# Brits -- Your impressions of Margaret Thatcher, please **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 24, 2006, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926 "2006-09-24T07:15:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boulter_s_Canary)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2006, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/21 "2006-09-24T21:14:52Z")
Originally Posted by jjimm Horrible nasty bitchcow. [QUOTE=Vetch] That sums it up perfectly. [/QUOTE] Thirded. I’m saving a couple of bottles of beer to give me the ammunition for what I want to do on her grave (and it ain’t dancin’). 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2006, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/22 "2006-09-24T21:27:38Z")
I imagine that the OP is beginning to wonder how Thatcher managed to win three elections if she was so universally reviled and life under her was so awful. Anyway, I’m not so sure that it is a fact, as **casdave** claims, that the Thatcher government was “set to be wiped out” in 1983/4 had it not been for the Falklands effect. The Falklands surely helped her, and the Tories’ poll ratings were indeed terrible ca. 1981. But they were pretty bad at mid-term in all of her governments, yet the Tories won every subsequent election, even 1992. It’s very unusual for in-power parties to be popular. Labour in Tony Blair’s first term was an exception. Also, things had begun to look up economically before the 1983 election. An alternative explanation for the '83 election result is that when it came to the crunch the electorate just couldn’t face a Labour government, not that Labour government anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2006, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/23 "2006-09-24T22:28:14Z")
Yes, ‘The longest suicide note in history’, wasn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2006, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/24 "2006-09-24T23:00:35Z")
My visceral impression of Thatcher (and indeed of the Conservative party in general of that era and until the time they were supplanted by Labour) is that she/it started off seeming like an industrious, maternalistic, protective queen bee, but every now and again, shed a skin and became each time a bit more like a vicious, predatory, calculating, inhuman insectoid alien. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2006, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/25 "2006-09-24T23:24:11Z")
She must have been very careful. I never saw the second set of jaws that could reacj out from inside her mouth, though I clearly remember her spitting the acid venom. ---
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2006, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/26 "2006-09-24T23:51:14Z")
[QUOTE=Usram] I imagine that the OP is beginning to wonder how Thatcher managed to win three elections if she was so universally reviled and life under her was so awful. [/QUOTE] I am indeed! Someone must have liked her… 😕 ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/27 "2006-09-25T01:29:05Z")
For many years before Thatcher came along, industrial relations in the UK had been badly in need of _some_ kind of reform or fix (with plenty of blame to be apportioned on both sides). The country was crippled by the never-ending round of strikes; by a reputation for poor productivity, ‘work shy’ attitudes and poor quality output; by at times insanely protectionist union practices (including utterly daft ‘demarcation’ rules of the ‘five people to change a light bulb’ variety); and pathetic and corrupt ‘fat cat’ management. No-one had been able to achieve much of an improvement, not even Harold Wilson - an extremely able, intelligent and shrewd political operator. Thatcher came along and _did_ manage to do something about the problem. Unfortunately her ‘solution’ was massively blinkered (unions bad, management good), partisan, corrupt and inhumane. Thatcher and her cronies took the view that tossing three million people on to the unemployment scrap heap was a worthwhile price to pay if it meant they could bring the unions to heel, and also a good way of achieving an obedient populace. She also seemed to feel that imposing sky-high rates of both direct and indirect taxation to pay three million people their unemployment ‘benefit’ each week was a wise way to conduct the national economy. Insofar as Thatcher did _something_ to break the country out of the rut of rotten industrial relations, and to curb some of the more egregious excesses of the trade unions, she is _maybe_ deserving of a very small measure of credit. In all other respects, she was simply a deranged and evil witch, corrupt and rotten to the core, who simply didn’t care how much suffering she caused to millions of ‘lower class’ people, and who also used a needless war as a way of holding on to power. That she was able to win three general elections is not so much a tribute to her own talents as a terrible indictment of the opposition’s ability to come up with a credible and elect-able alternative. Bad as things were, the country was never going to elect Michael Foot or Neil Kinnock as PM. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/28 "2006-09-25T01:54:30Z")
Mussolini made the trains run on time. ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/29 "2006-09-25T05:29:00Z")
The reality about that 3 million unemployment, it was far far higher. The Thatcher governement was notorious for finagling the figures downwards, estimates of true unemployment figures start at around 5 million and go upwad from there - the uper estimate is nearer to 6.5 millions but personally I think that too is hyperbole. They found any number of ways not to count the unemployed, for instance one of the biggest was for women who were out of work - if their husbans also happened to be claiming welfare for the whole family, she didn’t count, this alone would put many hundreds of thousands on to the list, anyone under 18 also did not count, adding a few more hundred thousand, and anyone out of work for less than 13 weeks didn’t count, adding probably over a million, because what they did was when you got to you 10th week of unemployment, you were put on a two week job seeking course, which then excluded you from the unemployment figures for another 13 weeks. Add to this all those people on shitty schemes such as YOP, ET and all the others, its not hard to see how it was done, in all there were over 30 revisions to the way the unemployment figures were calculated, unsurprisingly every single one of them pushed the figures down further. As for the 1983election, here try some of this, > **[1983 United Kingdom general election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election%2C_1983#Background_to_Election_1983)** > > Margaret Thatcher > Conservative > Margaret Thatcher > Conservative > The 1983 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 9 June 1983. It gave the Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of the Labour Party in 1945, with a majority of 144 seats and the first of two consecutive landslide victories. Note also that boundary changes gained the Conservatives 20 seats they would not otherwise have won. As for the Falklands effects, well MORI polls six months before the war put Conservative support at around 20%, and that would have almost eliminated them from any place in parliament. In the elections following that, the working class vote was split by the rise of the SDP party which helped Thatcher enormously. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 9:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/30 "2006-09-25T09:09:52Z")
[QUOTE=ianzin] She also seemed to feel that imposing sky-high rates of both direct and indirect taxation to pay three million people their unemployment ‘benefit’ each week was a wise way to conduct the national economy. [/QUOTE] Actually, she cut the top rate of tax to 40%. And her medicine, though painful, did work. In the short term it royally shafted 2 million people (Labour had already shafted the other 1 million), but Britain is now a much more prosperous country. Could it have been done better? I don’t know, but I do know that Britain was pretty far down the road of socialism and that the unions were simply intransigent. Let us not forget that she brought democracy to the unions too, where votes were often rigged. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 9:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/31 "2006-09-25T09:32:13Z")
[QUOTE=Quartz] Actually, she cut the top rate of tax to 40%. [/QUOTE] And the overall tax burden, rather than this gesture to the wealthy? ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/32 "2006-09-25T09:54:15Z")
I lived in London while Thatcher was PM. Margaret Thatcher is one of, or the single greatest, leader of any European country in my lifetime. That is becoming even more evident looking back. ---
**Author:** ![Martiju](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@Martiju](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martiju)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/33 "2006-09-25T10:16:26Z")
[QUOTE=Quartz] Actually, she cut the top rate of tax to 40%. And her medicine, though painful, did work. In the short term it royally shafted 2 million people (Labour had already shafted the other 1 million), but Britain is now a much more prosperous country. [/QUOTE] Britain is not a much more prosperous country because of Thatcher. She, and her pin-striped suited Cabinet, did a great job of ensuring that the rich got richer at the expense of the poor, but that isn’t the way to ensure economic growth. Since 1997, the number of unemployed has decreased (in real and government figures\*), trade is high and confidence within both Europe and the US appears strong (albeit with a blip since 2001 for obvious reasons). I say this as a non-believer in Blair’s government too, as I think they are the most right wing Labour Govt I could imagine. That said, as I get older I do think that some more traditionally Tory policies are necessary for economic stability. \*and everyone, but everyone now knows that the Tories severely massaged the figures down by some 2m. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/34 "2006-09-25T10:20:27Z")
The economy has been doing well since the early nineties though, and when Labour got in they stuck to Tory spending plans until 2000, so you can’t give them all the credit. ---
**Author:** ![Martiju](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@Martiju](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martiju)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/35 "2006-09-25T10:23:07Z")
[QUOTE=Usram] The economy has been doing well since the early nineties though, and when Labour got in they stuck to Tory spending plans until 2000, so you can’t give them all the credit. [/QUOTE] Sort of true - except the big step back in 1997 was giving the Bank of England responsibility for interest rates, rather than using it as a direct political tool. For the vast majority of us with mortgages, etc. that enables easier budgeting of the biggest monthly expense and means we go out and spend more, in turn boosting the economy. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/36 "2006-09-25T10:24:15Z")
I think we Brits, next time we’re slagging off the polarisation of US politics, need to take a good hard look at the Thatcher era… ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/37 "2006-09-25T10:30:07Z")
[QUOTE=GorillaMan] And the overall tax burden, rather than this gesture to the wealthy? [/QUOTE] Ah, the politics of envy. One of the things that Thatcher did was enable people to aspire, rather than being ground down by the state. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/38 "2006-09-25T10:41:11Z")
[QUOTE=Quartz] Ah, the politics of envy. One of the things that Thatcher did was enable people to aspire, rather than being ground down by the state. [/QUOTE] Riiiight. Millions of people sat unemployed, wistfully dreaming about not paying quite as much tax on their enourmous salaries. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/39 "2006-09-25T11:00:11Z")
[QUOTE=GorillaMan] Riiiight. Millions of people sat unemployed, wistfully dreaming about not paying quite as much tax on their enourmous salaries. :rolleyes: [/QUOTE] Ah but **GorillaMan** , all they had to do was get on their bikes and look for work… ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926/40 "2006-09-25T11:10:16Z")
The Thatcher government didn’t reduce the tax burden anyway. Tax as a proportion of GDP went up in the early years (all that unemployment benefit won’t have helped), and then drifted down to previous levels. The most you could say was that she arrested a long term trend for taxation to increase. It was the next administration, the Major government, which achieved the biggest reductions (if you view reducing tax as an achievement). Most underrated government in British history? 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-your-impressions-of-margaret-thatcher-please/373926.md?page=3)