AIBU to blame social science courses for some of this hatred of MrsT

[Grinkly]

I did an OU foundation social science course once. A major part was the detrimental effects of redundancy and unemployment on individuals and the community. It was interesting and spelled out how lives can be devastated by this.

The example was a Yorkshire mining town. It was a good course but I wonder if those, unlike me, who weren't around at the time of the miners' strikes have got a skewed view of why things happened.

Billy Elliot touches on the strikes too I think. But no background info is given, as far as I remember.

Am just amazed at the vitriol - especially by those not directly affected. And it was a long time ago. Don't want to start another debate unless someone has a new point to make.

[babanouche]

I think there is a level of mysogyny involved when it comes to Thatcher. I'm no fan of hers at all, but given the hundreds of years of patriarchy, where is the male figurehead attracting this level of vitriol? Surely there have been male leaders who have been as divisive?

Bush took a lot of flack but I can't imagine anyone giving a monkey's when he carks it.

[hwjm1945]

Comment 're unions above is simplistic in the extreme,good spread in Guardia n today with interviews from three people on their view on Thatcher. One is a teacher who comments on problems pre Thatcher.on balance she took conviction politics too far......lives were blighted....but what effect would globalisation have had eventually on industry?I think there is misogyny at work as well

[LaVolcan]

I've been in unions for oh about 30 years and have never been on strike.

[DeadWomanWalking]

I grew up in Liverpool in the 80's, the majority of scousers think she's scum (me included). She turned our city into a fucking ghetto, treated Liverpool people like they were shit on her shoe time and time again. She was a bitch, a rich tory toff who loved to fuck over the poor.

[YohedYoshoulderYonisandYotoes]

I don't think you are being unreasonable, people who are educated and thoughtful and concerned about the impact of redundancies and joblessness on families, and on the inequities in society, and on editing out people because of their class or accent rather than something logical like performance, contribution etc will realise how damaging a personalised fight to crush 'employees' by 'employers' was under Thatcher's guidance.

Social Science courses are one way in which people are made aware of the bigger picture, as are many of the other ways people describe in this thread.

What you ought to be asking instead is 'is it productive for a society to be kept in ignorance so that leaders can have an easy ride following a dystopian agenda of fighting within the team so that some can drink all the water on the lifeboat and cast the others out, and is this really, overall, likely to produce the best outcomes'.

You can have this debate in economics or business. My view is that allowing resource-grabbing to be equated with 'success' (i.e. we have 10 apples between us and each needs one apple to survive.. if you consider that one person ends up with all the apples that person is a success and the others are failures then you have many problems. Most obvious of which is that you have 9 people wanting to step out of the game and steal the apples by whatever means, because the game that led to all the apples going to one person has the best outcome for one, but the worst possible outcome for the majority, and for 9 individuals in the majority. Thatcher argued that the drive to get the apples back was 'stimulation of the economy' but in practice, Mr 10 apples will end up spending as much on protecting his apples to feel 'successful' as he does keeping them - which is why under tory governments we eventually have reduced means of production.

The other major disadvantage - relevant in a 'catch all' period of financial weakness across the world is that the best game of all for a country to play is the one where each person in the lifeboat gets an apple - so that the lifeboat is most likely to be rowed to safety, you can share food gathering and maintainance task to be more efficient and perhaps free someone up to do the navigation- or to put it another way, everyone pulls together, resources are shared, average self-esteem per person goes up and you have a 'winning' lifeboat against other lifeboats.. of course there is an argument for all lifeboats working with each other again... that extends to an EU analogy.

Thatcher's version, and the current administration's version is flawed because it fails to acknowledge a collective win as having any value. The logical outcome is that everyone is fighting constantly for bits of apple, the country gets insular and resentful and nasty.. people without apple for too long are resented because they are unproductive targets and stimulate annoying caring feelings in people who need to stay ruthless so they can exploit any opportunity to get a bit of apple.

That's economics, that's teamwork and that's adult survival. Childish darwinism will screw everything up. Personally I'm going to hold on to my one apple whilst pretending to be a no-apple so no-one attacks me. Go Go unproductive Britain!

[candyandyoga]

Whilst some see it as some imposing her power on the unions, other see it as she had no choice but to fight against an aggressive union stance that wanted to bring the country to its knees with its inflated demands...

What was she supposed to have done? Let the unions go ahead and have their inflated rises? With the pits - wasn't it the case that many were not profitable anymore and it was too costly to keep them going?

[Scorpette]

Call me mad, OP, but I'm going to take a wild and sarcastic guess that bazillions of people hate and hated Margaret Thatcher because she was a fucking cunt, not because of social science courses. And if such courses present facts that show her in a terrible light, it might, just might - try to hold this incredibly complex and dazzling concept in your head for just a moment - be because they are actually terrible.

I have relatives who were miners/worked down t'pits and I was also at comprehensive school when the miner's strike was in full flow. Anyone who saw just a fraction of what those children and their families had to suffer because of Thatcher would eat their own face before they ever had a good word for her or vote Conservative, EVER.

And let's not forget how badly she shat on her own nation: she was pretty fucking disgraceful outside the UK too. She supported Apartheid, she supported Pol Pot, FFS (know much about Cambodia? Google it and then tell us that the hatred of Thatch has been largely cooked up by bleeding heart liberal teachers), and she was a big personal friend of Pinochet. Those facts alone, even if she had done a stirling job here in the UK would make her subhumam fucking scum.

Also, re: the argument that Labour left the country in the shit when Thatcher got into power - it does not follow that to ameliorate things, the next governent had to do the abominable things they did under her leadership. The previous Labour government did not cause her or her policies to be so awful and cruel.

It is humiliating to read a grown adult blaming a person having a bad reputation on how that person is taught.

Finally, regarding your talk of vitriol - it's a basic level requirement of humanity to be able to feel empathy for others suffering things that we ourselves haven't experienced. For example, I am white, yet amazingly, I get really upset about racism. But then, I did do humanities at Uni, so that must be why...

[candyandyoga]

Deadwomanwalking - a rich Tory toff? She came from a working class background and worked her way up?

If there are any rich toffs around it is the likes of slimy Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband... And let's not forget Tony Blair...

[YohedYoshoulderYonisandYotoes]

You fail to understand the role of unions in producing effective working practices that benefit effective production, and have rather stupidly bought the DM chant of 'bring country to its knees' - the money men in the 80s made everyone but a few beg for work, food, status and respect. I found out today that incapacity benefit was created by Tories as a desparate way to get people off the unemployment figures because what I say above about the majority having no apple came true.

[candyandyoga]

I don't fail to understand anything and the only stupid people here are those who like to insult others...

[cuillereasoupe]

the bodies were piling up at the gravesides

150 or so funerals (including my great aunty Eileen's) delayed for a week or two by strike action by one group of gravediggers in Liverpool. Doesn't sound so bad that way does it? I'd take that over destroying the social fabric of half the country any day.

[MammaTJ]

Her policies affected every one. She brought in the poll tax.

[Dawndonna]

Fuck. I'm so bored with the myth that Thatcher came from a working class background. She didn't. It's a myth. Her father was really quite wealthy. She went to grammar school. FFS. Oh, and then she married a millionaire.

With regard to union, Thatcher never tried negotiation, she didn't believe in it, everything was a war and everybody that got in her way needed to be quashed. It could have been better, the unions did have too much power, but she would not negotiate.

[YohedYoshoulderYonisandYotoes]

The 'tory toff' argument is sound - she had an 18th century view of posh because she didn't understand it properly. (er she wasn't working class BTW business-owners are classed as middle class) That is why she pitched employers against employees in a pitched battle claiming that employees were 'taking' money from employers.

Unions knew then, as they know now that best working practice comes from effectively rewarded and motivated workers. To see how we got it wrong look at Germany's respect and protective stance on unionisation - where unions have positions on boards of major companies and unions are constantly giving the 'bottom up' information on how to improve business practice.

Look at Google who take classless people and spend fortunes on employee management motivation and well-being and compare it with industries here who recruit almost exclusively from class-based education and produces bosses who resent and bully their workers.. and then look at who is forging ahead.

Look at the Japanese management style that used british workers in employee-focussed teams where employees create the management environment and feedback their needs, rewards, pay and workflow management upwards.. When good, and not ra-ra class-based 'working class are stupid' management styles were used british workers were more productive than their japanese counterparts.

'Power of posh' is 'domination by people who think we are still in Jane Austen land' - where the poor can't read etc.. why? Because that is how Public Schools still look at the world.. why? Because public school teachers went to public school.

Thatcher because a mad, overhammed comic (nightmarish) clone of what she thought being posh was about - well until her image consultants pointed out it was getting too rabid and ridiculous and toned down the fake posh.

[LatteLady]

Mrs Thatcher was elected when I turned 21, I was nursing at the time... I left the NHS at the end of 1986... and the reason was Mrs Thatcher. By that time our budgets were being cut to the core, I had to threaten to cancel a clinic because there were no paper cups available and we were told to fold paper towels into cups... On another occasion the cleaners had not cleaned a theatre we were due to use, we were told to cancel the list as the cleaners could not be redeployed but it was a day list for mentally handicapped adults, so the whole theatre team got down on their hands and knees to clean it. I remember how materials became scarcer, difficult in a teaching hospital where students had to learn and would obviously make errors in mixing items which would then need to be discarded. Her cuts to the NHS made it impossible for me to do my job properly and after eight years I left with much sadness.

I remember going to pay for my poll tax and seeing an 18 year old who worked at WHS crying because she could not afford to pay on her minimum wage... remember when it was introduced every adult member of a household had to pay tax, it was no longer one unit like it had been under council rates.

If you lived through it, you would understand why she was a divisive woman.

[LaVolcan]

She came from a working class background and worked her way up?

No she didn't. Her father was an Alderman and a business man - he owned the shop, not worked for the shopkeeper. Generally speaking - a big noise in the town.

She got to Oxford, fine, by her own academic efforts, but helped no doubt by a wealthy father who could afford to keep her at school and then finance university. No leaving school at 14 for her and then having to get a job to bring an extra wage to keep the family finances afloat. E.g. My grandmother's was widowed. She managed to keep my Dad at school until he was 16 but after that it wasn't an option, so no swanning off to Oxford for my Dad or my Aunt even though they were equally clever as Mrs T.

She could have deferred her Oxford studies and taken part in the war effort but she didn't. Don't forget she was the same age as the Queen, who did join up.

After University she married a wealthy man.

So let's have a bit less of this working class and worked her way up, because that's just about the last thing she did.

[LaVolcan]

Cross post with dawndonna, sorry.

[Latara]

I don't remember much about Thatcher because i was a child in the 80s living in the South West; but this thread has been interesting & taught me a lot of things i didn't know about.

I do remember a Recession in the early 90s - was MT Prime Minister then? Lots of my friends' parents lost their jobs, & some had their homes repossessed. My Dad held onto his job but he was lucky because lots of his colleagues lost their jobs.

Re: social housing - so much was sold off down here that it's now very hard for people to get more than a room in a hostel, even those with children. I see lots of people still being affected by that policy.

[DeadWomanWalking]

candyandyoga she married a fucking millionaire!

[LazarussLozenge]

DeadWomanWalking Sat 13-Apr-13 20:28:11

candyandyoga she married a fucking millionaire!

So did Colenne Rooney... let's burn her.

[ilovesooty]

Her millionaire husband bankrolled her career in politics.

[ModreB]

If you had lived through it as an adult, northern, working class person, with children, who you were unable to feed without paying the mortgage that you were forced into because of the lack of social housing, you would understand.

And the current lot are much, much worse. I feel sad for my children.