Thatcher: On balance?
On the negative side there was…
- Support for apartheid.
- Scorched earth monetary policy – a vast proportion of what’s wrong with the world emerged in the 80s thanks to the Thatcher/Reagan axis of evil.
- Rampant financial deregulation – and we’re still suffering from this
- “We are being flooded!” – speech about immigration in 1979.
- Shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland.
- Section 28
- The Falklands War. I don’t support Argentina’s invasion, but the relish with which Thatcher exploited it for her own political ends was vile.
- Massive increase in socio-economic inequality – an inevitable and wholly predictable result of her policies.
- Fatally undermined local democracy.
- Beginning of the end of the NHS.
- “Make a quick buck” privatisation of essential services… introducing the profit motive where it doesn’t belong and making life worse for the average person.
- Government contempt for a whole swathe of the workforce – social workers, teachers, NHS nurses, etc.
- “There is no such thing as society”
- Care In The Community
- Support for mass murderer, Augusto Pinochet.
- Ripping the heart out of local communities
- Treatment of striking workers
- Poll tax
- Staggering increase in youth homelessness
- Harking back to Victorian morality and constant use of the phrase “family values” from a government that included Cecil Parkinson, Alan Clark, David Mellor, Jeffrey Archer and Jonathon Aitkin
- Beginning of the end of the UK’s genuinely progressive social housing policies.
- Sheer, rampant viciousness.
On the positive side…
- Before entering politics was part of the team that developed soft-scoop ice-cream.
… but as much as I like ice-cream… well.
I’d stick the Falklands War in a neutral column (war right; Thazza and Murdoch wanking over war was horrid), but otherwise agree with literally everything on your list and where it’s placed.
But “there is a woman from a working class background who is the PM” is more important than nothing given the context of the UK in the late 1970s. The fact that we’d dismiss that as irrelevant now cos she’s white and went to Oxford and married a rich dude is the thing she achieved despite being completely inegalitarian in her own beliefs.
The sheer fact that there was a generation of British kids who grew up where our default pronoun for PM is “she” means something that’s fairly new in society. Even if the default adjective is “awful”.
April 8th, 2013 | 4:37pm
by john b
The plus column isn’t entirely empty, but it’s not exactly “what did the Romans do for us?”. You didn’t even mention her obstruction of the international campaign against apartheid or her support for James Anderton.
I’d say that “contempt for a whole swathe of the workforce” doesn’t go nearly far enough. It was contempt for workers generally – with the telling exception of the armed forces and police – and, I’d argue, for work. There was no dignity of labour for the Thatcherites; there was business and there was profit, and if a business made a profit by screwing its employees, selling junk and generally doing a shoddy job badly, who cared?
I can’t stand Mr Whippy icecream, either so that’s a minus AFAIC. But on the plus side, all-day opening… and, er, that’s it.
April 8th, 2013 | 4:55pm
by Phil
Oops, apartheid was item 1.
Some good stuff this evening from Ken Loach, the Flying Rodent and, er, Tony Blair (the one who lived in 1988).
April 8th, 2013 | 8:54pm
by Phil
I’m not entirely sure that The Falklands War was necessary, John, which is really why it sits in the negative column for me. Don’t get me wrong, as a last resort it was justified* (so long as one doesn’t take a strict pacifist position). But Thatcher’s eagerness to play politics with the conflict almost certainly meant that other avenues were not explored as thoroughly as they might have been. Speculation maybe… but given the rest of the negative column, I’m not inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt on this one.
I quite like Mr. Whippy icecream, Phil, so I can’t begrudge her that one. Although, it too raises an issue… when she quit working in an icecream lab and entered Westminster, not only did she herald the onset of one of the most socially destructive eras in modern politics, she also denied the world potentially wondrous new icecream recipes.
All-day opening though… yeah, that would make it onto the positive list. I would amend the blogpost but it would undercut the humour, so I’ll just acknowledge it here in the comments.
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* There’s a common misconception that viewing the Argentines as naked aggressors in that war is somehow arguing that Britain has a “rightful claim” to the islands. As far as I can tell, no nation has a convincing claim. Which means the decision is down to the local population and there’s absolutely no question about how they feel.
April 9th, 2013 | 3:13pm
by Jim Bliss
I also completely agree with you John… “there is a woman from a working class background who is the PM”… that’s a long way from unimportant. But Thatcher could have been a woman from a working class background who enacted sane, socially just policies as PM. Except she wasn’t. And while her sex and her background have historical importance in and of themselves, they don’t excuse her misdeeds.
Just as the USA could have elected an African-American president who didn’t order drone strikes. That America is now a nation inclusive enough to elect a black president is a great thing. Doesn’t stop the man being a mass murderer though.
I know that’s not what you were saying. I’m agreeing with you. I just think it’s an opportunity missed. Instead of setting precedents by electing women or non-whites, why not set a precedent and elect a competent, compassionate human being with a genuine commitment to social justice and equality?
April 9th, 2013 | 3:30pm
by Jim Bliss
Instead of setting precedents by electing women or non-whites, why not set a precedent and elect a competent, compassionate human being with a genuine commitment to social justice and equality?
Because our political systems are specifically designed to exclude such freaks of nature from high office.
April 10th, 2013 | 3:53pm
by Philip
The really disgraceful thing about the Falklands War was the sinking of the Belgrano while it was in retreat.
She was right though about there being no such thing as ‘society’. But she meant it somewhat differently to the position expounded by Advaita Vedanta so it can stay in the negative column.
April 17th, 2013 | 4:17pm
by Joel