A minutes silence for Maggie!

[Legallyblue]

I'm laughing at the irony of that statement, which also sums up the implacable anti-Thatcher elements on here.

The true consensus is that she did some things right and some things wrong and if you really lived through the mid-1970's, you'd know what a fucking mess this country was in at that time.

For every person she put on the scrapheap, she helped others move a rung or more up the ladder, through being able to set up businesses, giving them far more disposable income, allowing them to own their own homes, freeing them from high inflation, giving them access to credit. Inflation was squeezed out of the system and interest rates, apart from a short blip in the late 1980's, went steadily down. Her reduction of taxation rates made it worthwhile to save, which impacts the economy by giving governments access to additional funds.

It's also a myth to say she "destroyed" manufacturing industry. The truth is that it was already declining before she came to power. Between 1970 and 1979, its share of GDP declined by just under 2%. Between 1979 and 1990, the rate of decline actually slowed so that its share of GDP went down by 1.5%.

Now I can't stop you thinking that she was (in your arrogant words that leave no room for argument) "a vile woman" but I can point out that not everyone shares that opinion.

There are lies, damned lies and statistics. The apparent slow down in the rate of decline was accounted for by the accelerating shrinkage of the public sector due to savage cuts fostered on us by Thatcher and her neo liberal mentor Keith Joseph.

The "savage cuts" in public expenditure had actually been imposed by the IMF in 1976, as a result of bailing out the Labour government. I don't deny it suited the Tories but that's how they started. Another factor that came about as a result of that loan was a change in fiscal policy from pursuing full employment to control of inflation via the money supply. So another Thatcher policy actually originated with her Labour predecessor. And that's not a lie or a statistic.

The facts are these:
- Manufacturing industry was already well in decline before 1979.
- Mining was already well in decline by 1979 and over 30 pits had been shut under Wilson/Callaghan.
- The plans to close down a number of steel producing facilities had already been made by the Labour government.
- British Leyland had gone bust in 1975 and had to be bailed out by the Labour government.
- Unemployment was around 1.5m and would have been a lot higher if the Labour government hadn't been propping up ailing, loss-making, inefficient, over-manned industries.
- Inflation was over 20%.
- There were something like 30m working days a year lost to strikes

I might have some regard for your views if you'd had the balls to admit that things were pretty shit in 1979 but claiming they were not as bad as the right-wing press made out marks you out as a complete and utter muppet of the highest order. Now go away and wank over your pictures of Clare Short.

Ignoring the descent into right wing thuggery and sexism, unemployment in 1979 stood at 1.2 million and trebled in the first three years of Thatcher's government. The price index moved from 216 to over 300 in the first two and a half years.
Industry worldwide suffered a huge blow in the early seventies on the back of the first oil price shock. The difference was how governments dealt with this. Some invested in training and manufacturing so that their industries were well placed when the upturn began. Thatcher dismembered the training boards, removed the levy paid by companies to fund apprenticeships, sold off public assets at an undervalue and distorted our economy to favour the City, leading to the preponderance of investment bankers who brought about our current financial collapse and in return were once more subsidised and rescued so that they are again benefitting from the bonuses they had become accustomed to.
In three years the output of manufacturing industry fell by an unprecedented 19%.
She slashed taxes for the rich and removed the link between earnings and the state pension. She capped NI for the higher paid but slashed benefits. The UK not only performed badly, crucially it performed worse than comparable economies. Perhaps her greatest crime was the squandering of the North Sea oil revenues that should have given us the opportunity to modernise our schools and hospitals and restore our infrastructure whilst creating jobs. Worse still this economic savagery was a deliberate attack on the working class using unemployment to smash them into submission. In 1981 Nicholas Ridley, Treasury Minister, described the high level of unemployment as "evidence of the progress we are making".
The waste of lives, education and opportunity, the increasing inequality and division in society that have resulted from her greed culture make me sad rather than angry. Her legacy of division and despair is now being reinforced by her Etonian heirs and we all suffer for it in the long term. I would celebrate her passing if I thought it made any difference.

 

[CTID1988]

More chance of a minutes silence for the turd I've just flushed

 

[bluezi]

She didn't do me any favours firstly stopping my free milk then later stopping me getting any apprentiship place. As I was not bright enough to go to uni I ended up not doing much I blame her right wing Tory government and what would a women know what a young man must need to provide an income for his family. I won't be parting with any tears for her had her policies all through my young adult life

 

[BrianW]

Tragedy was a great one off opportunity was squandered. We had peak North Sea Oil Revenues, plus the sales of nationalised industries, and this was squandered on tax cuts (mainly for the rich) and paying benefits to round about 3 million unemployed - 'a price worth paying' it was said at the time.

This got people used to artificially low income tax levels which it became politically impossible to increase, leading to the inevitable deficit in public funds that has had such a crippling impact on us all.

If that great windfall had been put into a National Wealth Fund and invested in British industry, we should be in a much better shape now.

It was all down to crazy ideology. Ironically, the Tories used to be the pragmatists, and used to object to Labour being obsessed with ideology. Now it's pretty much the opposite, all bow down to market-worshipping neo-liberalism.

The market should be a tool, not a god.

 

[Champions again in 2012]

Not read all the pages on this thread but i really can't see our Argentinian contingent observing a minutes silence.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

In three years the output of manufacturing industry fell by an unprecedented 19%.

Yes it did but much of that was a result of the recession caused by the oil price spike in 1979 when the Shah was deposed and Khomeini came to power in Iran. And it's also not the full story as I'll demonstrate.

This paper may interest you. http://www.cbr.cam.ac.uk/pdf/wp014.pdf. I know Jonathan Michie, one of the authors and he's no Thatcherite (although he is a rag!).

On page 22 he displays a graph comparing output, employment & productivity from 1962 to 1993.



As you can see it takes 1985 as the reference point with each measure indexed at 100. The solid line is output, the dashed line is employment and the dotted one is output per hour.

Output had been rising up till 1974, when industry was hit by recession brought about the oil price being hiked by the Arabs after the Yom Kippur war. Just before she came to power it was about 110 and dropped, as you said, over the next 3 years. But then it picked up again until 1990, when she resigned, at whcih point it was around 120. So actually it increased by a third from 1982 and was higher than it had ever been.

Employment had been falling since about 1967 and started declining steeply in the 1975, probably as a result of the early 1970's recession. Productivity had virtually stalled during the 1970's but shot up after 1980 as the weaker companies went to the wall and the better ones survived and modernised.

So manufacturing indutry was producing more after her tenure than it ever was before. Obviously jobs were lost but you'd expect that as a result of increasing mechanisation and computerisation. I saw this myself at BAe where we introduced CNC cutting machines onto the shop floor that were faster, more accurate and only needed a handful of people to operate.

I actually largely agree with a lot of the other things you say.

 

[stonerblue]

I will show her every bit as much respect in her death as she showed me and people like me when she was in power.

nail on head.