People who think Margaret Thatcher was good...why?

[malificent7]

I have s tory froend who worshipd Margaret Thatcher and cried when she died...just why? Can anyone explain please?

I'm not in England but am a little surprised at the idea that most council properties were sold for profit/rented out by those who bought them under right to buy. Is that really the case? Because it certainly isn't true of Scotland. I live in an ex-council house myself and every single house in my street that was bought was lived in by the buyer and only sold when they were moving anyway.

I know many, many people of my parents generation who bought their council houses and none of them did so to rent them out or sell on for a fat profit. A few properties, usually more run down flats, have drifted in to the rental market but they are very much the exception rather than the rule.

I'm from Wales and within my family there's different thoughts. My parents, while not enamoured with her and her destruction of a community, admit that without her they wouldn't have bought their house. They didn't sell it, they used it for what it was meant to be used on - for a bit of security. So my parents are grateful for that, but don't like her.

My uncle despised her and cheered when she died, as did lots of older men round me. He was a miner out on strike in the 80s, with two young children. They used to go and kill rabbits in the field and cook with them, for food. We've a big extended family and each household (who worked in factories etc) would buy a little extra shopping when they went - bread, milk, whatever - and would club together so they had food for the week. My mother would offer to have the children and tied it in with mealtimes so at least the little ones ate.

I don't blame my uncle for hating her guts. If I'd been through what he hsd I imagine I would have done too.

"Also she enabled millions of council tenants to become homeowners ...."

and why do you think she did that? It certainly wasn't because she was a champion of the working classes, quite the opposite. Someone with a mortgage to pay and a house with equity to lose is far less likely to go on strike than a council tenant. She knew exactly what she was doing.

She invented Mr Whippy. 💁🏻‍♀️

Other than that she destroyed entire communities for generations which is pretty impressive...........her legacy still lives on. I'll give her that much.

echobelly the belief that , people are basically selfish is one that Thatcher and her ilk love to promote. It's an ideology that has been promulgated deliberately in the last couple of decades. It is an ideology not a truth.

There is ample evidence from human societies all through history and in all parts of the world that selfishness and greed are not normal or natural or instinctive. The belief that they are is Thatcher's legacy.

Also she enabled millions of council tenants to become homeowners and ordinary people to own shares.

What she actually did was sell off the council houses (and didn't replace them, hence the housing crisis we have now) and sold off the utility companies, then reduced tax with the money from both. So then we didn't have the housing stock or the utilities and people expected low taxation forever.

Oh dear, first Brexit, then the election, now Margaret Thatcher. Do we really need another row about politics and intolerance of each other views

OP, if you really are interested in the answer, I don't think that you will get your answer in this medium. I'd go instead and read the 3 part biography by Charles Moore then research sensible critical analyses after that.

What Babdoc said. The problem is that it's only those born in the 50s/early 60s and before that actually remember what is was like before her. I used to have to leave work early on certain days as we had power cuts. Sure younger people can google her and read up on it but you really had to have lived it to appreciate how crap it was at times.

@ArnoldWhatshisknickers it’s no doubt partly a geographical thing; I certainly know of quite a few people in London who bought council flats and now rent them out on air bnb for stupendous sums. Of course lots of people bought their homes and used them for the precise purpose of living in them, but no one can deny that when they did come to eventually sell, they usually got a tidy profit due to buying at a knock down price. My point is, if anyone really believed wholeheartedly in those properties remaining in state ownership, then they wouldn’t have bought them.

I don’t think there is anything wrong or surprising that one aspect of human nature is to look after oneself and ones own interests. It would be surprising if it wasn’t actually.... the instinct to survive, protect and ultimately improve one’s situation is fairly basic. And it isn’t mutually exclusive with caring for ones fellow humans and a sense of collective responsibility either. People are complex. To try to pigeonhole them into simply selfish/ unselfish is ridiculous.

I really wanted Shirley Williams to be the first woman PM.

There are communities in the north east with three generations of unemployment. Towns like Hartlepool where the only work available is wiping old people’s arses. Thousands of people deprived of earning an honest living to fuel ideology.

The phenomenon of generations of unemployment is the fault of socialism, keeping on life support commuties that should (from an economic point of view) shrink or die. In a pure capitalist society, people would move away from such areas. (Not that I advocate abolishing the benefits system, but I do believe in fine-tuning to eliminate poverty traps.)

She got control of the unions, closed down unprofitable old mines, privatised the dinosaur nationalised industries, got a generation of council house tenants into home ownership

Closed profitable mines and left mining areas in poverty and with social problems that are still evident today. Lets not forget hiding the true unemployment figures by pushing people onto disability benefits - probably one of the causes of the current belief that everyone on them is a scrounger who just can't be arsed to work.

And selling off council houses and not letting councils use the money to build more has been fantastic for housing in this country. No problems caused by that at all.

As for privatisation, the government now spends more on the railways than they did before privatisation, so that's gone well. Gas & Electric - the poorest have suffered due to the significantly higher cost of energy when using pre-payment meters. No idea about water, our water company is not-for-profit.

I'll suggest you read on it. Here you are going to get opinions not facts.

The phenomenon of generations of unemployment is the fault of socialism, keeping on life support commuties that should (from an economic point of view) shrink or die. In a pure capitalist society, people would move away from such areas

Where would all those people go? Just the Rhondda has over 62,000 people. Merthyr Tydfil, nearly 44,000. That's over 100,000 people, It's nearly a third of the popultaion of Cardiff. Where are they going to move to? What about all the people who are working (say in Cardiff) and put up with the travelling because housing costs are so low?

I haven’t read the whole thread so I don’t know if anyone else has ventured this opinion.

Whilst I wholeheartedly believe her policies were less than ideal, and did cause problems for a huge number of people, I don’t think Thatcher should take all of the blame. I think she is disproportionately demonised as she was a woman with power that went against all of the “ideals” of what a woman should be I.e. the Victorian and Edwardian visions of the “angel in the home” who are maternal, sweet, women who bend to the will of men. She also had power over the men in parliament and I suspect that was largely despised by the lot of them, in an era where women were still more commonly defined by the home space than the work space.

The long and short of it is she was continuing previous, shit Tory policy already started by Heath’s government and the policies were continued by Major’s government. But no male prime minister is hated quite as much as Thatcher, and it’s likely because they don’t have to live up to the ideals that women do.

"People who think Margaret Thatcher was good...why?"

I believe it's generally because they didn't live through her regime.

.... or that they did, having lived through the previous decades...

There probably is a generous layer of misogeny tied up in it. John Major announced the death blow for the final major swathe of coal pits with a few limping on after, but he doesn't get anywhere near the vitriol that Thatcher did. Edwina Curry. Back to Basics but not significant criticism for economic change. It may help a little that his years as PM went from a descent into recession and back out of the other side for a revitalised New Labour and fresh faced Tony Blair to sweep us optomistically into the Millenium (until Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction...)

I'm approaching my 40s. My first 16 years were a run of Conservative governments. I was 29 when Gordon Brown lost the 2010 election. My 30s have (just about) beeb dominated by the Conservatives again.

I have known some individuals take advantage of right to buy. An elderly father bought his house then shortly after the minimum time he happened to move into his daughter's. I'm sure she got a nicer inheritance for it... On the other hand there were many older private owners on the (former) council estate I rented in for a year who had purchased their homes as their permanent home as intended. Many of the homes were obvious from the more personalised ways they were maintained and upgraded and a lot of them showed a lot of pride in their upkeep.

Something I remember from a university lecture was that many in the mining communities invested their redundancy pay-outs in paying off their mortgages. Generally a good financial move to have secured housing in uncertain times, but it trapped many in negative equity in communities with few opportunities. Long term disability benefits were used to mask unemployment. One of my lecturers had White Finger from his previous career down the pits caused by the vibrating machinery.

Destroying the power of the Unions wasn't necessarily a good thing. It's gone too far the other way. Ten years of wage stagnation and zero hours contracts. No job security.

My dad worked in a factory and bought a house on one salary. How many people can afford to do that now?

I'd go instead and read the 3 part biography by Charles Moore

For Christ’s sake don’t do that! Moore worships the ground Thatcher walked on, you won’t get any objectivity there.

It's gone too far the other way.
You can say that about anything in politics. It's all about where the country is on the pendulum swing.

Well people can say how much they hatted her but she was pm for 11 years so some liked her. The problem with the mines is that it was cheaper to import then to produce our own which is rediculouse but there we go. Closing Mines/steal/shipyards isn,t the problem Not having any alternative for those former workers is. I watched a benefits Britain programme. A chap blamed his unemployment on Thatchers cuts, but this is the noughties and he was unemployed in 80,s some just don,t like to except responsibility. (Certainly not a thacherite I think it was a ase with her rich got ricer an poor get poorer..)

I lived through her regime and saw her government of this country act like it was a police state!
She set the police up to be the enemy of the people - rather than a service to them. She set out to destroy workers rights and replaced them with extortionate business profits, ploughed into private pockets, not industrial development
She sold off council houses to buy votes for the Tory Party - but did not plough the money gained into building more social housing.
She vilified teachers - and the education service has never recovered.
She tested her hated poll tax on Scotland - and laid a strong foundation down for Scottish Independence (all good🍾).
She supported dictators across the globe - Sheiks of Saudi Arabia and Pinochet for example.
She fuelled the propaganda machine for the IRA by refusing to let them be heard, no chance of any 'good Friday' style agreement under her governance
She protected her corrupt son!
She set out to destroy heavy industry - the main employment in working class areas, but did not replace the industries with new employment opportunities.
She lied about the sinking of the Belgrano!

I'm a well off individual - hard earned, not inherited, but despised then, and despise now, everything she stood for and what her vile policies spawned in the 'me first and last' attitude of every Tory government since.
She did not serve the common good.

@stoneofdestiny Bravo!