I recall the Thatcher victory as if it was yesterday. I wasn’t impressed and wasn’t looking forward to a Thatcher premiership. My initial reaction was confirmed when, like many others during the early eighties, I found myself in and out of work. My brush with the local job centres and social security offices was sufficient to put me off for a lifetime. Indeed, such was my repugnance at the depressing nature of having to sign on, that I went to employment agencies and took any work they could offer me rather than go back.
Later in Thatcher’s tenure, my own small business – something she encouraged – suffered as a direct result of high interest rates and the poll tax. My own outgoings rocketed as mortgage interest rates hit 15% and my two main client groups were hit with this and the effects of local taxes quadrupling. It was the sudden loss of income – again – that led me back to employment and the rail industry.
So, no, I did not like Margaret Thatcher. And I was one of those who delighted in her final downfall – although was a little disappointed that it didn’t happen at the ballot box.
So, thirty years on how do I feel about the first woman prime minister? The prime minister who drove me finally into the arms of the Labour party with the objective of seeing the back of her? Well, actually, I feel rather more charitable than I did then. Despite nearly being assassinated by the IRA, she resisted the temptation to attack our civil liberties in comparison with a cowardly cabinet who think that they can use a few disgruntled jihadists as an excuse to treat us all as suspects and spy on us all. Whatever you might think of her, she was no coward. Her decision to take on Arthur Scargill was the right one. Despite my firm Labour roots, I felt this at the time. The man was a deranged menace to those he professed to represent (in reality, Arthur Scargill represented no one but Arthur Scargill and made a piss-poor job of that) and demonstrated this perfectly. I felt that she was right to stand up to Argentina – despite having the opportunity to avoid the conflict before it became one. Once it did, a strong response was appropriate. The privatisations that I opposed at the time have proved, generally, to be the right thing. While the outcome has been mixed, in principle, freeing up the utilities to outside investment made sense. As does the general principle that the less the government owns and controls, the less it can mess up.
On balance, then, I look back on those thirty years less harshly than I did at the time. I can’t say that I will ever like her. However, comparing her with what has followed earns a great deal of forgiveness in my book.
I regard her as a tragic figure. She had far more courage than most politicians, but used it it unwisely in too many directions because her gut-instincts were too narrow. As you say, she achieved some good things, but could have done so much more.
I deplore the visceral personal loathing which some people express towards her. Whatever her faults, she is still a human being and nowadays a rather sad one. I saw her having lunch in a hotel not long ago, and she looked like an empty hulk – beautifully dressed and coiffured, but scarcely knowing where she was, hardly speaking, and having to be shepherded along by her entourage. It was pitiful, remembering her more vibrant days.
Yes, she was an interesting woman. I was sorry to see her come to power, but she did earn my (sometimes grudging) admiration. I agree with Sean Gabb that a lot of what she did was wrong, but she wasn’t all bad. Like anticant, I came to be very unimpressed with the hatred that was expressed for her – and while I never exactly learned to love her, she was probably better than any of the alternatives that were on offer in the 1980s. Which means that I will respectfully disagree with Mr. Gabb, and reckon that it was probably just as well that she won in 1979.
I read Sean’s article. He makes some valid points, but I believe that he judges her too harshly. My reaction to Labour is much the same as his of Thatcher; I tend to feel that we would have been better off had John Major won in 1997. Sometimes people are judged more kindly in retrospect by their foes than their allies. Interesting, no?