As Thatcher said: 'If they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.'
By Mike McNally
Margaret Thatcher, who died yesterday at the age of 87,
was the first woman to lead a Western democracy. She saved Britain from
economic ruin, breaking the power of the country’s hard-left trade
unions in the process, helped to bring down the Soviet Union and win the
Cold War, and won a hot war with Argentina after it invaded the
Falkland Islands. Not a bad life’s work for the daughter of a
greengrocer.
Thatcher was a truly transformative figure. But when you set out to
fundamentally change a country you’re inevitably going to find yourself
unpopular in some quarters — ask Barack Obama. Much of the coverage of
her passing has focused on Thatcher being a “divisive figure”; “love her
or hate her” has been a constant refrain on the BBC coverage. (The BBC,
while showing due deference yesterday, was very firmly in the “hate”
camp while she was in power.)
There’s plenty for the left to be mad about. After all, Thatcher
defeated the Labour party so completely that in order to make itself
electable again it had to change its name (to “New Labour” under Tony
Blair), abandon several of its core policies, and adopt many of hers.
Although after defeating communism, the humbling of divided and
discredited Labour probably didn’t feel like that big of an achievement.
Like her great friend and ally Ronald Reagan, Thatcher had a gift for
presenting conservative arguments in plain language that resonated with
ordinary people, and for pointing out the absurdities of left-wing
ideas in equally plain terms. Although, one of the quotes most commonly
attributed to her — “The problem with socialism is that eventually you
run out of other people’s money” — is actually a paraphrasing taken from a 1976 television interview.
It should be said that those in Britain who are openly celebrating Thatcher’s death are in a minority.
Serious and principled socialists who disagreed vehemently with her
policies have nonetheless paid tribute to her character, resolve, and
political skill. Politicians on the center-left have been even more
generous — but then, they owe more to Thatcher than they’re prepared to
acknowledge: she did the dirty work of smashing the trade unions that
were dragging down the Labour party, paving the way for Blair to make it
electable again. (Thatcher was aware of the irony.)
Those directing the most vitriol against her (I’m not going to repeat
or link any of it, it’s not hard to find if you feel like a roll in the
mud) are on the lunatic fringes of the British left. They know that
thanks to Margaret Thatcher and the irrevocable changes she wrought on
British politics and society, they will never again wield influence
within their own party — never mind get their hands on the levers of
government.
But conservatives upset by the sheer viciousness of some on the left
should take a page from Thatcher’s own book, and view the attacks on her
as the ultimate compliment. They don’t hate her because of what she
believed — they hate her because she beat them. As Thatcher herself once
said:
I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.
Much of the anger at Thatcher is rooted in the damage inflicted on
working-class communities by her policies of shutting down inefficient
and costly industries, notably the coal industry. It’s true that the
unemployment that resulted from those policies devastated former mining
towns, and the Conservatives arguably failed to do enough to help
stricken communities recover. But the damage was worse than it need have
been because the process of reform had been put off for so long.
In the 1970s, Britain was known as “the sick man of Europe.” The
country was crippled by debt and high inflation, and the coal industry,
auto industry, and other state-owned behemoths had been running at
massive losses for years. Leaders of both parties, unwilling or unable
to confront the unions who were opposed to reforms, had resigned
themselves to “managing the decline” of their once great nation (both
the Labour party and the unions had also been heavily infiltrated by members of the communist party with direct links to Moscow).
Those who are today recalling with misty eyes the fate of the miners
either forget, or choose to ignore, the role the miners had played in
bringing Britain to its knees.
I can remember as a child in the early 1970s spending evenings
reading by candlelight because there had been yet another power cut. At
the time, all I knew was that I couldn’t watch Dr. Who. Years
later I learned that the power cuts were the result of industrial action
by coal miners, who were demanding pay increases beyond the ambition of
workers in other industries who lacked the ability to blackmail their
country by turning out the lights.
The miners helped to bring down Edward Heath’s Tory government in
1974. But Labour discovered that it couldn’t control the unions, either.
Prime Minister Jim Callaghan was fatally weakened by a campaign of
industrial action that culminated in the 1978-1979 “winter of
discontent,” during which uncollected garbage was piled high on
Britain’s streets, and the dead went unburied.
When Thatcher came to power in 1979, she set about modernizing the
British economy and creating an “ownership society.” In addition to
closing unproductive industries, she privatized public services, with
members of the public encouraged to buy shares in the new gas,
electricity, and telecom companies. She allowed council house tenants to
buy their homes, and opened the City of London to foreign investment,
paving the way for it to become the financial powerhouse it is today.
In the whirlwind of change that followed over the next decade, there
were inevitably losers as well as winners. Not everyone, after all, was
equipped to take advantage of the unprecedented opportunities on offer,
especially those who had relied on the state for a living all their
lives. Even Thatcher’s admirers would admit that she wasn’t bold enough
in reforming some public services, notably education and the National
Health Service.
But there were many more winners than losers. So Thatcher was
re-elected twice, and the Tories even managed a fourth consecutive
general election victory after she’d gone.
If the consequences of her policies were controversial at home,
Thatcher’s successes overseas were indisputable. Just three years after
coming to power she was faced with a test that no one could have
foreseen: Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands. Against the advice of
some in her own party — and initially against the wishes of some in
Ronald Reagan’s administration, who hoped for a diplomatic resolution —
she resolved to retake the islands, and sent a task force almost 8,000
miles to do the job.
I like to think that Thatcher was well enough to have heard the news a
few weeks ago, when the Falklands Islanders voted overwhelmingly to
remain British subjects.
But while the Falklands War was a spectacular triumph for Thatcher,
in the grand scheme it takes second billing to the part she played in
winning the Cold War. Thatcher was ridiculed by the left — both at home
and in mainland Europe — for her uncompromising attitude towards the
Soviet Union, and for the alliance she formed against it with Ronald
Reagan, who was viewed by European socialists as a reckless “cowboy.”
She defied both Labour — which was committed to a policy of unilateral
nuclear disarmament — and the communist sympathizers in the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament to allow the U.S. to station cruise missiles on
British soil.
Ultimately, Thatcher was brought down by divisions within her own
party over Britain’s relationship with Europe, another issue on which
she was ultimately proved right.
She was a keen supporter of the European Union as a free trade organization – indeed, she favored the creation of a transatlantic free trade area
encompassing Europe and the U.S. — but she was strongly opposed to
moves, led by France and Germany, to create a federal European
superstate.
She also presciently opposed the European single currency, warning in 1990:
The single currency will be fatal to the poorer countries because it will devastate their inefficient economies.
The bailouts, bank runs, and riots that we’ve witnessed in the last
few years, as one southern European country after another has been
forced to the brink of economic collapse, have thoroughly vindicated her skepticism. At the time, she was viewed as extreme and misguided by Britain’s political and business establishments.
When Thatcher left 10 Downing Street for the last time as prime minister in November 1990, she said:
We’re very happy that we leave the United Kingdom in a very, very much better state than when we came here 11 and a half years ago.
That was an understatement. As her successor David Cameron said in paying tribute to her yesterday:
She didn’t just lead our country, she saved our country.
He might have added the she also helped to save Eastern Europe, and perhaps the entire continent.
Margaret Thatcher wasn’t right about everything, but she was right
about most things, and everything she did was founded on a love of her
country and her deeply held belief in the decency and potential of its
people. Just as importantly, she showed that the British left was
utterly and dangerously wrong about every major issue of her time; that
is why so many of them hate her.
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