David Miller:
She was a great woman and the greatest peace-time Prime Minister this Country has had. Especially for those of us who can remember the state that Wilson and Callaghan had got us into, this proud Country crawling to the IMF begging for loans and the 3 day week.
I think it is shameful that people are now trying to blame her for things that she had nothing whatever to do with.
On Midlands TV news the other evening some fig-brain who was or is the Mayor of Birmingham said ‘She murdered British Leyland’. Most people remember it rather differently.
Last evening on Radio 4 some woman from Yorkshire was dripping on about how much she hated her saying that she ‘stole’ her husbands job and he was never able to find another and now their grandson has lost his life in Afganistan. Quite how that was Mrs Thatcher’s fault was not made clear.
But interestingly the point was made on the same programme that the Minister who closed the highest number of pits was… Tony Benn. They don’t have much to say about that do they?
And Kinnock, who now has a lot to say for himself, has firgotten that, at the time, he was the number one advocate of the UK joining the Euro. Thank God the Lady was not for turning on that point either.
RIP Maggie
David
It was actually Heath who was in power during the miners’ strike which resulted in the 3 day week.While even that was a questionable issue related to it possibly/probably having been effectively a lockout of workers not involved in the strike to cause a backlash against the miners considering the little difference it made to conserving coal stocks which was the so called stated aim of it’s imposition.While the miners’ demands of a decent increase on the £27 per week they were getting for that job wasn’t exactly outrageous considering the type of money which the bankers were paying themselves during the early 1980’s under Thatcher.
The economy was actually going in the right direction,peaking in 1972,until we joined the EEC,which was actually a Tory idea based on Heath’s fears of another war in the future with Germany,which Thatcher then supported membership of at the referendum.Most,if not all,of the industrial strife of the 1970’s was caused by the combination of the OPEC oil embargo and resulting oil price increases resulting price and taxation increases which resulted from EEC membership,together with the resulting job losses caused by the flood of Euro imports.
As for the idea that it wasn’t Thatcher who closed down Britain’s mining industry with the help of Mc Gregor,causing the 1984 miners’ strike,thereby making us a net importer of energy in the long term,that’s just bs re writing of history.Although no one is saying that the ‘Labour Party’ has ever defended the interests of those it is elected to being that it’s always been just another Tory Party in all but name.
So how was it that this so called proud country,which was self sufficient in oil,gas and coal,couldn’t pay it’s workforce a decent wage to keep incomes in line with prices and allowed it’s currency to fall to less than 50% of it’s value against a real currency like the Swiss Franc between 1973-1979.While charging it’s people as much,if not more,for their own oil as our competitors were paying for it on world markets which had been rigged by OPEC.While if Thatcher was right the economy would now be a lot better off in real terms than it was in 1972.Suggest you check out the actual relevant figures which,unlike the bs which supports her economic policies and all those since,don’t lie.
