The UK was as Greece is today in 1979. Hell there were three months of strikes by miners employed by the government in an unsustainable, unprofitable industry BEFORE she even took office.
And people still bitch that their kids didn't get free milk at school for lunch.
Just to take one example: Where do you think that Federal money comes from?
I'm afraid HN is slowly progressing into Reddit.
> If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)
Sorry, but there is no way for me or anyone else but you to know that. Anonymity comes with a price (in this case, credibility).
No country is an island - the idea that you should produce everything, even when it makes little to no economic sense, is a product of a bygone era. Countries become richer overall by focusing on that which they are most efficient. For a country like the UK, that's knowledge and finance.
Oil prices? The current oil price and the oil price during the time of peak oil production of the North Sea fields is publicly available and googleable as are flow rates and production stats.
..or the fact that the West used oil prices as a weapon against the Soviets? Again a much-written about topic that you can do your own research on quite easily.
TheOilDrum.com has a lot of good links to info. What is the point that you deem controversial and in need of sourcing?
Edit: Oh wait, I see the point that you need a source for, that was Scottie in Star Trek.
Second Edit: Now, if this isn't just a rhetorical point of yours and if you are seriously interested in the oil industry and trends regarding North Sea production, and the problems the UK is facing because it flipped from 4th largest exporter in the world to net importer a few years back, I'm happy to chat about it and do the leg work to find you some interesting reads on that, but this post probably isn't the place for it (though I'll be blogging from richarddjordan.com as soon as I get by github pages set up, and you can always ask me there). It's a fascinating topic, and one that often takes people by surprise when they learn some of the rather concerning details.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_and_gas_industry_in_the_Uni...
By all means though, if you want to undo Thatcher's actions and return the UK to a 19th century coal society, be my guest.
http://www.hi-energy.org.uk/Renewables/Why-Renewable-%20Ener...
If anything, Thatcher's move to get the government out of the coal business was prophetic in many more ways than she could have realized. The market for UK coal was non-existent: the resource was already dead to natural gas and oil.
The modernization strategies of Thatcher in the UK, Reagan in the US and even Mulroney in Canada were painful, but necessary requirements of countries that were trying to stay ahead of the curve.
The fact that the UK is a net importer of oil is irrelevant, given that this has more to do with high consumption than it does the industry itself.
One way or another the UK is going to pay for it's energy. The difference between the coal mines that Thatcher ditched and oil is that with the coal the UK was paying for that as well.
Of course, Britain literally is an island... :)
Slight tangent, but it's not unsurprising that Brits, especially older Brits, might hold this view btw (that everything should be produced at home if possible). Prior to the world wars, the UK imported many things from the empire; during the war (particularly WWI), and with the closure of the seaways, there was a massive food problem because home industry was so far behind the modern times as to be useless. This has lesson has somewhat echoed down the years.
Isolationism is a fool's game, even for countries like the United States, let alone tiny Great Britain.
I doubt very highly that the UK could even physically grow the food it requires, let alone maintain all other industries a modern country needs to not only function, but expand.
Which alone should be reason enough to declare anyone a Saint and then give them the Nobel Peace Prize for twenty years in a row.
I'd argue that that one move alone has done more to benefit the UK than any other decision since WWII, period.
And that's a call she lost her job on.
That being said she lost her job for a lot more than that. Poll tax was a much bigger social issue at the time. Her rough style had left her isolated in her own party and then she mishandled the challenges to her leadership at a crucial moment. The EU element was merely the trigger, the gun was already long in place.
How so? She was out before Maastricht was signed. Germany wasn't even unified when she was around.
She lost her job because frankly she presided over 3 terms in which she completely lost her mind part-way through the second and into the third and had to be removed by her own party who saw the writing on the wall. We don't have a term limit in the UK (and perhaps we should), but I still remember the "We have become a grandmother" moment which may sound trivial but was a shining example of how mental she became towards the end.
I would say if anything the thing leading to her being stabbed in the back was the way the poll tax was handled. The conservatives knew that if pushed through it gave Labour a credible chance of re-election, and that her reactions to it rendered her completely uncontrollable. They needed someone that senior tories could manage, which is why we had John Major (who for my money was one of the best PM's we had in a long time).
Granted, nobody has written her a personal apology for the other reasons yet. :-)
(And my opinion, from a Canadian, is that two term limits was one of the smartest things the founders of the US created)
I completely agree with a two term limit, would be a great thing to have here although somehow someone would find a way around it.
Is there a large percentage of the population in Britain that views WHAT she did as wrong or is it HOW she did it? I can understand the HOW, but why would people think that handouts aren't first hand-ins? Do people really believe there is a such thing as FREE milk?
When I hear about the mining strikes causing 3 day work weeks for the entire country, my thought is the same as any other sane individual: You, sir, are cancelled.
But while Thatcher shook things up and modernised many parts of the economy, she did it in an extremely divisive and many would say callous way - by devastating communities (especially in the north of England), destroying British manufacturing and putting unemployment up to 3 million (with millions more on disability, to make the jobless figures look better).
And these are legacies that still live on today - where I grew up there are still houses with barbed wire between neighbours who have lived there for years - as a result of the miner's strike. The north is still significantly poorer than the south, with much higher unemployment. The current government has just pushed through an extremely painful reform of disability allowance that appears to be punishing the genuinely disabled as much as the "skivers". And in Scotland she is so despised that you can't even say her name in public after shutting down much of the country's industry and taking North Sea oil revenue down south.
For the most part, nowadays, the question isn't whether the reforms were needed, but whether they had to be done so painfully and whether the benefits of those reforms were shared fairly. There is definitely a north-south divide within the country on that.
Was there a less painful way to do it? From what I've read, Britain was in some really serious trouble. I wouldn't say that they were at Greece's level of stagnation and financial trouble, but they were definitely hurting. People were going to get hurt regardless of what policy was implemented, and I think it was better to get it all done in one harsh, nasty blow than to slowly cut away the problems and create decades of uncertainty.
Some people think she was involved in a class war - I don't, I think she honestly believed in social mobility (unlike the current government which is rule by the rich for the rich). But she did devastate huge parts of the country and just regarded it as a fact, not even something to be regretted.
No. The milk was good systems thinking. In the post-war period it was cheaper to provide milk to help reduce the incidence of childhood malnutrition than pay for the resulting health problems.
People were happy to pay for it because it was cheaper than not paying for it. The miracle of the post-war government was that they managed to explain this to people. Perhaps wartime had trained people to believe in top-down authority and expect a decent outcome.
By the 1970s wealth and diets had improved and malnutrition was a smaller problem. Only children of the poorest and poorest educated had the problem. Thus it didn't make financial sense any more and the government cut it. But this really did hurt the poorest, most vulnerable people in the country. Political nightmare.
A similar argument applies for the mining and other industries. It was worth running unprofitable mines for a while since the cost to society of thousands of unemployed men would be too high. At some point this would change, as the employment opportunities widened with new technology. But holy hell this was a difficult period in British history.
Opinion is polarized: either Thatcher did a hard job with firmness and saved Britain, or she put economics (some say incorrect economics) over compassion and screwed the poorest to the benefit of rich and upper-middle class. Both of these things _could_ be true at the same time.
It's hard to explain now how passionately hated Thatcher was in popular culture back then. Imagine if the George Bush hating of the 2000's magnified until people rioted in the street and burned their own downtown area in their fury.