THE DEATH OF Margaret Thatcher has taken from us not just the dominant political figure of postwar British politics, but an icon of clarity and resolve who battled ceaselessly against enemies from within and without.
A leader who not only tamed the once-mighty unions at home and helped hasten an end to the Cold War abroad, but who reignited a spirit of economic enterprise and dynamism which transformed the lives of Britons and inspired countless millions worldwide.
And yet sadly it still comes as no surprise that the Iron Lady’s death has unleashed a tidal wave of both praise and vitriol.
Thatcher’s strong medicine, which transformed Britain from the sick man of Europe into an economic powerhouse, was sure to produce victims as well as victors. You can’t expect those who were repeatedly wrong about Thatcher to be happy about it. Or to admit their errors, even while they enjoy cheap foreign holidays at prices only made possible by Thatcher’s free market reforms. Or twiddle with their cellphones, bought for a pittance thanks to one of the world’s most competitive cellphone markets. While they check the web for a cheap train ticket from a multitude of suppliers they have no conception that not so long ago they had no such choice. Not do they realize, while they congratulate themselves on another four-figure increase in their home’s equity, that without Thatcher, they might instead be paying rent in a council house.
Speaking as one who turned seventeen the year Thatcher was first elected, I find it astonishing and dispiriting at just how many folks have greeted Thatcher’s death with little more than hate speech denying her achievements while braying about their plans to have a right old knees-up. Do these people really have no memory of what Britain was like before she came to power?
Well I do. I was there. And the memories are not pretty. Rampant inflation. A top tax rate of 98%. Never-ending strikes from powerful union bosses who were, often as not, self-proclaimed Marxists fighting a jihad against management. Power cuts. Three-day working weeks. Inefficient, state-run industries flogging ghastly, substandard goods while staggering from one taxpayer bailout to the next. Unaccountable bureaucrats running everything from the GPO to the Gleneagles Hotel. Government control of iron, steel, coal, energy, telecoms, transport and trucking.
During a visit to London last summer I marvelled at the efficiency and ease of the capital’s transportation network. The choice of timetables, prices and routes, to say nothing of the reliability and cleanliness of the trains is all a very far cry from the bad old days of the British Rail monoply. I took about twenty trains in a seven-day visit and all but one came precisely on time. The one black spot was a train that arrived FOUR minutes late, along with a very apologetic tannoy message from the operator. I remarked to my wife that back in the 1970s any delay of less than 30 minutes would not even warrant a mention on the loudspeaker. Rail privatisation may have come fully on-line after Thatcher was deposed, but it was the fruit of the serial privatisations she had pioneered.
Within British houses, everything from the televison and internet service, to the water coming out of the tap is now privatized. Does anyone remember a telephone in 1979? The device always carried the legend, “Property of the GPO,” reminding the customer – who often waited months for service, that it was not theirs, but but belonged to the Post Office: in effect, the government. Can one even imagine the cellular boom of the 1990s reworked through the prism of a GPO monopoly? One shoddy phone, spotty service and sky-high prices anyone?
Political will
A Liverpudlian friend reminded me this week that Thatcher’s ruthless economic policies, which essentially meant letting uncompetitive industries go to the wall while providing little cash for retraining and further education, meant that wide swathes of Britain’s industrial heartland were decimated and have never recovered. But the reality was that Britain had been clinging to its own uncompetitive rust-belt manufacturing base for decades because of the lack of political will to make hard choices. Thatcher had that political will. When she set about reversing the 1945 nationalisations that had put oil, gas, coal, electricity and an airline as well as a house removal company (!) in public hands she was sowing the seeds for a prosperous, competitive future in which the British people benefited both as consumers – (more choice, lower prices) and as taxpayers (no more bailouts).
Another common refrain from Thatcher’s detractors is that she ‘only cared about rich people, and that the working class were left to fend for themselves’. If this were true, how did she manage to get elected three times with considerable support from the working class? Perhaps because many of the working class also recognized that despite her education and achievements she was still a shopkeeper’s daughter from Grantham. Like them, she knew the benefits of hard work, thrift and balancing the books. And they were thrilled too, at the prospect of buying their own home. Thatcher recognized that the working class was just as aspirational as the middle class, and had just as much to gain from a dynamic, deregulated economy where hard work and ingenuity and enterprise were rewarded.
Thatcher also had to battle hugely antagonistic forces – not just from union firebrands like Arthur Scargill but from within her own party, especially from the Tory establishment of rich white men, many of whom who considered her a hectoring arriviste and worked to undermine and stymie her at every turn.
Then of course there was the enemy without – exemplified by the Argentine invasion of the Falklands in 1982. Although victory of arms now seems like a foregone conclusion, at the time it was anything but. Many were the dissenting voices in her own party who sought a face-saving accommodation with General Galtieri and his henchmen in Buenos Aires. Not to mention the shameful vacillating from Ronald Reagan and his cabinet, most of whom – with the notable exception of the magnificent Caspar Weinberger – wanted to keep the South Americans onside and urged the President to abandon Washington’s staunchest ally.
But perhaps Thatcher’s greatest victory was her ability to change the Opposition. To force Labour to accept radical change as the price of their electoral viability. So many Thatcher reforms were fought tooth and nail by Foot, Kinnock and co. And yet when Labour finally came back from the wilderness, most of Thatcher’s economic and industrial reforms were left untouched. Why? Because of the widespread consensus that they had worked.
It’s no wonder Tony Blair can barely bring himself to say a bad word about the old girl. Could an Islington moderate like himself ever have become Prime Minister without his party wrenching itself away from its old Clause Four orthodoxies? As one commentator put it this week: “It’s telling that Tony Blair’s domestic legacy amounts to two responses to Thatcherism: forcing Labour to accept it and then compensating for the damage the Tories had wreaked through sustained underinvestment in the public realm.”
And so here we are today. Those who remember Britain before Thatcher will draw their own conclusions about her impact and her legacy. Younger folk will more likely swallow their ‘facts’ second-hand and come up with a caricatured version of history, for good and ill. And the haters – the Ken Livingstones, the George Gallaways, the Joey Bartons and others celebrating Thatcher’s death, – in short those who have never forgiven her for being right – are gonna hate. Let them stay in their little rooms on the wrong side of history. The rest of us know better.
