I want to say,
honestly, before writing anything else, that Margaret Thatcher always gave me
the creeps. She made my skin crawl every time she opened her mouth. She was
truly the "Marmite Politician". (For anyone not familiar with Marmite
, it's a savoury spread made from yeast extract, and people either love it or
hate it). Thatcher produced an equivalent divergence of opinion throughout the
UK. I was one of those who hated her, with every fibre of my being.
I am not such an
idiot that I cannot recognise she had some positive qualities, and I am ready
to acknowledge that she deserved some credit in certain areas; and I do not
subscribe to the current torrent of abuse and vitriol populating the pages of Facebook and Twitter.
Nor do I condone the idea of dancing in the streets because someone has died
(with the possible exception of Adolph Hitler).
Ironically Thatcher was in part responsible for what has become a more
brutalised society that is prepared to indulge in such behaviour. She implied
there was no such thing as society, and encouraged an ethos in which the
advancement of "self" was the way to go.
So now she has
departed this life, it is time not to indulge in vitriolic abuse and bad
behaviour. I would like to look back on her time in office dispassionately at
why she was such a divisive figure. There were positives and negatives. In my
own view (and apparently the view of about 40% of the country) the negatives
hugely outweighed the positives. Here is my own (far from exhaustive) list of
"positives" and "negatives" ..
Positives
1. In 1979, Britain was
a basket case. The Trade Unions ran the country, i.e., mostly held it to
ransom. Dictatorial union leaders and shop stewards brought their members out
on strike at the drop of a hat. We made cars that fell to bits. Our public
services were hide bound in inefficiency and bureaucracy. Our power supplies
were unreliable. Domestic rubbish piled
up in the streets. The dead were left unburied.
Margaret Thatcher's
government introduced controversial legislation to democratize the trade union
movement, preventing wildcat strikes and emasculating the powers of individual
trade union leaders to pursue their own political interests (which at that time
seemed to be driven by an insane belief in the benefits of Communism). In this
respect, over the coming years British Industry was able to start functioning
again, based on the premise that in order to survive it was necessary to
produce goods that other people wanted to buy.
OK - so that's one Positive.
I've only got two
others:
2. She was not prepared to countenance the idea that a foreign power could
engineer a military take-over of a group of islands in the south Atlantic
considered to be British Sovereign territory.
I have always been prepared to consider the counter claim made by
Argentina, but to my mind you do not settle it by military invasion, and so
Margaret Thatcher did right, in the circumstances of the day, to send a British
Task Force to take back the Falklands.
On the back of that
successful operation, she was able to secure a second election victory by a
grateful nation (which up to then was increasingly wary of everything else she
was doing).
3. On the world stage
she stood up to any other country's leaders without fear, and usually got her
way.
I'm afraid that's
the end of my Positives. In my opinion -
job done. Thank you and good-bye; sadly not to be.
Negatives
1. She gave tenants of
Council Houses (social housing) the legal right to purchase their home from the
Local Authority, at a discounted price. This should have been a Positive (and it was
for many people) but it became a Negative
because she prohibited Local Authorities from investing the receipts from
Council House sales in the building of new homes to rent. The theory, of
course, is that property owners seem more likely to vote Conservative, than
Council Tenants. Consequently local authorities were piling up huge financial
reserves none of which could be used for the very important purpose of
providing much-needed homes. That problem is still with us today.
2. She encouraged the
closure of great swathes of manufacturing industry, including 99% of the
country's coal mines, on the grounds of their financial inefficiency. This was
done with such speed and apparent scant regard for the consequences on the
hundreds of thousands of people thrown out of work, that the bitterness
engendered survives to this day. No thought was given to making these
industries efficient and serving the country. Just close them down.
3. Local Council
services used to be funded (in addition to government grants) by the imposition
of a tax system known as "The Rates". What you paid depended upon the
notional "Rateable Value" of your house. The bigger and grander the
property, the more you paid. Council tenants were exempt, and if you didn't own
property you didn't pay rates. This was clearly unfair and needed reform.
Margaret Thatcher's solution was a disaster .. The "Community Charge"
- which came to be known as the "Poll Tax". Quite simply this stated
that every individual paid a set sum per year, irrespective of whether you were
a low-paid worker living in a two-up/two-down Victorian terrace house, or
whether you were a member of the "landed gentry" living in a great
stately pile on a country estate. Basically the richest man in the country paid
the same local taxes as the poorest. Clearly this was no fairer than the system
it replaced. It was foisted on Scotland first as an experiment, and then on the
rest of the country. It caused social unrest, protests, and riots in the
streets.
The legacy of this
is that the whole of Scotland can now boast only one Conservative Member of
Parliament.
One of the first
actions of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative successor was to abolish the
"Poll Tax".
Well, it seems I've
listed three Negatives and three Positives. I could go on and on with the Negatives but I fear I have gone on for too
long already, so I'll leave it here as an even split between good and bad; back
to the Marmite analogy!
