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Margaret Thatcher


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Tony unlike you and Awol many people do not put her as being the architect supreme that allowed changes that were happening anyway to proceed

She had so little regard for working communities in the UK that she was happy to exploit and basically kill them off just as long as her supporters remained safe (richer) and secure. - interesting the same policies that seem to litter so many of the current Tory party.

She was an evil (and probably still is) wicked bitch who when she does depart deserves nothing more than a drink to say good bye. The scars of her policies will remain for a lot longer away from the Tory heartlands of the south east.

Yet she was Britain's longest serving post-war PM - even longer than St Tony of JP Morganshire - winning elections by landslide margins. That's either a lot of people supporting her who didn't come from "working communities" (how are you defining the latter btw?), or lots of "workers" voting Conservative because they thought she had it right at the time, for the time.

How would you explain her victories?

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She won the first election because Labour were unelectable

She won the second election because the country was caught up in a wave of jingoism after the Falklands and the Gang of Four, sorry the SDP completely split the opposition.

She won the third election by a landslide because of the SDP again, that and the press' xenophobic character assassination of Kinnock.

iirc she was consistently the least popular post war PM in polls conducted during her time in office with an approval rating of less than 40%. she also was often less popular than the party she lead which is also a rarity

Shirley Williams et al should be ashamed of themselves, they really should.

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Yet she was Britain's longest serving post-war PM - even longer than St Tony of JP Morganshire - winning elections by landslide margins. That's either a lot of people supporting her who didn't come from "working communities" (how are you defining the latter btw?), or lots of "workers" voting Conservative because they thought she had it right at the time, for the time.

How would you explain her victories?

See answer from Bicks

You know exactly the areas that she targeted with her vindictive ideas, hence the lack of playing your games

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Interesting how Tory supporters seem to claim the "longest reign as PM" as some sort of badge of honour but then are dismissive of Blair.

The fact that Thatcher was basically "sacked" by her own party whereas Blair resigned has no relevance I suppose? Could Blair have continued for the full term of his third office? At the end of the day both were elected for 3 terms as PM (something that Tory supporters conveniently forget)

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Just doing a bit of catching up of the stories that happened over the Xmas period and am interested by the Daily Mail and the Jimmy Savile / Thatcher story, how correspondence between the two were censored / amended a couple of months back when the whole story broke. Why were the documents amended? What was contained in them? Are there some in the Tory party so desperate to protect the Thatcher image that they did that? or is it the Daily Mail (ironically one of Thatchers biggest supporters) printing BS again?

Thatcher and the whole media circus that surrounded her are still very much important for today's Tory party. A lot of the party despite what some of the spin doctors would have you believe, are very much behind her vindictive ideology.

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See answer from Bicks

You know exactly the areas that she targeted with her vindictive ideas, hence the lack of playing your games

What games, Drat? Is having a civil conversation really beyond you?

Edited by Awol
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Picking up a couple of points from the first page of the thread, there's a real irony in the contrast between her professed self-sufficiency, hatred of the state, reliance on the family, and the reality.

The £535,000 claim that Rev mentions was only in respect of public duties, not expenses more broadly. This at a time when she was virtually housebound, and apparently unable to attend public gatherings because her dementia leaves her confused. On top of that there's the £64,000 pension she gets each year (I expect she claims the state pension as well, but someone may know either way), and the significant cost of police protection. No such thing as society? Society seems to be doing very nicely for her, thanks very much.

But last year the Mail commented angrily on how her family don't seem to want to know her.

Not quite the picture her rhetoric would have led us to imagine.

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As someone who thinks that on balance she did more good than harm, I will: Selling off critical national infrastructure built with tax payers money to private interests was a huge mistake - and morally wrong too. As bad was then continuing to subsidise the private companies with more tax payers money while the revenues went to private shareholders. Further to that transport networks, energy, water and others constitute strategic assets that should never be in the hands of private companies, imo. They are there to underpin the basic operation of the country and as such should not be privatised. That is not to say they could have been run far better and more effectively than they were before privatisation, but there the union problem rears it's head again.

I'm the opposite, I think she did much more harm than good, but there's IMO something in the Union thing. Only a small thing, because it wasn't all Unions, by a long way. Just some. She used those (as she did with many things) to create a wider enemy and then attack all of them (Unions, in this case). Additionally, I don't think it's right to say (for example) that it was a Union problem. As lamentable as a few of them were in their leadership, it was really an Industrial relations issue. In other words, management was lamentable, too, in the coal or steel or Car industries. Cosy comfortable management, lacking ability or initiative, supported by the state (money) and unable and unwilling to move with the times, or work with their workforces. The two parts (mgmt & unions) drifted further and further apart. Thousands of just normal working people ended up shafted because she couldn't do anything with shades of nuance, just all out attack on all aspects and people involved with the Unions.

Thatcher just attacked the Unions (via the law and via Police) and pretty much left the management alone, which was wrong. The shake up did some good, but also much harm. Most of the rest of what she did was just (both at the time and with hindsight) extremely damaging.

Dreadful, dreadful, person and a terrible PM.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3067563.stm

Enemies within: Thatcher and the unions

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By Paul Wilenius

BBC political correspondent 999999.gif_39115336_augustine.jpg

Mrs Thatcher in 1979. The previous Tory government had been brought down by a miners' strike Margaret Thatcher was the nemesis of the trade union movement.

Together with miners' leader Arthur Scargill, she managed to destroy the power of the trade unions for almost a generation.

Only now, more than 13 years after her departure, are they beginning to find their feet again.

To understand the scale of what supporters called her achievement, others call her shameful legacy, it is important to look at the impact of the unions in the 1970s.

It is difficult to comprehend today how much power union barons like the then miners' leader Joe Gormley and transport union boss Jack Jones wielded in those days. There were endless strikes afflicting the Post Office, steel industry, the ferries, steelworks and much more.

There was also "Red Robbo", the union leader Derek Robinson who repeatedly brought car and truck-maker British Leyland to a standstill in the Midlands.

Labour ministers courted union chiefs; Conservative governments were humiliated by them.

Winter of discontent

It was a particularly galling situation for the Tories. When Ted Heath tried to take on the unions from Number Ten he suffered a string of indignities, including the three-day week.

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start_quote_rb.gif We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty end_quote_rb.gif

Margaret Thatcher on the miners' strike

In 1974 he foolishly decided to fight an election on the question "Who governs Britain?" The voters answered by installing Labour's Harold Wilson as prime minister.

Heath's defeat led to the arrival the following year of a little-known right-winger, Margaret Thatcher, as leader of the opposition. Her rise coincided with a spreading belief that union power was getting out of hand. She recognised that ordinary people, among them many trade unionists, were fed up with incessant strikes and walkouts.

Then in 1978 Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan made the political miscalculation that would put his party out of office for a generation. Rather than hold an election later that year, he decided to soldier on to the following spring.

Thanks to the delay, his government ran into the now legendary "winter of discontent". It ran through the first three months of 1979; its effects lasted far longer.

Public sector workers were out on strike for weeks. Uncollected mountains of rubbish piled high in the cities, Green Goddesses were on the streets, and bodies remained unburied. The latter happened in one city, Liverpool, but became an emblem of the chaos inflicted on the public by the unions.

Stage set for Thatcher

It was disastrous for the government. Labour had always been able to present its close relations with the unions as an asset that allowed it to deal with them effectively; that relationship had now become a liability.

At the May 1979 election Mrs Thatcher squeaked into Downing Street with a 30-seat majority.

_39284951_203scargill.jpg

Miners' leader Arthur Scargill on the picket line Her economic policies helped weaken the unions. The recession of the early 1980s saw manufacturing, the main area of union strength, shrink by half while unemployment soared to over three million. Union membership plummeted from a peak of 12 million in the late 70s to almost half that by the late 80s.

She appointed her henchman Norman Tebbit as employment secretary. Though a former leader of the BALPA pilots' union, it was a job he relished.

He set about stripping the unions of their legal protection. Flying pickets, the shock troops of industrial warfare, were banned and could no longer blockade factories, ports, public bodies and much more during disputes. Strike ballots became compulsory. The closed shop, which forced people to join a union if they were seeking employment in a particular trade, was outlawed.

Showdown with miners

But Maggie still wanted a showdown with a major union. She got her wish in 1984 when the battle mode she had recently adopted for the Falklands conflict was directed towards a new combatant: Arthur Scargill, who led his loyal troops into the trap she set.

As she famously - and controversially - framed the dispute at the time, "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty."

Mr Scargill gave her strategy a boost when he called a national pit strike without a ballot. As a result, Nottinghamshire miners - who opposed the strike but would have supported one had a ballot backed it - continued working.

They kept the power stations going and the lights on, and eventually broke away from the NUM.

Curing the 'British disease'

Mrs Thatcher ran the campaign against Scargill as if it were a military operation.

Subsequent energy secretaries, Nigel Lawson and Peter Walker, had built up massive coal stocks. Striking miners and working miners' groups were infiltrated by MI5.

Large numbers of police were used to keep the pits open, leading to set-piece clashes like the battle of Orgreave.

But there was one moment in the Autumn of 1984 when Mrs Thatcher almost lost her bottle.

The NACODS pit deputies were preparing to join the strike, which would have closed the Nottingham coal field. She offered a peace deal to Scargill, but he refused to take it.

His loyal deputy Mick McGahey admitted privately: "Arthur has won and he doesn't even know it. He will destroy this union."

He was right. The deputies' strike didn't happen. The miners lost, returning to work humiliated in 1985.

The unions went into steep decline, having seen the lengths to which the state was prepared to go to vanquish them. They lost their power, influence, millions of members and a large swathe of their rights.

Most trade unions loathed her; but she remained utterly convinced of the need to cure the nation of what had become known as the "British disease", strike fever.

Hmm the winter of discontent sounded bloody awful

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Aye, I'm of that generation that have memories from the 70's.

In fact, I've got a stash of candles and matches just in case there's a power cut. Kids today wouldn't have candles and matches stashed away other than for nefarious purposes (I just wanted to say 'kids today' and 'nefarious').

I remember all the BP oil tankers being moored up and decommissioned when the oil crisis hit.

I even remember the attempt to switch to metric bricks!

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whereas Blair resigned

Its well known in political circles He was forced out by Brown who finally got the goods on him after years of trying... Kindly wrapped up in a neat bundle by Jack Straw is the word on the street

So he was forced out by his party in much the same way Thatcher was ... New Year , New Fail :-)

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Its well known in political circles He was forced out by Brown who finally got the goods on him after years of trying... Kindly wrapped up in a neat bundle by Jack Straw is the word on the street

So he was forced out by his party in much the same way Thatcher was ... New Year , New Fail :-)

not really the same way though. Maggie was stabbed in the chest. Blair was stabbed in the back as is the way in the Labour Party
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not really the same way though. Maggie was stabbed in the chest. Blair was stabbed in the back as is the way in the Labour Party

You seem to have misquoted something which was said of Heseltine ("At least he stabbed her in the front"), and misunderstood the point of the comment, which was to point up the way her own Cabinet had failed to support her, but also failed to oppose her, preferring to keep their heads down while hoping someone else would do the business.

That's how it goes in the tory party. The use of "stalking horse" candidates is another tactic for allowing duplicity and treachery without people fronting up.

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It was worse than that as Scargill actually had Thatcher beat and she went to him to negotiate ... He turned her down

As one of Scargill colleagues stated at the time " he won and didn't know it"

He could possibly rival Brown for most incompetent person of all time ...

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Can anyone explain to me why Scargill didn’t call for a democratic vote on the strike, a vote he would have most likely won?

No. It was a major, major tactical blunder. It made it harder for other unions to support the miners, or gave cover to those who didn't want to support them. It divided opinion among supporters. It undermined (see what I did there) potential support among the uncommitted. Stupid, wrongheaded, and ultimately fatal.

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