Baroness Thatcher 1925 - 2013

[snoopysue]

Most Danes think that Maggie did a good job, they're less suprised than I am that she's getting a state funeral. They remember the state the UK was in before Maggie came to power, and what it was like after!

[Antie Em]

Everything in Langley is closed down now, only the shops and pubs left - the last remaining factory was bulldozed last year and the Maltings and Alcohols went up in smoke. The only factory here now is Albrights, now known as Rhodia.

[peterd]

38% out of a job where i lived minus the ones that commited suicide and the up turn in the divorce rate because couple were ontop of each other and little money available yeh nice rosey picture

[MarkCDodd]

So she didn't get 50% of the vote.

She still won every election according to the rules of your parliament.

And if she was making the easy choices who says she wouldn't have got way over 50%?

I am yet to see a single coherent alternate answer to the problems the UK faced when she came to power.

There were no other policies put forward by the opposition.

They hoped that enough people would hate the hard decisions made.

They hoped to regain power again by default, not because they had better ideas.

We had as opposite a government as you could imagine in Australia at the time.

The last Labour Government I voted for.

Their death was the power of the unions and Labour's inability to control them.

Our Prime Minister at the time used to be the most powerful Union Boss in Australia.

Aussies didn't want our electricity restricted to four or five days a week. Garbage piling high in our street. Our mining industry ripped apart by those already on a good wages demanding more than could be afforded.

Australia flocked to a conservative government after seeing all of this occurring in the UK.

[mikleed]

A very good post Mark.

[gardener]

Our mining industry ripped apart by those already on a good wages demanding more than could be afforded.

The trouble is that the demise of the UK coal industry was very complicated, lasted many years and had far-reaching consequences. It was never as simple as the miners asking for a pay raise that the industry could not support.

My grandfather worked in the same pit for most of his life. My father began down the same mine before moving on to work for the manpower department (in the 1960s when Scottish mines were being closed and miners relocated to the Midlands). What happened at the mine where my grandfather worked was that the mining method based on three 8 hour shifts of specialized workers, with each shift doing a different part of a 24 hour process, was replaced by a continuous mining process which required more all-round and less-skilled labour. Instead of there being work for the older, knowledgeable men who were less physically fit but very necessary to the process these men were offered early retirement/redundancy and replaced with an intake of school leavers.

The social effect of this was enormous. Men who had respect in the community lost their status. I am talking here of a small Derbyshire village but it seems to me that this was repeated all over the Midlands and Northern England and that what we see today, dubbed "Broken Britain" is the logical outcome of that.

We can't know what a Labour government would have done. Things would certainly have been different, worse and better in a mixture.

What worries me most at the moment is that the present Government is riding rough-shod over any ill-feeling. What was the point of recalling Parliament? To discuss what? certainly not any sort of crisis which is usually the reason for a recall. I also think that having the Services who were involved in the Falklands as coffin bearers is the biggest diplomatic faux pas for many a year. Think how that will be reported in Argentina.

I am planning my own silent protest by not watching any of the funeral coverage. I think the funeral should have been private and then they could have had some public memorial service. If it was my mother I would not like to have any protest groups making a racket while she was being buried.

[feral-underclass]

miners strike wasnt over wage demands!

thatchers hatchet man ian mcgregor was moved from british steel (where he had halved the workforce!!!!!!!!!) to national coal board in 1983.

the strike was over the closure of 20 pits with the loss of 20000 jobs

[peterd]

Mark you can say all the if and but in the world but unless you went through what she did to the communities of the mining, steelworker, shipbuilder, you not got a clue there still mining village desolasted 30 years on and never look like recovering it took the town i lived in nearly 30 years to recover it saw a lot of the younger generation leave recording a drop in its population for the first ever im not saying you dont have some valid points but until you lived that type of social upheval you wont understand where im coming from

[grangers14]

The mines were shut although they were still making money not run down or pay. Some now have people who have clubbed together to re open them in the North and are making it work!
My family were Miners/Iron Workers and to see the towns now, dilapidated and no sense of respect for themselves or others is sad. When it was such a close community and very very proud.
When the work goes so does the town because of the nock effect, no money nobody buying so shops shut business close. Leaving a ghost town.
And once again is happening with the closure of Iron works in the North once again...

[MarkCDodd]

In 1976 the UK was in such a state they had to ask for a loan from the European Banks. Sounds like Greece does it not?

For many many years the English mines were not making a profit. They were subsidised by the British taxpayer to allow them to keep open with the number of miners employed.

From the 1974 strike onwards the miners were asking for more money, despite their jobs being subsidised!

It is a fact that for over ten years it was cheaper for England to import coal from Australia than to produce it themselves!

To keep the mines open they had to be modernised and this would mean a cut in jobs.

This modernisation did make some mines, especially those in Nottinghamshire, profitable

Some mines, because they did not have the large coal reserves and large coal faces, could never have been made profitable and 23 of those were marked for closure.

So yes, you can argue the strike was purely about the mine closures but that was not what the union was all about prior to that plan being outlined.

Without the majority of support from it members and with public opinion 75 to 80% against strike action, the Union declared the illegal strike action.

Because the Union had not followed its own rules and held a National Vote, which it would not have won, amongst its own members the families of the strikers were not eligible for support from the government.

So in a way the poverty of the striking families was caused by the union management ignoring the rules it had negotiated at the end of the 1974 strike and the wishes of its own membership.

The Nottinghamshire miner's left the Union in disgust.

Less that 1/3 of the West Midland miners joined the strike.

Just over 10% of the South Derbyshire miners joined the strike.

The newspolls in the major newspapers showed public support for the strike at about 20% for its duration.

British Steel is often used as an example of how badly Ian MacGregor treated employees and was just a "toe cutter".

British Steel was another highly subsidised and inefficient industry that was made profitable and sustainable by MacGregor's measures.

Modernisation of work practices was adopted world wide and this did result in unemployment.

However, the economic benefits flowed through and newer industries created (i.e Information Technology) and traditional ones (i.e Customer Service) expanded and in most instances the unemployment levels reduced to the "pre modernisation" surge.

Of course there were pockets of England badly damaged because of the concentration of mines or factories closed.

But that happened world wide in every country that adopted the Thatcher way of economic reform which includes most of Europe, the USA and even Australia.

It was a necessary and logical change in the way things were done and Thatcher just happened to be the one tough enough to push the changes in the UK.

[peterd]

Wonder what the school kids do to get the free milk taken of them they must of been bad

[SRD]

I think you'll find that in fact, under Thatcher, Britain's recovery lagged far behind similar economies in all but wealth production, that wealth was mainly provided by North Sea oil the profits from which were poured into supporting the economy rather than being stored up for future generations (as happened in Norway). The flood of money away from traditional industries and into the pockets of entrepreneurs, land owners and existing financial businesses (very little actually went to 'new' industries, long term investment thinking has never been our strong point), where it was readily spirited away from the nation, may well have fuelled globalisation to the material benefit of many but it also spawned the financial crisis of the past 15 years. And when John Major tried to rein in the 'Spend, Spend, Spend' mentality of Thatcherism she did everything she could from the backbenches to shaft him.

[feral-underclass]

men employed in collieries 1980 230,000
men employed in collieries 1995 15,000

[peterd]

Two main reason maggie stayed in power was the falklands and the formation of the sdp that split the opposistion
its doesnt matter what facts and figures are posted ive seen a list a mile long of the thing that she did that people hold against her the bottom line is she dead and it look like majority of people dont want to spend 10 million on a semi state funeral for her

[dudleytaylor]

Well said