Thatcher’s Legacy

When talking of or writing about Lady Thatcher it is easy to be either raised by feelings of absolute hate or total adulation. That said there is no doubt that we are all living in a Britain that has been altered substantially by her being and her policies.

She may well have been a nice kindly woman in private but that has been said of many in history, some of whom we would never want to meet on a light night let alone a dark one. She was the 1st woman Prime Minister but to equate that to feminism is to equate di Canio to socialism. She may well have been focussed and not for turning but wasn’t that the doctrine of Generals in the Great War. What some will regard as positive virtues can, in retrospect be construed as an actual weaknesses. In reality nothing is ever that clear-cut. She created her image wilfully and was never in truth the person the Public saw as she was molded in looks, voice, actions and policies in the greatest PR exercise ever because most were not aware of the wiles of the spin doctor in her day.

As for the ‘Iron Lady’ image this was based on her tackling Argentina and Unions.

Lest we forget the Falklands War was a result of bad policy in removing the one and only naval vessel there whilst under threat from a bellicose dictatorship and partly won back by brown-nosing an equally despicable dictator in Chile. Britain may be a Society where Thatcher’s children hold sway but Chile’s children went ‘missing’.

The victories against Unions were predominantly those of the Miners and Wapping. The Miners were unfortunate to be led by an equally belligerent World War I type General in Arthur Scargill who incredulously launched his troops in March 1984 when they would have a minimum effect. The long-term effect has been the total demise of a home-grown coal mining industry. However, that said, Scargill has now been vindicated in his view of Thatcher’s intent to decimate this Industry. In the long-term hardly a great win for the UK. As for Wapping there is no doubt there were dubious Print Union ‘Spanish Practices’ that were unjustifiable but remember that Murdoch’s News International built and equipped their new plant under secrecy. The long term effect of this dispute was to entrench the power of Murdoch and sow the seeds that led to Leveson.

Thatcher envisaged the UK economy being based on Service Industries not manufacturing. This led to policies freeing up the potential for banks and insurance companies to operate in less strict environments and, as sure as eggs are eggs, the rotten eggs Thatcher laid grew up and the chickens came home to roost in our current economic crisis.

What about her great work in getting Brits to be homeowners I hear. Well the positive effect was to bring about estates with mixed tenancies and ownership but why and at what cost? The why is simple it was her policy to turn voters, in predominantly Labour areas, into mini capitalists. The downside is those homes removed from the Social Housing stock were not replaced causing massive waiting lists and now being attacked by an unseemly act of social cleansing by the Coalition in manipulating welfare payments, council tax and the odious bedroom tax.

The other major way Thatcher tried to make us all capitalists, and therefore not Labour friendly, was the propagation of Privatisation. Who now can honestly say we are better off with a mish mash of rail and energy companies with obscene profits, poor service and unexplainable pricing policies. And who wouldn’t wish back a water bill that was a small separate extra that came as Water Rates with your annual household Rate demand when the only time there was a hosepipe ban was in the exceptional Summer of ’76. And just how many of those original shares issued are still in the hands of the ordinary man and not the top 1% now getting their windfall tax cut?

Another area that needs to be examined is her xenophobia and homophobia. The first is clear in her dealings with her fellow Europeans whom she always acted superior too and had the bullies streak of ‘handbagging’ her colleagues within the European Union. The homophobia came out clearly in her support of the now widely accepted as infamous support of the anti-gay measure : Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which forbade schools from teaching “the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”. I cannot say whether she actually hated these people but she certainly engendered hatred.

It is also worth mentioning that Thatcher was the Prime Minister who introduced Rate Capping and abolished the Greater London Council. Two actions which were politically motivated and diminished local democracy, their autonomy and assisted the decline in voting at Local Government Elections.

This legacy is one of which I personally would be totally ashamed. I don’t, now she is dead, echo her cry of ‘Rejoice! Rejoice!’ but neither could I be that hypocritical that I would shed one tear for her.