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Can someone explain Margaret Thatcher to me?
Scroll to see replies
She was great 
Thornton
Or, depending on how you look at it, helped lead to the 15 or so years of uninterrupted economic growth between 1993 and 2008
Which appears to have been unsustainable and we are now feeling the effects, how long will it take to work it off? Currently I think the debt is predicted to last a bit longer than 15 years...
She privatised a lot of things before it was common which was a good thing as privatised industries are more efficient , reducing government expenditure and so our taxes are lower.
I dont know why the miners striked so cant comment on that.
I dont know why the miners striked so cant comment on that.
Lone Commissar
Which appears to have been unsustainable and we are now feeling the effects, how long will it take to work it off? Currently I think the debt is predicted to last a bit longer than 15 years...
Um, would you like to point to another period of history with that much uninterrupted growth? Recessions happen, get used to it.
Just because we are close to the bottom of a (admittedly very deep) slump doesn't mean that all recent economic policy was a disaster.
Picnic1
On the other hand, maybe Thatcher could have kept this nice gesture and found the money elsewhere. But she was clearly determined to be rational in these matters and. naturally, that will displease people. One of Thatcher's weaknesses may have been that there is no point being an economic miracle worker if you are going to look like a heartless robot to some people.
The interesting point is that Thatcher later regretted it. She wrote in her autobiography: "I learned a valuable lesson. I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit.".
Student2806
Post-WWII Keynesian policies stopped working in the 1970s, the Labour government lost control of pretty much everything, Thatcher came in, put her foot down, imposed a neoliberal revolution and regained control. And she took on the Argies.
She's much like Marmite - people either love her (for taming the unions) or hate her (for taming the unions).
She's much like Marmite - people either love her (for taming the unions) or hate her (for taming the unions).
Keynesian supply side policies never stopped working. Stagflation was a perfectly explained condition which neoliberals used as their 'proof' that Keynesian beliefs were flawed.
And Britain and America and a lot of the world influenced by neoliberal treasuries suffer to this day
To what i think about her: Thatcher ****** the kids
Lefty Leo
Keynesian supply side policies never stopped working. Stagflation was a perfectly explained condition which neoliberals used as their 'proof' that Keynesian beliefs were flawed.
And Britain and America and a lot of the world influenced by neoliberal treasuries suffer to this day
To what i think about her: Thatcher ****** the kids
And Britain and America and a lot of the world influenced by neoliberal treasuries suffer to this day
To what i think about her: Thatcher ****** the kids
OK, bad wording on my part. The Bretton Woods system (the brainchild of Keynes and Harry Dexter White) failed - primarily the fixed exchange rate anchored to the dollar. Anyway, it's kind of a moot point - neoliberalism got its way regardless of what went before it.
Oh Maggie 
Some of her social views were repugnant though, but on the whole, especially economically, she was a genius.
Beaten only by Churchill in terms of greatest leader.
Some of her social views were repugnant though, but on the whole, especially economically, she was a genius.
Beaten only by Churchill in terms of greatest leader.
I already posted this a few weeks ago in another thread:
Well, look at what effects Margaret Thatcher's premiership have had on the working class:
She privatised businesses, allowing more people to buy more shares in companies
She sold off loss-making nationalised industries, which became profitable after she released the government's stranglehold on those companies
Her Union reforms allowed us to have one of the longest periods of industrial peacetime ever, which was helped by Tony Bliar introducing the minimum wage in 1998, so workers need not strike when they already have acceptable earnings.
She allowed people to buy their own council homes, thus allowing people to get their first step onto the housing ladder.
And don't you say that Tony Bliar is a traditional Labour MP, he was very much a Conservative with Labour bells and whistles. if she can change the political ideology of the opposition less than a decade after she left power, then surely that's a measurement of how powerful she was? "Old" Labour was more socialist than capitalist, New Labour is more capitalist than socialist.
Basically, she fed capitalism and allowed those that had the initiative to increase their personal wealth to do just that - increase it. As her (slightly fictional) portrayal in that BBC drama-documentary about her a few years back said "I am a Conservative, not a Tory". She was a libertarian, not a traditional Conservative (or "Tory" as they are known).
Unfortunately, many people do still see her as a hard-right old style separate-the-poor-from-the-rich Conservative because she lived with a Millionaire husband, went to private school (Grammar schools at the time she was of school age were privately funded, not government funded like they are now), didn't introduce a national minimum wage (as she expected those who were on severely low incomes to increase their earnings by themselves via her privatisation scheme), increased unemployment almost entirely by accident as she had no choice but to cut inflation rates (which peaked - i think - at 27% in 1975). To put that into perspective, the inflation rate of last month was only 3.5%.
Also, while unemployment increased in her first term in office, she also cut the dole money.
So she was out of touch (as she didn't realise how bad the job situation was, and Norman Tebbit was out of touch as he didn't know how poor some of these families were and how expensive it is to move to another part of the country or another country to find a job). he famously declared at a Tory party conference, after a Young Conservative told him that he thinks that unemployment is the cause of riots on the street - there were numerous riots around the country in the early 1980s - Norman responded by declaring on stage "I grew up in the 1930s with an unemployed father. But he didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work until he found it".
This and her tax cuts made her want to cut government spending (by cutting taxes - even though she increased taxes earlier in her premiership during the middle of a recession), including spending on the benefits system to a point where to claim your dole money, you had to *prove* that you were actively searching for work. plus, as stated earlier, she expected the working classes to have the initiative to take advantage of their new found freedom via her privatisations.
She also introduced the Poll tax, which was between £300 and £500 per person per year, which had to be paid "whether you could afford it or not".
Oh, and she also introduced section 28, which i think is the most horrific thing her government did:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28
This fed the image that she was a traditional Conservative, as Conservatives were seen to be the traditionalists, who think that homosexuality is "unnatural". As she carried on in power in her third term, it seems that as she carried on and got more power crazed and more out of touch with the real world, her popularity declined even more. Hence biting satire on TV and in the press, such as the Spitting Image puppet in my signature (in an above post) used from 1987-1989. her popularity kept on bouncing up and down. up in 1979, down in 1981/82, up in 1983, not sure if it stayed up or went down in the mid-80s, up in 1987, then slowly sank to the point where her party saw her as a liability to them winning the next election (which would have happened in 1991, but was deferred to 1992 to allow John Major time to have an impact on the public opinion).
Now, i'm certainly not politically ignorant, but then again i'm not always right, as i've learnt this from past experiences, so if I have anything wrong, I'm OK with anyone to correct me. I do read these things the memorise them, and then when i type posts like this, i remember what i researched, which may have been months ago, so feel free to correct me. Politics is one of my deepest interests, but i don't see it as a career in any way and i'm happy to learn if i'm wrong.
Well, look at what effects Margaret Thatcher's premiership have had on the working class:
She privatised businesses, allowing more people to buy more shares in companies
She sold off loss-making nationalised industries, which became profitable after she released the government's stranglehold on those companies
Her Union reforms allowed us to have one of the longest periods of industrial peacetime ever, which was helped by Tony Bliar introducing the minimum wage in 1998, so workers need not strike when they already have acceptable earnings.
She allowed people to buy their own council homes, thus allowing people to get their first step onto the housing ladder.
And don't you say that Tony Bliar is a traditional Labour MP, he was very much a Conservative with Labour bells and whistles. if she can change the political ideology of the opposition less than a decade after she left power, then surely that's a measurement of how powerful she was? "Old" Labour was more socialist than capitalist, New Labour is more capitalist than socialist.
Basically, she fed capitalism and allowed those that had the initiative to increase their personal wealth to do just that - increase it. As her (slightly fictional) portrayal in that BBC drama-documentary about her a few years back said "I am a Conservative, not a Tory". She was a libertarian, not a traditional Conservative (or "Tory" as they are known).
Unfortunately, many people do still see her as a hard-right old style separate-the-poor-from-the-rich Conservative because she lived with a Millionaire husband, went to private school (Grammar schools at the time she was of school age were privately funded, not government funded like they are now), didn't introduce a national minimum wage (as she expected those who were on severely low incomes to increase their earnings by themselves via her privatisation scheme), increased unemployment almost entirely by accident as she had no choice but to cut inflation rates (which peaked - i think - at 27% in 1975). To put that into perspective, the inflation rate of last month was only 3.5%.
Also, while unemployment increased in her first term in office, she also cut the dole money.
So she was out of touch (as she didn't realise how bad the job situation was, and Norman Tebbit was out of touch as he didn't know how poor some of these families were and how expensive it is to move to another part of the country or another country to find a job). he famously declared at a Tory party conference, after a Young Conservative told him that he thinks that unemployment is the cause of riots on the street - there were numerous riots around the country in the early 1980s - Norman responded by declaring on stage "I grew up in the 1930s with an unemployed father. But he didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work until he found it".
This and her tax cuts made her want to cut government spending (by cutting taxes - even though she increased taxes earlier in her premiership during the middle of a recession), including spending on the benefits system to a point where to claim your dole money, you had to *prove* that you were actively searching for work. plus, as stated earlier, she expected the working classes to have the initiative to take advantage of their new found freedom via her privatisations.
She also introduced the Poll tax, which was between £300 and £500 per person per year, which had to be paid "whether you could afford it or not".
Oh, and she also introduced section 28, which i think is the most horrific thing her government did:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28
This fed the image that she was a traditional Conservative, as Conservatives were seen to be the traditionalists, who think that homosexuality is "unnatural". As she carried on in power in her third term, it seems that as she carried on and got more power crazed and more out of touch with the real world, her popularity declined even more. Hence biting satire on TV and in the press, such as the Spitting Image puppet in my signature (in an above post) used from 1987-1989. her popularity kept on bouncing up and down. up in 1979, down in 1981/82, up in 1983, not sure if it stayed up or went down in the mid-80s, up in 1987, then slowly sank to the point where her party saw her as a liability to them winning the next election (which would have happened in 1991, but was deferred to 1992 to allow John Major time to have an impact on the public opinion).
Now, i'm certainly not politically ignorant, but then again i'm not always right, as i've learnt this from past experiences, so if I have anything wrong, I'm OK with anyone to correct me. I do read these things the memorise them, and then when i type posts like this, i remember what i researched, which may have been months ago, so feel free to correct me. Politics is one of my deepest interests, but i don't see it as a career in any way and i'm happy to learn if i'm wrong.
Thornton
Um, would you like to point to another period of history with that much uninterrupted growth? Recessions happen, get used to it.
Just because we are close to the bottom of a (admittedly very deep) slump doesn't mean that all recent economic policy was a disaster.
Just because we are close to the bottom of a (admittedly very deep) slump doesn't mean that all recent economic policy was a disaster.
Annual growth figures show a longer period of uninterrupted growth between 1948 to 1973, the longest since 1992 which is the longest recent period of economic growth and the majority of that growth was under a Labour government (admittedly a "New" one). I am not saying that all of the current recession is due to bad planning but by closing primary and secondary industries, some state owned, the current recovery has been slowed and it could be argued that the growth was not due to government factors as much as a good international situation.
Lone Commissar
Annual growth figures show a longer period of uninterrupted growth between 1948 to 1973, the longest since 1992 which is the longest recent period of economic growth and the majority of that growth was under a Labour government (admittedly a "New" one). I am not saying that all of the current recession is due to bad planning but by closing primary and secondary industries, some state owned, the current recovery has been slowed and it could be argued that the growth was not due to government factors as much as a good international situation.
Actually you are right about growth between 1948 and 1973 - I couldn't find any UK figures going that far back and so had been using a list of US recessions instead. (Apologies about that - though I still recall reading that if you use quarter by quarter figures 1993-2008 was the longest expansion on record.) However the fact remains that recessions have always been around, and always will be.
Perhaps some of Thatcher's policies helped in some small way to worsen the current situation, but also helped improve the situation in the past. Of course many factors affected both the long boom and the bust; but it's not fair to argue that we are in the situation we are in now thanks to her.
One last point I will make is that the recovery after the early 1990s recession was strong and fast compared to the recovery after other previous recessions, so Thatcher's changes could actually be argued to be helpful in recovery, not a hindrance.
I know most people disagree with this, but I agree with the other posters who said that she wouldn't be as demonised if she had been a man.
Original post by Elipsis
She ripped the teat of the state away from the North, who had become accustomed to a job for life in which they could basically set their own pay and working conditions. I think most people with half a brain cell agree it had to be done, but she put the North straight onto solids instead of giving them follow on milk with blended baby food, to continue the anology 
.
.The unions were behaving badly yes but she decimated them with no regard for the working man instead of engaging to bring a middle ground like what is found today. She ripped the teat right out of their mouth and left them to starve, solids would have been a luxury. She wanted to increase the wealth of the country (which needed to be done) but had no regard with how it was done. She sold everything off, destroyed whole communities and many peoples lives, caused mass unemployment. She bought wealth back to the country but for many their lives were ruined but as long as it was ok for the upper half of the population who gives a **** about the working class ey? She had some good economical ideologies but had absolutely no compassion with how they were carried out and who she steam rolled over in the process as long as Britain's economy came out on top. I mean peoples lives are always second anyway
(edited 11 years ago)
Original post by in_vogue
I've been reading up on Thatcher because I'm embarrassed by my lack of knowledge. The problem is, I've never studied politics or educated myself on many political topics, so the material I'm trying to read seems a bit difficult to make sense of.
Can someone give me an explanation of Thatcher, what she did, her policies, perhaps her ''pros'' and ''cons'' (if you can simplify it that far), maybe your personal opinion. I'm happy for you to get into whatever debate you want with each other about it, but before you do it can you focus on giving me an outline please.
Rep to the clearest/fullest one
Can someone give me an explanation of Thatcher, what she did, her policies, perhaps her ''pros'' and ''cons'' (if you can simplify it that far), maybe your personal opinion. I'm happy for you to get into whatever debate you want with each other about it, but before you do it can you focus on giving me an outline please.
Rep to the clearest/fullest one
don't waste your time , you will learn nothing interesting from her
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