Page 8 | Maggie Thatcher, the iron lady

Seeingadistance · 02/06/2021 11:53

@nocoolnamesleft

I both respect and despise her.

This.

jellybeansforbreakfast · 02/06/2021 12:04

She was the ultimate Tory with a very, very strong whip hand. She was a very strong leader with her finger firmly on the pulse of the times.

Her understanding of the economy of the time was accurate and detailed.

Unfortunately her resolution was market forces rather than any form of social welfare. For many communities that was brutal and left them with nothing. No work, no way of getting any work and little or no support. It decimated communities and sped the change of the UK from a manufacturing base with social welfare/housing to a service economy with heavy reliance on the housing markert so quickly that some of those communities are only just beginning to recover.

Labour's knee jerk reaction to this brought us the current social welfare, something that is not fit for purpose, no matter what your views of it are!

As for unions, yes, they needed to be curbed. But because she simply smashed them we now have a more convoluted and less protective work environment - you only have to look at say Uber to see how the gig economy was easily perverted and not so easily corrected.

Basically, she had a vision and forced it onto a nation that wasn't quite ready for it. A Service Revolution with little to underpin it!

jellybeansforbreakfast · 02/06/2021 12:05

@KaptainKaveman

The whole 'Strong Leader' argument is ludicrous.

Assad is a strong leader. The Hong Kong well China really leadership is 'strong'.

Stalin - the same.

Pol Pot....Hitler...all 'strong'. And utter evil bastards.

She was strong in the same way as those dictators! It is impossible to consider her leadership style without drawing those comparisons.

Jellycatspyjamas · 02/06/2021 12:07

I think Major is very under rated. The NI peace treaty might have been completed by Blair but it was Major who did all the groundwork, it would have taken far longer to achieve without him

I agree about Major, I saw an interview with him a few years ago now and was struck by his views on social justice and inequality - I think he might have done a good job if he’d been given more time. We however moved to a place where personality and charisma seem to matter more than personal and professional integrity, and are poorer for it in terms of political leadership.

I’m not remotely a Tory supporter but I’d like to have seen what he might have achieved, I feel similarly about Brown tbh.

Blossomtoes · 02/06/2021 12:10

We however moved to a place where personality and charisma seem to matter more than personal and professional integrity, and are poorer for it in terms of political leadership

Maybe. But the Tories had been in power for 18 years and were looking very tired and jaded. The Blair years were very good ones in many ways.

JebelSherif · 02/06/2021 12:29

@SimonJT

A vile, racist, classist homophobe.

She knew Jimmy Saville was a peadophile and still lobied for him to be knighted.

She destroyed thousands of lives with section 28 and the awful impact of that is still very much present.

@SimonJT A link please (to the "She knew Jimmy Saville was a peadophile and still lobied for him to be knighted.) bit. Are you certain?

Arbadacarba · 02/06/2021 12:31

@Jellycatspyjamas

I think Major is very under rated. The NI peace treaty might have been completed by Blair but it was Major who did all the groundwork, it would have taken far longer to achieve without him

I agree about Major, I saw an interview with him a few years ago now and was struck by his views on social justice and inequality - I think he might have done a good job if he’d been given more time. We however moved to a place where personality and charisma seem to matter more than personal and professional integrity, and are poorer for it in terms of political leadership.

I’m not remotely a Tory supporter but I’d like to have seen what he might have achieved, I feel similarly about Brown tbh.

Yes, I agree about Major although I'm not a Tory.

He spoke a lot of common sense in the run up to the Brexit Referendum (on the Remain side).

Theunamedcat · 02/06/2021 12:34

Apparently everyone "knew" Saville was a paedophile after he died and the truth came out

if hundreds of people knew really knew then he wouldn't have got away with it there is suspicion where you "dont let your kids around someone because they seem a bit dodgy" and knowledge I do not think that he would have got away with it for so long had so many people known for sure

Blossomtoes · 02/06/2021 12:37

@Theunamedcat

Apparently everyone "knew" Saville was a paedophile after he died and the truth came out

if hundreds of people knew really knew then he wouldn't have got away with it there is suspicion where you "dont let your kids around someone because they seem a bit dodgy" and knowledge I do not think that he would have got away with it for so long had so many people known for sure

Loads of people with no influence knew. The nursing staff at Stoke Mandeville spent half their shifts protecting each other and young patients from him. His behaviour was also well known at the BBC. He was massively protected by the establishment.

DynamoKev · 02/06/2021 12:38

@olddaj

As a child of the 70s, it was so inspiring to see a strong, intelligent woman from an average background in the top job, even if I didn’t agree with all her policies. As a young woman it made me feel I could achieve anything I set my mind to.

I know people say she wasn’t a feminist (and I’m not sure about that), but she did a lot for women like me just by achieving what she did in what was then an extremely male dominated world.

Look at all the ministers she supported when they were caught with their trousers down or fingers in the till and tell me again about her feminist credentials (or even just some concept of decency and honesty) -

Cecil Parkinson, Alan Clark, David Mellor, Jeffrey Archer (3 times), Jonathon Aitkin (twice).

Parkinson refused to have anything at all to do with his daughter ever.
Aitkin and Archer rightly did time (later) - yet she gave them all important jobs in government AFTER they'd been caught lying cheating and generally doing stuff Thatcher claimed she didn't approve of.

jellybeansforbreakfast · 02/06/2021 12:40

@JebelSherif a quick Google will reveal quite a lot of evidence, people speaking about what they know she actually knew.

FOI requests have also shown this to be true.

Arbadacarba · 02/06/2021 12:44

I think Thatcher was a terrible PM, as previously stated, but I don't think the blame for Savile's crimes should be laid at her door. She didn't work with him, so I imagine she accepted the view of him as a dedicated, if eccentric, fundraiser which was held by the majority at the time. She wasn't the only senior figure to be taken in - Prince Charles also thought highly of him. Paul Burrell referred to Savile as the only person allowed to smoke inside Highgrove House.

LagunaBubbles · 02/06/2021 12:44

The poll tax was fairer than council tax

Was using Scotland as a testing ground for it fair, a year before anywhere ?

DynamoKev · 02/06/2021 12:52

@Jellycatspyjamas

I think Major is very under rated. The NI peace treaty might have been completed by Blair but it was Major who did all the groundwork, it would have taken far longer to achieve without him

I agree about Major, I saw an interview with him a few years ago now and was struck by his views on social justice and inequality - I think he might have done a good job if he’d been given more time. We however moved to a place where personality and charisma seem to matter more than personal and professional integrity, and are poorer for it in terms of political leadership.

I’m not remotely a Tory supporter but I’d like to have seen what he might have achieved, I feel similarly about Brown tbh.

His views on social justice weren't that great in January 1987, although I accept he may have refined them.

He was also an architect of the right to buy scheme that has led us to our current social housing shortage, so he's not without blame.

And that's aside from his "back to basics" morality campaign whilst shagging Edwina Currie.

queenMab99 · 02/06/2021 12:54

She was competent, and got the things done that she wanted done.........unfortunately. We had to have 'Spitting Image' in order to see the funny side, we don't need that now.

DynamoKev · 02/06/2021 12:55

@Theunamedcat

Apparently everyone "knew" Saville was a paedophile after he died and the truth came out

if hundreds of people knew really knew then he wouldn't have got away with it there is suspicion where you "dont let your kids around someone because they seem a bit dodgy" and knowledge I do not think that he would have got away with it for so long had so many people known for sure

I have a friend who was a tabloid journo at the time (late 80s) who asserted to me quite strongly (back then) that Saville was widely known to be a child abuser. I think it was very widely known at the time.

DynamoKev · 02/06/2021 12:57

@Arbadacarba

I think Thatcher was a terrible PM, as previously stated, but I don't think the blame for Savile's crimes should be laid at her door. She didn't work with him, so I imagine she accepted the view of him as a dedicated, if eccentric, fundraiser which was held by the majority at the time. She wasn't the only senior figure to be taken in - Prince Charles also thought highly of him. Paul Burrell referred to Savile as the only person allowed to smoke inside Highgrove House.

Savile's crimes are his own - but she must have known - and you only have to look at all the stuff she chose not to see in her own cabinet to realise she didn't care.

DynamoKev · 02/06/2021 12:58

@queenMab99

She was competent, and got the things done that she wanted done.........unfortunately. We had to have 'Spitting Image' in order to see the funny side, we don't need that now.

There was no funny side.

Blossomtoes · 02/06/2021 12:59

He was also an architect of the right to buy scheme that has led us to our current social housing shortage, so he's not without blame

I’m not sure that’s correct. He wasn’t in the cabinet when it was introduced, Heseltine was the Secretary of State responsible for it. It seems that a Tory leader at the GLC called Cutler first dreamed it up.

KaptainKaveman · 02/06/2021 13:04

Both Archer and Aitken went to prison for perjury.

Several people - parents of abused children - attempted to pursue criminal charges against Savile. This has been widely reported. However, they were opposed at every turn, added to which JS was so lawyered up it became impossible. Yeah, of course she knew. She also knew that the apartheid regime in SA was actively murdering black people at the rate of dozens per day but she still invested via her shifty dh heavily in it and openly refused to back sanctions. She was vile and corrupt.

To all those people saying She was inspiring as a female leader - she wasn't a role model for women. How so? she wasn't a role model for anyone, male or female. If that's what you call an example of a female leader, frankly we are better off without.

KaptainKaveman · 02/06/2021 13:10

@queenMab99

She was competent, and got the things done that she wanted done.........unfortunately. We had to have 'Spitting Image' in order to see the funny side, we don't need that now.

What 'funny side' would that be then?

she was competent and got the things done that she wanted done. WTF does that mean?

mass privatisation?

-smashing the unions and paving the way for mass exploitation of workers ?

creating a hostile environment for gay people?
demonising the public sector?
selling off social housing ?
lionising Murdoch, the cunt who sacked the print workers, normalised pornography in our newspapers and bought out sport, creating the sky monopoly?

I could go on.

ufucoffee · 02/06/2021 13:16

Good for some. Bad for others. I lived in a mining community at the time of the strikes. It was awful, someone who was deemed to be a scab had their house set on fire. So many communities lost when the mines closed. But my fiancé ran his own business and did very well when she was in power. I quite liked her because she was so hard and it was unusual to have a woman like her in charge of anything never mind the country. I felt a lot of the hatred towards her was because she was a woman.

Blossomtoes · 02/06/2021 13:19

I felt a lot of the hatred towards her was because she was a woman

It wasn’t. I was delighted to have a woman PM. It taught me to be careful what I wished for.

IntermittentParps · 02/06/2021 13:21

I can't decide. Part of me thinks she was a complete & utter bitch, another part of me thinks she had more balls than all the wet blankets currently running the country now or since

I think it's both.

She refused to call off the party conference after the Brighton hotel bomb, which contributed to finally bringing the IRA to the negotiating table.
Whatever you think of the Falklands war, she correctly read the mood of the nation in deciding to go ahead.
Her real mistake re closing the mines and steelworks etc was, IMO, not that per se but that she didn't invest in replacing the industries with high-quality manufacture in the German style and keep them viable/keep people in work.

I think as a scientist herself, and with her ability to read the public mood, she'd have listened to the science on Covid and handled it much better than has Johnson.

OTOH of course her views and actions on apartheid and gay people
were despicable, as was her friendship with Pinochet and many other things.

I think Major is very under rated. The NI peace treaty might have been completed by Blair but it was Major who did all the groundwork, it would have taken far longer to achieve without him. I agree. I always thought he was more sinned against than sinning.

DynamoKev · 02/06/2021 13:24

@Blossomtoes

He was also an architect of the right to buy scheme that has led us to our current social housing shortage, so he's not without blame

I’m not sure that’s correct. He wasn’t in the cabinet when it was introduced, Heseltine was the Secretary of State responsible for it. It seems that a Tory leader at the GLC called Cutler first dreamed it up.

Major was Secretary of the Environment Committee and helped with the 1980 Housing Act.

Here is his contribution to the debate - speaking in favour of a Guillotine in order to cut short debate -

johnmajorarchive.org.uk/1980/04/16/mr-majors-intervention-during-housing-bill-debate-16-april-1980/

First, I believe that the Bill needs and deserves to become law at the earliest possible opportunity.