Brits, Just what was so bad about Margaret Thatcher?

[The Grim Squeaker]

I often see various writers lamenting the politics, personality and policy of Margaret Thatcher (on a personal, not just political policy level), and I'm interested in hearing a good "rundown" of just why she's regarded by some (Left-wing SDN'ers) as being almost as bad as the English Reagan equilevent. (loved by some [who don't post here], loathed by many [who do]).

My base understanding, is that her economic policies were free market oriented, and that the adjustments caused by her reforms, as well as an increasingly bloated and unsustainable welfare government policy (which had been the status quo since post WW2), were brutal to some segments of the population (northern industrial towns, coal mining, the poor).
I also heard that large scale reform being needed to avoid an economic crash (due to the aforementioned increasingly unsustainable policies).
She also gets a lot of the "credit" for the Falklands war, despite not having anything to do with the anemic state of the military that preceded it, and I see it as a fully justified, justifiable defensive war on the UK's part.
etc'.
Basically, could some enlighten and inform me?

[Background - I lived in the UK when I was young, but moved away when I was a kid, and I'm not anywhere near old enough to have been around in the 80's].

I'm not looking for "Why Thatcher destroyed the uk! And hates the poor! And manufacturing!", I'm interested in something more "Fair and Balanced". (But not Faux news style)

[HMS Sophia]

You basically hit the nail on the head as far as I know. Terrible economic and employment policies, leading to some very bad unemployment rates and stuff like the miners strikes.
She does get boost in ratings from committing to the Falklands, she was spot on with that one. On the other hand, the 'anaemic' (understatement) state of the military was due too her and her party. There was a defence review just before the war, which was calling for massive reductions to the Royal Navy. This was eventually stopped by the war (unsurprisingly enough), but thats the conservatives pretty much

[bobalot]

I fail to see what exactly were her fantastic economic accomplishments are.

She started off with 10.3% inflation, which rose under her watch to 21.9%. By the time she left it was 9.7%. The number of unemployed started at 1 million, peaked at a whopping 3 million and by the time she left it was still 1.5 million. Interest rates started at 13%, peaked at 17% and ended up on 13%.

There was the Lawson boom and bust, the regressive Poll Tax and mass rioting in the streets. Privatization of water utilities were a disaster. It was so bad, even the conservative supporting Daily Mail described water privatisation as the “greatest act of licensed robbery in our history.”

[HMS Sophia]

Who said they were fantastic?
hell, who said they were anything more than terrible...

[bobalot]

Who said they were fantastic?
hell, who said they were anything more than terrible...

I find it hard to believe you have not read any right-wing commentary on Thatcher or Reagan and their economic "successes".

[Carinthium]

I fail to see what exactly were her fantastic economic accomplishments are.

She started off with 10.3% inflation, which rose under her watch to 21.9%. By the time she left it was 9.7%. The number of unemployed started at 1 million, peaked at a whopping 3 million and by the time she left it was still 1.5 million. Interest rates started at 13%, peaked at 17% and ended up on 13%.

There was the Lawson boom and bust, the regressive Poll Tax and mass rioting in the streets. Privatization of water utilities were a disaster. It was so bad, even the conservative supporting Daily Mail described water privatisation as the “greatest act of licensed robbery in our history.”

Out of curiosity, source? And timelines? (I've read quite a few sources contradicting you, so I'd be curious to look myself)

[bobalot]

I fail to see what exactly were her fantastic economic accomplishments are.

She started off with 10.3% inflation, which rose under her watch to 21.9%. By the time she left it was 9.7%. The number of unemployed started at 1 million, peaked at a whopping 3 million and by the time she left it was still 1.5 million. Interest rates started at 13%, peaked at 17% and ended up on 13%.

There was the Lawson boom and bust, the regressive Poll Tax and mass rioting in the streets. Privatization of water utilities were a disaster. It was so bad, even the conservative supporting Daily Mail described water privatisation as the “greatest act of licensed robbery in our history.”

Out of curiosity, source? And timelines? (I've read quite a few sources contradicting you, so I'd be curious to look myself)

Contradicting what?

The interest rates, unemployment figures and inflation are straight statistics from google searching. The Lawson boom/bust, numerous riots and the Poll Tax is actual history. Are you disputing they happened? or that the Poll Tax wasn't regressive?

[Carinthium]

On a quick Google search, I found statistics talking about how much inflation fell during Thatcher's time in power, checking the first five websites that came up. The two claims cancel out citing only online websites, so I was wondering if you had anything 'stronger'.

[Thanas]

Thatcher also famously tried to block the German unification because it would, in her stated opinion, lead to a new rise of nazism and a new Reich which Britain would have to fight off again.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Thatcher also famously tried to block the German unification because it would, in her stated opinion, lead to a new rise of nazism and a new Reich which Britain would have to fight off again.

In all fairness, she was hardly the only one of that generation. Historical examples were/are hardly comforting on the subject of Germany reuniting. (And the weakness of the East German economy was unknown prior to reunification, most people would have assumed that it would greatly strengthen Germany's economy and bolster it's industrial capacities).

Heck, i'd have been against it, and i'm a liberal lefty who plans to visit Berlin/Germany as soon as I have a vacation at the temperature becomes supra-arctic

[Twoyboy]

She started off with 10.3% inflation, which rose under her watch to 21.9%. By the time she left it was 9.7%. The number of unemployed started at 1 million, peaked at a whopping 3 million and by the time she left it was still 1.5 million. Interest rates started at 13%, peaked at 17% and ended up on 13%.

I'm not a fan, but those figures are misleading. You can't implement policy which makes long term changes in inflation and unemployment overnight. They both seem to have peaked during her reign and fallen again. If they continued downward afterwards you could argue her success in turning some bad trends around and leaving good policies for the incoming government.

I think they need some context to really be used as ammunition against her.

[Thanas]

Thatcher also famously tried to block the German unification because it would, in her stated opinion, lead to a new rise of nazism and a new Reich which Britain would have to fight off again.

In all fairness, she was hardly the only one of that generation. Historical examples were/are hardly comforting on the subject of Germany reuniting. (And the weakness of the East German economy was unknown prior to reunification, most people would have assumed that it would greatly strengthen Germany's economy and bolster it's industrial capacities).

Those people however had always agreed to the reunification. In fact, it had been a stated policy goal since the 1950s. Changing their mind overnight just makes them hypocrites.

Heck, i'd have been against it, and i'm a liberal lefty who plans to visit Berlin/Germany as soon as I have a vacation at the temperature becomes supra-arctic

Ah, so you are one of those who like to speak much about freedom and self-determination unless it might potentially inconvenience you slightly, and a Germanophobe to boot.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Thatcher also famously tried to block the German unification because it would, in her stated opinion, lead to a new rise of nazism and a new Reich which Britain would have to fight off again.

In all fairness, she was hardly the only one of that generation. Historical examples were/are hardly comforting on the subject of Germany reuniting. (And the weakness of the East German economy was unknown prior to reunification, most people would have assumed that it would greatly strengthen Germany's economy and bolster it's industrial capacities).

Those people however had always agreed to the reunification. In fact, it had been a stated policy goal since the 1950s. Changing their mind overnight just makes them hypocrites.

Spoken public policy isn't necessarily what people want, especially when the talked of goal was not in the immediate future.
"Peace", "Nuclear disarmament", "Modernizing the colonies of the empire", "Civilizing the Congo", "Establishing a democratic regime in XXX".
For many, the fall of the soviet union did happen overnight, forcing them to "do it or lose it", so to say, in terms of proclamations.

Heck, i'd have been against it, and i'm a liberal lefty who plans to visit Berlin/Germany as soon as I have a vacation at the temperature becomes supra-arctic

Ah, so you are one of those who like to speak much about freedom and self-determination unless it might potentially inconvenience you slightly, and a Germanophobe to boot.

More like having most of my family killed by a reunited German speaking nation.
Germany today seems to have gotten, for lack of a better term, "Better", same as Japan. But 20-30 years ago, there was relatively less confidence in the "reformed" nations. (Especially by the older generation, which politicians belong/ed too).

To put it very crudely, as I see the thought processes as being: Bismarck unites the German states -
Germany expands, becomes the greatest regional power in Europe, jockeys for power and it's rightful place (it being an economic and technological superpower thanks to strong growth (in terms of population growth and economic/GDP growth) and a relatively large population), the balance of power is unstable, hegemonic shift/war/WW1
. Germany is split up to prevent it from being such a dominant force again.

A generation later - most of Germany is reunited. WW2.

A generation later - Germany is a regional economic and industrial power again, wants to reunite with East Germany, which is hailed as part of the superlative powerful industrial economy of the USSR (this is bunk, but unknown to most of the public at the time) .

A high degree of leeryness is extremely understandable, some wanted to dismantle Germany entirely after WW2.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that there's anything wrong with Germany reuniting given the benefit of hindsight. I also think that Germany today is a quite model nation in terms of ethics, development, culture and civilization. Doesn't change the fact that the last few times a united Germany existed, it resulted (indirectly or directly) in a European conflict and catastrophe.
Apeaceful seperated Germany was/is/still became an economic and industrial superpower. Coached in those terms, what other European power would want Germany to unite and grow even more powerful? (Fearing a repeat of the past)

[Thanas]

More like having most of my family killed by a reunited German speaking nation.

So? I had most of my family killed by an English speaking nation. Your point being? One should be smart enough to recognize different enviroments.

Germany today seems to have gotten, for lack of a better term, "Better", same as Japan. But 20-30 years ago, there was relatively less confidence in the "reformed" nations. (Especially by the older generation, which politicians belong/ed too).

To put it very crudely, as I see the thought processes as being: Bismarck unites the German states -
Germany expands, becomes the greatest regional power in Europe, jockeys for power and it's rightful place (it being an economic and technological superpower thanks to strong growth (in terms of population growth and economic/GDP growth) and a relatively large population), the balance of power is unstable, hegemonic shift/war/WW1
. Germany is split up to prevent it from being such a dominant force again.

A generation later - most of Germany is reunited. WW2.

A generation later - Germany is a regional economic and industrial power again, wants to reunite with East Germany, which is hailed as part of the superlative powerful industrial economy of the USSR (this is bunk, but unknown to most of the public at the time) .

A high degree of leeryness is extremely understandable, some wanted to dismantle Germany entirely after WW2.

Like I said, Germanophobia based on nothing but wild speculation and pretty stupid thought processes. Thatcher especially thought that in twenty years or so she would have to fight Nazism once again.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that there's anything wrong with Germany reuniting given the benefit of hindsight. I also think that Germany today is a quite model nation in terms of ethics, development, culture and civilization. Doesn't change the fact that the last few times a united Germany existed, it resulted (indirectly or directly) in a European conflict and catastrophe.
Apeaceful seperated Germany was/is/still became an economic and industrial superpower. Coached in those terms, what other European power would want Germany to unite and grow even more powerful? (Fearing a repeat of the past)

It hardly like one can blame Germany for WWI, or single it out for its behavior in the 19th century, given that it was actually one of the tamest nations around. And besides, the reunification was promised over several decades.

It is one thing to fear a relative loss of importance. It is another to just go and scream "NAZIS" from the rooftop.

[bobalot]

On a quick Google search, I found statistics talking about how much inflation fell during Thatcher's time in power, checking the first five websites that came up. The two claims cancel out citing only online websites, so I was wondering if you had anything 'stronger'.

What? 'Stronger' than reality?

If you google "U.K inflation", the first link is the National Statistics Online - Inflation, and there is a link to monthly inflation figures.

She became PM in May of 1979 and finished in November 1989. She had 10.3% inflation in May and ended up on 9.7%, with a peak of 21.9% and average of 8%.
Please excuse me while I shit myself in awe of this achievement.

The only way she managed to bring down inflation (temporarily) was brain-dead monetarism, which managed explode the unemployment rnumbers to 3.5 million fucking people. She only managed to survive this social disaster by winning the Falklands War and riding off the patriotic fervor.

I notice you ignored my comments about her disastrous water privatisation, Lawson Boom/Bust, regressive poll tax and numerous riots under her era.

I'm not a fan, but those figures are misleading. You can't implement policy which makes long term changes in inflation and unemployment overnight. They both seem to have peaked during her reign and fallen again. If they continued downward afterwards you could argue her success in turning some bad trends around and leaving good policies for the incoming government.

You have a point. Inflation stayed high until early 1991. However, other countries around the same time also entered a period of low inflation, which continued for much of nineties. So how much of this can be credited to her is something for an economist to answer (Stas?)

I was merely pointing out that she wasn't a economic wizz. The entire period she was in office was marked with massive unemployment and social unrest. Australia, at the same time went through massive reform without having to rip apart society to do it.

[bobalot]

By the time she left, 28% of the Children of great Britain lived in poverty (A figure that kept rising after she left). In 1997, the U.K had highest childhood-poverty rate in Europe. She also managed to fucking double (unfortunately, you need to subscribe) the overall poverty rate.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not a fan, but those figures are misleading. You can't implement policy which makes long term changes in inflation and unemployment overnight. They both seem to have peaked during her reign and fallen again. If they continued downward afterwards you could argue her success in turning some bad trends around and leaving good policies for the incoming government.

You have a point. Inflation stayed high until early 1991. However, other countries around the same time also entered a period of low inflation, which continued for much of nineties. So how much of this can be credited to her is something for an economist to answer (Stas?)

I was merely pointing out that she wasn't a economic wizz. The entire period she was in office was marked with massive unemployment and social unrest. Australia, at the same time went through massive reform without having to rip apart society to do it.

Another point is that if your government is going to engage in necessary reforms that (necessarily) lead to high unemployment... you'd expect the government to go a little out of its way to mitigate the consequences of high unemployment and poverty for the public. Rather than just saying "well, we need to rearrange the economy, so it doesn't matter who gets hurt or how hurting them will harm our country's future."

I doubt Thatcher has a good track record in that respect.

[bobalot]

I'm not a fan, but those figures are misleading. You can't implement policy which makes long term changes in inflation and unemployment overnight. They both seem to have peaked during her reign and fallen again. If they continued downward afterwards you could argue her success in turning some bad trends around and leaving good policies for the incoming government.

You have a point. Inflation stayed high until early 1991. However, other countries around the same time also entered a period of low inflation, which continued for much of nineties. So how much of this can be credited to her is something for an economist to answer (Stas?)

I was merely pointing out that she wasn't a economic wizz. The entire period she was in office was marked with massive unemployment and social unrest. Australia, at the same time went through massive reform without having to rip apart society to do it.

Another point is that if your government is going to engage in necessary reforms that (necessarily) lead to high unemployment... you'd expect the government to go a little out of its way to mitigate the consequences of high unemployment and poverty for the public. Rather than just saying "well, we need to rearrange the economy, so it doesn't matter who gets hurt or how hurting them will harm our country's future."

I doubt Thatcher has a good track record in that respect.

Exactly. Some of those industrial towns she took great pleasure in fucking over were some of the poorest towns in Europe by the end of the conservative era.

[Crown]

She stole children's milk for one thing.

There seems to be a real split in the UK on her based on geography, if you're southern, you're most likely a Torie, and don't mind you, if you're from the midlands and north you wish her the most gruesome death. I have mates in Liverpool, who's fathers toast to her being incontinent and addled brained in her later life. The hatred the northern regions of the UK have for her are quite amazing. Most seem to point the finger at her for destabilising the social fabric in the UK, although I'm not sure if you can measure that.

One thing that is leveled at her, was making the NHS worse. I can't recall the exact figure, but the claim being that the ratio of administrators to doctors/nurses in the NHS shot through the roof under her reign and it didn't correlate to a better service, only a more expensive one. Would love to see if anyone has data on that. And for reference to our perhaps not so savvy American posters; the NHS is the National Health Service and sacred cow in the UK, not even Thatcher could have dismantled it, there would have been a revolution, despite her privatisation fetish.

[Rye]

According to my parents who actually worked in the health service, their experience was that Thatcher brought in lots of pay freezes and cuts to see how little the NHS could be run on. People weren't paid properly for years. They ended up having to do work-in strikes (where they were on strike, but obviously had to still work so people didn't die).

[madd0ct0r]

I once sat my wife down and asked her as an outsider and an economist, was Thatcher so evil? (I'm northern)

Her reply was that basically her policies were broadly correct economically, but devastating socially.

Other deeply cynical moves that come to mind from her goverment was the 'renovation' of Inner London. By allowing the forcing out of poor people and building Yuppie flats on the land, she (or her goverment) tried to change the voting pattern in favour of the Tories.
Much like Gordon Brown did by trying to get most of the UK middle class working for the government.

Since the damage done by her was so regionally defined, the bitterness remains to this day.

[Starglider]

Essentially, the nothern part of the UK is parasitic on the southern part, in the sense that the north has a much higher government spending - to - tax ratio and a larger percentage of the economy consists of government beurecracy (staffing of core services is similar across the country, but the north has a lot of extra low-level civil service). This is fairly bad now, but it was much much worse in the late 1970s, because tax revenues from London were subsidising massive state industries which were running huge losses. This had been the case since the second world war, but in the 1970s unions were at the peak of their power and revelling in it. Not only were unproductive workers impossible to fire, they seemed to take pride in striking as much as possible and genuinely campaigning for absurdities like a three-day work week. Companies like British Leyland were driven into the ground mostly by unions strangling the life out of them (to be fair, poor management didn't help). The economy was in a bad shape to due the various consequences of WWII and the dissolution of the British empire, but the unions anti-productivity measures made it worse, and of course as standards of living fell the unions did what they always do; grab as much public money for their due-payers as they can using economic terrorism, and fuck everyone else.

Margret Thatcher was a hero to all non-unionised private workers tired of subsidising lazy entitlement-complex parasites; particularly in the south of the UK, where the seeds of economic recovery were there but being smoothed by the massive drain to the unproductive north. I mean that literally; I grew up in Reading, in the Thames valley, and a majority of both my teenage peers and my parent's social circle thought she was awesome. Obviously most of the north hate her for taking away some (by no means all) of their massive government subsidy. I don't even blame her for not trying to mitigate the transition significantly. The unions of the time were outright poision, smug in their ability to sabotage the country and feeling no need to acknowledge any concept of fairness or compromise, so they brought that harshness on themselves.

Obviously she made numerous mistakes and started some unfortunate trends (e.g. contributing to the UK's relatively high income inequality), but she literally saved the UK from economic collapse. Labour's unusually ineffective brand of socialism had made the country the laughing stock of Europe, Thatcher's government may have been disliked but it was definitely respected.

[madd0ct0r]

The Tories of the time were outright poision, smug in their ability to sabotage the country and feeling no need to acknowledge any concept of fairness or compromise...

You see what I did there

And this gentlemen, is the spilt over Thatcher.

Grow up in the prosperous south, and she was a goddess who broke the greedy, stupid unions and cut out a lot of wasteful government spending. Wasteful, because it was money being spent to try and keep the North afloat as heavy industry crashed and burned. The money was often ill-applied and even more often only enough to slow the decline, drag it out over generations.

Grow up in the North, as a working class guy, and she was the person who smashed the unions, who at the time were your only guarantee of a living wage. Unemployment was already high, and getting steadily higher. Living conditions were barely above 3rd world countries. The film Billy Elliot is a good example.
At the same time, she cut out a lot of the spending on social workers, unemployment benefit and similar. Guess which part of the country was hurt most by this?


The unions of the time were idiotic, and company management often as bad or worse. The situation was untenable, and economic reform was badly needed. But the damage done by Thatcher was disproportionate, almost to the extent of malignant. As Starglider writes her voting block at the time wanted to see the North and the Unions suffer.

[bobalot]

Yeah, the "non-parasitic" south (the City) of the U.K has done such an awesome job of late, getting the largest taxpayer bailouts in the United Kingdom's history that will take literally generations to pay off.

It's hilarious to complain about the regions of the UK couldn't contribute as much to wealth creation (basically outside the City) and their reliance upon on transfer payments, when the strong pound policy Thatcher championed basically ensured that all all other industries were simply uncompetitive. It's like kicking away a cripple's crutches and complaining he can't walk.

[Starglider]

Yeah, the "non-parasitic" south (the City) of the U.K has done such an awesome job of late, getting the largest taxpayer bailouts in the United Kingdom's history that will take literally generations to pay off.

Firstly, this is twenty years later, the fact that the City now is as bad as the unions then isn't relevant to discussion of Thatcher. Note that it was Labour who bailed out the banks; they never met a massive government subsidy they didn't like, regardless of which industry it's in.

Secondly, the south is not the City of London. The Thames valley and the south coast contain the majority of the UK's high-tech companies, both manufacturing and services.

It's hilarious to complain about the regions of the UK couldn't contribute as much to wealth creation (basically outside the City) and their reliance upon on transfer payments,

They factually didn't and still don't. 'Could' is irrelevant fantasy.

when the strong pound policy Thatcher championed basically ensured that all all other industries were simply uncompetitive. It's like kicking away a cripple's crutches and complaining he can't walk.

Those industries were a write off. Any money that could have been used to modernise them (e.g. replace aging plant equipment) had long since been handed out to unions as pay bonuses. There was literally no way to fix them, and that left the financial sector as the only serious option for powering economic growth. Which worked fairly well, and of course produced the extra tax revenue that allowed Labour to go on a massive public sector spending spree in the late 90s.