She could have provided funding for other growing industries, like high-tech machinery components and luxury goods. She could have invested in British engineering long-term. She could have attracted other industries. There are so many things she could have done but didn't.
She did do those things. She created 37 enterprise zones at a cost of £300 million. These were designed to attract new businesses to derelict areas. She gave tax breaks to smaller businesses and introduced a lot of incentives to help people re-train, find new work, or start a business. And not just in the South East. There are many areas of Scotland which shifted their focus and are now really successful.
The thing that gets me is some people seem to believe her policies, ie stripping the country of its actual, tangible assets and providing a playground for coked-up bankers without regulation, didn't work. We're in a rubbish situation and the economic crisis has shown how vulnerable Britain is to financial crashes because our economy is based on something so fragile. The rich get tax breaks because governments don't want to offend the bankers and at the same time, the taxpayer asked to bail them out when they invariably screw up. I would rather my taxes went towards subsidising jobs for people whose work actually benefits the country.
It surprises me you actually think we had those tangible assets in the first place. Did you ever go in a train in the late 70s? Probably not because it never turned up. If you were lucky enough to find one running to your destination and could pay the ridiculous cost, you were treated to an old dirty carriage on a train which would likely break down on the poor infrastructure and be incredibly late. None of the public industries were running efficiently, hampered by massive inflation and poor currency exchange. The manufacturing industry was already declining, long before she came to power, as with everything else cheaper imports made it unviable. To me, she didn't sell off the silver, she sold our stake in a declining industry, before it became worthless to us. These assets would not still be on our books as they would be defunct.
Thatcher did not de-regulate the banking system. She deregulated the financial markets to help the London Stock Exchange compete on the world stage. She also helped smash the old boy network in the city which allowed those who previously could not, enter the trading floor. I struggle to see why this was a bad thing. What has gone on since has been because of a systematic refusal of the FSA (and similar regulatory bodies across the world) to do what they were set up to do.
Oh the successive governments definitely shouldn't have continued her policies but that doesn't take away from the fact that it was her policies that led to these problems. She didn't fix the economy, she made it worse in the end.
That's like saying the bloke who invented the bomb is responsible for everyone killed by one. If her policies were so bad, so wrong, so worthless, so damaging, in the almost 30 years since she came out of power, they would have been changed. Blair and Brown could have introduced more regulation, but of course, they were in the pocket of the bankers too. So much so it were
They who removed bank regulation which many would say was far more responsible for today's crisis than anything Thatcher did.
You seem to base your entire view of Thatcher on what your parents did/said. Of course that's part of anyone's experience, but it's not the whole picture.
I think this goes for both sides. Many of the myths surrounding Thatcher and the hatred that goes with them, I see being spouted by people too young to even know who she was or understand what she did. I think it comes down to the fact she did great for some and badly for others, just as every Prime Minister has always done. One of Thatcher's problems was in breaking the stranglehold of the unions, which I really do believe needed to happen, she created a very vocal opponent. She didn't remove worker's rights, she didn't disband the Unions, anyone who has ever worked in a Unionised industry is well aware they still have a fair amount of power and do protect their workers. What they have to do now, is work within a stricter set of rules. Under today's rules Scargill would never have been able to do what he did in calling a strike when a minority of his members voted for it. Is that such a bad thing? I'm not sure anyone, from any political angle, thinks the miner's strike was a good idea.
South Wales is one of the EU's largest recipients of poverty funding.
And yet still the people have been unwilling or unable to take advantage of that and turn the area around.
The country was not "on its knees". Britain was a major industrial power. This is a myth that has been perpetuated by supporters of Thatcher who are looking to quantify the destruction she caused by saying it was the only way to act.
Inflation was in the 20s. That alone shows the economy wasn't doing well. Britain was dubbed the sick man of Europe. We were not doing well and one of the major reasons for this was the over inflated demands for pay from the Unions. When successive governments tried to bring this under control, the unions went on strike and cause major problems.
Half the mines and steelworks were profit-making and not "sucking the taxpayer dry" (like state buyouts of failing banks and privatisation of public amenities) and it was perfectly normal (and still is normal to this day) for countries' governments to subsidise industry. What do you think happened to Rover? Why do you think Siemens was given the contract to build 1,000 new Thameslink carriages instead of the Derby Bombardier plant, losing 1,400 British jobs? Her legacy has been to completely abandon heavy industry and any interest in British jobs, a much more stable source of income than financial services and a lot more crisis-proof, and this legacy continues to this day. There is nothing positive about that.
If half the mines were profit making, that leave half that weren't. It was never Thatcher's intention to close them all down, but she discovered she could not make the changes to the industry which were required because of the Unions. The Government did continue, and still does, to subsidise formerly public companies. It might not be wholly successful, it might not be absolutely the best way of doing it, but to pretend these industries were being well run and were a huge asset to the Nation is definitely re-writing history.
I don't think people are fully aware of the personal nature of Thatcher's war on working people (and coincidentally largely Labour voters). Why would she help communities diversify? (She didn't) Why should people be forced to move from places their families have lived for generations because of the awful decisions of one woman?
If there is one thing Thatcher could never be accused of, it is "being personal" If she was against working people (and labour voters) why encourage them to do better through things like the Right to Buy? What Thatcher was against was those who looked to the Government to solve all their problems, or subsidise their existence. The very people the media try to get us to love to hate today.
I'm afraid Thatcher was against a lot of people, and it wasn't as simple as people who "didn't want to help themselves". How are you supposed to help yourself when you are supporting a family of four and have your livelihood removed? Take your kids out of school? Move to the nearest big city leaving hundreds of ghost towns behind? Subsidised housing? (She managed to get rid of most of that) Three years of uni? Entrepreneurial spirit?
Yes, that is exactly what you are supposed to do. You get on out there and make things happen. My parents moved 600 miles to live with their parents, with 3 children, taking us all out of school. My father used his own skills to start his own business, after going abroad for 3 years to get us back on our feet. His business now has a turnover of almost a million pounds a year and employs a number of people. He has no qualifications, he didn't have rich parents behind him, he got off his arse and decided he wasn't going to sit about and wait for the Government to do it all for him. His business was undoubtedly helped in the early days by the Government incentives Thatcher offered. She didn't "get rid" of Social housing. We lived in a council house for 5 years in the mid 80s, they weren't nearly as hard to come by as they are now. Of course selling them off and not building more helped create that problem, but Major didn't build enough, Blair didn't build enough, Brown didn't build enough. Is it worse that she created a problem and perhaps didn't forsee the problem, or that successive governments have refused to solve it when it became apparent?
The woman sold the family silver and I hope that her particularly nasty brand of politics is burnt with her.
And this is where I have the problem with the whole rejoicing of her death. Is it changing anything? Will her politics be "burnt with her?" In three generations people still blame her for everything from the banking crisis to the weather, she is apparently responsible for absolutely everything that goes wrong today (and yet bizarrely not responsible at all for any of the good times we've had) If no-one fixed in in three generations, who will fix it in six. Will we have another thirty years, or sixty years, or ninety years where we blame Thatcher for everything? Her being dead changes nothing, and will change nothing, except for her family who I feel wholly sorry for, having to hear all about parties and celebrations.
As I've said before, by all means disagree with her politics, but rejoicing her death is in very poor tasted (not that I'm suggesting that's what you are doing, just making the point)
