UKH

Kind of surprised there hasn't been a thread on this excellent series yet. Never liked the woman but I can't fault her grit and determination. Not a woman to mince words

She'd turn in her grave if she could see the shambles today. The one thing that we would definitely agree on was the sovereignty of Parliament she would have  had no truck with a referendum and would have sent Farage packing.

youtube.com/watch?v=Up1ogdqDpVg&

This Maggie Thatcher would have no truck with a referendum?

Why would I want to reawaken painful memories of that woman by watching fiction?

I endured the real thing.

It's apparently far too sophisticated an idea these days that human beings can be complex, good at some things and bad at others. Everyone has to be a comic book hero or villain, a saint or the devil incarnate.

er... it is a documentry. Well worth watching as a reminder of what took place

To borrow from a different thread, Jo Brand once quipped that "Lady Thatcher sounded like a hair removal device", which was also criticised but at least was funny that time.

As did I. However despite the misery she wrought on working class communities I think she believed what she did was in the interests of the nation. The amoral, self interested creatures that inhabit the tory party today are far worse. John Major is an intellectual giant compared to the current crop of aspirant Prime Ministers.

Rory Stewart seems like a decent sort. I'd like to see Boris Johnson walk across Afghanistan with his dog. Well, maybe not with the dog.

I remember the seventies very well. It was shit. Thank God for Maggie.

You poor thing. If it gets shown on the telly, hide behind the sofa.

I remember the seventies as well. When folk left school and got jobs, when we had a balance of trade surplus and quaint things like that.

Then I remember the eighties and they were shit, mainly due to an uncaring and inept government.

Actually we had a balance of trade deficit most years in the 1960s and 70s (14 out of 20) . We also had inflation,  declining productivity (in relative terms), rising unemployment and high levels of strikes.

Aye, she carried on making it shit into the 80's too.

As the program pointed out, she had very little empathy with "common" people, her "greed is good" ethos and "trickle down" policies, which have never worked, f*cked the UK. Her housing policy has left us short of housing and paying over the odds, giving first time buyers little or no hope. We've become a nation reliant on debt, rather than a nation of savers and planners.

So do I it was brilliant. We had a community, and jobs were easy to come by.

I am not saying that it could last nor that some of what she did wasn't necessary. But she damaged the country as much as she saved it. She paved the way for new labour and a less caring society.

The programme gave me more of a respect for her but not everything was shit in the seventies and not everything Maggie did was good.

we did have rising unemployment and then Maggie came along and doubled it.

In 1976 I took a job but hated it. Left after a week and got a new job the very next day. Then I went to college and never failed to find summer work in the factories. This was far from unique. We were told about unemployment but never saw it and we never saw anyone begging on the streets until the mid 80's

There’s been plenty of time for politicians to correct the mistakes that she undoubtedly made.

Grit and determination are all very well if the en result is positive and socially beneficial. Being gritty and determined in the callous destruction of peoples' lives is another thing. She's arguably to blame for much of the inequality we see around us today.

The way she enshrined homophobia towards children in law didn't really benefit me growing up in the 80s.

Would argue she opened the door to neoliberalism, which has progressively f*cked up this country (beyond repair?) over the last 40 years.

Mick

In 1945 post war Germany was a devastated country. Politically, economically and socially.

By 1975, thirty years later, it had completely rebuilt itself - the western half anyway.

So thirty years after Thatcher it’s been impossible for British politicians and industry to repair the damage that she did?

She’s a wonderful scapegoat for the failings of those who have followed her.

    Manufacturing output was actually falling faster in the 1970s than the 1980s. Manufacturing unemployment fell faster in the 1980s than the 1970s, which meant that productivity improved and implies  that much of the 1970s manufacturing employment was in fact underemployment.

Manufacturing out put probably didn't fall in the 80's because there was nothing left to fall.

I can see how the no-existent coal industry of the 80's fell less than the country wide coal industry of the 70's.

Western europe from 1948 benefitted massively from the Marshall plan, with Germany as the central player.

Has there, really? That's like saying there's been plenty of time to eradicate .

What she started, has fundamentally changed society, in my mind not for the better. The people with money and power don't want change, they're doing very well out of it thank you very much, so why do you think her mistakes haven't been corrected.

Corbyn, is probably the best chance we have of changing some of the mistakes made by Thatcher, and look how he's been treated by the media / establishment.

Only now, are some councils being able to build more council houses, to actually use the money from the sales of existing stock to build more housing. It might well be too late because, we're in an era of renting and private landlords now, it's very difficult to go back from that, especially when the current government is encouraging private landlords with buy to rent, and low interest rates.

Also, how do we get back the money from UK oil she pissed away?

FTFY

What about Blair's mistakes? 

What in Corbyns CV can you highlight as evidence you think he is capable of improving anything for anyone other than the job security of a few well paid union leaders? 

I believe that the UK received a third more aid than Germany 

It also had to repay it's loans to the USA with interest. So it wasn't exactly free aid, more of a flexible loan. They could defer some years if the exchange rate was not favourable. Finally paid off I think in 2008. 

People with money and power always do well.

Unless there’s a revolution.

It’s the governments job to ensure that the majority of the people do well.

Governments can change previous policy and failure to do so lies at their doorstep not previous government.

I like the idea that Thatcher was so powerful that she could change attitudes but subsequent politicians are unable to do so.

Some woman that Mrs Thatcher!

  Well, it's true that it fell fast in the 1970s but it was still 17.6% of the economy in 1980. By 1990, under Thatcher, industrial production was bigger than in 1980.

Actually employment in the coal industry fell the biggest in aggregate in the 1960s, stabilised in the 1970s because the unions wouldn't let mines close, and then fell sharply in the 80s and 90s.

The version I remember referred to it as a 'bush' trimmer so a little more crude but probably one of her funnier moments.

I did ok in the 80s. I was able to use the dole(with the knowledge and support of the DHSS) to volunteer to get training and experience in a difficult and competetive area ( nature conservation). I was also able to use that time to go climbing, like pretty much everyone of a similar age)

It was only really in the 90s when i started working in coalfield communities that i saw the dreadful damage that conservative ideology did to families and their homes, villages and communities. 

I question that because it doesn't give the whole picture. Coal production fell drastically. Gas production did hit an all time peak, which then fell.

Output from both manufacturing and construction rose steadily between 1964 and 1973 (at annual rates of 2.9% and 1.8% respectively), but between 1973 and 1981. Manufacturing output fell by as much as 14.2% in the recession.The recovery after 1981 did take manufacturing output to a new peak by 1990 which was just 5.4 points above the previous peak 17 years earlier in 1973. All of that gain in output was then lost in the recessionary years of 1991 and 1992, before the upturn from 1993 which left manufacturing output in 2005 only 6.3% above that of 1990 and just 11.7 points (or 10.2%)above the level of 1973. Over a period of 32 years this rate of growth represents virtual stagnation

I do think it was obviously dependant upon where in the country one was and what industry one was in

The devastation of coal mining and other industrial communities was a legacy of which the conservative government of the time should be ashamed.

That subsequent governments have for the most part done little or nothing to alleviate the problems that these communities suffered and still suffer is equally shameful.

How do we or any subsequent government, get back the oil revenue she pissed away?

I presume before and after it was used wisely by Labour MPs?

Best not mention Brown selling off gold etc..  

The UK government has been receiving money from North Sea oil since Thatcher left office.

How long is that?

How much money is that?

What’s happened to all that money?

  You then produce a raft of statistics to demonstrate my point

Yeah right. Who are you fooling?

Hey Duncan, you really hit a sensitive spot with this one!  There's a lot of bleating going on!

Her legacy was (and is) poisonous. Attacking workers rights, discarding strategically important industries, supporting right wing dictatorships, parcelling off national assets and infrastructure.... and worst of all selling the lie that self interest and greed was healthy and community was irrelevant. The unravelling of what was a values based liberal democracy has its roots in the fast buck capitalism and jingoistic nationalism promoted by Margaret Thatcher. Discuss.

Didn't Arthur Scargill use Thatchers right to buy scheme to purchase his London flat at a knock down price? Whilst the union also paid for his Yorkshire home and I won't mention his holiday home which he had to avoid during the strikes so he didn't appear too affluent. 

Your point doesn’t address any of the points Alistair raises, so a there were selfish hypocrites involved in key historical moments, your point? 

I suppose that’s one view of her time in power.

Funny that the Conservatives stayed in power for so long with such an abhorrent agenda.

Nicely put Duncan.

Yep. It was about power. Simple. Scargill lost. Thatcher won. Shame that ordinary people paid the price.

You view lacks detail and doesn't agree with facts. It has no merit and isn't worthy of discussion.

What? On second thoughts, don't tell me. I'm pretty sure I'll have no idea what the hell you're banging on about.

Dude, I'm not young. And EVERY labour government in my lifetime has left the country pretty bankrupt. Mmmm……  Would yet another one be any different? I wouldn't bet on it.

Well the rest of the world had caught up and it was migrating elsewhere globally. Automation and concentrating on niche high value cane to be our strengths.

It would be interesting to see the % growth in the service sector over the same period.

UK industry was progressively less competitive from the 60s onwards, cheaper foreign coal and steel, shipbuilding in South Korea etc.. The unions were obsessed with having a manpower driven work force and refused to modernise, they considered everything a threat to power.

Thus into the 70s industries were even further behind competitively. Thatcher just gave them the bad news they'd chosen to ignore for the previous decade. 

It wasn't by chance the UK needed a bail out in 70s. The sick man of Europe etc. Can't blame Thatcher for that. It was the politicians and the unions of the 60s and 70s. 

I did but only to demonstrate that you are merely cherry picking your information.

As do others. You can find good and bad if you try hard enough

The service sector undoubtably grew and there is no denying that the city made a killing over much of her period.

I can't believe people still pedal this old bollocks. I quite agree that the unions didn't help but neither did management. People tend to forget that there was intransigence on both sides.

I have to disagree thereit is a common misconception.

  You made factual claims. I simply pointed out that your facts were wrong. You then produced more facts to confirm that your  facts were wrong. Actually, the decline in manufacturing 1973-79 was  at a faster rate than that between 1980-90.

 I'm not making any claim that manufacturing  boomed under Thatcher or that the early 80s weren't a bloody hard time for a lot of people. If I am making a points it is  that the so called prosperity of the 70's was largely illusory, and that the claim that she destroyed British manufacturing is also illusory.

  Anyway, this debate has been held a million times. I just wanted to correct your factual claims.

I can't remember the source of this information to back it up. So I could be wrong. I do recall feeling convinced it sounded right at the time.

Incompetence was widespread I agree. 

Thatcher did not cause the problems they had existed for decades and could have been fixed slowly through the 60 and 70s but weren't. The end result would have been the same regardless of who was PM in 80s. 

She made mistakes but blaming her for industries failing a decade before she was PM is stretching it some what. 

Even in the 80s she might have been PM, but in the former pit village I grew up in, the local council and mp(blair) were obviously Labour and bloody useless at looking after the region. They'd rather let everything fail, blame the Tories so the locals keep on electing the incompetent muppets.  

But you haven't.

To re-iterate my factual claims:

1. The coal industry was in decline and virtually collapsed under Thatcher (with the help of Scargill I don't deny that). The fact that it was already declining is imaterial to it dissappearing under Thatcher. I believe the figure is something around an 83% drop over the period of her prime ministership

2. Unemployment was higher under Thatcher it was 1.5 mill under labour and the conservatives took it to over 3 mill.

I also said not everything was shit in the 70's which it wasn't.

The only thing I have said that you could possibly mean was when I said that there was "probably" nothing left to fall. Which of course is not a factual statment merely a supposition.

To conclude you have not corrected any factual claim only a supposition which I graciously accepted.

Thank You

To be honest there is a certain amount of truth in this.

What caused the boom in the city was the shift to electronic trading in 86, which was what suddenly made London a much bigger international hub than previously. Again it would have happened with any political party. And any deregulation that the Tories put in place, Labour quite happily continued. 

I've seen and lived it. After 3 terms as PM Blair's pretend home constituency should have been amazing, sadly it wasn't. 

Pits were closing since the 60s. I'm the first generation in my family to not go underground after 300 years of coal, lead and copper miners.

My grandad was a mining engineer and he bailed out in the late 70s. He said there wasn't enough coal in most pits and they were all running at a loss. So he took a job in a factory in case he pension got wiped out too. (Very uncertain economic times then). He despised the unions as he could see that less workers and more modern machinery would have improved profits, but no one was interested. 

There are some good history websites on Durham collieries showing annual extractions from respective pits etc.. The massive decline of easily and cheaply extractable coal is clearly visible. 

You're clearly viewing the 70s through your blue-tinted glasses. Try this for some balance:

https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/were-the-1970s-really-...

"For the wealthy, then, the 1970s were the worst of times. Profits were eaten away by high taxation and a bolshy workforce, and, until Margaret Thatcher came along, it looked as though it was going to get worse. No wonder they wanted to consign the decade to the dustbin of history. "

Which I didn't dispute. I simply added the context which is important to understand. I, incidentally, didn't refer to the coal industry intially. You raised it.

  Which I didn't dispute. I just put it in context, and in the context of your relatively rose tinted description of the 70s..

  And I didn't dispute that . Although a lot was shit!

  You said there was a trade surplus through the 70s. There generally wasn't so I pointed this out

   Well, "nothing left to fall" is a factual statement although obviously I accepted that it wasn't to be taken literally. But as any meaningful, albeit exaggerated, description of what happened it was false. There was more left to fall than there had been in 1980.To show this I pointed out that manufacturing output was higher in 1990 than 1980. You then gave more details to confirm this.

For which, thanks

She didn't double the unemployment total she trebled it and then add on another 200,000.

To put some context to this, the rise in unemployment was similar in other Western European countries.

Service sector is not just London based, something people tend to ignore. 

What was the rate in 1990 compared to 1979?

Hard to tell. The government changed the way they calculated the numbers every few months when her shit hit the fan.

And anyway, by 1990 her heartless policies had wrecked many lives. Much damage had already been needlessly done.

Section 28. Very well known.

To be honest pits always close. My mother's ancestors moved when their mines ran out in the 1800's

I am sure it wasn't x3 + 200000 however it was calculated....

Pefa used Diane's Abbottus...

??? Care to show me. I am not saying you are wrong here I just can't recall (or find) ever stating that as fact. Anything I said regarding the 70's has been covered above.

I stand by supposition owing to my use of the term "probably". Factual statments tend to use words like "definitely" and "it proves"

In general it would seem we agree with each other

It seems from several posts (for both sides) on here that our politicians didn't do anything but be cast on the winds of fate

Which too be honest is probably closer to the truth than we tend to give credit for.

very true call centres are everywhere

Of course. To be more precise all the readily extractable coal in that geographic region had already been removed over the previous 200 years. 

Whilst with some industries you can subsidise or improve with technology, you can't simply re-bury coal just to give miners a job. Probably a blessing in disguise when you consider the work conditions, pollution, acid rain etc.. a slow phasing out, mine by mine through the 70s would have been better though. But that's history. 

I think we can both agree that a lot of both the 70's and 80's was shit.

Can't fault that

That is an exceptionally good link there

No argument with that !

From the same article:

The fact that so many children had space hoppers, ludicrous as it may seem, is testament to the fact that even working-class families now had a solid disposable income and could afford toys for their younger members.

Blimey, there's proof, families could afford to buy their children a Space Hopper!

Correction - 

Thatcher increased unemployment x 2.5

Thatcher increased unemployment by her policies?
Or, she happened to be PM when there was a European/Global recession which resulted in high unemployment? 
Maybe it was a bit of both?
What do you think?

And Thatcher tackled both problems, reducing union power and replacing hopeless management via privatisation

As a teenager in the seventies I remember the step change un youth unemployment after Thatcher came to power. I'm also aware of the state of the Labour market in Germany in the eighties. The difference in opportunities between Germany and Britain and the attitudes that the two governments took to employment were like night and day.

well, doh! They were coming from completely different situations, cultures, laws etc etc etc!!!

Germany and France had slightly better employment figures and the Benelux countries and Italy about the same or slightly worse.
I'm slightly too young to remember the impact that Thatcher had on certain parts of society, or if her policies were indeed verging on the vindictive as some seem to believe.
One thing seems clear though, the UK wasn't really any worse than other Western European countries with regards to overall employment figures, so to use the Three Million Unemployed mantra to criticise Thatcher is perhaps a bit of a red herring. 

I always equate that the "Myth of Thatcher" - Everything in the 70s was crap, then Thatcherism miraculously cured it.

with  "The Myth of Punk" - All rock music in the 70's was crap, then Punk cured it.

As ever the truth lies somewhere between

Yes I love punk but musically it is very low quality compared to other music at that time.

It is a good point about unemployment going up in many western European countries in the 1980s (of course zero unemployment in European socialist countries bar a few with very low amount) which after a bit of internet searching appears to be true so fair play. However there was a UN report (after much Internet searching I cannot find it but it was easy to find 5 years ago, which is suspicious) done on the social impact of welfare policies in the developed world which concluded that the social consequences of Reagan and Thatchers model saw a big rise in poverty, neglect and abuse which was not seen anywhere else. 

Dude! Neither am I, but I'd say you're exaggerating just a tad there. Let's look at who pushed borrowings to record levels should we?

  I think they are very different. Mrs.T actually existed. I think punk is a figment of the imagination of a small bunch of middle class crumblies who went into media. Only 3punk albums ever made it into the top 10 (one Pistols, two Stranglers) and the best selling punk singles were The Pistols and The Jam coming in at 32 and 67 for 1979.

Best selling albums in 1978? Bread, Fleetwood Mac, Abba, Buddy Holly, Nat
King Cole, Saturday Night Fever, Boney M, Grease, Shawaddywaddy.

Now that's what I call music!

PMP (bouncer at Suzie and the Banshees 1977, allegedly)

Rubbish - Every man and his dog formed a punk bank in the late 70s

Not really the way to judge it though is it? Look at how much of the next decade (and on) was heavily influenced by punk, right through to the mainstream.

All musical dead-ends, with the exception of Disco.

Blair, Brown, Darling? (2008-10.) A massive escalation in the annual deficit. Some of it justified to prevent a banking crash. 

You missed out Blondie who were punk, the Clash, Sham 69,Crass,Buzzcocks,999, SLF, Boomtown Rats, The Dickies, The Exploited, The Damned,Revillos and the ramones, Dead Kennedys, iggy pop.A few of those had big hits at the time. 

You were a bouncer at a Siouxie gig is that right? 

It's funny how middle class rightwingers obsess over middle class liberals/left wingers.

Buzzcocks...middle class... I've heard it all now What's next for this Friday afternoon fun... Hunt for PM

See where you're going wrong there though, you are predictably, measuring success on a capitalist scale, punk wasn't about being No.1, not in the beginning anyway, until the money men saw a away to make money out of it.

It was about, having something to say and getting up and saying it. The fact you've listed The Jam as a punk band shows your ignorance.

I suggest you start with Crass and progress from there.

General government gross debt has been above the 60% of gross domestic product reference value since the financial year ending 2010

That must make you an expert, I suppose.

Of course. But now you are talking about national debt after 2010, not the deficit which increased massively between 2008 and 10, which was your original comment. 

You can't even start paying off national debt until you have an annual surplus. That requires shaving 160billion plus off the annual spending that they inherited. 

Plus if you are anti austerity shouldn't you be agreeing with the tory borrowing?  

  That's the point. They didn't really have big hits. It was a niche taste.

  Yup, bouncer for Souxie !

PS. Blondie wasn't really punk. She had melodies

Boomtown Rats?! Punk?  Boomtown Rats?! They were a sell out before Geldorf came out as a Tory

   And proud of it! And there was I was trying to be generous to punk. The Jam are, after all, listed as a "mod revival/punk rock band ".

   I seem to have hit a nerve with the aging middleclass lefty ex-punks....

Listed by who? I doubt very much there'd be many punks / ex-punks that class the Jam as punk, they we the antithesis of punk in some respects.

There's no Ex about it if you're alluding to me. You really, really don't understand punk in the slightest, comparing how high they got in the charts, or musical ability, completely misses the point.

"Punk ain't about your standards and your rules
It ain't another product for the suckers and the fools"

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Oh that is a good one

I think that is pretty much my view.

Ooo now now there's an argument

   Well it's a relief it's not about the music.  Have you still got your sex pistols credit card?

True. 

Well your the dark horse eh! Would never have seen you as a bouncer did you sneer at the lefty anarchists? 

I see where you are coming from here but you can also say the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks etc had melodies compared to Discharge or Exploited but its about the punk ethos not the melodies. 

They were seen as punks when I was wee a bit like the Stranglers. 

Love how you not just shoehorn Blair in for blame, but put him front of the list, long after he was no longer Prime Minister, he wasn’t even an MP. We all know the hate is strong.

Of course history shows us that the Tories are much more profligate and wasteful.

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/03/13/the-conservatives-have-been-t...