Lets be honest, our manufacturing industries were on borrowed time, all she did was cut the umbilical before the mass subsidization was required. It cost more to pay people to mine coal than it did to buy coal and pay miners dole. Our car industry was a global joke and the UK people were quickly realizing they could buy much better foreign cars for the same money, in fact if Thatcher hadn't passed law limiting the amount of cars none EU country's could import into Britain thus forcing Japanese manufacturers to open factories here then UK car production would have been killed off almost completely.
Baroness Thatcher has died.
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Lets be honest, our manufacturing industries were on borrowed time, all she did was cut the umbilical before the mass subsidization was required. It cost more to pay people to mine coal than it did to buy coal and pay miners dole. Our car industry was a global joke and the UK people were quickly realizing they could buy much better foreign cars for the same money, in fact if Thatcher hadn't passed law limiting the amount of cars none EU country's could import into Britain thus forcing Japanese manufacturers to open factories here then UK car production would have been killed off almost completely.
Except it's not 10% is it, it is 8.1%.
[Edit] 7.1%
Still a big difference from 10%, and a much smaller difference than originally implied for Germany
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Copied from BBC from 2008
I suspect (though cannot remember precisely) that RR was a smaller, more technically sophisticated and less Union dominated operation.
Even then it was hard enough to turn it around.
Turning around large Union infested operations like BL (Remember Red Robbo?). The Shipbuilding industry and Steel/Mining etc might have been possible but it would have been much much more difficult.
(And pulling the Unions teeth would still have been a necessary prerequisite)
Personally I would have liked to see the industries supported but I find it hard to see how it might have been done in the political/economic context of the late 70's, early 80's
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sure, but was there any serious effort to modernize them and make them competitive? i know they were a joke but the potential was there and they could have been a lot better.
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Except that these industries were all dying a death long before she came along and were already collapsing. Nobody in industry was working - they were all on strike, or being fired for refusing to strike. Can you picture coal mining being as prevalent today if Thatcher hadn't been around? I think it would be a little laughable to think it would. Health and safety expectations have moved massively improved, machinery and computing has improved to the point where a single machine can sometimes do the job of 100 men. Military ship/aircraft/vehicle building etc. has massively declined because there's simply far less need for it these days (which is good, right?).
This is life in a capitalist country, for better or worse (FAR better, in my opinion - my partner grew up in a communist state - we don't know how lucky we are in the UK). We, as workers, have to respond to demand. If the demand is not there for our expertise, we have to supply something else, to someone else. Thatcher simply came along and took a dying section of the country and cleaned it up. It was horrendously painful for those who thought their jobs were for life (they were obviously massively misguided - that was the thinking of the day, and it still continues now, sadly) and we're going through something very similar right now - people are finally starting to realise that nobody owes them a job. No job is for life, and nothing is guaranteed, ever, not even a pension. I think she was a great woman and did great things for this country and its people. Harsh things, yes, but if some politician is going to roll up and say "hi! you're going to lose your job and get less benefit from the state!" of course she's going to be unpopular. But I don't think it's the job of a Prime Minister to be popular - I think it's their job to ensure the country and its citizens are safe and prosperous, and she certainly achieved that, even though it was a huge struggle.
And, so far, Cameron and Co seem to be continuing this ideal through - we ALL resent it, because we're losing jobs and losing money, again, just as under Thatcher - but at least we're strengthening the foundations of the economy and paving the way for something that should hold firm in the long term. It's struggle like hell for a while or or end up like Greece. I know which path I'd rather my PM guided me down.
I found the street parties celebrating the death of Bid Laden to be in equally bad taste (not to compare Thatcher to Bin Laden, just the act of celebrating a death) - overall celebrating the death of another is a crass thing to do & over serves to undermine genuine criticism of the persons ideologies and policies.
Argumentum ad temperantiam.
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Except it's not 10% is it, it is 8.1%.
[Edit] 7.1%
ok, it was a roughly estimate but i doubt it is only 7%. I mean germany is a huge factory from north to south...anyway
The Unions were really the crux of the issue. They tended toward putting their faith in iconoclasts like Arthur Scargill, Red Robbo, Hugh Scanlon and Jack Jones - which worked against those who 'led' without conviction (i.e. Edward Heath) and those who were handcuffed by party interests (i.e. Harold Wilson & James Callaghan).
Problem is, the unions decimated what sympathy the public had for their plight during the seventies, so when a not-too-dissimilar iconoclast like Margaret Thatcher was elected, the public were almost willing the unions to fall. When you look back at that period with a little objectivity, it's hardly surprising that the feud escalated to the levels it did - it was almost like pulling a Rottweiler's tail and then behaving indignantly when it turns around to bite you.
Don't get me wrong, it's nothing but sad that as a direct result of this high stakes brinkmanship Britain's manufacturing and industrial economic sectors are a shadow of their former selves and I honestly believe that the nation's dependency upon little more than a few hundred square miles is unsustainable in the long run.
However, with the above in mind, the writing was on the wall as far back as 1979. Whilst those directly affected by the vendetta between the unions and Thatcher have every right to be angry at her for taking a no compromise approach, I think it's disingenuous and frankly in patent disregard of reality not to be angry at the union leaders who used the livelihoods of thousands of families as a political gambit and who largely now live in the lap of luxury despite the damage they caused. They are just as much, if not more, to blame for picking a fight they were never going to win.
What makes me laugh is that there are some people who pontificate over how a select number of bankers screwed the lot of us and walked away loaded and yet also turn a willful blind eye to the union leaders who did exactly the same thing.
If Margaret Thatcher was the reaction, the unions were the original action. I worked on a shop floor in the early / mid seventies and the restrictive practices in British industry were a huge disincentive. No one in their right mind would invest in british manufacturing industry. It was left to the government to bail out or nationalise. I spent several days a month on unofficial action mainly through stupidity on behalf of the unions at that time. It was not possible to work if you were not in the union and far easier to be blacklisted by them than any employer.
Pay restraint was impossible, no Labour or Conservative administration could make that stick. Inflation was running in double figures.
I was working in Spain in early 1979 so did not vote for her then but the two following elections did vote conservative and I am glad I did so. The alternatives were far worse than her administration.
Pay restraint was impossible, no Labour or Conservative administration could make that stick. Inflation was running in double figures.
I was working in Spain in early 1979 so did not vote for her then but the two following elections did vote conservative and I am glad I did so. The alternatives were far worse than her administration.
You either misunderstand the fallcy or misread what I wrote.
No, it's not. If you were around at the time and witnessed how she tore families and communities apart then maybe, just maybe you would understand why some people are genuinely happy that she is dead.
This is a bit of a myth. Remember that Mrs Thatcher came to power in the midst of a global oil crisis causing high inflation. The first actions taken by the Thatcher government pushed the pound to record highs, putting massive pressure on export industries. Britain's manufacturing and mining industries were uncompetitive in the '80s, but it was Mrs Thatcher who made them so. With the price of coal and other raw materials what it is today I could quite easily see Britain's coal mines operating today, it'd be a very welcome boost to today's economy - only problem is, we've exported all the skills to our competitors so can't re-open them. Oops.
Crass behaviour is crass behaviour. It's inexcusable. You don't have to have liked her, but to lower yourself to such a level is simply wrong.
As somebody who can (just) remember the "winter of discontent" and grew up through the 80's and 90's boom times only to see it largely undone after 13years of subsequent Labour administration(s) I say RIP to somebody who saw where we had gone wrong, had the balls to put it right - however painful - and won 3 on the trot elections because of it.
What really worries me though is I don't see anybody of any party who will pull this declining nation out of the mire a second time....
RIP Maggie, how we need somebody like you today instead of the spineless suits were lumbered with!
What really worries me though is I don't see anybody of any party who will pull this declining nation out of the mire a second time....
RIP Maggie, how we need somebody like you today instead of the spineless suits were lumbered with!
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I served in the Falklands conflict, NI and the first Gulf War.
I worked 20 hour days at my home barracks during the second Gulf War as I was medically unable to go.
I spent 10 years of my military life working on the forerunner to the Sat Nav you now have on your phones and in your car.
Personally, I'm proud of my life so far and glad I fought wars so you could judge me.
If we have exported all the skills to our competitors then how do we run the current coal mines in the UK? Magic mining pixies?
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