Mrs Thatcher's legacy -good or bad?

The London Underground is the home of all things weird and loopy. It's every square inch of space is adorned with advertising, even to the extent that some of them are now digital so they can show several adverts at once.



Some people have taken to defacing posters, in an anarchistic sort of way, with their own (unpaid-for) hand-written stickers. A sort of DIY advertising - or propaganda. Some of it isn't so bad: on adverts for cosmetic surgery is plastered "you're beautiful as you are", or  the more straightforward "don't pay for this shit". I'm ok with the sentiment, but what about people who genuinely need surgery, or just have the right to pay for it as they see fit? Live and let live, I say.

Anyway - I saw a more political one recently: "Trafalgar Square, the Saturday after Thatcher dies - I'll be there!" It was not a celebratory invitation. I think it was from a lunatic socialist fringe group. No British prime minister has inspired as much loathing as 'Maggie'.

Enough time since Maggie's reign has elapsed to examine and debate her legacy, as the effects are now known. I'll start be stating my position: that she was indeed a 'good thing', not a 'bad thing' for this country; but that I wouldn't say the 'greatest' PM because you're not comparing like with like - Attlee had arguably greater challenges to face.

Rather than compare with Attlee I'll stick to Thatcher. One is enough!

I'm willing to bet the people who plastered those stickers aren't old enough to remember the early 1980s. I am (just). But I'm not old enough to remember the Britain she inherited: the 3-day week, power cuts, union militancy, high inflation, and all the panoply of socialism that led Britain to be known, across the world, as the 'sick man' of Europe. History repeats itself; in 1979 the Labour government of the day had left the country nearly bankrupt, had borrowed too much, had overspent and overtaxed and the UK had to go 'cap in hand ' to the IMF for a bailout. (For IMF read USA. Again.) Guess what - the next Labour government ended the same way - overspend, debt and economic disaster. When we people learn the lessons of history?

So Maggie put a lot of that right. Squeezing the money supply to control inflation, 'good housekeeping', demanding secret ballots for unions before strikes, closing down industries producing things that no-one wanted to pay for. Socialism, in essence, means people thinking they can make decisions for you, because they know better than you. Thatcher started to reverse that. People were given the chance to buy their council houses, own shares in the companies that were supposed to be serving them and 'got her money back' from an EEC that Britain was unfairly funding.

I don't think any person who takes an honest look at the economic data confronting the UK in 1979 can claim anything other than - at the very least - Mr Thatcher made some necessary changes for the good of the country. I would go further and say that they were vital, and have been vindicated. Across the developed world the Thatcher style of privatisation and share ownership was adopted, mostly very successfully, and in the UK inflation was curbed and economic competitiveness restored. The 'sick man' tag was finally shaken off. Labour's absurd 98% tax on the highest earners, which actually reduced the total tax take, was lowered. Not many people seem to be aware of this, but under Thatcher and her tax cuts total tax revenue actually increased.

Economically-literate honest people can't deny these things. They're facts. I think the problem many had (and still have) with Thatcher are the costs of her reforms. Some of these charges are fair, some unfair.

The fair ones first/ There's no doubt that under 'Thatcherism' crime went up, the gap between richest and poorest widened and as state-owned industries and 'old industries' (like mining) were closed down economic and social problems in many communities became widespread. When 'monetarism' was first applied in the early 1980s it was at least one of the factors causing unemployment to rise to 3 million (though it came down afterwards). I think these charges against Thatcher are fair, and are heavy 'minus' points against her. A counter-argument though is the long-term structural changes that UK industry was able to make because of these reforms: less reliance on manufacturing when the output couldn't compete with cheaper foreign good (or coal) and more reliance on finance and services (and a few British 'winners' like pharmaceuticals). This restructure had to come in one way or another or there would have been no jobs left in Britain at all, apart from the public sector.

The less fair ones relate to the myth of 'Tory cuts'. Even today you hear people repeating this myth. Some of it's true, but most of it isn't. Under Thatcher NHS spending increased. Transport was squeezed and the effects lasted a long time, it's true. As someone who uses public transport I can remember it deterioriating. British Rail was a nightmare and needed reform, but rail privatisation wasn't the answer and it didn't work. But introducing competition into telecoms and other utilities spread digital technology to the masses and the competition held companies to account.


Ultimately it is the long-term changes, the profound economic shifts and the repositioning of the 'centre ground' of politics that we can use to ultimately judge a legacy. When asked what her greatest achievement was, Lady Thatcher (as she now is) replied "New Labour". And there you have it.