The Good, The Bad And The Ugly – Margaret Thatcher and Her Legacy

There has obviously been a lot said about the late Mrs Thatcher and her policies over the last week or so, and I’ve seen a great deal of misunderstanding and myth perpetuation from people on both sides. Some on the left (particularly some who weren’t even born during her career) are painting her as some kind of evil demon unworthy of even the most basic humanity towards her and her family at the time of her death, while at the same time some on the right, especially across the Atlantic, seem at a loss to understand how and why people could see her as anything other than a great national hero. There are rumours and counter-rumours about what she did and why the opposition to her exists so strongly, so I thought I’d put my own thoughts down (in general terms, without going in to the detailed ins and outs of particular issues).

Firstly, it’s important to recognise the context of when she came to power, and how bad things really were at the time, and this is something I think that many on the left are missing. The cosy post-war consensus that had developed between both Socialist and Conservative governments in the wake of the real destruction brought to the UK and its economy by that conflict had become an utter disaster – what should have been ‘emergency measures’ had become entrenched, and the positive things that had been done had been undermined. The country was in a state of collapse, inflation was out of control, and the economy was in meltdown. Both parties regarded the government’s role to be very much ‘in charge’ and ‘in control’ of the country, its economy, and the people, and the scope of nationalised industry at the time was something incredible – every part of the economy was controlled and regulated. Most of those industries were failing, and in the process were bankrupting the country. On top of that, the unions were powerful and undemocratic, and had fallen into the hands of a group of radical ultra-socialists who knew they had the power to shut the country down and bring down governments, and were determined to use that power to the maximum effect. The UK was thoroughly infested with ‘the British disease’, and was very much ‘the sick man of Europe’. Something seriously had to change, but what will there was to change within the both Labour and Conservative parties was weak and indecisive.

Into that context came Margaret Thatcher, a radical Neo-Liberal in the Conservative party, firmly at odds with the prevailing view within even her own party, with an agenda of change based on freeing up the markets, freeing up the economy, and reducing the role and scope of government. Having won her party’s leadership and then a general election (showing considerable personal determination to do so, particularly being a woman in the male-dominated world of 1970’s UK politics), she set about achieving her agenda’s goals as quickly as she could, and as completely as she could, and with a manner that was forthright and no-nonsense to the point of being dictatorial (knowing that she couldn’t even command a majority within her own cabinet on many issues). She stripped away the regulations, privatised those crumbling nationalised industries, shut down those parts that weren’t capable of making a profit, and took on the unions head first. So far so good, in a sense – much of what she did was stuff that desperately needed doing in order to prevent the downward economic spiral from continuing, and to limit the ability of government to interfere into people’s daily lives.

So why do ‘the left’ hate her so much? Is it that they simply hated being beaten, and that their dreams of a socialist utopia had been shattered? No – it’s much more than that. It’s not so much what she did that is the problem, but the way that she did it. The rebalancing of the economy away from the old heavy industries was, to a very large extent, inevitable – they simply could not survive the way they were. However, the extreme Neo-Liberal way in which it was done paid no attention to the social and future economic effects, especially in those areas where employment relied on those heavy industries. This is what some on the right seem to fail to grasp – former mining and industrial areas of the UK (including large parts of South Wales, where I am from) were quite literally laid waste overnight (and in a way that was nothing short of deliberately confrontational, and even in some cases vindictive, with some things being closed even though they were still financially viable – for evidence see Tower Colliery). The industries in towns and villages which had relied for generations on a single heavy industrial employer suddenly disappeared, with no real prospect of anything else to put in its place. Entire communities found themselves out of work – not only had their main employer gone, but all those other jobs supported by the money paid to their employees also went. This was regional, so there was nowhere within travelling distance to go to get jobs – whole regions were suffering the same fate, and the only possibly alternative for those who could was to leave altogether (as many did, running down those areas even more). An entire generation of people were suddenly without any prospect of work, whole regions were running down for lack of money, and new generations were growing up seeing their fathers with no hope of work, and no hope of work for themselves. The effect of that kind of desolation on whole communities in whole regions is profound, and is a self-perpetuating downward spiral that just keeps going – economic wastelands like that simply don’t look attractive to inward investment, so the jobs just don’t come back.

Meanwhile, of course, the deregulation of the City of London was paying dividends for many, and the other new ‘industries’ were driving the apparent figures up, looking at the UK as a whole. Britain became swamped by the new aspirational ‘loadsa money’ society, and the TV was full of images of people doing incredibly well. The economy had apparently been freed from its shackles, and the people were apparently enjoying the fruits of that. However, that boom time was largely restricted to the South East of England, which was already the wealthiest part of the UK by a long way (and the most over-populated, something which has brought its own problems). It was in no way ‘trickling’ out to ‘the regions’. It was a very widely publicised illusion for most of the UK, supported by figures about ‘how well we are all doing’, but not reflected at all in what they saw around them every day. There was supposedly lots of opportunity to make money in the ‘new economy’, but not in a way that was attainable by the people in large parts of those former industrial heartlands. There is nothing more likely to cause bad feeling to people in such situations than waving money in their faces, and that is what was happening.

People who had done nothing but work hard all their lives, earning their living and contributing to the economy, were simply abandoned, and left to rot, along with their whole community and their whole region, while the TV taunted them about how well the economy had supposedly picked up, and how successful people were becoming. The ‘divide between rich and poor’ was not simply a case of some people working hard and doing well and others being too lazy, or some industries failing while others succeeded, but it was a real and tangible divide between one part of the UK doing extremely well while the rest suffered, and that part of the UK, because of the way the electoral system works, largely had the political power (and still does) to get the politicians to continue further and further down the same road. That is the reality that is hidden by the historical figures that show the way that the UK’s economy recovered during the 1980’s.

It is a basic flaw with Neo-Liberalism – the idea that if you suddenly remove the previously controlling government from economic matters altogether, and free up the marketplace, and let the ‘failing’ parts of the economy collapse, everything else will somehow automatically look after itself so that the system rebalances itself for everyone. It won’t – it just doesn’t work like that. Of course, Socialism as a system fails equally by over-regulating and removing incentive from the economy, and it proved itself in practise in the 1970’s, through the actions of ‘Socialist’ union barons, to be no less ‘selfish’ in its aims to look after its own at the expense of everyone else. The problem with ‘Thatcherism’ was not that it was wrong to free up the economy, but that it was wrong to do so in such a sudden and unmanaged way in the wake of what had gone before – there was no ‘transitional period’, and no real thought to assisting those areas that would suffer disproportionately to rebalance their regional economies.

The legacy in those former industrial areas is not something in the past – it is something still very, very real to the people who live there. The good quality, skilled jobs that had been lost to those local economies never came back (what employment did eventually come to many of them was low skilled and low paid), and the communities were never able to rebuild. The ‘success’ of the UK under Thatcher and beyond was real, but only to certain people in certain areas – to much of the rest of the UK it was very, very hollow, even though the overall figures looked good on paper. On the other hand, without the action that was taken then in dealing with the massive problems that the UK had, there would not even have been that limited long term success – it is wrong to look back to the time before Thatcher with rose-tinted spectacles, and make claims about how she ‘ruined everything’ as if things were perfect before. They weren’t, and even those industries that were so viciously shut down were largely living on borrowed time anyway.

Of course, beyond that there are the even more ‘ugly’ things that were done, particularly in later years when the reforming zeal had taken on a life of its own far beyond those reforms that were necessary. The Poll Tax is the most obvious example of those – possibly the worst policy dreamed up in the UK in the whole of the 20th century. There was the international angle, too, and there again there are examples of ‘Good’, ‘Bad’ and ‘Ugly’ things, but on balance she actually performed pretty well on the international stage (which obviously makes it still harder for people outside the UK to understand the strength of anti-Thatcher feeling). The legacy of Thatcher is very much a mixed one, though, and everyone should really recognise that the picture isn’t universally ‘good’, or ‘bad’ or ‘ugly’. In the wake of her death, much has been said by both sides that is simply wrong and frankly somewhat silly. She wasn’t ‘evil’ and worthy of nothing but contempt, but nor was she a ‘national hero’ worthy of sainthood – she was a politician with considerable personal determination who put into practise what she believed in, doing some good things in the process, but making some serious mistakes and misjudgements along the way, and going too far down her ideological road without giving thought to the long term problems she was creating. In other words, she was a human being, worthy of normal human dignity at the time of her death, and the normal niceties that befit such a prominent politician at the time of her passing, but certainly no more than that – her mistakes and misjudgements can’t be swept under the carpet, because they are still effecting the lives of many people.

 

See, to this I would ask why it's the government's job to assist those regions at all. This might be the difference between the American and European attitude (or what used to be the American attitude anyway during the era of the pioneer spirit). What you just described is basically a scenario of "(*)(*)(*)(*) happens." There are two options when this occurs; you can cry about it or you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps, adapt, and move forward. Our entire nation was built on the latter. Perhaps you guys have a different tradition in Europe. I don't really know. But, unless I'm missing something here, I'm still not really seeing the problem.

 

There are some significant differences, one being that the USA has regional government - there are state governments and authorities that can attract inward investment, improve infrastructure, and so on. The UK at that time didn't have anything like that at all - the only 'local authorities' were small scale local councils of very limited means, and they just didn't have the ability to deal with things like that. There were 'regional development agencies' set up, but they were generally pretty ineffective, and the purse strings were held tightly by a government only intent on looking after the one area which was 'succeeding'. Since that was the place that elected it, it had no real incentive to care about what happened anywhere else. On top of that was the sudden change from the government interventionism that had existed for decades (and beyond) to a policy of almost complete laissez-faire that hadn't existed in practise for over a century, and of which nobody had any experience.

It was the suddenness of it all in the context of what people were used to. We're talking about places where, for example, generations of people had worked in a single place for a century and more. In some cases (particularly South Wales - unusual in having a coalfield in a mountainous area), they were fairly geographically isolated places, too, with very poor transport links to other places that were made still poorer by the sudden deregulation/privatisation of the bus services (and consequent closure of 'unprofitable' routes). Strings of relatively small and very tight-knit communities that had been forged in adversities like the war, mining disasters (the likes of Aberfan), and so on, where everyone knew everyone else, and everyone looked after everyone else as if they were family (and many of them were, of course) were suddenly and unexpectedly just abandoned to their fate.

These were the people who had, only 40 years before, played a massive role in winning a war (or at least ensuring the survival of their country), and ever since that had been used to a government consensus that managed their economy, their industry, and so on (and was broadly used to the idea of the provision of 'a land fit for heroes', rightly or wrongly). They were the people and regions who had built the wealth of Britain during the industrial revolution, and the prevailing attitude over recent decades had been that the governments would interfere in economic matters to prevent complete disaster.

Suddenly all of that was gone overnight, and gone completely, and the whole community left high and dry with no employment at all, no way of attracting new employment, no way of getting to places where there was employment, no way of moving because they couldn't sell their houses (because there were no jobs, so nobody wanted to move there, and even if they could sell they could afford to buy another one in a place where there were jobs because house prices were so much higher), etc., etc.. And suddenly the government wouldn't help in any way, the peopel had no power to do anything, and nobody cared about their plight - this was a new situation.

It was such a momentous and sudden complete change in economic situation and attitude that there was really no opportunity for them to 'adapt' whatsoever - they went from hard-working, close-knit communities to.....nothing, and literally overnight. It would be impossible to overstate the nature of the change. There was no alternative way of generating income in their communities (they couldn't start their own business, for example, because there were no customers there with any money to spend), and no way for most of them to leave even if they wanted to (short of literally living on the streets and begging). Sudden and complete hopelessness for community after community, covering whole regions - nobody able to get work or money. A whole generation of people who were in their late 40s or older then were never able to find employment again - even when there were occasional jobs, nobody wanted to employ an ageing mineworker who had known nothing but life as a miner all his life (and his father and grandfather before him), and a whole generation of kids grew up 'knowing' from the experience of their families, friends and neighbours that there just wasn't any work out there - no point in trying, because there was just nothing to try for.

That sudden change left a huge self-perpetuating hole - once a community loses everything, and goes from a well-paid community of skilled worker to complete unemployment and hopelessness, it's almost impossible to get it back. Nobody wants to invest in such a desolate place, especially when it's also an isolated place. Where Thatcher went so badly wrong is in failing to realise this problem - what was needed was a sensible level of managed transition to allow the people to adapt to the new situation without being thrown into an utter despair across a whole region that fed itself and couldn't be recovered from. Going suddenly from work and government economic interventionism to no work and no help is disastrous for a community - that happening in community after community for a whole region leaves a whole economic desert. Many of these places, including the South Wales valleys, have never been able to recover from the sudden shock of what happened - they were pushed too far too fast to be able to stop the decline before hitting rock bottom, and once they hit rock bottom they had no choice but to stay there.

The UK is one of the richest countries in Europe. The South Wales Valleys are one of the poorest areas in western Europe, and there are other parts of the UK in a similar situation, and it is because of that sudden change 30 years ago. That is neither fair on the people of those regions, nor remotely sensible for the overall economy of the UK - large parts of the UK have been left almost entirely unproductive, relying on welfare handouts and public sector jobs (and some poorly paid unskilled jobs), because of the way they were suddenly and catastrophically dumped almost without warning. It just shouldn't have happened like that - it was both unnecessary and foolish to implement a sudden and complete policy change in that way without giving thought to what the consequences would be. A complete overnight change in government and economic ideology is one thing, but to not think through what the effect would be and how to bring people along with that change, is quite another.

 

Margaret Thatcher fixed England, the same way Ronald Reagan fixed America so here are a few points to counter your argument.

At some point Socialism becomes saturated with idleness as you mentioned, and when Margaret took office everyone was complacent and living off the government for everything. From nationalized companies, to many people living at home on government welfare.

What Madam Thatcher did was give a proper thrashing to the system, to revitalize it. Without her, most England would still be nationalized and net recipients.

Now I would agree with you that once privatized Government should play a limited supervisory role, but that was not her job at that time, there was only so much she could do. Not to mention she was the first women prime minister, which carried burdens all of its own. The Capitalists in England were actually enlightened quicker than the socialists which is surprising, as they helped a woman to achieve power first.

She should obviously be treated with dignity in her death, but also remembered for her legacy furthermore.

 

It doesn't counter my argument at all (although she was Prime Minister of the UK, of course, not 'England') - in freeing up the economy and destroying the post war consensus, overall she did what needed to be done. The problem was the way that she did it so suddenly and completely - in order to get the patients breathing for themselves again, she simply cut off the oxygen supply altogether without warning. In those places, mainly in the South East of England, where there were alternative supplies available, people took the opportunity with both hands and began to breathe. However, is some parts of the UK there simply was no other oxygen available - there were no alternatives in place for the patients to use, and no way for them to get any alternatives - in those places, she simply left them to die, and that is exactly what happened.

 

I see, but from what I understand there was too much government that she had to clean up. If she had played her cards dovish, then she wouldn't have got much work done. She had to use a surprise attack, as did Ronald Reagan where they were correcting many decades of socialism. Once the people realized what they were doing by taking away their entitlements and welfare, they wouldn't have let it happen.

Now as an avid support of entitlements and welfare, I do realize at some point there is too much gravy and no one is motivated to work any longer, because they are too busy living the easy life. That is why Madam Thatcher had to use that strategy, as did Ronald Reagan, where they bring it suddenly and surprisingly, before the people are able to comprehend they are changing years of the establishment of the welfare state.

Now I would concur with you that it did leave many people who were accustomed to the easy life such as government jobs from nationalized companies, living off welfare at home, etc...suffer as they could not bring themselves into this new lifestyle. But it did bring about change in that time, and these new theories of free market and government have interest in being testing again.

So that is why I believe Margaret Thatcher did leave a legacy, because her policies inspired change even though it came at costs that may have been better mitigated. What we have now is to learn from both sides, and use the right way for progress.

 

Not quite. There was nothing 'easy' about the life of the workers in the heavy industries like coal and steel (which had only been nationalised after the war) - they were skilled workers working incredibly hard in very tough conditions, and generally speaking all they expected was a decent day's pay for their hard work (although militant union action played had begun to play its part in unreasonable wage demands, which didn't help the overall economic situation). These were proud working people, not people expecting an easy life of any kind.

It was the sudden disappearance of those jobs that created the welfare dependency problem in those areas that is now having to be dealt with (as well as the over-reliance on public sector jobs, because there isn't the industry or private enterprise providing employment there). That problem just wasn't there before - people were expected to work, and to work hard (and play hard - that's why the game of Rugby Union became so popular in the mining valleys, and also why there were so many choirs, and so many pubs - it was a tough life, and it was all they knew). It certainly wasn't that they expected or wanted 'hand-outs' at all - quite the opposite. It was that they ended up having to rely on welfare, because they ended up having nothing else to live on, and no realistic prospect of anything else to live on.

For a working man that has worked all his life, that is soul-destroying - being told that there's just no work for you, and no way for you to work to earn the money to support your family, and nothing you can do can change that, no matter how hard you've worked all your life until that point, or how hard you want to work, because the jobs for working people have just gone from the region. Multiply that, person by person, community by community, across an entire region, and you begin to see the scale of the problem that was created. Continue that generation by generation as each grows up seeing no jobs around them, nobody working around them, and older generations of former working men left hopeless by their situation, all dependant on welfare because that is all that there is, and you can see just how completely the effect sinks in and through those communities. As that happens, inevitably infrastructure crumbles, housing stock crumbles, crime rises, nobody cares about their surroundings anymore (and nobody can afford to do anything if they do), and the whole area becomes less and less attractive to possible employers.

And so it goes on, and there's really nothing much that the people themselves can do to change their situation. It's no good telling them to get off the welfare - they have nowhere else to go. There's no jobs in their communities. They can't attract jobs to their communities. They can't leave their communities to find jobs. Add to that, of course, those who now depend on disability welfare payments for ex-miners in particular (coal dust is very nasty stuff for long term health), and you find that welfare is pretty much all that is keeping those communities and their people from literally starving to death, and it is the effects of those former economic policies that have caused such dependency on it.

 

I can only compare UK to America in the respect that nationalized companies of that time, reminds me of union companies in America today. Yes they have blue collar jobs and work hard, but they usually work really slow and are paid high amounts of money. Free market companies run on profits so that creates more production because of competition, Nationalized companies don't have free market competition. That means those workers for nationalized companies are free to be idle, since they are not competing for profits.

Madam Thatcher made it hard for these idle workers by ending nationalized companies, and this forced them to move to where the private industries were to get a job. The problem is if someone were accustomed to easy government jobs, and now they had a choice between collecting welfare or moving away to work even harder for private industry, they will choose to stay in their hometowns and collect welfare. Simply because that is easier choice to make.

That is similar to what is happening today all over the world and in America, people don't want to move where the jobs are and instead choose to collect welfare because they are accustomed to the easy life. Margaret Thatcher gave the socialists a proper wake up call, but I would agree that it was too sudden, as these people were not ready for this type of change.

 

Cenydd posted It’s not so much what she did that is the problem, but the way that she did it. And that is at the heart of this. Remember Thatcher once said there was no such thing a society, just individuals and families. I'm sure there's much more to her statement than that stark point of view and context is everything, but I think it's apparent that she had no time for the notion of an organic society.

After the Second World War Britain was victorious but broken. She was kept afloat by the Attlee government and its unashamedly socialist policies. A lot of people from outside the UK or who are not familiar with the post-Second World War mood are sometimes surprise that the wartime PM Churchill was defeated at the 1945 election. In some other countries a wartime leader who had such success would have been a cert for election, but the Brits instinctively distrusted the Tories (they're bad enough now but they were absolutely awful back then) in peacetime and gave Attlee the job. Just as well. Nationalisation of industries was an absolute necessity to rebuild Britain. Again context is important.

It is true that Britain was in decline before Thatcher, but not all of that decline can be laid at the feet of government. The Wilson Labour government was elected in 1964 and had to deal with the fiscal mismanagement of its predecessors. It wasn't helped by a general malaise in the world economy in the late 1960s into the 1970s.

Something needed to be done - as Cenydd has pointed out - but the way it was done by Thatcher reeked of ideology trumping policy.

 

[video]http://www.channel4.com/news/thatcher-funeral-protesters-turn-backs-on-iron-lady[/video]

 

That is understood, but given the nature of politics change has to come radically to protect the center...If it is too slow the center will drift further to the other side, and compromise will not have the potential that it originally had.

Madam Thatcher lived in times times when the left had incredible political power (nationalized companies), as the welfare state was properly established for many years. So if she did not act radical, the political leaders on the opposing side would figure what she was doing and put a stop to it before she was able to accomplish anything for her side.

President Obama is a good example, after 30 years of mostly capitalist rule he brought change radically to America to protect the center for compromise. As we see now, many American's could not see it in time to stop it. Surprise attacks are necessary in politics.

 

It would be wrong to confuse the 'welfare state' with the issue of nationalised industries and freeing up the economy from government control. The Thatcher governments didn't actually significantly reform the 'welfare state' itself at all. The two things aren't connected particularly.

It would also be wrong to think that the nationalisation and direct government interference in the economy was something coming entirely from 'the left', or that 'the left' had the power in that sense. The 'right' of British politics was equally guilty of it - the Conservative party pre-Thatcher was an incredibly paternalistic organisation based in the traditional aristocratic 'ruling classes' that saw its role very much as being 'in charge' of the plebs, running things for them 'for their own good'. That was the post-war consensus in UK politics.

 

It is wrong in the UK perspective, but speaking from the US perspective Nationalized companies and the welfare state are work of the left.

So that is interesting as the views are different on Margaret..

 

Thatcher is like Churchill in that they are both better thought-of in America than in Britain.

Hitler wasn't good and cold before the British threw Churchill out of office.

 

Churchill is generally very highly regarded in the UK, and always was (he made a few mistakes, but there are very few who hold those against him). Being a great war leader doesn't necessarily mean you have the right policies for running the country during peace time, though. The Labour Party (under Atlee, who had served as Deputy Prime Minister in Churchill's coalition for most of the war, looking after much of the domestic stuff while Churchill looked after the actual running of the war) won the election immediately after the war, because the people decided that their policies were the best ones for peace time (and Atlee was also highly regarded). Churchill then won again in 1951. He's never (not since the war, anyway - before that he wasn't universally popular) been the same kind of controversial figure in the UK that Thatcher has always been.

 

I'm all in favour of strong medicine being administered but it has to be the right medicine and the right dose at the right time and pragmatism must drive it. Thatcher was an ideologue, she absorbed Hayek and probably Friedman and went hell for leather with her ideological agenda when she got power. She attacked British society, she didn't try to improve it. She was vehemently opposed to various policies and institutions - an opposition based purely on ideology. She hated the welfare state and wanted to abolish it - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...tle-welfare-state-privatise-NHS-revealed.html - and that policy approach is being carried out now by the current coalition government in Britain. Chancellor Osborne was crying at her funeral, probably distressed that she wouldn't see the end of the welfare state which is being brought about by the Tories and their associates.

 

Indeed, I was living in London when he died and I remember well the funeral and the tributes. If there was a murmur of disapproval of Churchill I didn't hear or read it.

 

Britain needed Maggie Thatcher like the junkie needed detox. She was therapeutic but the moochers hated her.

 

It's nowhere near that simple at all. The people who hated her weren't (and aren't) just 'moochers' at all, and the effects from her policies weren't just felt by those who wanted some kind of an 'easy ride' in life (in fact, the 'moochers' on benefits felt little effect, since she didn't change the benefit system significantly). The biggest effects were on ordinary hard working people who lived in parts of the UK outside the South East of England, and just wanted to carry on being able to earn a living for themselves by working hard as they always had done.

 

British nationalized industries = moochers. From CEOs to janitors: moochers. Because these obsolete industries would have gone bust without mooching taxpayer sterling.

For twenty years after the First World War, the single unifying motive in British politics was to keep Winston Churchill from the levers of power.