Maggie Thatcher death discussion thread - Mod rules in first post

The UK is heavily in debt too and and the north of the country is replete with inter-generational welfare ghettos. You need two people working to have a good standard of living for a young family these days. Extremes of wealth and poverty haven't been so pronounced since victorian times

trickymicky wrote: »

what i cant understand is if she was so hated by the british people, how did she get three terms in office and basically ran britain for 21 years.

now im no fan of thatcher and wont lose any sleep with her being dead, but can anyone answer this for me because i wouldnt be too educated in her policies but there must of been something that kept her in power for that long.

awec wrote: »

On one hand, you'll have those who try paint her as perfect, everthing grand, butter wouldn't melt etc etc.

On the other hand, you have those who'll try and paint her as some sort of monster who hated the poor, liked killing people and all sorts of muck.

The reality is somewhere in between.

Morag wrote: »

Let me see, she wanted homosexuality outlawed, the mentioning of homosexuality in any forum outlawed, she wanted to put all the AIDS/HIV patients in a concentration camp.

Morag wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28

Margaret Thatcher at the 1987 Conservative party conference, issued the statement stating "Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay".

May 1985 , the first official guidance to doctors and surgeons dealing with AIDS was issued.

The Health Minister, Kenneth Clarke, enacted powers to detain people with AIDS in hospital against their will, despite the recommendations of leading medical experts who felt that this measure might deter some people from coming forward for treatment.

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

It was about 40% of the people that voted. It's like how everybody hated george bush but there you go, divisive but a lot liked her. Some mourn her death while I've heard reports of it being announced on trains and the whole train cheering.
I don't know too much but I'd be glad to hear more, tell me what is accurate/inaccurate anybody:

'- Slashed the number of council owned homes for low income families

Under Thatcher 1 million families bought their own council houses. That's one million families who own a home where before they didn't. That is a good thing. There are drawbacks in the system but the fundamental change in allowing council tenants to buy their own homes is a positive.

- Made significant cuts to welfare state benefits

The benefit systems were cut, but remember when she came into power the taxation and inflation rates were ridiculously high. Inflation rates of 10+% are unsustainable, income-tax of 90% is mind boggling. If you ask me, if we were given a similar choice, i'd take the reduced benefit rates every time if inflation and tax came down.

- Destroyed trade unions, making it impossible for the working class to affect change in the workplace by withdrawing the one thing they truly possess - their labour. Too much power and labour force downtime and nothing gets done, too little and workforces get exploited and have to work in inhumane conditions. From an economic stand point obviously the latter is preferable to the former, from a humanist standpoint vice versa. The reality is however that recessions will always happen due to the monetary system and how it is constructed and Thatcher made no attempt to find the balance.

In 1979 striking was epidemic. You had bin bags not collected and laying in the streets, you had dead bodies not being buried as people were on strike. Things come to a halt and normal life is difficult. That sort of power the unions had was disproportionate and could never be sustained.

- Privatized essential state controlled services, opening the door for shameless profiteering and further squeezing the poor.

In the 1970s, anything important economically was owned by the Government. It was deemed that if it was important it should be under Government control. Thatcher felt the role of Government wasn't to nanny the people and own everything, that people should take control of a lot of these things. So you had the privatisation of lots of areas and it led, ultimately, to growth, jobs etc. It took her a good 10 years but by the end of her reign unemployment had been cut in half.

- Single-handedly created the financial policies that lead to "negative equity" for homeowners, something that crippled a lot of working class first time buyers in the late eighties

- Introduced policies to the NHS that encouraged more and more medical professionals to work privately, cut salaries of NHS doctors and brought in the management system we know today that has seen modern hospitals fixated on profitability over effective care.

The free market health care debate is one that can be argued over and over. Personally i think the freedom to go private, to pay for your health care is a fair choice for anyone. It's then up to the public to vote with their wallets - if a private hospital is choosing profits over patient care, bring your cash to another hospital that focuses on patient care.

- Hated anyone in the working classes who couldn't "better themselves" or relied on state handouts. She saw this as weakness and believed the individual could always attain anything through hard work, without taking into consideration societal constraints that she then reinforced.'

The idea that a person can always better themselves is ok in a vacuum and most people would agree that through hard work you get further than sitting on your hole. But yes that does rely on a sweeping societal change for that to work - some sections of society didn't have the means, education, confidence, capabilities to just work hard and get places. Under-addressing support for these sectors was an error.

'She stated that the idea of community was dead and that the individual must prevail in Britain. Actually followed through and, starting with the unions slowly dismantled the cornerstones of community. UK is now left with a 'me-first' culture and fragmented society.

Society was already fragmented in 1979 when she took over, she probably did plenty to drive a bigger wedge in it but you hardly think everyone was going on strike for the good of the country at large. They wanted their own pockets looked after first and foremost.

She broke sanctions with South Africa during the Apartheid regime.

Praised by FW de Clerk for her support for South Africa, was a fierce critic of Apartheid but wanted a South African led solution to the problem, not a global intervention. She even reconciled with Nelson Mandela in later years and became friendly with him to an extent.

Unconditional support for Augusto Pinochet, mass murderer and torturer.

The USA and particularly CIA financed and supported Pinochet for a decade. Maggie had tea with him a few times.

Shoot-to-kill and torture policies in Northern Ireland.

Horrendous, inexcusable policies during an horrendous period for both our countries.

After agreeing to an 'exclusion zone' with Argentina (an area well outside the Falkland Islands in which there was to be no combat) she instructed a Royal Navy submarine to sink an Argentine ship that was outside the zone. Hundreds of soldiers drowned.

The sinking of the Belgrano was an unnecessary act (imo) but it was a war and bottom line the Malvinos have a right to self-determination. A land of settlers choosing their allegiances - no different to what America did in their history.

British soldiers who were maimed or disfigured were not allowed near the front of the victory parade.'


'She implemented policies, based purely on a right-wing ideology, which caused massive unemployment and poverty, whilst at the same time leading a government which demonised the unemployed as work-shy scroungers.
Whole communities were destroyed when their main employers closed down, either as an indirect result of the government's laissez-faire policies, or were directly closed down by the government, i.e. most of the country's coal mines. Through all of this her government really didn't seem to care about the people, the human misery involved. See unemployed = work-shy scroungers, above.

She created an us-and-them mentality, whereby those who disagreed were "the enemy within". There is much evidence that the police were deliberately politicised and used to suppress opposition. Having been part of that opposition myself, I can say that it felt like we were nearing a police state.
It's difficult now to really give a flavour of how things were back then; it was a deeply divided society. For those of us on the opposite side of the political spectrum it wasn't just a political difference, it was a fight for the soul of our country, which was being sold off to the highest bidder. And the government used all the powers it had, the press barons, the spin doctors, the police, to beat down the opposition.'

There can be no doubt that the policies of Thatcher ostracised and alienated large sections of British society, drove a further wedge in the north-south divide in England, angered the Welsh, pissed off the Scots, brutalised the Irish. Her policy of trying to force the working class to better themselves through hard work was ok in theory but she failed to show the necessary wherewithall to enact it in practice. On the whole though she left the country a much better place economically, played an enormous role in ending the Cold War and by proxy in the fall of the Berlin Wall and communism. She was certainly a pig-headed determined character of conservative stock but her motivations and her view of society were not intrinsically bad.

It should be up to us as individuals to make the most of our lives, not up to the Government.
I don't know too much but I'd be glad to hear more, tell me what is accurate/inaccurate anybody: