The unions had a hand in the destruction too. If there had been more compromise the impact would have been lessened. Scargill is just as hateful a character

Do you think I revel in what happened to the industries? not one bit – but you cannot blame Thatcher for it all, it was going to happen sooner or later anyway, and whenever it happened, it would have been horrific for those communities –

(my bold)

True, but the way it was done with an apparent disregard for the future was callous in the extreme. I’ve seen nothing in all the years that have since passed that makes me think that the Tory policies of confrontation and repression were justified.

I’ve no argument with the need to modernise, and I agree that the union leaders needed to bend in the wind – hence my views on the current public sector pensions strike – but to just terminate industries and double the unemployment to 3m was wrong on every level.

Emsz – bet you wish you never asked!

She was very polarizing as you can see from above. I was very definitely an anti Thatcher. She started privatisation of the railway when I was there which was really coming to terms with things in this period on its own by ‘sectorisation for a start. (I know John Major was PM when legislation went through in ’93).

Last election I did not vote labour because Gordon Brown was complimentary about her not long before the election (voted Lib Dem so I suppose that makes me partly responsible for current problems).

She inspired quite a bit of music, we didn’t have FB or twitter to release our tensions, listen to Tramp The Dirt Down (Elvis Costello) Blue (Fine Young Cannibals) Billy Bragg or Christy Moore. [CM is on a boxed set, very eloquent on Reagan / Thatcher when not railing on anti abortion in Ireland etc etc.]

All the above is of course true TJ and there is really no excuse for the way it was done.

They (the unions) were as much to blame as the government of the day, with entirely unreasonable and unsustainable demands, which, along with the rapidly emerging manufacturing industries in the far east, created the circumstances which allowed The Government (not just Thatcher) to behave in the way it did. Coal was only one industry however and many of the problems could have been sorted out if it wasn’t for union leaders attempting to take over the running of The Country, which left the Government little option but to ‘break’ both them, and as a consequence, their members.

Although Thatcher is quite rightly vilified for many of her and her parties actions, little is mentioned of the man, who in my opinion was equally responsible for much of the suffering in coal mining dependant communities, Arthur Scargill. This BBC link explains it quite well.

thatchers main agenda was to destroy the power and right of working class people.
and by destroying the countries most powerfull union, she managed to do this.
hatefull spitefull woman, who acted on her own twisted agenda without a thought for anyone.

A few years ago I was managing a business where it looked very likely that we were going to become unionised to a fair amount of panic amonsgt my colleagues in the boardroom. We got ACAS in and I’ll never forget the guy who came down to see us. Completely straightfaced he sat there and told my MD that “you will only get a union if you deserve one”….folowed a few seconds later by “I reckon its going to happen from what I’ve seen”. I had to feign a coughing fit to get past that moment.

Never a truer word spoken in my experience. Think about it, if you’re working for a good caring employer who plays a straight bat with you, why would you want to pay to be represented by a union? Thats as true at a national level as it is at a organisational one. So then think about the industrial troubles under Tory governments in recent times. Bad crews or bad captains? Pretty sure I know the answer.

along with the rapidly emerging manufacturing industries in the far east,

PS: Having been one of the first companies to seriously trade in China, which is what you are talking about, (India/Taiwan/Japan/Phillipines etc had been going like 10 men for some time before Thatcher), I’m here to tell you that the boom from there did not really pick up speed until almost 10 years after Thatcher came to power. In the main British companies at the time did not want to do business there because it was notoriously difficult and unreliable. Ultimately we had little choice because of the disasterous state of the UK economy largely caused by selling off utilities and things like coal and steel.

Relatively balanced outlook on the British economy without all the crap from the pseudo-politicos on this forum who believe that only they know the truth.

Interesting comment on that link

However, Mrs Thatcher’s modernisation of the British economy was far from trouble free; her battle against inflation resulted in mass unemployment with the jobless count passing 3,000,000 by the start of 1982 compared to 1,500,000 three years previously. This was in part due to the closure of outdated factories and coalpits which were no longer economically viable; this process continued for most of the rest of the decade. Unemployment peaked at nearly 3,300,000 during 1984 before falling dramatically in the final three years of the decade, standing at just over 1,600,000 by the end of 1989

So the closures of all the various industries mentioned drove the unemployment up to 3,300,000.

However by the end of the decade the unemployment figures were back down to almost the level seen before all the closures.

So, genuine question, either all those that lost their jobs as part of the closures

a) found new work

or

b) retired

or

c) the figures were seriously doctored and reclassified

So if she permanently devestated the country, why did unemployment figures drop back to the level they were at before her evil crusade?

Figures were doctored. the way unemployment was counted was changed frequently reducing the headline numbers dramaticaly

because everyone got a job in a call centre

Ton – bus ask yourself why? Arguably (oh, no!!) she came to power in response (among other things) to a union movement whose main agenda was to destroy the power of businesses and entrepreneurs. And by destroying governments (Wilson, Callaghan and Heath) and industries, they managed to do this. Hateful, spiteful people (seems extreme, but…?), who acted on their own twisted agenda without a thought for anyone.

BB – I like that: “Completely straightfaced he sat there and told my MD that “you will only get a union if you deserve one”.

Figures were doctored. the way unemployment was counted was changed frequently reducing the headline numbers dramaticaly

Doctored enough to wipe millions off the figures? Again, genuine question. I do know the way of classifying unemployed was changed but it must have been a hell of a change to shave millions off the top.

Even now I hoard and worry over money

*splutters coffee over screen*

With the amount you spunk over frames, forks etc?

Back on topic.

If there is a hell, then Thatcher *and* Scargill will be gaffer taped in a loving embrace for all eternity whilst evil little pixies poke them with hot sticks.

Berm Bandit

Not just talking just about China, as the others you mention were still ’emerging’. I was working in the oil industry at the time and I remember a tender for a semi-submersible rig being awarded to an Indian shipyard. They built two for less than a UK or other Western builder was willing to build one.

Doctored enough to wipe millions off the figures? Again, genuine question. I do know the way of classifying unemployed was changed but it must have been a hell of a change to shave millions off the top.

Yep, also take a look at the numbers claiming incapacity benefit.

TJ – your claims aren’t supportable – according to the ONS:

Economic inactivity trends
Data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS)
back to 1971 show that the overall inactivity
rate has remained fairly stable over the
period, even though there have been
notable variations in the economic cycle.
Despite this stability, there have been some
distinctive changes in the composition of
the economically inactive group.
Unless otherwise stated, analysis in this
article is based on those aged 16 and over
and below state pension age (that is, 60 for
women and 65 for men).
Th e total number of economically
inactive people in the UK stood at 7.9
million for the three months to September
2008, a rise of around 864,000 since
the beginning of 1971. Despite this, the
economic inactivity rate has remained
stable over this period because the total
population for this age group has also
increased.
Figure 1 shows that the proportion of the
population who were economically inactive
fl uctuated around 21 and 22 per cent
throughout the 1970s. Inactivity increased
during the early 1980s’ recession, with the
rate reaching 23 per cent during the fi rst half
of 1983. As the economy improved in the
1980s, the rate fell to around 19.3 per cent.
However, the recession in the 1990s drove
the rate back up to the level experienced in
the 1970s. In the three months to September
2008, the economic inactivity rate was 20.9
per cent (down by 0.2 percentage points
from a year earlier).

If large numbers of people had been pushed off the unemlpoyment figures onto, for example, long term sick, then it would show in the economic inactivity figures.

f large numbers of people had been pushed off the unemlpoyment figures onto, for example, long term sick, then it would show in the economic inactivity figures.

so what about the millions on youth opportunity schemes or enterprise allowance schemes ? millions of people massaged off the UB totals but still financed by the govt. and with no chance of full time employment at the end.

BB – good points and question and an important marker for the next few years. There is no doubt that UN was a direct consequence of T policies and marked the transition in the structure of the UK economy. This is shown by the bell-shaped curve of UN. In time, supply side reforms helped the private sector to absorb some of the losses of the private sector but with a painful lag. So this was the period that went from a Keynesian inspired state-oriented to a more enterprise oriented economy (see Zulu’s personal experiences above).

Gordon Brown’s version of Keynesian economics was less extreme and hopefully the repercussions on the public sector will also be less so. But the government is dreaming if it thinks that the private sector is going to pick up the slack in the immediate future. So we will see the same bell curve again. Two losers – financial services and public sector – the new winners – answers on a postcard…!!

BoardinBob – Member

There are certain members of this forum who would swear that black was white because it fitted with their predictable, short sighted and narrow minded politcal views.

Unfortunately the OP asked a question that you will never get a correct answer to (Have you read some of the religeous threads?).

Politicians are all scum who, as Jessa says, should be shot in front of their families, for crimes against humanity.

I don’t remember a great deal about the 70’s due to my age but do remember the constant power cuts, my dad coming home from work because he couldn’t do any work, sitting by the windows in school to be able to read books and boxes of candles. Pretty miserable really not the rose tinted version offered by many on here. A view that is reflected by many others here

Emsz, like someone else has said look back at history before and after Thatcher and make your own mind up.

because everyone got a job in a call centre

Not only… I was lng term unemployed during this time and went into training. For this I was given an “allowance” (or bribe) of £10\week above the dole money I was scrounging at the time.

Zulu-Eleven – Member
TJ – your claims aren’t supportable

Oh gosh look, tweedle dum and tweedle dee are at it again. Who’d have guessed?

Boarding bob – yes. Probably reduced the count by 25% or more. 20+ alterations to how the numbers wer counted each time reducingthe headline figure

16 and 17 year olds removed from it. Entitlement to benefits was cut – you used to get a benefit if you were out of work no matter what – but it became means tested so if one person in a houshold was unemployed they got no benefit so did not appear in the count. YTS and so on removed from the count. Students lost entilement to benifits in teh summer hols so they came off the count.
etc etc

you used to get a benefit if you were out of work no matter what – but it became means tested so if one person in a houshold was unemployed they got no benefit so did not appear in the count. YTS and so on removed from the count. Students lost entilement to benifits in teh summer hols so they came off the count.

Which I’d say were all fair enough, no?

students used to be able to claim benefits in the summer hols ?

FFS.

She had some great friends and allies around the world who’s beliefs she defended steadfastly

she wouldn’t have a bad word said against them

Back in the days of grants, yes. The grant only covered you for term time. (And you didn’t have to pay it back either. I did demonstrate against the introduction of student loans…)

Why wait til she’d dead, celebrate her now at

Home

Actually looks aright for those of a certain age… which is, thinking about it probably, too old tooo party…

http://www.squaremeal.co.uk/restaurants/london/view/104226/Maggie’s

In a Jeremy Clarkson type comment 😆

All those people who voted for her should be took outside and shot lol

and on the other side of the fence all those who did well out of her will no doubt wish that all those who lost there jobs because of her and had to become dole scum (in there views )should have been shot so the money spent on there unemployment could have been saved as f*** them we are ok type of society we became.

On a serious point when she departs down to hell we might at last find out the full truth about the Hillsbough dissaster .

jota180 – Member
She had some great friends and allies around the world….

…as do many politicians

Hmm: don’t suppose I would have gone self-employed (’86) or bought a flat (’88) in a different climate than was prevelent in Thatcher’s Britain. Worth remembering though that VAT went from 7.5% to 17.5%..so much dor reducing taxes; also the interest rate on my mortgage soon went up to 13%! That nearly finished me off.
I do echo the sentiments about generations of folk who have never had jobs, but at the same time know that you can’t cure the ills of soceity by throwing money at them, the will to better your life has to come from within the individual (accept it’s way harder to do this if you’ve never had a leg up from anyone and only ever had poor role models amongst peers and family).

rkk01 – Member

Depraved reptilian scum – utterly devoid of humanity.

I will happily suspend my devout atheism so I can believe in the fires of hell being well and truly stoked when she goes

Posted 9 hours ago

Thatcher didn’t govern through some sort of personal dictatorship she needed and received the support of her party, her ministers, and parliament. And when that support was no longer forthcoming, she was gone.

In fact, although Thatcher tore up the postwar consensus and she caused huge and lasting divisions in the country, she was actually very inclusive when it came to how she governed.

Thatcher was perfectly happy to include individuals from right across the political spectrum of the Tory party, including former colleagues of her sworn enemy Ted Heath. And she was quite prepared to give them very senior cabinet posts too.

Yes, there’s little doubt that she bullied them, but it was still a high risk strategy. And this inclusiveness did indeed eventually lead to her downfall. When she was in effect sacked by her cabinet it reminded me of how when Nikita Khrushchev was sacked by the politburo he said afterwards, “at least they were able to sack me because of me – Stalin would have had them all shot”.

(Contrast that with the cringe-inducing Stalinist Tony Blair, who after systematically destroying all democracy within the Labour Party and turning it a one man show, then proceeded to surround himself exclusively with sycophantic yes men and women. Anyone who was not a “Blairite” stood zero chance of a government post. Unsurprisingly, he was never challenged, not even when he was bending over for an extreme right-wing war-warmongering half-wit US president)

Thatcher was PM and leader of the Tory Party only for as long as she had the support of her party. And she could have achieved nothing without the support of others.

But the Soft Left in British politics prefers to concentrate on Thatcher the person, to vilify her personally, and to hold her up as a hate figure – putting personalty before policies. Which not only shows a lack of political maturity and awareness, but also goes a long way in explaining why the Left in Britain has been completely ineffective for the last thirty years.

And not only because “hate Thatcher” is an unconvincing argument when fighting right-wing policies, but because the Tories/right-wing use this simplistic vilification of Thatcher to their benefit.

The Tories should never have won the 1992 general election, even the Financial Times was backing Labour, and the perceived wisdom was that they wouldn’t. But they did, even though they continued with fundamentally the same policies as Thatcher. Quite simply because they had ditched “evil” Thatcher. With Thatcher still as their leader they would have lost – and they knew it.

Tony Blair and his extreme right-wing cronies were also able to carry on with Thatcher’s policies, because Tony Blair wasn’t Thatcher.

Even at the last general election, David Cameron made a point of publicly reassuring the electorate that he wasn’t Thatcher and putting some distance between him and her, lest people got frighten of voting Tory. And yet he has proved to be much more right-wing than Thatcher was, in fact he’s behaving like Thatcher on steroids.

I find the constant, predictable, and tedious, personal vilification of Thatcher by the Soft Left depressing………go out and learn some real politics FFS. Then perhaps we might have something tangible to offer the British people, instead of the pointless character assassination of a senile old woman. And never has the need to offer the British people real politics been more acute than right now.

craigxxl – Member
I don’t remember a great deal about the 70’s due to my age but do remember the constant power cuts, my dad coming home from work because he couldn’t do any work, sitting by the windows in school to be able to read books and boxes of candles.

I remember that too. It was the winter of 78-79 and Jim Callaghan was PM.

But the Soft Left in British politics prefers to concentrate on Thatcher the person, to vilify her personally, and to hold her up as a hate figure – putting personalty before policies. Which not only shows a lack of political maturity and awareness, but also goes a long way in explaining why the Left in Britain has been completely ineffective for the last thirty years.

Reasonable enough comments Ernie, but not ones I follow.

I have always made a clear distinction between Thatcher and her government’s policies. The reason I genuinely detest her is not just because of the policies, but because of the enjoyment she seemed to get from talking about the “enemy within” and the “wreckers in our midst”.

The policies were bad enough, and stattering in their impact. But to dance on the graves of those companies she closed was a whole new level of unpleasantness.

And yes, we get the politicians we deserve. The Tories caught onto the great idea of selling council houses to the people who effectively already owned them, and with this effective bribe mamnaged to hoodwink many otherwise Labour voters into believing the Tory myth.

Was Blair a Tory? Not quite, and I dispute that he was an extreme right-winger, at least on most social issues. But certainly not a Labour leader, not in my eyes; he’s the reason I resigned from the party.

Thatcher was probably the first of the ‘personality’ leaders, and ever since, the parties have realised that the voters buy the leader first, and the politics come a distant second. Not the way it should be, but how else do you explain Blair, Cameron, Clegg, and most particuarly Boris Johnson? Contrast the failures of Duncan Smith, Hague, Brown….none of whom had noticably worse policies than either their predecessors or indeed successors, but just weren’t as media-friendly.

People shouldn’t put personality before politics, but they do. Banging on about the fact that policies matter more than the mouth that espouses them is all very well, but first you have to get elected. As we currently stand, I have more chance of becoming Prime Minister than Hopeless Ed Miliband. As I’m neither an MP nor even a member of the Labour Party, that tells its own story.

I remember that too. It was the winter of 78-79 and Jim Callaghan was PM.

Really? Power cuts for most of us were 1973.

I’d say before that as we moved house in Feb 72 and the power cuts affected the first house and not the second.
What I’m struggling with is the reasons for the power cuts.

how mad is this?
a seven page thread on thatcher that is still open!

@ernie and @nickf,

Not going to bother debating the minor points with which I disagree in your posts, I am also of the opinion that “we get the politicians we deserve”.

So will this ever change? Given that we have roughly followed the American model of personality politics (and it’s still worse there, but we’re not so far behind), will it get worse before it gets better?

Indeed, will it ever get better at all?

the American model of personality politics

Have you seen the latest rogues gallery….amazing how they keep dropping like flies

Have you seen the latest rogues gallery….amazing how they keep dropping like flies

I’ve dropped the ball on the republican race for nomination but heard something about two candidates dropping major bollocks – was I imagining things?

nickf – Member
> I remember that too. It was the winter of 78-79 and Jim Callaghan was PM.
Really? Power cuts for most of us were 1973.

Yep. We had them too.

don simon – Member
I’d say before that as we moved house in Feb 72 and the power cuts affected the first house and not the second.
What I’m struggling with is the reasons for the power cuts.

What do you reckon?? http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/16/newsid_2757000/2757099.stm