I posted this on another forum, with a very different demographic to this forum. I'm interested to see how a younger group of people perceive Mrs T's legacy.
I was born in 1969, so I just remember the 70s, and the 80s rather well. For those who were not around then, or who have forgotten, let me tell you that the UK was in desperate straites by the time Mrs T came to power.
I did my homework by candlelight several nights per week. Power cuts you see. Yes, power cuts in the United Kingdom because there was no coal to fuel the power stations. No coal because the Miners were on strike. Again. And again. And again. Or even if they were not on strike, somebody else was, meaning that there was a picket line that could not be crossed by workers of any type - even those with no connection to the dispute. Imagine that, if the local car factory went on strike they could send pickets to the nearest power station and shut that down too. It was called secondary action. It went on everywhere. Everything stopped. And boy oh boy did the Unions use their muscle. You name the trade, it was on strike at least once a year, and of course with all these strikes and the resultant secondary actions, nothing got done. So we had stand pipes in the streets for water, candles for light, and parafin stoves or coal fires for heat. In Britain. In the 1970s.
Supermarket shelves were frequently empty. Hospitals rented refridgerated containers to store bodies for weeks on end (undertakers went on strike) petrol was rationed. RATIONED in 1970s Britain. If you had a job, there were long periods when you were only allowed to work 3 days a week. Not enough power for a 5 day week you see. Coal miners again.
And the filth, oh boy the filth. Google the images of Leicester Square at the height of the dustbinmens strike. 4 stories (I think) of rotting stench. Rats as big as terriers scampering around bold as brass. In Britain, in the 1970s.
And even when things were working, well they didn't. 6 months to get a phone line from the Post Office. And then you'd have to share it with your neighbour if you were not lucky - most young people think a party line is a premium rate number these days - back then it was how you got your phone service. As for what we produced as a nation... well it was laughable. Cars? Mostly plops. Televisions, washing machines, consumer goods? Mostly plops. So plops in fact that the British, who had staunchly bought British turned to anything but British goods. I remember the first little Datsun cars (Nissan today) arriving on these shores. Oh how we laughed at the notion that they might be better than our beloved Austin 1100s,..... Trouble is, all these foreign goods showed us what things should be like. Cars that ran reliably. Washing machines that lasted longer than 12 months. Motorcycles that kept their oil inside them. All novelties for a nation grown accustomed to Great British products produced by Great British Workers (when they could be bothered to turn up to work, on production lines that may or may not have had power to run them - Miners again)
And do you know what? The people got sick of it. And Mrs Thatcher came and changed all of that. The lights stayed on. We could have stuff, stuff that worked. We could own our homes, we could own our shares, we could get telephones in a few weeks instead of months - and we did not have to share them. Our streets became clean, and the dead eventually got buried.
She took on a task of modernising Britain that Governments had either shirked (Labour) or were defeated in doing by Unions(Conservative).
People drone on about how she gave no thought for communities that were reliant on coal and manufacturing. These were the same communities that gave no thought for the rest of the population as their selfish actions condemned us to the cold, the dark, the standpipes and the unending gloom that was the shiteness of Britain in the 1970s. But never mind that, the simple question is what could have been done? The country was skint. The miners and their unions and the hold that they had on the UK was such that what would have been merely a nasty boil that required lancing in the 1950s and 60s had turned into a full on gangrenous infection that required the amputation of the limb by the 1980s. Compassion you say? You say that as if there was ever any reasoning to be had with the Unions about the strikes and demands. Anyone who watched the annual televised event that was the TUC congress would have known that there was no reasoning with the forces of the left.
Having seen Heaths Government fall, and Callaghan emasculated, Thatcher came to power determined that the rule of Government should apply. Scargill was determined to maintain the power of the miners. There could be only one victor. Especially as North Sea Gas was now coming to heat our homes and fuel our power stations, the demand for coal, Britains addiction to coal in fact, was broken. The transition was brutal, but was made infinitely worse by the Unions. Honestly, who in the right minds would have considered that reasonable debate could have been had with them over a transition policy, given their behaviour of the previous 20+ years and the public positions adopted by the Union leadership and the TUC. The Unions betrayed the workers by convincing them that the fight to keep the status quo could be won....one more strike, one more dispute. The world owes us.
And now I see what my children live with today. The stuff that was a daily reality in 1970s Britain is long long gone. Indeed, most people do not even believe it happened, that it could have been as bad as it was.
Thatcher was no saint. She made mistakes. She got stuff wrong. But what she did well, she did brilliantly well, and that specifically was to turn this country towards a road of prosperity and enterprise. It has not all gone well, that is for sure, but compared to where we have come from, it is infinitely better !
She does not in any way deserve the opprobium that some in the UK have heaped upon her. It seems that Mrs T must be blamed for every ill, every knock, every disaster. I heard she also caused Hurricaine Katrina and is probably behind Kim Jong Un. They say you can judge the greatness of a person by how desperately their detractors attack them. By this measure alone Mrs Thatcher was a giant amongst pygmies.
