise about the ''Iron curtain'' countries and the decline of communism.
Saul
[ 09. April 2013, 08:12: Message edited by: Saul the Apostle ]
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"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
Posts: 1772 | From: unsure | Registered: Jun 2008
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Qoheleth.:
Post-Thatcher, no-one has the responsibility to keep the UK lights on.
And yet they stay on, in stark contrast to the regular brownouts and power cuts that came before. Isn't that interesting...
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Hail Gallaxhar
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
@Marvin - you're highly selective of course.
I'm focusing on the good. Others are focusing on the bad. If I'm being highly selective, then so are they.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Rosa Winkel
Saint Anger round my neck
# 11424
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Rosa Winkel:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
The moment it really dawned on me the whole thing was on the skids was when the army took over in Poland. A Communist military coup!??
The communists were already in power, so it wasn't a coup. Many here in Poland believe that Jaruzelski ordered martial law in order to stave off a possible Soviet invasion.
It may not have involved violence, cutting of telephone lines, field guns pointing at government buildings, but the military taking over from a civilian government and then the general going on television in uniform to explain what he's done, isn't the sort of administrative transition one normally gets in either a parliamentary democracy or a peoples' state.
No-one's saying that it is.
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The Disability and Jesus "Locked out for Lent" project
Posts: 3271 | From: Wrocław | Registered: May 2006
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Rosa Winkel
Saint Anger round my neck
# 11424
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
@Marvin - you're highly selective of course.
I'm focusing on the good. Others are focusing on the bad. If I'm being highly selective, then so are they.
Do you acknowledge things like the doubling of poverty? That she played a part in Hillsborough?
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The Disability and Jesus "Locked out for Lent" project
Posts: 3271 | From: Wrocław | Registered: May 2006
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Stejjie
Shipmate
# 13941
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Qoheleth.:
Post-Thatcher, no-one has the responsibility to keep the UK lights on.
And yet they stay on, in stark contrast to the regular brownouts and power cuts that came before. Isn't that interesting...
Under a Conservative government. In which Thatcher served.
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A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Of course, Marvin ... it's just that you agree with some people's selectivity whilst I might agree with others ...
We are all selective.
In the interests of balance, though, I think there are two equal and opposite pitfalls here.
We could caricature both.
Yours might be represented as, 'I think I'm better off as a result of Thatcher's legacy so the rest of you can fuck off.'
Mine, as articulated upthread, might be represented as, 'After a slow start during the recession of the 1980s, I eventually prospered under the Thatcherite legacy until the bubble eventually burst beneath me and I ended up on my arse - so those of you who are continuing to do well can all fuck off ...'
Neither, I submit, would be an appropriate response.
I would agree with those who've said that pre-Thatcher the country was marred by the politics of greed and the politics of envy. That continued afterwards, perhaps in a starker way.
Someone once said to me that the people of The Potteries (Stoke on Trent) don't mind not having a great deal materially ... as long as no-one else has a great deal materially either ...
I think there's a quintessential Puritanism behind both the UK left and elements of the UK right, certainly Thatcher's small-shop/greengrocer's daughter end of things.
That gives both a certain charm but equally has particular pitfalls.
The legacy is mixed. On the one hand the market freed things up, on the other it dealt a death blow to communities and to industries that could, in some cases, have been turned around. Some of the things that happened to indigenous UK manufacturing wouldn't have been allowed to happen in France or elsewhere - world class names and world-class products allowed to go to the wall.
Bizarrely, for my own part I find myself self-employed and trying to be more entrepreneurial ... on one level that's no bad thing ... time will tell whether I have that tendency.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Rosa Winkel:
Do you acknowledge things like the doubling of poverty?
I remain unconvinced. ISTM that the poor of today are better off than the poor of the 70s, it's just that the rich are even more better off.
quote:
That she played a part in Hillsborough?
Other than the slightly tenuous fact that the Prime Minister is ultimately responsible for the police force, I'm not sure what you're referring to.
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Hail Gallaxhar
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
@Marvin - you're highly selective of course.
I'm focusing on the good. Others are focusing on the bad. If I'm being highly selective, then so are they.
The interesting things are those which are regardeed as good by some and bad by others. Thatcher's legacy includes lots of that, such as increased home ownership and a housing shortage, which have common roots in council house sales and banking deregulation, such as demutualisation.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
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Rosa Winkel
Saint Anger round my neck
# 11424
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Posted
I should have said 1987.
quote:
From 1979 to 1987, the number of Britons living in poverty (defined as living on less than half the national average income) doubled, from roughly 10% to 20% of the whole population. In 1989, almost 6 million full-time workers, representing 37% of the total full-time workforce, earned less than the “decency threshold” defined by the Council of Europe as 68% of average full-time earnings
Source
Regarding Hillsborough, Thatcher's toleration of police abuses during the abuses during the Miner's Strike ("the enemy within"), including within the South Yorkshire Police contributed to a culture of impunity. In this context, her acceptance of SYP lies contributed to the cover-up. Cameron himself said that Thatcher had been advised that the SYP were "close to deceitful".
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The Disability and Jesus "Locked out for Lent" project
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Rosa Winkel:
quote:
From 1979 to 1987, the number of Britons living in poverty (defined as living on less than half the national average income) doubled
See, there's your problem. Normally a comment like "poverty has doubled" implies that lots of people are poorer than they used to be, but with that definition all it means is lots of other people are richer than they used to be.
I have a reasonably good standard of living right now. Should it come to pass that enough other people got richer to mean that statistically speaking I would be on less than half the national average income - but still with exactly the same standard of living - that would not make me poverty-stricken.
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Hail Gallaxhar
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
It's been said that Thatcher was the enemy of the working class. But I don't remember many council house tenants refusing on principle to buy their houses, once they were allowed to. In fact, the first million sales went pretty quickly. I also don't remember crowds of people turning up their noses at the thought of buying shares in privatised industries.
In fact, there were many who bought their homes and then sold them quickly at a huge profit; and the same with the shares. And then, later, voted at the annual general meetings of their (mutual) building societies to convert those societies into banks, and bought even more shares!
To argue that Thatcher somehow destroyed what had been a morally principled working class is rubbish. The British are a greedy people, and she fed our greed.
Likewise, there's the allegation that she destroyed communities - usually meaning villages or towns where virtually everyone worked in the same mine or factory. Community my arse! If you were a working class lad who wanted to go to university instead of straight to work in the local plastics factory, you could forget getting served in the local pub. You could forget most of your former friends even acknowledging you in the street. You call that a community? Places like that needed breaking - it was 1979, not 1926. And Britain was eventually the better for it, except in those pathetic places where such "communities" are still living off a generation of resentment.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
I refrained from comment on the day she actually died, and I'm not sure how long needs to pass before anything I say will be understood as being an unsuitable criticism so soon after the event, but I suspect the fact that she will have what essentially amounts to a state funeral will raise many mixed feelings in people.
As a first woman Prime Minister she obviously felt the need to leave her mark and to be tough in a mans world, and I cannot help but respect her for that; but as time went on there seemed to be a determination in her not to listen to anyone on anything. I remember vividly her last term in office, and it wasn't a good time. In many ways things from the past started to bite her in the ass and I honestly think that if she had run another term after that (as unlikely as that seemed at the time) it would have been truly disastrous. there was, unfortunately, an element of the corruption of power that seems to have gone to her head a bit.
On the one hand there are things she did well, but she will sadly be remembered for what she did wrong, because when she got it wrong, she got it spectacularly wrong. Her dealings with Northern Ireland were truly awful and her (almost stereotypical) Conservative response was always the same, with the result that the conflict was prolonged, bloody and ugly. Under Thatcher, Northern Ireland had a parade of ministers who had obviously received the post as a kind of booby prize - you could not have picked a worse pack of bumbling ineffective idiots who had no notion of why the troubles even existed if you'd tried. She completely and utterly failed at addressing RUC and army corruption, and even at times refused to acknowledge that it was there even when it was staring her in the face.
As a pro European I found her anti EU stance disheartening, but it wasn't the policy that galled me, it was the sentiment. It's one thing to be anti EU, it's quite another to believe in a 'great' Britain that ends up promoting xenaphobia and seeding racial fears, and I fear that is what she did. It's always a difficult line to tread, but she did it poorly and it is sadly something that Conservatives today still do poorly as part of her poisonous legacy on this.
Economically she reinforced class to a large degree, between the rich and the poor. She didn't need to totally decimate the unions and would have been far better served to limit powers to a degree rather than try a head on breaking exercise. She appears to have been hell bent on a policy of selling every public service to private companies, which depending on which side of that fence you happen to fall, was either a great thing or a terrible evil. In many ways her economic policy mirrored economic policy in the USA - you want it, you pay for it.
Lastly, and I think this is the most important thing, she stayed too long. If ever a case was to be made for limiting the period of office was to be made, she made it. It always puzzles me that it was never introduced after her, but I think she stayed too long in office. If her terms had been shorter I really doubt that there would even be half the invective leveled against her now by her critics. I don't think it's helped by people making foolish statements like, 'she was the greatest prime minister that ever lived', or as one headline put it 'the greatest woman of the last thousand years'. Statements like that just beg for inappropriate comment.
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
Posts: 5235 | From: a prefecture | Registered: Jul 2008
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dv
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# 15714
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
I can't believe nobody has mentioned the housing crisis yet... surely the original 'Right to Buy' rules, which forbade councils to use the money from house sales to build more council (= social) housing if they were running a deficit, were at least partly responsible for the current bubble in the property market?
As well as massively reducing the stock of available social housing, the 'Right To Buy' probably prolongued the Tories' time in power - the Labour Party only dropped their opposition to the scheme in 1985.
Surely that was more to do with massive uncontrolled immigration - especially under Labour but still, sadly, continuing to a large extent with the ConDems.
[ 09. April 2013, 09:47: Message edited by: dv ]
Posts: 70 | From: Lancs UK | Registered: Jun 2010
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
No-one has mentioned Niel Kinnock's appearance on the BBC retrospective.
He is still clearly filled with a passionate _loathing_ for...Arthur Scargill. He commented (I'm paraphrasing) that Scargill made it easy for Thatcher to play the opposite pole in a dualistic war-to-the-death in which Scargill led the working man to his doom.
I work in Engineering, and I find it notable that whereas Denmark (a high-cost economy) still has a major ship-building industry, we do not. There are lots of other examples, but the interesting counter-example is in the defence sector, where the strategic importance of defense electronics / jet engines / (even ships, though small-scale to what has gone) means we still have national design _and manufacturing_ capacity.
Perhaps that strategic importance helped keep the wheels on in that area (that is, constrained the worst excesses of an ideological power struggle? Led to a more collaborative approach? And yes, overlooked corrupt sales to wealthy foreign powers?) whilst the opposite poles of Scargill and Thatcher fought a battle in which much else was destroyed. The tragedy is that once it is gone, it is very, very hard to bring it back - and if I were to follow Tebbit's advice and get on my bike, well it's a f*cking long way to Shenzhen.
[ 09. April 2013, 09:50: Message edited by: mark_in_manchester ]
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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Thurible
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# 3206
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
I refrained from comment on the day she actually died, and I'm not sure how long needs to pass before anything I say will be understood as being an unsuitable criticism so soon after the event
From today's Comment is Free.
Thurible
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"I've been baptised not lobotomised."
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
An excellent editorial.
quote:
Much was wrong with the Britain she inherited in 1979, undemocratic union power among them, and many things, though not wrong in themselves, were unsustainable without radical change, including some nationalised utilities. Britain would have had to alter radically in the 1980s and 90s, and the process would have been hard and controversial. But, as Germany and other northern nations have shown, economic dynamism has been possible without the squandering of social cohesion that Mrs Thatcher promoted.
In the last analysis, though, her stock in trade was division. By instinct, inclination and effect she was a polariser. She glorified both individualism and the nation state, but lacked much feeling for the communities and bonds that knit them together. When she spoke, as she often did, about "our people", she did not mean the people of Britain; she meant people who thought like her and shared her prejudices. She abhorred disorder, decadence and bad behaviour but she was the empress ruler of a process of social and cultural atomism that has fostered all of them, and still does.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Amos
Shipmate
# 44
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Thurible:
quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
I refrained from comment on the day she actually died, and I'm not sure how long needs to pass before anything I say will be understood as being an unsuitable criticism so soon after the event
From today's Comment is Free.
Thurible
Exactly so. There was a thread here not so long ago upon the death of Hugo Chavez in which a number of the people now insisting that no ill be said of the dead were, in their turn, speaking ill of the dead.
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At the end of the day we face our Maker alongside Jesus--ken
Posts: 7667 | From: Summerisle | Registered: May 2001
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GreyFace
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# 4682
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
To argue that Thatcher somehow destroyed what had been a morally principled working class is rubbish. The British are a greedy people, and she fed our greed.
Perhaps. But I don't think you can blame people for cashing in when the government's going to sell off the family silver one way or another.
Posts: 5748 | From: North East England | Registered: Jul 2003
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I don't see how I'm poorer now than I would be if I had less money, less opportunity and less choice in how to live my life.
Because you are concerned about the poor in your country and how they are treated, if you are?
It's not one of my major concerns, no.
In short your attitude is "Fuck you, got mine." And this is why we will never see eye to eye.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Rosa Winkel:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
As regards Pinochet’s Chilean fascism, which murdered about 3,000 victims, Thatcher was on the wrong side.
As regards communism, which murdered tens of millions of victims, she will always be remembered for being gloriously right.
So on the one side you limit fascism to one example, while on the other side you look at communism as a whole.
If you were to look at communism in her lifetime, i.e. the communism she was worked against, you'd have different figures.
Chilean fascism was the one with which she interracted, though she she indirectly opposed Argentinian fascism.
Soviet communism was the one which she "worked against" (though she was opposed to communism in general, including its Chinese and other manifestations), and it was responsible for a minimum of nine million deaths.
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
To argue that Thatcher somehow destroyed what had been a morally principled working class is rubbish. The British are a greedy people, and she fed our greed.
I wouldn't suggest that the British are more or less greedy than anybody else. Man is a wanting animal. Maybe there is more envy, but Britain, like it or not, has had a class system since the Normans arrived.
What Thatcher did was to enable many people to make a small cash gain from a number of state sell-offs and building society demutualisations, thus removing them from democratic control and placing them in the hands of profit- rather than service- oriented owners.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Mention of 'squandering of social cohesion' upthread reminds me that this isn't the only thing which Thatcher's government squandered. She came into power as North Sea Oil was coming onstream. Why haven't we now got a sovereign wealth fund like Norway has (the biggest in the world, apparently)?
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
Interestingly balanced commentary by Ross Douthat in the NYT
discussing how
quote:
Thatcherism turned out to be “a much more complicated thing than many analyses contain”
...
quote:
And that was why she ultimately failed, as every politician always ultimately does. She wanted to return Britain to the tradition of her thrifty, traditional father; instead she turned it into a country for the likes of her son, a wayward, money-making opportunist.
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
quote:
Mark Betts posted
BTW. I don't remember Margaret Thatcher being particularly religious. Tony Blair was (is), as we all know - but I never saw that as a bad thing, whatever else might be said about him.
1. She was brought up a Methodist - church 3 times on a Sunday, bible class, etc, etc, etc.
2. She continued church attendance when she left home for Oxford: but at Oxford it was easier to attend the CofE college chapel, which she did.
3. She continued to attend church whenever she could throughout her adult life. In fact, her attendance at the church nearest to Chequers is the most frequent of any 20th century PM, bar none (and Cameron comes second...)
4. Any who doubt that she was a woman of faith might do well to seek out and read her speech to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Read it several times, as I have, and then try to pick holes in her declared belief.
5. And to those who would riposte "by their fruits.." look at the testimony of the Downing Street "garden girls" - secretaries/clerks whose building is in the garden: they all say that she was very kind, marked weddings and babies with handwritten notes and thoughtful gifts, etc.
She may not have suffered fools, gladly or otherwise, but she was interested in people and never forgot or tried to hide he beginnings in the flat over the shop.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I once heard a story that she used to learn out of the window of that flat above the grocer's shop, L'Organist, in order to spit at the kids passing underneath ...
This might have been a wild calumny of course.
There's a lot of legend mixed up in all of this.
The truth, as ever, is usually a lot more interesting.
Some good - her personal courage - some bad - her inflexibility - some indifferent.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
She did indeed have a reputation for personal kindness. I have a horrible feeling that had I worked for her as e.g. a driver I might have quite liked her. On the other hand, read what John Major (a man noted for his courtesy, on the whole) says in his memoirs about how she conducted cabinet meetings, especially at the end of her premiership: she could be really unpleasant and humiliate people. Some people are horrible to those aroudn them and good to people in general, others are the other way around, some are consistently both personally and generally good or horrible. Doesn't really take us any further.
As to your last point, L'Organist: oh no, oh very much no. Read the first volume of John Campbell's biography. She couldn't wait to get away from Grantham and put it very much behind her - psychologically and physically (she hardly ever went back)- until round about the time when she became party leader in '75, when she needed to project an image which was not the (would-be) posh Tory lady persona that she had developed over the previous 25 years. this isn't necessarily a criticism of her, but she was on the way up and out of that narrow background, and having to work very hard to make her way in the world.
[ 09. April 2013, 12:41: Message edited by: Albertus ]
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
In short your attitude is "Fuck you, got mine."
I'd phrase it slightly differently, but whatever.
And I'd call your phrasing both practically indistinguishable from "Fuck you, got mine" and incredibly short sighted.
The reason I call it shortsighted is that I do not know the full situation of everyone I care about. And even if I did I would not know where they would be. Further I don't know the situation of everyone I will care about in the future. So the best I can do to protect me and mine is work for a situation in which as close as possible to no one has unmet needs.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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argona
Shipmate
# 14037
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Posted
Commentators have been noting Thatcher's lack of "sentimentality". Do they understand the term? She had sentimentality in abundance, nowhere more than in her romantic attachment to virtues of self-reliance and public service she identified in her father. Yes, real virtues, but sentimentality blinded her to the obstacles a divided world throws in front of them. It also blinded her to the carnivorous nastiness that exists higher in the food chain than the middling niche she was born into. When, through financial deregulation, she let the tigers out of their cages, I expect she thought they would, at least mostly, be decent creatures like her dad, to the good of all. Was she too senile by 2008 to see how they'd gobbled us up and run laughing to their (offshore) banks? Sentimentality is a curse, and Thatcher was cursed with it.
Posts: 327 | From: Oriental dill patch? (4,7) | Registered: Aug 2008
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
I've heard David Willetts (who should know) say that she was indeed quite shocked by the failure of many of the people who she'd enriched to use their new money as charitably as she had expected them to.
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
She didn't need to totally decimate the unions and would have been far better served to limit powers to a degree rather than try a head on breaking exercise.
Callaghan tried to play nice with the unions, and was rewarded with the Winter of Discontent - and he was on "their side"!
On what planet would "limiting powers to a degree" have actually worked? The unions made their bed in the 70s, and Thatcher made them lie in it.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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