Baroness Thatcher, Britain’s greatest post-war prime minister, has died at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke, her family has announced.
Read it all and there is coverage from Reuters and the BBC and a tribute from Cranmer
[Telegraph] Margaret Thatcher dies of stroke aged 87
Posted in * International News & Commentary, England / UK
Memory eternal!
A hero for our time. For all time!
In 1979 I was spending six months abroad between school and university. A radio was placed on the dining table of the friends I was staying with and tuned in for news of the UK election – then the news came that Margaret Thatcher and a Conservative Government had been elected – a cheer went up.
It had been such a downward road we had been on – paralysed with strikes, the ‘poor man of Europe’ with a lost empire and declining commercial trade, high inflation, taxes and government debt, a devalued currency, restrictive practices – a grey sad country which had lost its way and its self-belief.
You will hear various opinions about Margaret Thatcher, but she turned things round, restored our trade, opened our markets and removed restrictions on trade and currency movements. Contrary to the naysayers’ predictions, capital flowed in and people started investing in the UK. Taxes came down and we became the fourth largest economy in the world, something which lasted until Tony Blair got his hands on things and started borrowing and spending like there was no tomorrow.
I am grateful for her leadership and the gift she was to us. Her ideas were used by others across the world to turn their economies round, or rather the ideas of her main advisor, Airey Neave who was sadly blown up in an IRA car bomb. It was his plan she put through and we are so grateful, even as things are now, we are better placed than we were.
We came very close to joining the Euro – her colleagues including the chancellors and John Major argued very strongly for it, and for a time we shadowed the early ERM basket of currencies. A weak economy combined with no flexibility on exchange rates led to the sort of speculation and crisis as Greece and Spain have had more recently, although unlike them we could and did get out. By that time however, we had expended huge reserves defending the currency. We learnt the hard way what could happen.
Currency linkage and pegging is only possible if you have a weak client economy of a large one, such as Panama had with the US, or if you go the whole hog of uniting into one country as the US states did. The half-way house of independent states with one currency just does not work if they have such varied economies. Thatcher foresaw all this as an article I read today pointed out.
There is no doubt her government did make mistakes. In particular with our manufacturing industry in the Midlands, North and the Gaelic and Celtic fringe. There were three things I could see happening:
1. British manufacturing companies had not invested in modernisation – their demise would have happened anyway without government assistance and advice such as China, France, Germany and others engage in.
2. Others who had invested, were caught out in the ERM mess when having borrowed to modernise, the exchange rates made them uncompetitive followed by a period when interest rates doubled – something no company could plan for and which sent many good companies to the wall unable to service the debt for modernisation the government had encouraged them to undertake.
3. Necessarily the government stopped spending taxpayers’ money propping up heavy industry and mining, but the speed with which it happened gave no time for companies to reorder themselves. As a consequence we lost a third of our manufacturing capacity in about 4 years.
Then of course there was the Poll Tax – an exercise in hubris.
But on balance, she brought us into the modern world and set us up mentally and economically as a country to move on and rebuild – something which we still carry as an inheritance from her period of office.
An amusing story, that’s making the rounds…
Prime Minister Thatcher back in the 80’s was invited by the leaders of the opposition (the Labor Party) to dine with with them. She showed up at the restaurant and took her seat with the members of the so called shadow cabinet. Drinks were served and as she sipped, she also listened quietly as the lefties berated her for her cruel and backward economic policies.
In due course the waiter appeared and asked Thatcher what she wanted for dinner…
“I shall have the roast beef” she replied.
“Very good maam. And for the vegetables?”
“They shall have the roast beef as well.”
Thatcher changed the course of my political (and ultimately cultural and religious thought). Or more, precisely, the reactions of some of her critics of her response to the Argentine invastion of the Falklands. When Thatcher resolved to recover the territory, many in my circle condemmed her as an imperialist, conveniently overlooking the history of the junta ruling Argentina at the time. It was obvious to me that the junta had invaded in an effort to whip up public support for the vicious regime. The efforts of my liberal (and further left) friends to defend that action struck me as absurd, and started a long process in which I reassess other liberal orthodoxies. So, Thatcher’s firmness was a catalyst.
As usual Pageantmaster’s analysis is masterful. A wonderful summation of her era and towering achievements. I want though to dwell a little on the long-term legacy for the Conservative Party. Pageantmaster mentions the impact on Scotland and by implication on inner city areas. The truth is that the Conservative Party has been wiped out in Scotland and the big cities. It used to be the lead party or second party in Scotland; now it polls 10%. Big cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and yes, even Glasgow, used to elect at least some Conservative members of parliament. Now they return none. There is an irony in this, however, in that often she articulated the thoughts and aspirations of working-class people, the Sun newspaper readers, better than the Labour Party. Yet in the end, the rugged, almost unmitigated individualism of her policies proved too much for people used to a more communitarian (and in the case of Scotland, egalitarian) approach to life.
One challenge from her that I think we have flunked is her repeated call for small government and subsidiarity, ie decisions being taken as close as possible to the people affected, allowing as much delegation as possible to lower levels of authority. Somehow despite Thatcher’s best efforts Britain remains highly centralised, dominated by a metropolitan culture with ever-present dangers of sclerosis as a result.
Finally, with the advantage of hindsight, I think ruefully about the ever-present difficulty of matching form and content. Her 1988 address to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland meeting in Edinburgh is a thought-provoking call for a Christian faith which encourages taking responsibility for our lives as part of our faith. Well worth reading again today. You can find it here:
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107246
Re-reading it for this post I was taken by surprise. It is much more balanced than I remembered it to be. There is even (and this surprised me!) an element of humility, and she speaks as a Christian, acknowledging her faith. Yet at the time all I remembered was this image of a woman (…. prejudice on my part?) going up from London to Scotland to lecture the Church of Scotland in what has since become known there to some as ‘the Sermon on the Mound’. Was it her style, that could so easily veer towards hectoring? Or did she have to overcome great obstacles to do what she did and achieve what she achieved, with the necessary hardening that this entailed? The film The Iron Lady implied the latter, and I think that is probably correct.
As an American, it would probably be impertinent and pointless for me to comment on Margaret Thatcher and her legacy, but I thank Pageantmaster and Fr. Tee for adding their insightful comments to this thread. Personally, I think what Fr. Tee says of Pageantmaster’s views could also be said of his own contribution. Both assessments are brilliant, balanced, and “masterful.”
David Handy+