.....the destruction her ideology wreaked on entire communities. Those who voted for her were normally safely insulated from the fall out!
Actually the irony of Thatcherism is that many of her victims could be counted among her most enthusiastic supporters.
Thatcher succeeded in becoming PM in 1979 by convincing a very small but significant minority to change their traditional allegiance away from Labour and to the Conservatives.
The region which actually tipped the scales in what was otherwise a fairly close election was "the prosperous Midlands".
Skilled workers in the Midlands were doing relatively very well at a time when Britain still exported more manufacturing goods than she imported. What occurred was the Labour Party and trade unions became victims of their own successes.
After decades of constantly improving living standards thanks to Labour national and local governments, plus the negotiating skills of their trade unions, a minority of skilled workers decided they wanted nothing less than "more".
Thatcher's appeal to selfishness and the triumph of personal greed struck a particular cord with them, specially with all the talk of alleged tax cuts and buying your council property.
So it was that a significant minority of skilled Sun reading manual workers gave Thatcher the power, which she otherwise would not have had, to do what she did. They continued to support her and still largely do to this day.
The irony is that despite the prosperous Midlands winning it for Thatcher in '79, and the fact that many skilled workers subsequently did precisely what Thatcher requested of them and obediently turned their backs in their trade unions putting instead their faith in her, she destroyed British manufacturing, preferring instead to help her mates in the banking and financial services industry.
Another example of how Thatcher shafted her own supporters was the case of the Notts Working Miners. The Notts Working Miners were indispensable to Thatcher and she promised them a bright well-paid rosy future with lots of talk of endless work in the so-called "Super-pits".
All they had to do was turn their backs on their union and carry on working with complete disregard for their colleagues who would lose their livelihoods. They obliged, and when Thatcher had consolidated her power she shafted them. Although I'm sure many former Notts Working Miners will still tell you what a great gal Maggie was.
There were also btw plenty of Notts Striking Miners, they didn't get paid for a year, whilst Maggie's boys were raking it in. Until she shafted them of course.
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Woppit & Junkyard - I think zokes point is that binners is correct, and it's not just in Scotland where Tory MPs are non-existent in large swathes of the country.
I don't need to exonerate her for something she didn't do (though for the record I'm indifferent, unlike Blair, Brown etc.).
