What exactly did Thatcher do?

Falklands is hundreds of miles away from the nearest point of South America, 1000+ miles from Buenos Aires. Its not really like the Isle of Wight.

urbophile said:

So the white English speaking inhabitants are indigenous then? By what right did we settle there? Imagine the outcry if some far-off nation had settled in the Isle of Wight. Or even – to be a fairer comparison – in one of the uninhabited islands of the Hebrides.

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By that logic the Faroe islands is ours and not Norways. If Argentina settled some uninhabited Island off scotland 300 years ago i really wouldnt care either

Lost property said:

For those who don't understand a dictator / dictatorship can take many forms, not just the so called classical methods, Thatcher was as much a dictator as were others.

She purged her Cabinet of "wets", or moderates to be more precise, and coined her immoral / immortal phrase " is he one of us ?" when confronted with prospective candidates for Gov't related positions.

The "Spitting Image " sketch involving her ordering steak and being asked what about the vegetables ?...summarised her perfectly.

Although on the subject of other dictators, she extended her open arms and hospitality to another...a certain Gen Pinochet

Assuming LNER are actually running trains, how many of you have felt inclined to make a pilgrimage to Grantham and worship at her statue / shrine.

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A democraticly elected government getting rid of ministers that arent following the platform they were elected on is hardly a dictatorship

Bevan Price said:

The only good thing she did was drive the Argentinians out of The Falklands It helped her win the 1983 General Election, but perhaps just as important was that the Labour leader was Michael Foot (mentioned previously, and a 1980s equivalent of Jeremy Corbyn - sincerely believing in far left policies, but totally unelectable by a UK population.)

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Again, the invasion only happened because of her cuts to the Military. If anything, it shows an error of judgement that was paid for in blood.

Wasn't the whole claim to the Falklands and the reason Argentina want the Island so much to do with oil?

joebassman said:

Wasn't the whole claim to the Falklands and the reason Argentina want the Island so much to do with oil?

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No

joebassman said:

Wasn't the whole claim to the Falklands and the reason Argentina want the Island so much to do with oil?

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It certainly is now, but then..? I don’t think that the full extent of the oil resources were then realised: if we had any idea we weren’t sayin’ nuffin’ or didn’t think they could be exploited. Fishing rights might have been seen as a more important resource.

The Falklands conflict was a smokescreen for a crumbling unpopular regime that could galvanise support through war and help deflect attention from the many failures in domestic policies and awful extremism causing discord and unrest.

I believe it was useful for the Argie Junta as well.

Lost property said:

Although on the subject of other dictators, she extended her open arms and hospitality to another...a certain Gen Pinochet

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The Queen dined and held parties with the Ugandan Dictator Idi Amin, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, and Robert Mugabe. A large proportion of the population still revere the Queen.

Churchill once wrote in a letter;

“Those who have met Herr Hitler face to face,” […], “have found a highly competent, cool, well-informed functionary with an agreeable manner, a disarming smile, and few have been unaffected by a subtle personal magnetism.” Hitler and his Nazis had surely shown “their patriotic ardor and love of country.”

And said; One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.

joebassman said:

The Queen dined and held parties with the Ugandan Dictator Idi Amin, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, and Robert Mugabe. A large proportion of the population still revere the Queen.

Churchill once wrote in a letter;

“Those who have met Herr Hitler face to face,” […], “have found a highly competent, cool, well-informed functionary with an agreeable manner, a disarming smile, and few have been unaffected by a subtle personal magnetism.” Hitler and his Nazis had surely shown “their patriotic ardor and love of country.”

And said; One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.

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The Queen invited those whom the government recommended her to take take with. It would have been very unusually, if not to say constitutionally awkward, if she were to have said, “No, thanks, I don’t want to see that ****.” I am no fan of the monarchical system, being a Republican, but this was not her fault. If anything, it is an example of her doing what she saw as her duty in the way that she thought it should be done despite her personal feelings.

I looked up Thatcher's relationsip with Pinochet.

In an interview Thatcher thanked Pinochet for supporting the UK in the Falklands and credited him with bringing democray to chile.

She appears to have had a strange concept of democracy.

507021 said:

I promised myself I wouldn't get involved in politics on this forum again, but I'm going to make this one exception.

There are very good reasons why Thatcher and the Conservative Party are, shall we say, not particularly popular in Liverpool. These include Winston Churchill deploying soldiers and a Royal Navy cruiser to Liverpool during the 1911 strike (which resulted in the deaths of two striking workers), Thatcher's shameful cover up of the Hillsborough disaster and members of her cabinet wanting to put the city into managed decline. I know a lot of people who lived in the city during the 1980s and it was a rather bleak period in the city's history, with its industry decimated and unemployment high. Taking all of that into account, is it really a big surprise to those on the right why there is such a high level of disdain and disrespect for Thatcher and the Conservative Party in this city? As my parents taught me, and I have taught my children: respect is earned, not given.

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I just cannot argue against such thoughts to be honest because it is true. With regards to your latter comment, true too but even in this day and age, the so called Labour Party representing various local councils may be 'red' on the outside but in reality are becoming clone conservatives - in it for themselves and don't care about the people who in turn have no respect or like Labour either! Sadly many a person vote Labour because of previous generations did but they are not looking at the current Labour Party and what they represent or not as the case be. I find it very sad.

Thatcher had no interest in the welfare of the poorer, even lower middle class people of this country, it was all about the 'rich' people and her cronies. Everyone else was left to rot. She certainly did not care about at least two thirds of this country (especially north of Watford, west of Oxford) with her policies and leadership. I have huge distain for that woman, more than some people could imagine!

Yew said:

Again, the invasion only happened because of her cuts to the Military. If anything, it shows an error of judgement that was paid for in blood.

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At least that won't happen again!

Glad the Channel Tunnel got built under her leadership though.

8A Rail said:

I just cannot argue against such thoughts to be honest because it is true. With regards to your latter comment, true too but even in this day and age, the so called Labour Party representing various local councils may be 'red' on the outside but in reality are becoming clone conservatives - in it for themselves and don't care about the people who in turn have no respect or like Labour either! Sadly many a person vote Labour because of previous generations did but they are not looking at the current Labour Party and what they represent or not as the case be. I find it very sad.

Thatcher had no interest in the welfare of the poorer, even lower middle class people of this country, it was all about the 'rich' people and her cronies. Everyone else was left to rot. She certainly did not care about at least two thirds of this country (especially north of Watford, west of Oxford) with her policies and leadership. I have huge distain for that woman, more than some people could imagine!

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I don't know. Whilst I agree that Blair's government may have not been true Labour and they brought in several things I did not agree with, they certainly did a hell of a lot more for mental health and social support. I remember there used to be loads of mental health and social support groups when New Labour was in. My brother used to go to some and was doing really well. Then Cameron's government was elected and the majority of these groups were closed.

My mother used to work as a social worker for foster children and there was support for the birth parents to attempt to prevent their kids being taken away. Social services would work with the parents. Again a lot of this was stopped under the Tories and a lot more kids ended up in care.

Then there were the Remploy factories that helped severely disabled people to work. Again all closed under Cameron's government.

joebassman said:

I don't know. Whilst I agree that Blair's government may have not been true Labour and they brought in several things I did not agree with, they certainly did a hell of a lot more for mental health and social support. I remember there used to be loads of mental health and social support groups when New Labour was in. My brother used to go to some and was doing really well. Then Cameron's government was elected and the majority of these groups were closed.

My mother used to work as a social worker for foster children and there was support for the birth parents to attempt to prevent their kids being taken away. Social services would work with the parents. Again a lot of this was stopped under the Tories and a lot more kids ended up in care.

Then there were the Remploy factories that helped severely disabled people to work. Again all closed under Cameron's government.

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Just for clarification, my reference to the Labour Party, is the current regime whether at national or local level. The Blair regime was in my opinion was a half way house between Labour and Conservative, these days the Labour Party very much the latter although Keir Starmer and the rest they would suggest to the contrary.

8A Rail said:

Just for clarification, my reference to the Labour Party, is the current regime whether at national or local level. The Blair regime was in my opinion was a half way house between Labour and Conservative, these days the Labour Party very much the latter although Keir Starmer and the rest they would suggest to the contrary.

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Both Blair and Starmer recognise that they would never get enough votes to win elections if they proposed far left policies; something that Foot & Corbyn seemingly failed to accept. Neil Kinnock might have been a good PM, but Labour had been damaged too much in the Foot era and needed longer to recover.
Better a little of what you like, rather than more years of tory rule.

Bevan Price said:

Both Blair and Starmer recognise that they would never get enough votes to win elections if they proposed far left policies; something that Foot & Corbyn seemingly failed to accept. Neil Kinnock might have been a good PM, but Labour had been damaged too much in the Foot era and needed longer to recover.
Better a little of what you like, rather than more years of tory rule.

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I thought what stopped Kinnock was the papers doing a number on him with the falling over on the beach saga.

Blair realised that the only way to win an election was to get the media onside.

It was why Blair got into bed with Murdock, so to speak.

We live in a world where knowing how to play the media game is how to win an election. It was one of the main reasons Trump was elected. His team was better at social media than H. Clinton's team.

Corbyn was rubbish at media relations and the Brexit saga and anti semetism within the Labour party was what brought him down. He actually did pretty well in the first election he was Labour leader.

I live in an ex mining village in Nottinghamshire. The pit closed in 1989 up until then there was a thriving community. The closure of the pit changed that. In the following years the village became like a ghost town which many properties becoming empty. By 1996 80% of the properties had become unfit for human habitation.
That is how it changed in the 1980s. As a matter of interest I live 5 minutes away from the village/small town featured in the recent 3 part programme about the 1984 miners strike.
I have been informed that it was nearly as bad in my village with the police from outside the area being brought in to control the strikes.
The pit was losing £200000 per week prior to its closure.

.

Was it true that coal was imported from abroad to allow the mines to be closed out of spite against the unions?

joebassman said:

Was it true that coal was imported from abroad to allow the mines to be closed out of spite against the unions?

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Some will ascribe a motive of spite, but imported coal was cheaper. Other countries were using large opencast mines rather than our deep mines.

One of the things that caused much damage and I don't think has been mentioned in the thread, post 1979 election - was the decision to pursue an ideologically driven monetarist policy with interest rates as a method of trying to bring inflation down. This had the impact of altering exchange rates so that UK manufactured goods suddenly became v expensive, and uncompetitive, in overseas markets. This was devastating for lots of UK businesses that exported products - with resultant impact on factory closures. These were businesses that were not inherently inefficient, but this served to cause a much more significant economic recession for the communities concerned in the period 1979-c1982, as well as leading to prolonged unemployment levels of over 3m people.

A more nuanced and balanced govt policy around this could have saved many of these businesses so they lived or another day.

To my mind this is why the UK has such a weak manufacturing base today - and as a result has continued poor economic prospects that still affect our national prosperity. Also why we compare unfavourably with say Germany in this regard, with low levels of high skill / high paid employment in our economy - and far too many people in work who require subsidies to ensure they can meet the cost of living (various types of social security benefits / tax credits etc).

This monetarist policy was eventually quietly backed away from by the Tories IIRC but not before a great deal of damage was done. It was inevitable the businesses could not adapt to the rapid shock to the system that this created, so much resource of manufacturing capacity was essentially wasted as it drove up bankruptcies that other policy approaches could have avoided.

Mrs T was committed to this approach having been 'captured' by a cohort of radical free market economists in the years before 1979 (advocates of the so called 'chicago school'), and it was very damaging).

I think it was a similar shock treatment that Liz Truss seemed to think would be a good idea when she became PM more recently.

North Sea oil probably also had a negative effect on the competitiveness of other industries by turning the pound into a "petrocurrency" to some extent.

WesternLancer said:

One of the things that caused much damage and I don't think has been mentioned in the thread, post 1979 election - was the decision to pursue an ideologically driven monetarist policy with interest rates as a method of trying to bring inflation down. This had the impact of altering exchange rates so that UK manufactured goods suddenly became v expensive, and uncompetitive, in overseas markets. This was devastating for lots of UK businesses that exported products - with resultant impact on factory closures. These were businesses that were not inherently inefficient, but this served to cause a much more significant economic recession for the communities concerned in the period 1979-c1982, as well as leading to prolonged unemployment levels of over 3m people.

A more nuanced and balanced govt policy around this could have saved many of these businesses so they lived or another day.

To my mind this is why the UK has such a weak manufacturing base today - and as a result has continued poor economic prospects that still affect our national prosperity. Also why we compare unfavourably with say Germany in this regard, with low levels of high skill / high paid employment in our economy - and far too many people in work who require subsidies to ensure they can meet the cost of living (various types of social security benefits / tax credits etc).

This monetarist policy was eventually quietly backed away from by the Tories IIRC but not before a great deal of damage was done. It was inevitable the businesses could not adapt to the rapid shock to the system that this created, so much resource of manufacturing capacity was essentially wasted as it drove up bankruptcies that other policy approaches could have avoided.

Mrs T was committed to this approach having been 'captured' by a cohort of radical free market economists in the years before 1979 (advocates of the so called 'chicago school'), and it was very damaging).

I think it was a similar shock treatment that Liz Truss seemed to think would be a good idea when she became PM more recently.

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Crediting Truss with the capability to think is very generous and charitable of you. Thankfully, she only lasted 49 days, but, like Thatcher, her legacy and damage lingers on.

Bevan Price said:

Both Blair and Starmer recognise that they would never get enough votes to win elections if they proposed far left policies; something that Foot & Corbyn seemingly failed to accept. Neil Kinnock might have been a good PM, but Labour had been damaged too much in the Foot era and needed longer to recover.
Better a little of what you like, rather than more years of tory rule.

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There lies the rub, I don't like what I see or hear from Keir Starmer, plain and simple as that, he is Tory in disguise! Sorry no other way of seeing it! Likewise, I will not vote for Conservative and never have done. So where does that leave me - end up not voting in the present electoral system?

8A Rail said:

There lies the rub, I don't like what I see or hear from Keir Starmer, plain and simple as that, he is Tory in disguise! Sorry no other way of seeing it! Likewise, I will not vote for Conservative and never have done. So where does that leave me - end up not voting in the present electoral system?

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You need electoral reform really.

The UK system centralises political direction within parties, to the detriment of more radical thought. Thatcher was a radical and captured her party - because she kept winning (because the voters did not trust a post 1979 labour party which was divided) she was in a stronger place to win for 10 years. Parties are happy to keep backing a winner as leader. Had she looked like losing in '83 things would have been very different.

WesternLancer said:

You need electoral reform really.

The UK system centralises political direction within parties, to the detriment of more radical thought. Thatcher was a radical and captured her party - because she kept winning (because the voters did not trust a post 1979 labour party which was divided) she was in a stronger place to win for 10 years. Parties are happy to keep backing a winner as leader. Had she looked like losing in '83 things would have been very different.

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I agree with you that we need electoral reform. But as a wider point, I'm not convinced that the present system (for all its faults) discourages radical thought any more than any other system. I would expect that with a PR system, it would be even harder to be truly radical because you'd need to have 50%+ of the population voting for parties willing to support your radical ideas, whereas with FPTP, you generally only need 40%+ to vote for your radical ideas in order to implement them (as Mrs. Thatcher did).

8A Rail said:

There lies the rub, I don't like what I see or hear from Keir Starmer, plain and simple as that, he is Tory in disguise! Sorry no other way of seeing it! Likewise, I will not vote for Conservative and never have done. So where does that leave me - end up not voting in the present electoral system?

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Irrespective of whether you like / dislike Labour / Conservatives, other names appear on the ballot sheet so you have alternatives available even if you don't like them either.

The point is, cast your vote, please.

Too many people died trying to ensure the population have a right to vote, which, for me, is a basic human right.

DynamicSpirit said:

I agree with you that we need electoral reform. But as a wider point, I'm not convinced that the present system (for all its faults) discourages radical thought any more than any other system. I would expect that with a PR system, it would be even harder to be truly radical because you'd need to have 50%+ of the population voting for parties willing to support your radical ideas, whereas with FPTP, you generally only need 40%+ to vote for your radical ideas in order to implement them (as Mrs. Thatcher did).

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It could happen that a more radical party gets into coalition with a more moderate one, and they agree to get some of that party's ideas implemented but not all.

Better than the current situation where we have basically a choice of a programme somewhere on the left or somewhere on the right, exactly how far left or right depending on the vagaries of intra-party politics. In 2019 we had Labour well to the left and the Tories committed to Brexit but otherwise claiming something similar to the concensus of the 1970s. This was somewhat similar to the 1980s when Labour's programme wasn't really credible to most voters and the SDP was too small to win seats, so many people just voted for the Tories even if they didn't particularly like them. Now we have the Tories well to the right and Labour near the centre.

Lost property said:

Irrespective of whether you like / dislike Labour / Conservatives, other names appear on the ballot sheet so you have alternatives available even if you don't like them either.

The point is, cast your vote, please.

Too many people died trying to ensure the population have a right to vote, which, for me, is a basic human right.

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Under FPTP it's often necessary and arguably legitimate to vote against whoever you like least, with a tactical vote for the candidate most likely to beat them in that constituency.

jfollows said:

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_Kingdom) says

The NCB started with 958 collieries at nationalisation in 1947.

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Useful stats here - but it must be pointed out that many of the pre 1980s pit closures were part of managed restructuring of the coal industry - with new, more modern pits being opened at the same time, and miners transferring from declining coalfield areas to ones that were seen to have a long term future (north east to notts being a well trodden path for many as an example). As an aside there was even a related programme in the Durham area that involved the planned demolition of villages ('category D villages') supposedly to help manage the decline that ensued - albeit what would seem to us now as an extreme example of planned intervention ref the consequences!

This changed in the 80s as it was not foreseen that there would be expansion, and many of the communities left after pit closures were left to decline with little or no public investment directed to helping them tackle the consequences.

But the Major era pit closure programme was preceded by a major global change that is not often mentioned in the context - namely the end of the cold war.

In 1984 the cold war was a given and no sign of it ending. It would have been unthinkable for the UK to have considered imported coal supplies from parts of eastern europe that became an option after 1989. This completely changed the economics of the industry - tho I guess coal imports from 'western friendly' parts of the world may have been an option, if they were cheap enough to warrant it.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Thatcher govt had a political agenda ref union power in general and the NUM in particular (this is obvious) but I suspect there were some tory politicians, and probably MacGregor and the coal board, who saw a genuine future for the coal industry in the UK if it could be slimmed down to a profitable core of modern, productive mines - which could then presumably be privatized in due course. But the end of the cold war changed this in a way that would not have been foreseen in 1984.

So with hindsight (and it's not what I thought at the time!) - it's possible that Thatcher did see a future for the coal industry in some form so long as it did not need permanent subsidy I suspect. By the Major govt era this had changed, although the significant public concern and outrage when the 1992 pit closure programme was announced did force a partial U turn in relation to some of the pits scheduled for closure.

WesternLancer said:

So with hindsight (and it's not what I thought at the time!) - it's possible that Thatcher did see a future for the coal industry in some form so long as it did not need permanent subsidy I suspect. By the Major govt era this had changed, although the significant public concern and outrage when the 1992 pit closure programme was announced did force a partial U turn in relation to some of the pits scheduled for closure.

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The remaining pits were privatised in the Major era, most of them going to RJB Mining I think.