Margaret Thatcher
 

Watching Agent's Scully uncanny portrayal of the Iron Lady in The Crown, and it got me to wondering, what are others' views on Mrs T after all these years...?

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

I was only a child when she was in power, but I distinctly remember 3 things about her time in office.
1. My grandparents loved her for allowing them to purchase their council house.
2. The miners hated her
3. The Falklands war

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

It wasn't just her economics, I recently saw a clip of he talking about children who are gay, and her repugnant attitude reminded me why she is despised by so many.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

I haven't seen the clip, but certainly in the 70s and 80s the general attitude towards homosexuality was obviously very different. I mean it was seen as criminal behaviour until 1968. So that charge seems somewhat revisionist.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

A couple of years older than you, I did find the Falklands bizarre at the time, and now see it as reprehensible. Very conflicted on the miners. I don't know what to think. It certainly wasn't handled well, and the lack of new investment in those communities is tragic.

Have you been watching The Crown. Series 4 is not as bad as they've been saying, although only seen the first two episodes so far,

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

As always, there were those for things and there were those against things, You picked your side of history then as now. Thatcher's government actively brought in Section28 at a time of social change, it ran counter to the sway of society at the time, although the HIV/AIDS scare caused a slowing in that change, which Thatcher's government made full use of. Section 28 received a lot of push back from decent people.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

Doesn't it depend on how old you were and if employed what type of work you were doing. A soldier/police officer would have a totally different opinion as to that of a coal miner. Having done 2 of those jobs in the 70's/80's I can tell you that Thatcher was very well liked. Does it mean she was right in everything she did No but see how you might think of her dependent on what you were doing at the time.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

Destroyed communities. Threw thousands on the dole. Put soulless hatchetmen in charge of destroying traditional industries. Implemented one of the most corrosive policies ever (Poll tax) in my country first, which, once England cottoned on to what she was doing, contributed to her downfall. It's all well and good saying people could buy their council house (my folks did) but they didn't replace these houses with new council properties. Homelessness shot through the roof (pardon the dreadful pun). Completely intransigent regarding free milk for kids, which for some was their only intake of protein a day. I think she tried too hard and as the first female Prime Minister she felt that she had to be Billy Big Balls in order to prove something. Falklands war? Meh. BOT so entitled to the protection of the UK.

In short, yes, she did change politics in Britain forever but did she have to go about it the way she did? I don't think so. The Labour Party were a laughing stock at that time so she COULD do exactly what she wanted. She left a legacy but I hope we don't see her type again.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

I see. I'll have to look up S28.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

I never quite understood the depth of resentment against the poll tax, and evidently, neither did she ! I had the sense that the protests were more ideologically against Thatcherism than that particular policy itself.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

One can argue whether Thatcherism was class warfare or not, but an attempt to dismantle the concert of progressive taxation system on such a scale was both shocking in and of itself, but indicative of the breadth and depth of Thatcherism. I think it was opposed as symbolic, and a step too far in switching how government was funded from the more affluent to the less able.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

Winners and losers. It's all about if you were a winner or a loser, and if a loser, how much of what you had was just lost or given to someone else.
Right wing governments have a habit of placating the columns that support and defend the state, such as soldiers and police.What did the soldiers and police see she gave them outside of their jobs, or was that it? I have assumed that those jobs trend to the right anyway.
​​​​​​

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

So It is May 1979 and you are the new PM what would you have done differently

She presided over a shift from centralised, state-controlled institutions to privatisation and economic reform.
One of Margaret Thatcher's first goals was taming inflation which had reached dizzying heights of over 25% in the mid-1970s.
Unemployment had been rising throughout the 1970s as companies set about restructuring and modernising their businesses.
Against this backdrop of high unemployment, the Coal Board announced in early 1984 that 20 uneconomic pits would have to close, putting 20,000 miners out of work.
For Margaret Thatcher, home-ownership was a right, and one which which she believed should be extended to council house tenants.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-22070491

During the first years of Thatcher's reign, fewer people came to live in the UK -
Ironically for a prime minister who focussed so much on family life, the 1980s saw the end of the traditional family unit for many. Divorce rates reached 13.4 per 1,000 married population in 1985, although that wasn't as high as the peak of 1994 after the recession.
In 1970, manufacturing accounted for 20.57% of UK GDP. By 1979 that was down to 17.62% of GDP. By the time she left office, that decline had continued - albeit at a slightly slower pace, down to 15.18%.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...hatcher-charts

I tend to think there will be those who thought she was a good PM and those who think she was a bad PM.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

From what I remember Thatcher was seen by the soldiers and Police as a God send. She dramatically improved their wages, working conditions and fully supported them as at that time morale in both were very low. As for trending to the right how would these jobs change if they were trending to the left?

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

Would whole heartedly agree. I was on the point of leaving the force as I could barely get by. Morale was in the basement, shifts, poor renumeration and an increasing number of cops leaving the job leading to increased work load
Thatcher WAS a god send to such as me, and I was earning a decent wage within a year of her getting in to power. Lord Edmond Davies, at the direction of the labour government completed a review on police pay during that labour government....but but under labour the recommendations would have been spread over years! Thatcher enacted his recommendations within months. Was I glad to see labour ousted by her? Damn right!
Just an opinion based on my personal circumstances......and being a life long conservative.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

She presided over a shift from centralised, state-controlled institutions to privatisation and economic reform.

This alone is a plus for me. I left the UK at age 17 permanently and as such never got to vote there but the power of the Trade Unions in the 70's and the lack of entrepreneurial spirit in the country at the time was a dark gloom over the nation. Thatcher had an unwelcome task to overcome the power of the unions and for many she allowed the economy to open up.

For many who hated her with a viceral passion, it seemed that she wanted to take away the entitlement and free ride that they were benefitting from for so long.

I find it telling in S4 of the Crown that Prince Philip was suspicious of her as she seemed to be a self made conservative (a scientist no less) and not like the long line of Conservative MP's who were very similar to Jacob Rees-Mog or the various landed gentry from the shires who had dominated conservative party politics for so long.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

Yes I finished episode 6 last night, really enjoying it so far and the actor playing Charles is spot on.

I wonder if the young Royals watch it now that this season is hitting close to home. I'm still confused why Charles didn't marry Camilla in the 1st place.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

I think Camilla had been around the block a few times, as such she was deemed unsuitable for a future Queen. A young woman with no history, was what the Queen Mum and Uncle Dickie were looking for. Enter the 19 year old Lady Diana Spencer.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

Bigamy - as she didnt get a divorce until 1995. But it wasnt thought the thing to do, anyway, to marry a divorced woman, the spirit of Edward VIII's abdication, (the Queen's Uncle), to do that was still strong.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

I think Danny meant before she married PB. She met Charles years before when they were young. He wanted to marry her but the RF sent him overseas. It’s in The Crown series 4.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

Thatcher = Despicable disgusting piece of -- . Loathed her and her type then and despise her & her type to this day. That will never ever change. What she did to the country remains forever unforgivable.

Made me more than spit that she was given a ceremonial funeral with her ashes buried at the royal hospital Chelsea , rather than just cast ignominiously down a pit.

Makes me sick even thinking about the likes of that one.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

Everyone who despairs at the selfish and grasping nature of the UK today can trace that attitude directly back to Margaret Thatcher.

She was enthusiastically supported by the greedy and the unthinking. "F*** society - me first." Interesting that the supporters on here so far only note their personal benefit, not societal.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

I guess clamping down hard on terrorists, football hooligans and allowing people to buy their own houses from the council cant be classed as societal. Bringing down inflation I bet doesn't count either. I wonder if she had had a Referendum what the result would have been? At the end of her tenure unemployment was down from when she took over and she actually closed less coal mines than the previous Labour Govt. I wonder if Labour would have sent the Armed Forces in or handed over the Falkland Islands to the Argentinians? Deregulating the Stock Exchange in 1986 I suppose didn't help with the amount of money that flooded into the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...hanges-britain

But yeah I guess to some she did no good at all.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

He certainly has the ears for it.

​​​​I think it was because Mountbatten had viewed it as a young passing love, and encouraged Charles to play the field. Meanwhile Camilla got married.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

"Clamping down hard" on terrorists isn't automatically a good thing. Remember internment? And notably, peace in Northern Ireland was brought about by engaging with the leaders of the various factions. You're not a squaddie any more, you don't need to think like one any more either.

Football hooligans? That's what happens when you create 3 million unemployed people... bored and angry young men. "Clamping down" on a problem you created is hardly political genius.

Selling off council houses? Let's not go there. The UK property market is completely distorted beyond belief thanks to the Thatcherite obsession with property prices. Selling off council houses has ruined the UK economy.

Bringing down inflation was achieved by destroying the industrial sector. The obsession with inflation is idiotic... inflation is driven by demand, and demand is healthy for the economy. Chocking the economy simply to drive down inflation is stupid.

Unemployment - I hope you are not trying to credit Thatcher with bringing down unemployment. Revisionism beyond belief!

Falklands? Who cares, really?

Deregulating the Stock Exchange... well, I never had you down as a yuppie, FL. Remember the financial crash of 2008? Directly due to deregulation and encouraging people to make money out of selling debt.

Oh, she changed society alright... and it's funny how so many Gammons like Farage keep harping back to the halcyon days of old, which are usually before Thatcher took the axe to Britain.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

I am certainly no yuppie just an ordinary guy going about things to live a decent life.
So who sent the troops into NI it certainly wasn't a Con Govt.
Not all football hooligans were unemployed.
So would you have preferred that those who bought council houses to have remained paying rent and not have the opportunity to buy a home? I lived in a council house until 1972 but my parents didn't buy one when they could afford to buy a home.
FFS she was voted out in 1990 and died in 2013. The way some talk about her I am sure some of them would sooner have Hitler, Stalin or Mugabe sat at their dinner table than Thatcher.
She has been voted the best and the worst UK PM so make of that what you will.
Did I vote for her No.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

Id agree with this...a balanced view point.

As many have said, your personal view point of her, really does depend how old you were and what you did for a living, The UK was out of control when she came to power following the winter of discontent....which has been forgotten by people who spout the bile and venom, she may have overdid it in certain areas, but it needed to be done, the trade unions were out of control ....as FL mentioned you would think some would sooner share a dinner table with Mugabe, Mao, Stalin or Hitler than Thatcher. .

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

It was a cold, calculated, politically motivated policy to empty people from the electoral roll. With poorer families and households failing to register, and who would traditionally be working class and Labour voting people, this by default ensured tory wins in elections and by-elections. The very fact that it contributed to her downfall proved how flawed it was. No-one denies that people should pay their way but Mr Kensington-Smythe in his townhouse in Belgravia paying the same as Mr Bob Broke, wife and 2 adult kids in his 8th floor flat in Peckham paying 4 lots of poll tax? Seriously? What particularly annoyed the people of Scotland was that no-one gave a toss or listened to the concerns until it affected England. But we didn't riot about it, although the 'Poll Tax riots' are what made the rest of the UK sit up and take notice! And now we have Bojo and JRM 🙄

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

I haven't heard the theory about removing voters from the elctoral roll, that sounds a bit of a stretch as political motivation. Whether a non-progressive flat tax is fair or not is a different argument. Although, the current system council tax based on property value does seem fairer.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

It's a long time ago, but one or two things still stick in the memory.
I seem to remember voting for Thatcher and arguing with fellow workers about her policies and driving through picket lines.
I think a couple of things really changed it for me.
I distinctly remember listening to the news of a morning and hearing tales of the police stopping motorists from travelling if they'd come from certain areas, the idea that so called flying pickets might be among them. To me this really was an example of the state going too far. Many tales came from innocent people going about their business but stopped from doing so simply because the police thought they might be up to no good. Confrontations outside the likes of Orgreave was one thing but clamping down on someone like me because I might be doing something they didn't want me to do didn't sit well at all.
By the time Thatcher started selling off utilities I'd become fervently anti-thatcher. Taking from people who, as a member of the voting public, partly owned a utility to sell it off cheaply to only those who could afford it, was to my mind stealing from the poor to give to the rich. Ironically I was never wound up about sales of council houses.
It's clear to me that the unions had become a force that needed to be taken on. I'm not sure that there were many politicians who'd have taken on the job, but it was well planned and enlarged stockpiles of coal is evidence that she'd decided as and when the struggle would take place and she was lucky in her choice of adversary. Scargill was much more easily disliked and demonised by the average voter than the quiet Gormly.
The Falklands war was allowed to happen. I seem to remember tales that a show of concern about Argentine ambitions by dispatching a warship to the area might very well have quietened things down had they done a few years earlier, but I found the islanders fixated on their dislike of a country so close and one they traded with. I remember thing at the time that it would have been cheaper to have bought the islander off and sharing sovereignty, but by then I don't think compromise entered the Thatcher mentality.

Like Churchill, she was suited for a time and unsuited for so much else. Unlike Churchill she's still in living memory.
I hesitate to wonder to what lengths Thatcher would have taken the country had the miner's strike gone on indefinitely.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

I'd say, "She did what she had to do, but it's not certain if it benefited the country in the long run".

Basically she made a couple of mistakes: Laying the long term foundation that the finance industry would be the major industry in the UK, not industrial manufacturing. Then the poll tax, later on the council tax, laying the foundation to bringing the responsibility to the council, but never having enough funding and making rising taxes the only option. Whether that were all wise choices for the long term of the UK is debatable or questionable. Finance jobs moving to the mainland due to Brexit, not as much industrial manufacturing or at least not like Germany, ever rising property prices due to mortgage availability, also financial issues for councils....

But overall her work was ok, in the end, she did what most conservative politicians would have done.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

10 foot plinth
https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/n...-event-4747191

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

Still dead.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

You sure?

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

Manufacturing of physical goods is not everything, and in case, Britain still has many manufacturers of more advanced goods. Brexit will threaten manufacturing just as much as finance, perhaps even more so given physical supply chains. I think criticism of Thatcher has is more about social upheaval than economic shifts.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

Lincolnshire Live website is a bit ambitious, first asking if I'd like to recived notfications from them (well, so many do these days) THEN putting up a screen suggesting I add a shortcut to their homepage on my desktop ! This is after the usual cookies consent page. Surfing the net is not as frictionless as it used to be !

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

A generation grew up thinking you has to be Female to be PM.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

Anyone on here registering or attending the egg throwing day out for the statue unveiling??????

https://metro.co.uk/2020/12/01/thous...atue-13682784/

I suppose it will be a boost to the egg marketing sector and to those who sell eggs in that area. Will it be UK eggs only or will EU eggs be allowed?

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

Perhaps those so inclined could donate the eggs to the local food bank.

Re: Margaret Thatcher
 

Or perhaps they should get on their bikes eh ? Perish the thought the idea that people protest such a divisive not needed , utter waste of money statue . Perhaps that money could have gone towards the communities laid waste.

Note: I do not agree with wasting eggs. i grew up poor. Rotten fruit and veg or even better used bog roll. No statue .

Yup. We do not need any reminder. Leave it gone and far behind but never ever forget what happened .