to think you can have an opinion on Maragret Thatcher regardless of when you were born?

[NewStartInSpring]

Sorry I know people are sick of MT threads. However this one isn't about whether you are happy/sad she died or whether she did have good/bad policies etc.

I have seen quite a few people say that your opinion (regardless of what it is) isn't valid if you were not born during the time MT was Prime Minister.

Aibu to think this is ridiculous?

Surely if you believe that then the majority of us wouldn't be able to express an opinion on Hitler for example.

I also remember Labour's 'ethical foreign policy' which lasted ooooh 5 mins

Was talking about this with baby boomer parents the other day = Thatcher brought about a shift in culture - I think she engendered a far more individualistic perspective.

I see it now in the NHS: typically the older generation: 60+ will be concerned that they are using up NHS resources, not wanting to bother the doctor (Dr still has incredible status), worried they will take someone else's place in the queue.
Younger people have an expectation of service and will be impatient that the service is not good enough to meet their needs on their terms and very young people are incredibly naive in their expectations of what to expect from NHS care in terms of waiting to be seen etc

As a few have said most of the opinions of those who were born post the Thatcher era are based on heresay and if they hate her, heresay from someone who had only negative things to say.
Now I understand what you are saying about Hitler but until the history books do a full right up on Maggie I guess none of us know the whole truth.

Whilst I agree with some of the comments that say some of Maggie's wrong decision still resonate today, so do many of her right decisions.

The miners strike is always an interesting case in point as it had so many issues of which I am by no means up to speed on. I as a teenager in the 80's (who did not suffer the ill effects and was able therefore to watch from a distance) saw it like this and it has I suppose shaped my opinion of unions throughout my life:

1. Coal was dying as an industry so was going to shut down eventually -

this was however the least of the problem.

1. Maggie wanted to shut down and shut up the unions - she picked this as her fight.
2. The unions kept driving the strike on and on and on - she got meaner and meaner and neither side backed down.

In my (fairly ignorant I will admit) opinion - neither Maggie or the union leaders gave a crap about the miners - they were locked in there own head on battle with the poor sods stuck in the middle. The loss of jobs would have happened in the long run - the dreadful depravation and awful treatment could have been avoided. We will never know what would have happened if it hadn't have been Maggie and Scargill at the battle front I guess but I dont know that I agree with those who only blame Maggie.

My opinion therefore of Unions is shaped by that activity. All the good work unions do is rarely spoken of (H&S, rights, etc). All we hear about in the media is another union telling the workers of a failing company to go on strike - which with no back story always seems like utter nonsense. We never get to here about what the management have done to get the company that way, which would probably help our understanding of the strike. Media isnt interested in that though I guess.

Coal was not necessarily a dying industry. I came across the argument the other day that we could instead have chosen to invest in 'clean coal' technology and lead the world in this field. But we didn't.

The mines too could have been closed in such a way as to have been mothballed, so that they could have been re-opened if necessary.

So instead we now have, 3, or is it 2 deep mines open, and we import coal and gas from Poland and Russia.

Indded. We still produce coal, about 16 million tonnes of it a year, but import about 55 million tonnes

2. Maggie wanted to shut down and shut up the unions - she picked this as her fight.

I disagree. Scargill picked the fight by declaring a strike without balloting his members. I think he'd have comfortably won a ballot which makes it puzzling to me as to why he didn't. It's no secret he hated the law which says he had to ballot but then we don't get to pick & choose which laws we wish to obey.

3. The unions kept driving the strike on and on and on - she got meaner and meaner and neither side backed down.

Anything specific you had in mind? I remember seeing the violent protests on the news. I remember seeing police trying to keep the road open for coaches with workers in trying to get to work and the strikers violently trying to stop the coaches.

I know there's still a feeling amongst ex-miners that the reporting was biased and unfair but those are certainly the stories which I saw and I suspect most of the nation.

I agree that productive mines should indeed have been kept open. The blame for closing them should be apportioned to Major and Heseltine in their "dash for gas" - after MT's time of course.

MT just closed unproductive mines. Total coal output was actually pretty similar at the end of her time in office as it had been at the start as she kept the most efficient ones.

It would be good if some mines could be reopened, but maybe this would be infeasible due to flooding, subsidence, lack of maintenance etc.

Handcream, above, is correct to point out the Harold Wilson's 1960s government (which included people like Barbara Castle, Anthony Crosland and Tony Benn) closed many more pits than MT did.

Another point that should be remembered is that before the 1984 miners' strike, MT and Peter Walker offered any miner whose pit was to be closed a choice between a generous redundancy package and redeployment at another pit. Peter Walker argued that although this would be expensive it would nonetheless be preferable to a full-blown strike. MT agreed to this. It was Scargill who rejected it out of hand and pushed on with the strike.

Well, Maggie did indeed plan for it, stockpiling coal and introducing Tebbit's Law in 1982. The police had been placed under centralised control, Ian McGregor had been speaking about reducing the size of the coal industry and in March 1984 closed Cortonwood - without NUM consent. Despite what it commonly reported and repeated, there were spontaneous walkouts across the coalfields. Eventually about 80-90% of pits were closed. The campaign through the media, the courts and via police intimidation was akin to Churchil's use of the army during the Tonpandy dispute. During the miner's strike 10,000 miners were arrested, two killed, and many many more miner's and their supporters intimidated, assaulted and threatened by police.

As for the ballot, it was Mick McGahey, the union's vice-president. who said "Area by area will decide, and in my opinion it will have a domino effect." Opposing a national ballot with the words: "We shall not be constitutionalised out of a defence of our jobs."

How can the right to strike, a right people had to fight for, remember it wasn't so long ago that refusing to work, or even simply not working was a crime. with Laws such as[i]f any . . . workman or servant . . . retained in any man's service, do depart from the said service without reasonable cause or license, before the time agreed, he shall have pain of imprisonment. And that none under the same pain presume to receive or retain any such in his service."

so it isn't always simply a case of by following the law one is doing what is right.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, including the young and ill-informed.

I reserve the right to not be influenced by anyone else's opinion unless I think they know what they are talking about.

niceguy Earlier you used the word 'naive'. It seems extraordinarily naive for a presumably intelligent poster to talk about the stories he saw and not suspect that there were others that went unreported.

Take it from me: reporting of the miners' strike was biased and unfair. That's more than 'a feeling' and isn't an opinion held just by miners. I have first-hand knowledge because I am a reporter and was shifting at The Sun at the time.

You would not have expressed even the mildest sympathy for men losing their livelihoods in that newsroom if you wanted any sort of livelihood yourself.

Miners were stopped from travelling by police roadblock. A remarkable thing to do to free citizens who have committed no crime in a democratic nation, don't you think?

I met two of them, who had dodged a roadblock and were extremely nervous not to be discovered, at a union meeting to discuss donations. They wanted money or food parcels including tampons. I felt ashamed that they had to beg me for such things.

Some police behaved extremely violently and provocatively at miners - anything from beatings to waving cash and thanking them for paying for their holidays.

That information came into the newsroom. It did not go out. I also got it from a police officer friend who was shocked by the behaviour of some of his colleagues. It didn't help that he, like many of his fellow officers were young and from the south of the country so had no empathy for miners and their families.

I am not denying that some miners behaved violently - I remember the convictions of two of them who killed a taxi driver taking a strikebreaker into work by dropping a lump of concrete on him from a motorway bridge.

I'm just saying this to help you as I am sure you would not want to make naive statements in future if you can help it.

So someone saying in response to 'Mrs Thatcher was a nice old lady underneath' that 'Hitler was kind to children', is or is not invoking Goodwin's law?

as limitedperiodonly said, incredible to think that people were stopped from travelling by police (3000 Police drafted in to Nottingham alone for this job) Also slightly worrying that this policy is still being used but goes relatively unmentioned nowadays. Similarly the charging of protestors with horses and then baton weilding officers, scarcely a whimper of concern. Maggie's legacy

P.S.
Also airbrushed from history is the fact that under article 41, the miner's were well within their rights to strike.

The little darlings dancing on her grave atm need to be reminded that we - the great British public of the time - voted her in for three terms.

They could do with asking themselves why.

It's because we believed that she was, on the whole, good for Britain. I disagreed very much with the Poll tax but she was firm on Europe (and everything else she believed in). She was easy to dislike but also easy to respect: she didn't dillydally like all the politicians today. And she was crystal clear. What you saw was what you got. Can't see her claiming expenses for duck houses, she was brutally transparent, honest and trust-worthy, whether you liked/agreed with her or not.

LaVolcan That's an informal fallacy

Miranda -From what I recall her party got 43% of a turnout in the very low 70's. hardly a majority of people in the country. And since she left office she claimed well over half a million quid in expenses.

Yeah, so transparent that all the stuff surrounding the sinking of the Belgrano had D notices, disappeared etc.

She was not easy to respect.

Mrs DV - What I meant was that there were reasons she was voted in, and they would do well to ask why she was successful.

A lot of dodgy stuff went on on both sides during the Falklands campaign, as it no doubt does in any war situation.

Lots of people disagreed with the Poll Tax after it had been introduced miranda. Possibly because it was the first time Margaret Thatcher had taken from the pockets of Middle England as opposed to filling them.

The expenses fiasco is interesting. As I understand it, the regime was instigated by Thatcher as a means of increasing the income of all MPs without giving them a pay rise which voters are always opposed to.

I don't know whether she would have egregiously abused it. Possibly not, as she was personally quite frugal, though not unopposed to lining the pockets of her friends though her policies and of course, her son, through her contacts. And frugal is a relative term when you retire to Belgravia.

But ducking the issue of MPs' pay and increasing it by the back door isn't what I'd expect of someone who people keep telling me always declared her decisions and bravely stood by them.

She partly got in again because the left was split.