Should Mrs Thatcher apologise to Scotland?
Curious that Mrs Thatcher chose to celebrate the 30th anniversary of her landmark 1979 election victory with a visit to Glasgow at the weekend. The title of David Torrance's new book, "We in Scotland: Thatcherism in a Cold Climate" says it all. Even after all those years, the Iron Lady and her legacy still provokes a negative reaction from the Scottish public — as the overwhelming majority of callers made clear on today's Morning Extra.
Take Margaret Curran for example. The Glasgow Baillieston MSP has called on the former Prime Minister to say sorry for neglecting Glasgow's heavy industries and for introducing the hated poll tax that contributed so much to her downfall after 11 years.
Mrs Curran said: "Margaret Thatcher should apologise to Glasgow for her policies that wreaked havoc on our city. The constituency I represent is still trying to recover from the destruction that ensued from her plans and political approach. This is the woman that closed down our shipyards and steel mills, believed that unemployment is a price worth paying, and then told us that she knew best."
Should Mrs Thatcher apologise to Scotland? Or should we, in fact, be thanking her for saving us from ourselves — as the former Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth did in Glasgow on Saturday evening?
At a dinner organised by the East Renfrewshire Conservative Association, Mr Forsyth praised the former Prime Minister for rescuing Britain from the "horrors of Labour in the 1970s," congratulated her for taking on the trades unions, for "unleashing a new age of enterprise and wealth creation," privatising businesses and selling council houses.
So what was Mrs Thatcher's legacy to Scotland? Did she break "the dependency culture"... or just break society?
Links:
- Re-live the 6-hour long Decision 79: Election Night results on BBC Parliament
- And if that's not enough there's Decision 79: The Morning After
- The Night the Government Fell: archive audio and video
- 1979: Looking back at the Thatcher era
© 2012~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~49~RS~)
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When we reflect on the past we must consider both the pros and the cons in all matters. Did Mrs. Thatcher work to an agenda to benefit the individual countries that make up the United Kingdom? Did Mrs. Thatcher reflect the individuals of these countries and the respect they deserve? But what are the lessons learned? Have any of the Prime Ministers since that point in time acted to limited government, increase independence of their people, promote commerce and trade and therefore prosperity? Do we have more freedom in our lives to generate wealth, live freely, and not need to be dependent on the state? If we are to measure the impact or the benefit of her time in office we must reflect on many things. If we look purely to Scotland we are no more better off in many respects, if not worse off. Do we have more material possessions at the cost of raised debt and now reliance on the state? Do we have independence to generate our own wealth and contribute rather than being bond by laws now not just from England but also from a even more distant E.U. set of policies? We watch the parties fight amongst themselves acting with little regard to the people they are sworn to serve as a voice for. The only things we can take away from Mrs. Thatcher is that government should not be an overpowering government and that a large government should never be an option. Question any person on the street and more likely than not they would prefer to work at an honest job for an honest salary and NOT depend on state handouts that come with the ropes that bind the hands of each and every individual.
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Hi Graham
Yes she is guilty as charged.
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To comment on Graham's comment regards benefits continuing. Scotland has been deprived of it's ability to prosper. It has had it's land raped, it's people tricked, it's assets removed, it's power withdrawn and it's people brought to despotism. Scots fought the battles of many a war but, over time, Scots have been ground down, reminded their place and repeatedly told they are a benefit handout society. Like the child brought up in a broken home and reminded daily of low worth they will react as such.
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Thank God for Frank! His comments are the most sensible and balanced this morning. Most of the remainder are making ill founded and even libelous comments illustrating their left wing leanings.
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Thatcher gave people a chance to buy their council house whilst you were working away at pit and we all had jobs then the strike and mining closures, she turned miner against miner with the strike, you cant pay a mortgage if your unemployed and then destroyed a whole culture when she closed down the mining industry,as far as it harmed me,I dont own my house now,she didnt replace the mining industry with anything ,she didnt retrain all these men into any new industries all we got was unemployment and we still have that, were all on benefits of some sort.
show me any new industries in all those areas where mining was.
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Thatcher drove a wedge into this country which is still there. She is such an arrogant and dismissive woman that she would never apologise for anything she did, and probably believes her policies were acceptable and even necessary. She used Scottish oil revenue to bankroll her policies, and almost bankrupted the country during the Miners' Strike. Thatcher's legacy will be that she destroyed Britishness, and some would argue that that is no bad thing.
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I'm not a new member.
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The criticism of Thatcher by left wing Scots gives a worse impression of Scots than it does of Mrs T. Heavy industry in Scotland has declined though labour and tory government since the war. The left seems blind to this fact are should apologise to Mrs T for unfairly blaming her. Margaret Curran continues the disgraceful blame someone else culture that is designed solely to cover for the inadequacies of Left wing politics.
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LoonFaeAngus, yes, the fact of the matter is we are not really any better off. As I noted above, governments may change but the effects seem to be the same. We see subtle differences in policy, grandstanding and platitudes but the end result seems to be the same. It is like having one group with two sides each looking to play ruler for a brief time and then stepping to the side for another from the same group.
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Britain was in a state of virtual bankruptcy when she took over from the last Labour government (its the story of the end of all Labour governments). Since then we have achieved a growth rate better than that of the other big EU countries. If we accept that economic growth has been 1% a year better since 1979 than it would have been if Labour had nationalised the "commanding heights of the economy" as they promised (& actually a difference much larger than 1% is likely) she has is responsible for 30% of Britain's wealth now.
I strongly suspect that not a single one of the parasites decrying her failure to give them as much of the taxpayer's money as they want has either had the good manners to thank her or the integrity to refuse 30% of their dole/civil service salary that comes from the real economy. Nor indeed that anybody in the taxpayer funded BBC has either.
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Strange how some of our leaders (Thatcher and Blair) are disliked at home and well thought of in the USA. The difference of course New Labour unlike the Tories - destroyed the economy. Blair's strategy of being a Tory clone worked for a while, Labour could have tweaked the legislation brought in by Thatcher but they knew that the Unions had a part to play in bringing the IMF in and throwing Ted Heath out of office. They won't need the Unions help this time to call on the support of the IMF, they have done it all by themselves.
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NeilNinePercent, what can be seen is fewer manufacturing jobs, less trade and more goods bought in from other countries disproportionately. Britain now has some service industries, the sales of arms and the expectations from a speculative market that works against the masses for the few. True wealth, as stated above, would have been better found in true free trade and commerce and industry with foreign nations without the empire building alongside the U.S. I take your point regards nationalising industries from the standpoint that this has and will a) increase overall debt and therefore repayments from loans with interest that Britain can not repay during those same times b) goes against true free market economics as it props up failing businesses at a cost to the taxpayer and the competitive market and c) increases the overall control and therefore size of government, which raises costs, increases dependency and usually comes with the erosion of personal liberties. If you do not wish for a dependent state then you should do everything in your power to limit government, follow sound economic policy of a free trade & commerce system and work to protect your citizen's rights. Otherwise you create a state whereby people have fewer opportunities, need more government programs and, following on, raise secondary lending or borrowing. It has gotten so that the trade of debt is not just common place but the expected.
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I agree with you about free trade Steve & I think she would too. I also think she made a mistake when she came to power in letting the £ be pushed up by North Sea oil which, while useful in fighting inflation, nade our industry uncompetitive & thus the recession worse. On the other hand no opposition politician disagreed with that - they just wanted to throw money at the problem as well.
As regards aggression with the US & increasing the control & power of government she wasn't remotely as bad as Labour (she didn't increase the size of government but didn't do enough to cut it). Even in the Kuwait war she was never anybody's poodle.
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Britain was in almost the same bankrupt state it is now when she took over. She dragged this country back from the brink and destroyed the power of the unions who had with the help of the Labour party reduced the great industries to uneconomic dinosaurs swallowing enormous amounts of the country's resources. She did not destroy industries, they were already dying from uncompetitive practices, lack of profits , poor management and unions concerned only with filling their own pockets at the expence of the taxpayers who didn't work in a ' big union " industry. Coal , steel and shipbuilding could no longer compete without taxpayer subsidies, and it was cheaper and easier to import than to allow the unions to hold the country to ransom.
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I was a very active member of the labour party in Scotland during Margaret Thatcher's reign of terror and I actively fought her during her entire term of office, supported the miner's strike, boycotted the poll tax, marched with CND, sent money to the Greenham Common women and all the rest.
Even today, I have on my office wall a framed copy of the Independent dated 23rd November 1990, with the headline, "It's A Funny Old World" and on the that day I cheered from Causewayhead roundabout all the way to Stirling Bridge when the BBC announced her resignation.
Despite all this, history will recognise Margaret Thatcher's great achievements, like them or not. She freed us from the bureaucratic nightmare that was pre-1979 Britain, where it took eighteen months to get a phone installed, where six sales staff would stand and chat over a washing machines at SSEB while people queued all the way out the door to pay their electricity and where your morning rolls were stacked beside the paraffin in the coop to add proper industrial nose to them.
She made us choose between a life on the dole or taking the opportunity to retrain, to go to university and to take responsibility for ourselves. I did this otherwise I guess I would have become a miner like my father. It didn't in anyway change my political views but I am sensible enough to accept that at the time, there really was no alternative. In the end she paved the way for an even better Labour Government under Tony Blair and was the midwife whose actions ultimately delivered a Scottish Parliament. So I don't need an apology from The Iron Lady, to be honest, I would have no difficulty thanking her, she changed my life.
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I'm 61, and regard myself as a Conservative - in fact, I'm old enough to remember the Scottish Unionist Party, as it was called until the early 1970s!
I was nver a particular 'fan' of Baroness Thatcher - being more of an 'old-fashioned' High Tory, but, on balance, I think she was, indeed, good for the country.
I think I'm old enough to know how politics works, but I find it amusing that it is Mrs Margaret Curran who is 'demanding' some sort of apology to Scotland from the Baroness. Would this be the Mrs Curran - a Labour MSP - who managed not to win a Westminster constituency a month or so ago? Surely, Mrs Curran wouldn't be attacking Baroness Thatcher in order to 'disguise' her own lack of success in the Westminster by-election?
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I don't believe that Mrs Thatcher should apologise to Scotland and actually, it's a rather daft question and concept.
There is no doubt that our heavy industries were uncompetitive, dated and uneconomic, and were highly reliant on government subsidies to survive. Thatcher introduced a sink or swim policy and revolutionised our economy. Many working class people went off to university and bought and improved their own homes.
The flipside of that new industrial revolution was that hundreds of thousands of skilled and well paid manufacturing jobs were replaced with low skilled, low paid, service sector and call-centre jobs. Worse still, these jobs were never replaced in the areas that were hardest hit. So towns like Port Glasgow, Fauldhouse, Auchinleck, Cardenden, and their surrounding villages, were effectively abandoned and left to sink into a culture of unemployment, benefits, drug abuse and alcoholism. As hard as central Scotland was hit, we were fortunate in comparison to the north-east of England and parts of Wales. At least by living close to surrounding new towns and Edinburgh, our labour force found new jobs. Pretty terrible jobs in a lot of cases, but a job is a job, nevertheless.
The social fabric of the UK also changed - and for the worse. I grew up in a working class village and I thought nothing of the fact that a few doors from my (Mining) family, we had a dentist, police officer, fire-fighter, and teacher living close-by. You wouldn't get that now. The low-skilled live in their ex-council houses or private residential areas mortgaged to the hilt. Professionals and factory workers no longer live side-by-side. Wealth and poverty, and gaps in inequality is therefore far more extreme and obvious.
Thatcher closed down our manufacturing and made our power stations reliant on foreign coal and gas. She replaced well-paid skilled jobs with low skilled service sector and electronics jobs where employers could easily relocate to the next country to offer setup subsidies. She allowed us to acquire huge debts to buy houses, carpets, and conservatories. She left us with a divided country - socially and economically. She created a society that was individualistic and one where most of us have debts that will only be repaid when the life insurance company pays out.
But should Thatcher apologise? I don't think so. From what I can see many of us were only to happy to saddle ourselves with debt, to buy-in to 'aspirational Britain'. To vote for more of the same under the likes of Tony Blair and Margaret Curran. Was that good? Should we not also apologise to Scotland? Thatcher left office twenty years ago. What have we done in that time to address and reverse the problems she helped create? Nothing! We voted for more of the same and got even worse. Labour has been in power for twelve years and the gap between rich and poor has widened further. Our children and perhaps their children will be paying for the economic collapse that we contributed to. It is disingeneous to put the blame for our problems at the feet of Margaret Thatcher. Labour is also to blame. We are also to blame. We can forgive ourselves for putting them there but not for re-electing them - twice!
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Her agenda was plain and simple divide and conquer! Communties divided more than ever, and the conquering hero over the likes of Arthur Scargill and pretty much the demise and undoing of good elements of socialisim. Did part of the job afore Mr Blair and his cohorts took up where she left, not suprised that she was re-ivited to No 10. This person has the blood of indigenous and foriegn nationals on her hands. Rather than an apology to Scotland, a prison sentence would be more fitting, for crimes against humanity!
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14-17 are thoughtful posts.
18 do you seriously suggest she has as much "blood on her hands" as her successors. Look at the publication, over a year ago, that British "police" in Kosovo had been involved in dissecting hundreds, probably thousands, of people while alive & selling their body parts to our hospitals. Do you think Thatcher ever did anything approaching that atrocity? Do you even think the BBC would have censored it if she had?
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No politician has clean hands, in form or another, and it would be wrong to assume otherwise. The question posed was should Mrs. Thatcher apologize to Scotland? If the question was Should Mrs. Thatcher apologize for her actions? then we could, of course, include any crimes, violations of rights, or morality issues we have against her. She was no angel but, as we can see from present day (and not so past days) we have greater offenders. The question of apologizing comes from the feeling or fact of wrong doing(s) against a person or persons. While it can be perceptual I'm sure there are many that can find just causes to justify their feelings. Maybe the question(s) should have been what did Mrs. Thatcher do to wrong us Scots? Hell, if we're making lists of people and actions against people I'm sure we could fill a server or two (thousand)!
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the thing about maggie was her contempt for any kind of social government , her love of the chicago boys and milton friedmans obseesion with the market, and the idea if it moves privatise it , if you look to south america particularly chile you will see the experimental theatre for friedmans ideas however the fact that the uk was a mature democracy meant it was not possible to imprison trade unionist , implement a coup , kill an elected president , and dismantle all social infrastructure , and leave it all to market forces , however maggie created the enviroment for some of these tactics the bogey man being the enemy within ie the miners ,and our soldiers were used as cannon foder to help her be re elected via the falklands war prior to that war opinion polls had her as low as 25% in some cases , ah but she let us buy our council house indeed she did , the illussion of being middle class was extremely appealing ! the consequences a crisis in social housing , homelesness at its highest in living memory, and what about repossessions probably the same people who aspired to be middle class, maggie repent for your sins and apologise to scotland and the rest of the uk too
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