That’s fine Rob, I respect your opinion - it’s yours as mine is mine - but I’m a grown up so could happily listen to your thoughts on other great leaders and your reasoning. Just because I start off with a different perspective doesn’t mean I can’t listen to someone elses.
All excellent points - IMHO.
I have no opinion other then RIP - however the two main contributing factors in war are 1. Religion 2. Politics - cant be assed with either as it all ends in tears!
Yep to some she’s the wicked witch of the west …
…to others shes Joan of bloody Arc!
Lets look at motorcycles to show how her philosophy worked…
Triumph Meridan under Labour - a subsidised workers co-operative. Old fashioned, uncompetative machines made on outdated machinery by a comparatively huge workforce. Taxpayers money pumped in again and again to prop it up - they never made enough to pay for the advertising and marketing of the machines, let alone invest in new models…a real dead duck, kept afloat bu you and me…Triumph Hinkley established just at the end of Thatchers reign - private money,no subsidies modern machines - modern factory, modern tooling , efficient workforce and from a tiny beginning they are now class leaders in midrange supersports, sports nakeds, retro and mass market adventure bikes plus doing a bloody good job in the other sectors…Yep a lot of stuff farmed out to Thailand in recent years ( like all major manufactures, Harley, BMW, Ducati and all of the Jap brands ) but 600 jobs and the whole design team live and work here (not to mention the thousands of ancillary workers )
Yes she ruined whole communities - but like Meridan Triumph how long could they have gone on with hand outs when a Japaneses/Indian/Korean worker worked for a tenth of their wages? How many of people awould be willing to pay,say, £20 a week out of your wages to subsidise a UK kettle factory only to find out the the inferior, old fashioned British kettle cost yo £40 when the modern, reliable Korean one was only £25???
Don’t get me wrong - I used to shout “Maggie Maggie,Maggie - out, out OUT” once too …but history has proved her descions cruel …but right in the long term.
Columbo,
First off, well done for asking. As for unbiased, that is all a matter of perspective so I can list facts (as I have above) but depending on your perspective you may see things differently.
For example, take the coal miners. The strikes were fundamentally about the closures of uneconomic pits. As you mine a pit, some coal might be easier to get at, but then some coal might be harder to get. So, as a pit is mined you might find a situation where the coal costs more to mine than it is worth - a large part of that cost being attributable to high wage costs. If that was your business the obvious thing would be to close the pit, but the coal mining industry had been nationalised in 1947 so some people felt the miners should have jobs as a right. The National union of mineworkers had won concessions through strikes in 1972 and 1974 (I remember the blackouts) so after a terrible year just before Maggie came to power she knew she had to do something to avoid the country being held to ransom by the NUM again. She prepared by ordering stockpiling and by 1984 the NUM called a strike again but Maggie was ready. The strike would only have won if the country was inconvenienced/disrupted by the lack of coal but her coal reserves meant she could outlast the strikers.
So - the uneconomic pits were eventually closed, which left only a handful economically viable of pits in this country. That process damaged areas of the country and people had to retrain or move to find work. Obviously there are many that feel that was a bad outcome, I personally believe it was the right outcome. So - this was one of Maggies battles that causes MANY people to hate her - so do you think she was right in that case?
Maggie also bought in lots of measure to allow and encourage people to do better. The tax cuts I mentioned earlier were an example of this and some would say they were only an impact to the wealthy. Fine. How about right to buy. She introduced legislation that gave people the right to buy their council house (at a discount). This bought over 1 million households into home ownership and for the first time many families were able to pass on a legacy to their children where they would NEVER have been able to do so previously. Do you think that was a good thing?
I could go on - but every person will have their view. She was the first and only female PM we have ever had - at a time when females were significantly disadvantaged in many ways. Pretty impressive don’t ya think?
You can go down the list and see if you think she was on the right side or the wrong side. Whatever a leader does, someone will disagree, but do you think she had the country at the top of her priority list.
Columbo,
First off, well done for asking. As for unbiased, that is all a matter of perspective so I can list facts (as I have above) but depending on your perspective you may see things differently.
For example, take the coal miners. The strikes were fundamentally about the closures of uneconomic pits. As you mine a pit, some coal might be easier to get at, but then some coal might be harder to get. So, as a pit is mined you might find a situation where the coal costs more to mine than it is worth - a large part of that cost being attributable to high wage costs. If that was your business the obvious thing would be to close the pit, but the coal mining industry had been nationalised in 1947 so some people felt the miners should have jobs as a right. The National union of mineworkers had won concessions through strikes in 1972 and 1974 (I remember the blackouts) so after a terrible year just before Maggie came to power she knew she had to do something to avoid the country being held to ransom by the NUM again. She prepared by ordering stockpiling and by 1984 the NUM called a strike again but Maggie was ready. The strike would only have won if the country was inconvenienced/disrupted by the lack of coal but her coal reserves meant she could outlast the strikers.
So - the uneconomic pits were eventually closed, which left only a handful economically viable of pits in this country. That process damaged areas of the country and people had to retrain or move to find work. Obviously there are many that feel that was a bad outcome, I personally believe it was the right outcome. So - this was one of Maggies battles that causes MANY people to hate her - so do you think she was right in that case?
Maggie also bought in lots of measure to allow and encourage people to do better. The tax cuts I mentioned earlier were an example of this and some would say they were only an impact to the wealthy. Fine. How about right to buy. She introduced legislation that gave people the right to buy their council house (at a discount). This bought over 1 million households into home ownership and for the first time many families were able to pass on a legacy to their children where they would NEVER have been able to do so previously. Do you think that was a good thing?
I could go on - but every person will have their view. She was the first and only female PM we have ever had - at a time when females were significantly disadvantaged in many ways. Pretty impressive don’t ya think?
You can go down the list and see if you think she was on the right side or the wrong side. Whatever a leader does, someone will disagree, but do you think she had the country at the top of her priority list.
steveCBR11XX, sorry mate but I gotta defend my misses. She might in your opinion get 3 months off but i can tell you she don’t. She leaves the house at quarter to 7 to be in class at 7 to set the class up for the day ahead and team brief before they start at 9. when all the kiddies head home at 3.30 she’s there till 5 planning the next days work. Don’t get me started about weekends…
Anyways back to MT, love her or hate her she did good and bad but destroying the unions IMO has a nail in the coffin for normal workers. Without unions the common worker would have no security and companies would do as they please with there work force, increased hours, minimum wages etc.
I like you steve am ex forces but it’s not just the unions striking that back in the day that the army were used to cover. The forces are the kicking boys for ANY government in power. They know they have the troops by the balls as they can’t refuse to soldier. Anyone going on strike for better pay and conditions…GET THE ARMY IN
Sorry rant over
Somewhere down the line someone asked for an unbiased review of the life and times of Mrs. T. I’m going to hazard a guess that you will have to wait a long time for that.
Despite living through WW1, the depression and being on active service throughout WW2 my father still hated Churchill with a passion for some things that had gone on 30, 40, perhaps 50 years before.
My opinion? Don’t ask!
I’m a died in the wool socialist, but I’ve hated all the Labour and pseudo Labour governments after Clement Atlee’s (two guesses how I feel about the Mrs. T?) and the only decent socialist era I’ve lived through since was under Harold Macmillan. (I’d guess a lot of you will have to Google both of them.)
Please just stop telling me she was some form of Goddess, or the devil in carnet. I’m getting very bored with all of this already and there will be weeks more of it on television.
David Cameron has just sent this official letter to the Thatcher residence. It starts: “I regret to inform you that due to recent events, you now have too many bedrooms…”
Too soon? 
Lol - never too soon…
For damaged, read destroyed. And for retrain or move read live on benefits. It’s not reasonable to say that when an entire town’s industry closes down that people can just move on and retrain as consultants.
She also used the police as an army agains the strikers - where I come from a lot of coppers facing the miners down would have grown up in mining communities - not a good legacy for police relations. My dad was a young PC in east lancashire at the time.
There were obviously no angels on either side but she always struck me growing up (and admittedly I’m a bit too young to be fully aware of it at the time) as a vindictive woman in a lot of her policies.
Edit: No malice intended towards you there Simon. Just pointing out to Columbo the different perspectives - she is not exactly a saint up north.
I’ve been giving this some thought. Whilst I was not in the UK for Maggie’s reign I cannot for one second consider her a true ‘leader’ and definitely not ‘great’. A true leader of a country is one that cares for everyone, one who gives to his/her country without focusing on how it benefits his or her own goals or those around him. Maggie had none of those qualities. She constantly battled for the disolution of society, creating a greater class divide than ever before. Frequently belittling and ostracising the working classes she helped grow the industries that benefitted her business circles. Oh yeah and the forces… best I don’t speak about my opinion of the forces… A friend uploaded one of her quotes and as he put it, it summed up everything he didn’t agree with.
And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour.
I couldn’t help but agree with with him on this. When we stop helping others because we want to make more for us that is when any spirit of kindness we have collapses. I don’t want a leader who encourages self preservation, I want someone who will fight for me.
For me politics corrupts and as a result no established politician or person of power can ever trully be a great man or woman, particularly of an overtly capitalistic country like the UK. I was reading an interview with Tony Benn the other day and I loved how his wife told him to leave Parliament, so that he could focus on politics. He continues to be an activist to this day. I have great admiration for him, even though I don’t necessarily agree with him. To me he is much more of an important person that Maggie…
I will consider that she was a forceful woman but then again I have seen the same thing in Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and many others around the Globe. Likewise most of the great dictators have been forceful and took no sh*t. I don’t put her in a league of her own. She was a driven woman no doubt but the very things driving her are what I disagree with. Being driven does not make one person great. If it did, we could call Ray Kroc a great person. God forbid we ever did that…
Impressive? Nah inventing a polio vaccine and not patenting it so that millions could get it for free… that’s impressive. I think Maggie would have been horrified at that (the financial loss to industry), and that’s what puts her in the ‘no’ basket for me. In any case, as you say people will have their own opinions on her and they can decide whatever they want to.
I think it’s fair to say that she divides the country just as much now as she did then… again, another argument for not being great 
I think that latest entry is about as unbiased as things are going to get until the media gets over it’s self seeking bleeding heart syndrome and swamping the t.v. and radio with fawning cant.
Well said. I was organising financial support for Easington at this time. (Despite thinking Scargill was not a lot better than Thatcher.) The whole thing around all the mining communities from Snowdown (Kent) North was appalling with the police being used as political tools of the worst kind.
I hope never to see that again in the U.K.
Love her or loathe her, she had the country’s best interests at heart… although some people/communities were casualties at a given point in time, the result was a substantially better-off economy which benefited everyone in the longer-term.
Most politicians now can’t see past their 5 year tenure or how to best line their own pockets. As has been said, the woman had more balls than anyone we’ve had since.
I’ve got to agree with Simon here…
Nobody WANTS people to lose their jobs and have to move away or re-train but at the same time, if its not economically viable it must be done.
Anyone holding the country to ransom will not get my support. (Cough RMT/ASLEF Cough)
I’m not 100% sure on the right to buy issue.
Although it seems only fair to allow people to buy their council homes, it only works if they are replaced. They clearly aren’t as there’s a 10+ year waiting period in some areas.
Seems fair to the occupant but doesn’t look like it quite works fairly to the government.
@monimark, no malice assumed mate - its just debate and you need two sides for a debate. The police as an army comment I have heard before. They have to enforce law and order so they weren’t exactly Maggies private army. Don’t forget Scargill pushed the strike through without a ballot of the members so the strike was illegal. Scargill was power hungry and even anti Thatcher commentators recognise he was more to blame than Thatcher for the strikes and the outcome. Neil Kinnock has stated his views about that a number of times. However it did play into Maggies hands and she had decided to crush the unions one way or another because of they way they were destroying this country.
@columbo you are quite right to worry about the replacement of housing stock in RTB. The scheme had rules to say the money was not to be used to provide new housing, only to reduce the debts of the councils. Maggie believed in less government overhead and more opportunity for individuals. The current mess with the welfare system must have had her head spinning.
Remember though that her politics were an enormous change in a country that had BIG issues. Many industries had been nationalised and were performing horribly. It was state funded waste on a scale that makes the banking bailouts look like a bargain. The unions were quite frankly taking the piss and holding this country back. Our world position was so bad that a banana republic country such as Argentina thought they could invade our land and we would sit and do nothing. Her policies were radical and caused a horrible recession, but actually turned this country around so whilst not everything she did was right, we were certainly better off after her reign. THAT is very hard to dispute.
Very sad she has died, she was the only political leader in my memory who had the courage, determination and the vision to change the country for the better. In comparison to those who came later, she was a true revolutionary. Socialism had become a cancer in the country, it was no longer a positive force for the good of the average man and woman and had to be broken -those who claimed to be socialist at the time, the likes of Derek Hatton, Ken Livingstone and Arthur Scargill were not socialist in the sense we understand now, they where worshipping Trotsky but instead of fighting injustice 80 years ago they were fighting the general public - our country, our parents and destroying our futures. Margaret Thatcher had the courage to deal with these people and return industry to profitability.
We now have technology and car industries (amongst others) we can be proud of and are profitable and generating the money to fund the NHS, something that would not have been possible had the Unions and their leaders retained the immense power they had. There were mistakes - who could have foreseen the housing benefit scam that is probably a result of not rebuilding social housing stock ? The miners ? There were some sad times but even Neil Kinnock, one of Mrs Thatcher’s harshest critics at the time, admitted that Scargill was responsible for the miners situation.
I am very sad to see the negative comments about her - she was a great woman and an inspiration to many other women, probably doing more for equality than anybody else in the past 50 years despite the derision heaped on her by feminists who felt obliged to tow the party line.
She was a great woman, a fantastic leader and inspiration to millions of people and will be sadly missed. I will miss her a lot.
Not strictly true…
1in7 kids were classed as poor when she became PM, 1in3 was that number within a few years.
Sorry Serrisan I can’t leave that one unanswered. You’ve quoted some statistics measured against a VERY flawed measurement (which has been known for years as a bad measurement). The poverty definition used there is families whose income is below 60% of the median contemporary income. So - as the country was doing better the median increased and more families were “in poverty”. So, they weren’t worse off, they were worse off compared to a rising yardstick. It’s a nonsense measurement. The poverty rate actually fell last year - do you think it was because poor people were better off or is it simply because everyone was a little worse off because of the economy.
Labour were able to decrease the poverty numbers by increasing welfare payments to an unaffordable and frankly unfair level.
Yes Thatcher’s policies increased the gap between poor and wealthy but that is by design (hoping that the poor would take action to improve their position).
She didn’t introduce the legislation, the previous Labour administration did that, it was just passed under her government.