Posted by laurent Helius on February 22, 19101 at 02:41:56:
Let me introduce myself: my name is Laurent, I’m French and I’ve been studying British politics, and the Thatcher decade in particular, for the last three years. Not being British, but having lived in Britain for the last two years, I hope I can bring in the debate a rather impartial point of view.
I must say I am amazed at the reactions of so many Britons to the Thatcher years; how can she be admired so much now: after all, at the time she was in power she became the most unpopular PM since polls began…
Those who admire her so pionately cannot be aware of all that she really did for Great Britain. Where to start ? She claimed public expenditure had to be cut; as a result most local authorities stopped their building programmes (with dreadful consequences for housing: how many people live on the streets, and even more in precarious flats?) and reduced investment in education (she neglected the fact that today’s pupils are tomorrow’s workforce); programmes for road and train infrastructure were reduced drastically (look at the results today); but on the other hand she spent recklessly to liberate the Falklands (because her political survival was at stake… She spent so much money for 500 people, and nothing for millions in Britain), to fight the miners, and on the whole to reinforce the powers of the police (in other words: the State doesn’t have any money to help the poor, but can find some to keep them quiet).
She called for more ‘responsibility’: by this she rejected the principle of solidarity which had helped so many people in need in the previous decades, and denied the responsibility of a compionate society (oops… I forgot, ‘there is no such thing as society’ for the Lady) towards the most unfortunate. One has to recognise that everybody hasn’t got the same chances in life; therefore, you cannot deny that it is the responsibility of those who have been lucky to succeed to help the less lucky through state redistribution (which I must admit has not always been perfectly achieved, but it does not mean that it has to be abolished; the ‘forces of the market’ don’t care for the poor and the needy). And even if you don’t like paying taxes (who does?) you must admit that it is an investment in the well-being of our society, from which everyone benefits in the long run. Isn’t it worrying that today Britain is bottom of the league for child well-being in Europe?
Today’s precariousness is the legacy of the Thatcher years; both the Tories and Labour make of law and order a key electoral theme, but they don’t ask themselves why today’s society is more insecure, and why crime and the use of drugs have risen in the last decade. These are only symptoms of a less caring society, a society in which many don’t feel to have any future.
As for the weird idea that ‘Thatcher was the best PM ever’ (I must agree her political career in itself was admirable: she was the first woman PM, and won three consecutive elections), I’d like to remind you of what John Major declared in 1993: ‘[the Conservative] party… is still harking back to a golden age that never was, and is now invented’. I don’t believe she cared about the British people who only realised what ‘Thatcherism’ was in 1990, at the time the ‘poll tax’ was introduced: a programme in which individuals don’t count and must serve the power of money.
Under Thatcher Britain was allegedly ‘great again’; Thatcher needed enemies (Argentina, the USSR, Scargill…) to ert her ‘values’ in black and white terms: egalitarianism versus freedom, tyranny (or, for Thatcher, state intervention under all its forms!) versus democracy, and so on. She was only politically successful when she ‘played the Iron Lady’. She played on the British people’s trauma that their country was no longer the ‘great nation’ it used to be, and offered them the illusion that she was the great leader they needed to ‘restore’ their place in the world.
In 1980 she promised to bring ‘people back to real and lasting employment’: the result is less flattering. In today’s deregulated Britain employers have only rights and no obligations; more and more employees have precarious jobs (i.e. little security and little pay) and go from a job to another.
As far as the privatisation programme is concerned, I doubt whether it benefited the public at all: in areas like telecommunications, energy and transport in particular, the private sector only seeks immediate profit at the expense of long term investment; there are services which only the State is able to provide in the long term. Besides, I think it’s a pity that the government sold its best ets (and under their real price!) whose benefits could have allowed more expenditure on education and health.
I would have a lot more to say, but it would take hours and hours! Don’t hesitate to contact me to tell me what you think of this – and if by any chance you, Margaret Thatcher, read this, I would be delighted to meet you to talk about your unique political career which is at the very heart of the M.A. I am currently preparing.
heliuslaurent@aol.com