Thatcher: Traitor or Saint ?

seanoconn

Being too young to remember most of her 12 years in power, a couple of things stick in the mind.

Thatcher's abhorrently exaggerated upper class accent and condescending tone and her one display of emotion being when she lost her job :roll:

Oh and Mandela was a terrorist

asquithea

seanoconn wrote:

Being too young to remember most of her 12 years in power, a couple of things stick in the mind.

Thatcher's abhorrently exaggerated upper class accent and condescending tone and her one display of emotion being when she lost her job :roll:

Oh and Mandela was a terrorist

I'm also too young to really remember what she was like (born in '82), but I do know that her natural voice was quite high, and she was mocked for it by her political opponents. She took voice coaching lessons to lower its pitch so that she would be taken seriously.

dynamicbrick

Whilst I know the wounds run deep in the industrial heartlands, I think it's too simplistic to blame just Thatcher and/or just the unions for the death of coal mining. With or without her, coal mining was already doomed by the mid 80s as coal in itself it not an industry - it exists to drive other industry.

Primarily, the industrial revolution and British Empire was built on coal. By the end of the Second World War we'd lost the Empire, and the dark satanic mills of the industrial age were beginning to disappear as Britain lost it's 'workshop of the world' status to the US, Germany, and Japan. Furthermore, the age of coal powered steam - rail and ship - was over.

Chuck into this mix one the worst people in our post-war history; De Gaulle. To thank the British for standing alone in 1940 and persuading the Americans to liberate France, he invested considerable energy in the formation of the European Coal Board - explicitly to protect continental coal (French, basically) industry from non-continental competition (British, basically). Someone managed to persuade the arch-anglophobe that the British on the ECB would be a good thing. The Labour Government at the time turned it down (I can't recall who made the decision). The ECB laid the foundations for the EEC, which ultimately became the EU. Not being there at the beginning condemned us to a bit part ever after.

But all of that pales into insignificance compared with the real issue facing British industry - economies of scale. Thanks to the neo-capitalist Victorian era, almost all major industry; rail, coal, steel, aircraft, utilities, etc were by the close of 1945 a collection of cottage industries smashed together into nationalised or semi-nationalised lumps. They were all crippled by unimaginative management (at best), which resulted in unionised working practices from the 19th century, which resulted in appalling efficiency. Some of the post-war mergers sort of worked - BAe, BR, BT, but most of them simply took the myriad of smaller problems and made it into one big problem.

After the war, Britain was broke - completely. An industry geared exclusively for war for the previous six years now had to convert back to peacetime footing, modernise, and compete against the emerging global forces with either cheaper labour (Poland for coal), modern factories (German automotive), or working practices not stuck in the 19th century (Japanese), nor could it ever have the sheer scale of the US.

Coal, in the scale it had enjoyed, just no longer had the market - without steam trains, battleships, or huge domestic and colonial base for it to feed, who or what was it going to sell to? Couldn't compete, pure and simple. Subsidisation was the answer for a period of time, but with an NHS to fund, a Cold War to fight (and it was very hot and very expensive during the 70s and 80s), and a burgeoning welfare state as the population aged, it couldn't last forever.

Were the unions at fault? Possibly, but it wasn't the unions of the 70s or 80s - it was two or three generations back that had saddled their descendants with a yoke.
Were the successive Governments to blame? Probably, but then all up to and including Thatchers were populated by products of the Empire, products of when Britain ruled a quarter of the globe and there was no such thing as global marketplace.
Were the miners/panel beaters/smelters/workers to blame? Absolutely not - to be born into generational industry is nobody's fault, and to defend it is natural.
Were the management of the industries to blame? Certainly, but as with the politicians, products of the Imperial mindset trying to modernise unionised practices were never going to achieve much.

Thatcher brought about the coup de grace, and it was long overdue to be frank. Her really villainous action was to get into an ego war with Scargill (who himself should have known better) which caused all humanity to be discarded in pursuit of victory.

A Pyrrhic Victory - Ultimately, the only beneficiaries of the whole sorry saga were the police officers on triple-time.

For my part, as a lower middle-class (pre 2013 BBC class system) southerner born in '76, I regarded Thatcher as a capitalist centre-right hero. Certainly I have the career and income I do today because of her policies - if nothing else, she brought about the end of generationally determined jobs.

However, post Blair, and whilst watching the Bullingdon chums rape Blighty for their own nefarious ends, I think the real - and far more damaging - legacy of Thatcher is political paralysis. The closure of the pits was a blot compared with the decades of non divisive leadership we're having. No political leader will ever dare polarise opinion as much as she did.

Consequently, nobody has the balls to deal with the long term ramifications of flogging of all the social housing, the bloated NHS, etc etc - it is just tinkered with, for fear of being labelled 'anotther Thatcher'. Similarly, nobody has the balls to either support or take on the unions in pursuit of social change.

No, she's no longer a saint. Her policies are far more damaging than closing down death-bed industry or stopping milk for kids*. However, she certainly wasn't a traitor - the real traitors came after, the ones who won't stand by their political convictions for fear of losing office, and who consequently won't drive the change that is perhaps needed to undo what Thatcher did (for right or wrong).

*School milk - I started school in 1980, and I have to say my recollection of school milk was that 90% of the time it was either frozen solid or completely curdled. Can't say I ever missed that small bottle of disgust in the mornings.

Gazzaputt

Hard one as I directly benefited from right to buy and privitisation.

She set though to destroy the north as she seemed to view it as all militant left wingers.

As a person you could never warm to her and towards the end the power went to her head.

Cannot deny her legacy right or wrong.

MattC59

An excellent post by Dynamicbrick.

FatTed

MattC59 wrote:

An excellent post by Dynamicbrick.

+1 I voted for her.

tim_wand

Victims of Thatcher,

The National Coal Board.

The Print Workers Union

The people of Toxteth and Brixton

on a more positive note.

Crew of General Belgrano

Iraninan embassy seigers

Republican terrorists "holidaying" in Gibraltar.


She was and will remain a devisive leader of this country, but at least she had policies right or wrong and stuck to them.

Be interesting to see the contrast when Saint Nelson Mandela shifts this mortal coil, and somewhat Ironic to see that true demon, Winnie Mandella lamenting.

It is kind of Guiling though that all positive soundbites of Mrs Thatcher are being provided by the Bullingdon Club and US statesmen of the Regan era.

I agree with the Blow Monkeys personally "She was only a green grocers daughter"

Somewhat Ironic really that No1 North Parade Grantham is now a "Wholistic Healing Centre". I m sure it's what she would have wanted

laurentian

MattC59 wrote:

An excellent post by Dynamicbrick.

+2

wiffachip

Ended all building of new council houses and gave away the existing ones
Looking forward to the minutes silence on Sunday

Toon Army

VTech

laurentian wrote:

MattC59 wrote:

An excellent post by Dynamicbrick.

+2

+3
I didn't vote for her, I was too young but my parents hated her. I was raised in longbridge which was totally anti Tory as they were blamed for ruining trade unions.
It was only when I grew up that I realised my parents were wrong.
My father isn't with us any more but my mother is and regrets the actions of the unions striking. She had to feed 3 kids on nothing and really struggled.

Our GDP was at its worst when she came into power and in a few years we were back in track. Propping up ailin businesses is futile, look at the banks !!!!

Pross

Another + for Dynamicbrick - well balanced, well argued post at a time of biased rhetoric from both sides of the debate (not necessarily on here but throughout the media).

AchillesLeftKnee

Another +1 there for DynamicBrick. Superb post.

finchy

I think that Dynamicbrick's post is very good as well, but there is one point I'd like to pick up on:

dynamicbrick wrote:

However, post Blair, and whilst watching the Bullingdon chums rape Blighty for their own nefarious ends, I think the real - and far more damaging - legacy of Thatcher is political paralysis. The closure of the pits was a blot compared with the decades of non divisive leadership we're having. No political leader will ever dare polarise opinion as much as she did.

Consequently, nobody has the balls to deal with the long term ramifications of flogging of all the social housing, the bloated NHS, etc etc - it is just tinkered with, for fear of being labelled 'anotther Thatcher'. Similarly, nobody has the balls to either support or take on the unions in pursuit of social change.

This is probably because large swathes of the electorate just do not trust our political classes to act in our best interests. So when a government moves in to make massive reforms, people immediately assume the worst. And going by past record, they'd probably be right.

CambsNewbie

A well written and considered post DynamicBrick. Possibly the only thing that might get consensus on here!

I'm another one too young to really remember her in power. I do remember chanting in school 'Maggie Thatcher milk snatcher'. And I can remember being in a A level history class when she resigned, the teacher running into the classroom shouting 'she's gone, she's gone' before going back to the unification of Germany (the first time!).

As others have said I think perhaps one of her biggest legacies will be the increasing blandness of politicians as no-one wants to be that opinion splitting and they all battle over the centre ground.

ooermissus

seanoconn wrote:

Oh and Mandela was a terrorist

Thatcher gets a bum rap on this. She never called Mandela a terrorist and, although she opposed sanctions, she was consistent in putting pressure on the South African government to release him, telling Botha it was the single most important thing he could do to end South Africa's isolation.

The Mandela=terrorist quote mangles an incident where she called the ANC a 'typical terrorist organisation' at a press conference when told by a journalist that an ANC spokesman had threatened attacks on British companies. Not really the same thing.

fevmeister

at least in north korea the poor people cant complain... i wish it were the same here

Cleat Eastwood

Fevmeister wrote:

at least in north korea the poor people cant complain... i wish it were the same here

help is at hand though