I am not sad that Margaret Thatcher has died but equally I am not celebrating that a frail, elderly woman has died. I do feel an irrational happiness that the symbol of the politics I feel has had such a terrible impact on our society has now gone but this is neither useful nor healthy. Nonetheless, there it is.
There may well be features of Thatcher's government that were positive. These probably include limiting the extremes of union power (although she went far too far) and something about the way Britain was represented abroad, at least at the beginning of her period in office. She was also remarkably successful in implementing her vision of economic and social policy, often through sheer force of personality. I have little doubt that she believed what she implemented.
However, it is clear to me that her administration ultimately did terrible damage to the UK and that this damage continues to be done now. The economic policy of the 80s was not the unmitigated triumph it is now made out to be. The UK's manufacturing base was decimated and the deregulation of the financial sector may have brought apparent success to our economy, but this was achieved by placing the benefits of this deregulation into the hands of a tiny group of wealthy individuals rather than spreading them amongst the population as a whole. Thatcher's social policies, which were ruthlessly implemented, made this not only acceptable but desirable. In Victorian times, 'good' industrialists created model villages, town halls, swimming pools, parks and other amenities for their workers. Taxation was a shared contribution to society. After Thatcher, 'good' business leaders cut costs, minimise wages and manpower and maximise profits for themselves and their shareholders. People using shared social amenities are 'scroungers' and taxation is theft of personal wealth.
I live in a post-industrial city in the Midlands and have seen, over my lifetime, the impact of the reforms that took place over in the 80s and 90s. Our staple industries (pottery, coal and steel) have all collapsed, as has employment. A once proud city with a highly skilled and cohesive workforce has become a downtrodden place with a lost population that has little chance of breaking free from these chains. Mine is one of many post-industrial towns that needed help in the 80s to either transform it's manufacturing base or to move into new, modern industries. Instead, it was left to collapse and the social problems that resulted will take generations to be healed.
The great failure of the administrations that followed Thatcher, and in particular the Labour government from 1997, was the repeated acceptance of the monetarist philosophy and the failure to roll back the liberalisation of the economy and workplace. The most striking statistic that I've read over the last few days is that 1 in 7 children lived in poverty in 1979. That figure is now 1 in 3. That we consider our society to have progressed over that period is a terrible indictment of the health of our society.
Thatcher's legacy is a more unequal society, a more divided society and a less cohesive society and it should be remembered as such. Please don't allow the current generation of politicians, left or right, to paint this philosophy as being the accepted status quo.
