Margaret Thatcher: Thirty years on

[Banquo's Ghost]

I'm rather surprised that no-one has thought to mark the thirtieth anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's victory in the 1979 election. Quite clearly one of the eminent politicians of her era, if not the entire twentieth century, she polarises as much now as when she lived in Number 10. Modern Britain (and it might be argued, much of the world) has been fundamentally changed by her legacy.

Bruce Anderson has written an interesting piece on her influences which might serve as a starting point for discussion.

Here, she had the defects of her qualities, for it would have helped if she had been rather more intellectual. Thatcherism had no theory of the state. When an election was imminent, she would fill the gap by claiming that the NHS was safe with her. Otherwise, and in private, she came perilously close to the position which Carlyle caricatured as anarchy plus the constable. Defence and the police were vital. All the rest of the state was a mere unprivatisable residuum, which had to be preserved for electoral reasons but which would never be much good.

In this, she also displayed the narrowness of her imaginative sympathies. In Margaret Thatcher's world, you worked hard. In so doing, you reaped the harvest of upward social mobility: home ownership, share ownership, a healthy pension, private healthcare and private education. If she had been honest, Mrs Thatcher would have said that apart from a few bizarre, incomprehensible Lefties, it was a mark of economic failure to use state schools and not have health insurance. Although she has a partial excuse for not doing more on education, in that there were bigger dragons to slay, there is no evidence that she would ever have got the education system in a firm Thatcherite grip.

Her lack of imaginative sympathy had another important manifestation. Because of it, the Billy Elliott version of Thatcherism, though grotesquely exaggerated, does not lose all contact with truth. She did not set out to destroy vibrant working-class communities and replace them with the listlessness of hereditary unemployment. But again, if she had revealed her innermost thoughts, they would have included the belief that most of the unemployed have only themselves to blame: that those who really want work will always find it.

It must also be remembered that most of the industries which Mrs Thatcher is accused of destroying were already in the gun-sights of globalisation. They could not have continued to provide those who worked in them with a first-world standard of living. This country had impoverished itself by subsidising sunset industries. Eventually, that would have had to stop. Mrs Thatcher only accelerated the process.

[rory_20_uk]

Excuse me for indulging in a medical paralell:

The patient came to the doctor with a drug problem. The other doctor had just thrown methadone at the patient whenever they asked for it. They felt great, but their health was deteriorating.

The new doctor made them go without. They went into withdrawl. Wracked by pain, anxiety, nausea, diarrhoea for days at a time, barely able to keep fluids down. They got through it and were stronger and fitter because of it.

Some relatives were thankful that the junkie was reformed.
Some could not see past the suffering that the junkie had to do through.

The Thatcher years were harsh. But oddly running a deficit for ever isn't sustainable. Subsidising industries may make the worker's feel better, but the jobs aren't real. If these things had been addressed in the 1950's the upheaval would have been far less - left for longer it would have been even worse.

To detest her is either to be utterly selfish in that she destroyed the subsidies for your industry or is to display a dislocation with reality - somehow everything would have just magically turned around and the economy would have worked producing substandard goods at uncompetative prices even with subsidies.

[Fragony]

The UK still has anniversary's that aren't about world citizenship??

[Rhyfelwyr]

Scotland is not a guinea pig. She's owes an apology.

[Furunculus]

an excellent article, and the right person at the right time to turn around the shiny turd that was the good-ship-britain circling ever closer to the drain of history.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Scotland is not a guinea pig. She's owes an apology.

Why? If you don't pull your own bootstraps up they will be pulled for you.

Just for the record, the failure of the "poll tax" was not that it used the electoral register but that not everyone was required to be listed on said register, thereby creating potential unfairness.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I don't even want to argue about this, that woman was a criminal of the worst order.

It almost makes we want to consider independence just to prevent anyone similar ever coming to power again.

[InsaneApache]

Excuse me for indulging in a medical paralell:

The patient came to the doctor with a drug problem. The other doctor had just thrown methadone at the patient whenever they asked for it. They felt great, but their health was deteriorating.

The new doctor made them go without. They went into withdrawl. Wracked by pain, anxiety, nausea, diarrhoea for days at a time, barely able to keep fluids down. They got through it and were stronger and fitter because of it.

Some relatives were thankful that the junkie was reformed.
Some could not see past the suffering that the junkie had to do through.

The Thatcher years were harsh. But oddly running a deficit for ever isn't sustainable. Subsidising industries may make the worker's feel better, but the jobs aren't real. If these things had been addressed in the 1950's the upheaval would have been far less - left for longer it would have been even worse.

To detest her is either to be utterly selfish in that she destroyed the subsidies for your industry or is to display a dislocation with reality - somehow everything would have just magically turned around and the economy would have worked producing substandard goods at uncompetative prices even with subsidies.

^ What he said.

[Pannonian]

One legacy not yet touched on in this thread is the culture of individualism, or the consumer culture. Whether this was made by the prosperity that Britain enjoyed, or whether it was made by the religion of individual responsibilities that Thatcher believed in, there was a shift from the old conservative ideas of social responsibility (conservative includes both Tories and socialists), towards an emphasis on individual rights (consumer rights), which society (the seller) had to fulfill. That IMHO was the greatest legacy of Thatcherism, which is why her politics cannot adequately be described as Tory or conservative, for it was neither, but liberal.

[rory_20_uk]

I think that by 1979 a lot of this had already happened. The 50's, 60's and 70's were all years where the old order fell away, so I think that these changes were already advanced when she came to office.

[Furunculus]

good point, but i have always believed in traditional liberal politics, which is one reason why i don't vote liberal-democrat or labour.

[CountArach]

Here's to 30 years of greed!

[Idaho]

Thatcher was a product of the times. Her 'ideology' was non-existant. She largely just continued the monetarist policies imposed on Britain by the IMF in 1976. The ephemera of her ideology masked choices based on what she liked and who her friends were. What she said and what she did were usually completely divorced - "roll back the frontiers of the state", "reduce public spending" actually translated into the biggest increases of public spending and massive increases in state power and scope.

Privatisation of national industry was chanced upon. Her government needed to raise money quickly so decided to sell off govt assets. They were as suprised as anyone as to the popularity of the move - and retrospectively turned it into ideology.

The poll tax was chanced upon at random too. The civil service presented a range of options to replace rates. Almost as a joke the poll tax was tacked onto the presentation.

Her husband and her husband's circle all become multi-millionaires under her govt.

Like all British rightwingers - she held at her heart a contradiction. That people should be at liberty only to do the sorts of things she herself would do.

[Furunculus]

"roll back the frontiers of the state", "reduce public spending" actually translated into the biggest increases of public spending and massive increases in state power and scope.

Like all British rightwingers - she held at her heart a contradiction. That people should be at liberty only to do the sorts of things she herself would do.

got some figures to back that up boyo?

how very divorced from reality.

[Furunculus]

Here's to 30 years of greed!

after thirty years of slovenly and unnecessary decline it was a breath of fresh air!

[CountArach]

after thirty years of slovenly and unnecessary decline it was a breath of fresh air!

Greed > Imperial Decline

Right...

Not sure I follow?

[Che Roriniho]

Here's to 30 years of greed!

Hear Hear! The thing is with Thatcher, is she and Reagan decided that Trickle-down economics actually worked, somehow. They are, what we call in conversation, idiots.

[Vladimir]

Hear Hear! The thing is with Thatcher, is she and Reagan decided that Trickle-down economics actually worked, somehow. They are, what we call in conversation, idiots.

No doubt that is considered spirited debate in those circles.

[Furunculus]

Hear Hear! The thing is with Thatcher, is she and Reagan decided that Trickle-down economics actually worked, somehow. They are, what we call in conversation, idiots.

And yet Britain became so much wealthier, including a vast number of the working-class who became middle-class as a result of her policies............

[Louis VI the Fat]

Countries change over time. After the war, for decades, the UK was the most socialized country west of the Iron Curtain.

Yes, contemporary talk of ultra-liberalism as an 'Anglo'-tradition is historically off the mark. The UK and New Zealand - always the most 'British' of the dominions - had a social system that makes anything that ever happened in Scandinavia appear heartlessly ultraright. Neo-liberalism has spread from America into the British world. This neo-liberalism could make common cause with, trace some of its origin in, some British traditions. But on the whole, in the modern version it is an alien import into the (former) British world. Compare, for example, the vast difference in social systems that still divides Canada from the US. Britain, as is so often shamelessly forgotten both within and without the UK, is not a country with an inherent 'Anglo-style capitalist' tradition, but is instead the very inventor of the welfare state.

By 1979, Britain was bankrupt. A poor country, the second poorest in the EU. A new course was needed.

This, however, is not really what Thatcher did. She did not set out a new course* for Britian so much as destroy the obsolete. What she did, with sardonic pleasure one might add, was destroy the old in Britain. Arguably rightfully so. But with near psychopathic ruthlessness. Did she psychologically try to wash off the traces of her own modest origins by lashing out onto the poor?

*This honour, for better or for worse, I think belongs to Blair and New Labour.