First things first: Did she really talk like that? This lightness was not natural; she adopted it at the suggestion of her image consultant. The Crown makes clear that Thatcher was hated because of her policies. But what exactly were those policies?
Unions were crushed. Anything that could be put up for sale was. Still, what The Crown understands is that the substance of her government was sometimes less important than the style.
But as a society it suffered meltdown, with catastrophic long-term consequences. Income inequality rose, too, as did crime. If you were one of those shut out of the boom times — if you lived in the north, say, or worked in manufacturing — you experienced her reign as a period of ever-increasing precarity.
The attendant loss of civic trust and social cohesion was no less real for being unquantifiable. Whole landscapes — the Victorian landscape of textile mills, tall chimneys, docks, pitheads, shipyards, and terraced houses — were obliterated. Got it. Did she actually have a tense relationship with the royals? In fact, Thatcher singlehandedly changed the way Britain, and much of the world, viewed women as professionals and leaders. Other prime ministers since have had her ability Gordon Brown or her charisma Blair or her communications skills Cameron.
But none have had her courage and determination to bring about a radical change to society, and embed it for generations. In fact, the more one sees the puny, second-rate Thatcher-wannabes in the modern Conservative party Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove etc , the more she stands out as a thoughtful and grounded leader. And would she have been duped by the City before the financial crash, as New Labour and George Osborne were?
There is, though, one leader who may match her for courage and revolutionary zeal, and who may yet bring about another major shift in society. His name is Jeremy Corbyn. This article is more than 3 years old. Joseph Harker. The more one compares her with later politicians, both Labour and Tory, the more she towers above them. Or so I thought. I used to think people made rational decisions.
But now I know I was wrong Deborah Orr. What is less welcome to many people is that Britain was in critical need of this change. Andrew Sullivan sums it up well in his piece, Thatcher, Liberator :. She divided the country deeply — and still does.
She made some serious mistakes — the poll tax, opposition to German unification, insisting that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist — but few doubt she altered her country permanently, re-establishing the core basics of a free society and a free economy that Britain had intellectually bequeathed to the world and yet somehow lost in its own class-ridden, envy-choked socialist detour to immiseration.
For a more 'thorough' review you can read a detailed analysis from the Centre for Business Research on the History of British Industrial Performance from , or The impact of Government policies on UK manufacturing since She did. This Guardian article and the linked Google Spreadsheet has a number for excellent interactive charts where you can plot various economic indicators over the course of the Thatcher Government and beyond.
More important than simply being in office during the time of such rates were the consequences and the measures taken to control them. This Parliamentary Briefing Paper shows one of the biggest - repossessions. Ordinary home owners, many of whom had bought their homes as a direct result of the Right to Buy scheme, found themselves losing their homes due to spiraling mortgage payments.
However, it must be said that the bulk of repossessions happened directly after Thatcher left office , though no doubt many rightly attribute their defaults to the period of high interest rates that preceded her departure. Though the control of inflation was ultimately achieved, this further damage to ordinary people, millions of whom had already lost their jobs thanks to the impact on manufacturing, lead to a deep rooted personal hatred of Thatcher and Thatcherism.
She did, but the Bill passed anyway. As ever, things are more complicated. Thatcher, the new Secretary of State for Education at the time, was ordered to make cuts in four areas:. Concerned over the effect of the cuts to milk, she said :. She proposed a compromise, that would later be accepted , to remove milk provision for those aged 7 to 11 but retain it for primary school pupils for nutritional purposes. In , the then Labour Education Secretary Edward Short removed free milk from secondary schools , 3 years before Thatcher continued the phased removal for primary school pupils over 7.
It is therefore prudent to ask at what point responsibility for the current situation switches to successive Governments who have failed to correct this imbalance. The Poll Tax is the stand-out, unequivocal disaster of the Thatcher Government.
Though, that's a somewhat contested claim. Many believed that changing the way the tax was calculated, from the estimated market value of a property to the number of people living in it, was a backwards step. It disproportionately hit large families living in relatively small accommodation and was universally hated for being unfair on ordinary working people. The Community Charge caused intense distrust and deep wounds in the political psyche of millions of voters, many of whom never forgave Thatcher for her actions as we see from the anger released following her death.
The changes generated seething public anger , mass protests , public disobedience, mass refusal to pay , legal challenges and some of the worst rioting ever seen in England.
Yorkshire Police even made preparations to refuse to arrest anyone as thanks to the problems of implementing the tax , the force believed it lacked the resources to deal with such wide-scale civil disobedience. John Major won the resultant leadership contest and immediately abolished the Community Charge. It was based on the essentially identical Rates system used prior to the Community Charge. Such is the strength of feeling still felt in Britain about the Community Charge, politicians have consistently steered clear of adjusting it for over 20 years, save for minor alterations aimed primarily at increasing discounts for certain households and individuals.
As ever, things are more subtle. The Labour Party initially campaigned against the internal market, claiming it had fragmented the NHS and distorted incentives. GP fundholding was abolished, and primary care groups later primary care trusts were established as the new commissioning bodies, but with a greater focus on needs assessment and accountability to the local community.
Although they initially helped primary care groups with needs assessment, they were to ultimately take on a more managerial role, determining local targets and standards. The sentiment is more rightly directed at the Conservative Party as a whole.
Section 28 refers to Section 28 of the Local Government Act which stated:. Nonetheless, such legislation reflects the generally held beliefs of the Conservative traditionalists that Homosexuality, though no longer illegal, should not be promoted. Modernists, including current Prime Minister David Cameron , no longer support such sentiment.
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