# Margaret Thatcher's Legacy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 8, 2013, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142 "2013-04-08T12:00:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Hippy\_Hollow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hippy_hollow/32/4841_2.png) [@Hippy\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hippy_Hollow)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/41 "2013-04-08T16:00:00Z")
> [@BrokenBriton](#): > > Fuck her and everything she stood for. Elvis Costello said it much better than I ever could - including his opening words, and the way he spits out the final lines: > > Tramp the Dirt Down: > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-BZIWSI5UQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-BZIWSI5UQ) I was just over at the NME website looking to see what Elvis Costello, Morrissey, Dave Wakeling, Billy Bragg, and any other musicians were going to say about her death. Nobody’s said anything yet. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/42 "2013-04-08T16:01:08Z")
Did she leave Britain better than she found it? Although I am not British looking at the difference between Britain in 1979 and 1990, the answer has to be yes. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/43 "2013-04-08T16:08:35Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > All you need to know, isn’t it? I don’t know what you mean. The government of the time were anti-apartheid. They didn’t think extreme economic sanctions were the best option but they were hardly alone in that. Harold Wilson’s labour government of the late 60’s was just the same. Pretty much every country tailored their sanctions policy according to national interest and the UK was no different. ---
**Author:** ![hansel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6bbea6/32.png) [@hansel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hansel)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/44 "2013-04-08T16:49:15Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Did she leave Britain better than she found it? Although I am not British looking at the difference between Britain in 1979 and 1990, the answer has to be yes. She was there, doesn’t mean she was responsible. I’m not saying she wasn’t, but looking back on that generation of Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney, I can’t tell if they caused things to get better or looted the circumstances opportunistically. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/45 "2013-04-08T17:01:31Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > Pretty much every country tailored their sanctions policy according to national interest and the UK was no different. That was my point. ---
**Author:** ![sidecar\_jon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@sidecar\_jon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sidecar_jon)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/46 "2013-04-08T17:07:12Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > With Wales, Scotland, and most of the North against her, how did she ever win an election? Because there are a lot of constituencies that return MP’s in the south, Its a standing joke that there are more pandas in Scotland (two) than Tory MP’s. ---
**Author:** ![sidecar\_jon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@sidecar\_jon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sidecar_jon)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/47 "2013-04-08T17:09:43Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Did she leave Britain better than she found it? Although I am not British looking at the difference between Britain in 1979 and 1990, the answer has to be yes. But not after all the deregulation came home to roost in 2005.. I rang the wife and told her Thatcher was dead and she wants to arrange a party. She’s a nicer person than me too! ---
**Author:** ![Cinnamon\_Imp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@Cinnamon\_Imp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cinnamon_Imp)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/48 "2013-04-08T17:24:14Z")
Party in Glasgow - [http://local.stv.tv/glasgow/220638-council-says-stay-away-from-george-square-party-for-thatcher/](http://local.stv.tv/glasgow/220638-council-says-stay-away-from-george-square-party-for-thatcher/) ---
**Author:** ![Kepler1571](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/db5fbb/32.png) [@Kepler1571](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kepler1571)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/49 "2013-04-08T17:25:35Z")
She was a very effective and hard-nosed _leader_, and she fought for what she thought was right. Her abstract principles actually seem to have been well-meaning – she wanted to unleash the power of the magical market to make people’s lives better. In retrospect most of her actual policies were terrible. Far from reviving British industry she delivered it into the grasping hands of the bankers and the financial speculators. Privatization in the name of blind ideology left the British economy vulnerable to exploitation on a massive scale by financial actors with no accountability to the public interest and led directly to the casino economy and the inevitable crash. I do think she believed in her policies and was honestly trying to do right. That is what a leader is supposed to do. It is a cruel trick of history that her mystical faith in the market turned out to be hokum: she essentially believed in the economics equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. If she had happened to be influenced by different people and tried to effect more sensible methods, she would likely have been a great PM. Instead she was a very strong leader for a terrible cause. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/50 "2013-04-08T17:25:48Z")
Apparently, the milk snatcher epitaph was undeserved. She was executing Government policy that she argued against. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/51 "2013-04-08T17:26:11Z")
> [@sidecar\_jon](#): > > But not after all the deregulation came home to roost in 2005.. > I rang the wife and told her Thatcher was dead and she wants to arrange a party. She’s a nicer person than me too! Now, now, if you can’t say something nice . . . _De mortuis nil nisi bonum,_ and all of that . . . RIP one of the greatest statescritters of the 19th Century! ---
**Author:** ![codgerone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c37758/32.png) [@codgerone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codgerone)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/52 "2013-04-08T18:04:08Z")
I for one am sad at the passing of one of the best Prime Ministers we’ve had in the last 50 years. I was 24 when she won her first election as party leader and I well remember the mess the country was in. Of course she made mistakes but ultimately she was a true “conviction” politician. She believed that her policies were in the best interests of the country and didn’t care if it made her unpopular, unlike many who followed her who were more concerned with focus groups, sound bites and the effect of their policies on their re-election chances. It makes me laugh to hear the socialists spewing their vitriol and blaming a woman who left office nearly twenty years ago for all the ills in our country today. How much better do they think it would have been if Michael Foot or the Welsh Windbag Neil Kinnock had been in charge? Maggie’s legacy is that overall she left the country in far better shape than when she arrived. All the lies, posturing and sour grapes from the left cannot change that. And she didn’t want a state funeral. ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/53 "2013-04-08T18:04:47Z")
Her effect on my life and those around me was detrimental, very much so. It is odd how such an uncaring , non-compassionate individual could have had positive effects. During the early '70’s we were struck hard by the oil price shocks that led to huge inflation, and huge pay demands to go with them - of course that led to massive industrial unrest. This was not the fault of either Labour nor Conservative administrations, but the effect was to increase the power of unions, which in turn led to waves of strikes and the downfall of various administrations. Naturally each political party blamed the other and put forward their own ideas on how to solve these dire problems. I recall during that time, when the Labour administration was brought down by strikers, folk around me were stating that they had not gone through World War II to fight against extremism, to have it all undermined by small minorities of left leaning unions - there was huge anti-union feeling at the time. I think for the sake of democracy, that union power had to be broken, you just cannot have your government held to ransom by a small minority of a workforce. Thatcher could not have survived had it not been for the revenues from North Sea Oil, this is what bankrolled her programs and without it our situation would have been absolute economic disaster - so she got lucky. The Falklands war was critical, defeat would have certainly led to her loss of the general election, and we might well have had 18 years of a Labour administration, with all those oil revenues funding their programs. The defeat of the Argentine led directly to the collapse of one very nasty brutal little regime there, even today there are still issues in tracking down the miscreants who murdered the ‘disappeared’ and stole their children. I doubt that regime change was Thatchers intention, its a by product - strange how history changes things. The reliance of Thatcher on the financial markets has been pretty much negative in almost every aspect, the massive concentration on short terms gains through financial markets rather than longer term industrial investments is something we will continue to regret. She liberalised the financial system which in turn has led directly to the irresponsible risk taking culture that we see in today’s trading and banking sectors. I completely despise the fact that she sold off state invested and funded industries for a quick buck, in order to keep British workers unemployed, and now we are finding our energy, water, sewage, road and rail transport costs are soaring well beyond the rate of inflation whilst incomes stand still or go backwards.Our railways are sucking out more government money in their privatised form than they ever did as a state industry. She was famously quoted as saying “there is no such thing as ‘Society’” and she has done more to destroy our national sense of community than any person alive or dead in the last century. She often portrayed herself as a patriot, as a mini-brittania figure, yet her actions have done more to jeopardise the Act of Union than any person since it was implemented. Her policies were so London-centric (and continue to be so) that Scotland is to have a vote on independence, Wales would do so if it had the option, hell, they even mooted a regionally autonomous ‘Council of the North’ a few years ago, such is the desire of the country to distance itself from the heavily economically favoured South East. Her governance of the UK has led to a real possibility of it becoming completely unravelled, its almost like having Obama run the US in such a way that half the states are to hold a plebiscite to secede. What good she did, and there was plenty, is more than outweighed that the harm she has done to the United Kingdom - and ironically its her patriotism that has done the most damage. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/54 "2013-04-08T18:36:52Z")
Hey, if the British people are, and still, all that hostile to Thatcher’s memory, how is it that the Tories are now in power once again? ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/55 "2013-04-08T18:42:36Z")
Perhaps embarking on a war that has cost billions of £ and hundreds of thousands of lives is a good way to explain part of it. The Labour administration promised to deal with poverty, and they did it by giving away lots of money, taxpayers money - so why bother working if the state will hand it out? All just a shower of shite, and besides, it was some time ago but the national divisions remain, the Conservatives were the least unpopular of the three main political parties - none got an overall majority. ---
**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:** [April 8, 2013, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/56 "2013-04-08T18:45:56Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Hey, if the British people are, and still, all that hostile to Thatcher’s memory, how is it that the Tories are now in power once again? Even after 13 years of Labour, with a massive economic shock having occurred on their watch, the Tories still did not manage a majority. They are in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. A coalition that will lead to the devastation of the Lib Dems, if the last couple of years of polling is any indication. There’s still a _lot_ of anti-Tory feeling in the country, and that’s partly a legacy of Mrs Thatcher. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/57 "2013-04-08T18:52:17Z")
[Christopher Hitchens wrote in 1990:](http://www.thenation.com/article/173706/lessons-maggie-taught-me) > [@](#): > > **Lessons Maggie Taught Me** > Christopher Hitchens \*April 8, 2013 > > This article originally appeared in the December 17, 1990 edition of\* The Nation. > > \ > > It is easy to summarize the foulness of the Thatcher years: the combination of Malthus and Ayn Rand that went to make up her social philosophy; the police mentality that she evinced when faced with dissent; the awful toadying to Reagan and now Bush; the indulgence shown to apartheid; the coarse, racist betrayal of Hong Kong; the destruction of local democracy and autonomous popular institutions. Yet every Tory in the House had voted gleefully for all of those things, and one of them, her newly anointed clone, John Major, has disagreed with Thatcher only from the right. While on the ostensible issue of principle, a common European system. Labor’s conversion has been too late and too shallow to be convincing. > > Christopher Hill, perhaps England’s greatest living historian, pointed out to me in the summer of 1988 that Thatcher had quarreled with the monarchy, the House of Lords, the Church of England, the Inns of Court, the University of Oxford and the Chiefs of Staff–every ancestral prop of the British state. Detestable though she was, she was a radical and not a reactionary. She has not been removed for any of her offenses against democracy or decency. Rather, she has been deposed by those who worship only opinion polls and their own skins and who yearn for a quiet life and business as usual–living gallantly off the fat of the land. > > “An end to conviction politics,” smugly wrote Peter Jenkins, Fleet Street’s most devoted practitioner of consensus journalism. Let us hope not. “Thatcherism” has made possible a movement for a serious, law-based constitutional republic in Britain and has hacked away at the encrusted institutions and attitudes that stood in its path. Thatcher has herself shown that there is power and dignity to be won by defying the status quo and the majority rather than by adapting to them. If the British left, which she froze into immobility like Medusa, could bring itself to learn from this, then we might not have to look upon her like again. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/58 "2013-04-08T18:52:50Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > With Wales, Scotland, and most of the North against her, how did she ever win an election? Several things contributed. Firstly, a lot of the gutter press was (and is) owned by Rupert Murdoch, who told lies on her behalf, conning many people into voting for her. Secondly, there was the rise of the SDP, a new political party that split the vote against her. It meant that in many constituencies, there could be overwhelming opposition to her, yet the Tory candidate got the largest number of votes. Without those two factors, she would have sunk without trace. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/59 "2013-04-08T18:53:41Z")
> [@Baron\_Greenback](#): > > Even after 13 years of Labour, with a massive economic shock having occurred on their watch, the Tories still did not manage a majority. They are in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Yeah, what do **they** stand for, again? I’ve heard them characterized as standing to Labour’s right, but also as standing to Labour’s left. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142/60 "2013-04-08T18:54:53Z")
> [@casdave](#): > > Perhaps embarking on a war that has cost billions of £ and hundreds of thousands of lives is a good way to explain part of it. You mean, because a **Labour** government did that, yes? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/margaret-thatchers-legacy/655142.md?page=4)