We Need More Leaders Like Thatcher

On the occasion of Baroness Thatcher’s funeral, Enza Ferreri offers some thoughts on some of the Iron Lady’s character traits that are sorely needed in Britain today.

We Need More Leaders Like Thatcher
by Enza Ferreri

Among the people who complained about the cost of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral (and on this I happen to agree with them, especially in these financially hard times) are also some of the protesters, the “hate mob” at the funeral, who in fact increased those costs by indirectly forcing more security measures.

This tells you a lot about the Leftists. In particular it exposes the difference between what they say and what they do.

This funeral cost duplicity is in perfect parallel with the hypocrisy of claiming to be compassionate and wanting to help working-class people while implementing all the policies that harm them, whereas Maggie Thatcher actually benefitted them.

As former Tory minister Kenneth Clarke recalled during the TV debate “Question Time”, it would not have been possible to make those necessary changes introduced by Thatcher in a different, softer, more compromising way. It had already been attempted by as many as three previous prime ministers — Callaghan, Wilson, Heath — without success.

Their opponents’ position was too entrenched, rigid and unwilling to compromise to be able to allow that. Changes could occur only in the manner that Lady Thatcher enforced them, due to the opposition’s inflexible stance.

Liberal Democrat politician Menzies Campbell reminisced that, during the era before Thatcher, bodies were left unburied, people went to sleep at night without knowing whether the next morning they would have water, electricity, gas: all this because of the continuous, interminable strikes.

Kenneth Clarke, in the UK network Channel 4’s documentary Margaret: Death of a Revolutionary, has a colourful way to express how super powerful trade unions were: they grabbed the country by its cojones and, when they wanted something, they squeezed more and more until they got it.

The UK had become a socialist country. Pre-Thatcher, when it was called “the sick man of Europe”, Britain was the country with the highest level of nationalization of its economy, and consequently one of the poorest, outside the communist block. It was on the brink of social and economic ruin.

Almost everything had been nationalized: telecommunications, steel, energy, water, electricity, gas, mines; the car, bus and lorry industries; aircraft manufacturing, airports, transport, travel companies such as Thomas Cook. A man could spend his whole day without ever being in contact with private industry, but only using state-owned or state-manufactured products and services.

The state-based economy was bringing the country to the brink of collapse. Founded on monopoly, in the absence of competition, there was no incentive to win the customers over and nobody was held accountable for making (or not making) the system efficient, productive and profitable. Managers did not worry if there were problems. If companies lost money instead of making it, no sweat: that’s what taxpayers’ money was for, to compensate for the losses.

Maggie changed all that, privatized industries, closed down those that were over subsidized, unprofitable and damaging to the economy. As a result:

According to the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), the state companies went from costing the Treasury an average of £300m each a year in subsidies to contributing between £3.3bn and £5.8bn a year in corporation tax from 1987 onwards.

Political consensus had been tried and failed. As we know, Baroness Thatcher stood up to the quasi-omnipotent unions and won. British society, including the working class, in the long term was better off because of her interventions.

Thatcherism worked. Take one (of course imperfect) measure: ONS figures suggest the economy grew by 3.03 per cent a year in the 1950s, 3.18 per cent a year in the 1960s, 2.07 per cent in the 1970s, accelerating back to 3.09 per cent in the 1980s under Thatcher, before expanding by 2.77 per cent in the 1990s (when her legacy largely remained) and by 1.77 per cent in the 2000s.

The report of the LSE growth commission is emphatic: by the late 1970s, the UK had been left behind, with US GDP per capita 40 per cent higher than Britain’s and the top European economies 10-15 per cent ahead. By 2007, however, UK GDP per capita had overtaken France’s and Germany’s and reduced significantly the gap with the US, a position which hasn’t really changed since, despite the US and Germany’s better performance over the past couple of years.

In the days before Maggie Thatcher there was no social mobility, society was not meritocratic and did not let individuals express their full potential.

If the father was a plumber, the son would be too, and the grandsons, and so on for all generations.

If a working class person had ambitions, s/he could do nothing, there was no way for him/her to climb the social ladder out of the housing estate where this person was born. In fact, the Left objected to aspirational working class people, considering them arrogant for wanting to break the uniformity of egalitarianism.

But after the advent of the Iron Lady people from low background with entrepreneurial skills could and did become rich, including in the City, whose doors she opened to everyone, beyond dynasties and old school ties.

There is no doubt that not just Britain, but every country needs many, many more politicians like Thatcher, now — it would seem — more than ever, but the question that is foremost in my mind is: if Maggie were Prime Minister now, would she deal with the immigration, and particularly the Muslim, issue the way she dealt with union leaders, strikes and Left opposition?

Nobody can know the answer to that, given the different times, circumstances and prevailing ideologies: no-one, for instance, called her “racist”, which these days is a cardinal sin, an anathema, a fate worse than death, at most she was a “milk snatcher” which does not sound half as bad.

But what we do know is that we need a political leader who will address Islam, the seemingly intractable “unions” issue of today, the way she addressed them.

Enza Ferreri is an Italian-born Philosophy graduate and writer living in London. She blogs at www.enzaferreri.blogspot.co.uk.

For her previous articles and translations, see the Enza Ferreri Archives.

13 thoughts on “We Need More Leaders Like Thatcher

  1. Ah, socialism, the promise of the greatness that somehow never appears! Thatcher is of a shunned breed — the economic realist. She got powerful on surprise; Great Britain didn’t understand markets by that point, she seemed revolutionary in that way.

    You either vote for common sense, clear thinking type or for that perpetually appearing new guy who promises you the world. The first type has been pretty much crushed politically. Nothing left now but a skinny socialist beauty contest. Oh, they each say a bit of conservative economics from time to time to pretend they are serious, while they fritter away your economic base and future.

    The fickle, dumbed down, televisionized human being will ever vote socialist. What was the point of fighting in the World Wars? I think I forgot.

    • Where do I start? Yes, the trades unions had too much power in Britain but the legacy of Mrs Thatcher is now a low wage economy. And she did nothing to stop the ever-closer union that is the EU. She knew what was in all those treaties and could have refused to sign them. And she conned us on immigration to get our votes and then did nothing. And her greatest achievement in her eyes was Tony Blair, the liar, who is now a multimillionaire socialist. He who let in 3m third world immigrants in ten years.

      As for nationalisation, most people in this country want the railways renationalised. The French nationalised railways are much better than ours. And we are being ripped off right left and centre by our privatised utility companies whilst the nationalised French EDF seems to have money to build nuclear power stations here. Yes, she fought the Falklands War but only because she left things to drift down there. The Falklands should have been garrisoned and then there would have been no need for a war.

      As for social mobility, the grammar schools were the driving power behind this. She herself benefited from a grammar school education, which was open to all from the poorest of the poor who passed the eleven plus. Her party persisted with comprehensives which have done the poorest no good at all, whilst benefiting the public schools as people who could would get their children out of the comprehensives ( silly head in the clouds Shirley Williams was responsible for them).

      True the unions needed tackling. But she has left a greedy uncaring society as her idea of libertarianism means the devil take the hindmost. She thought that wealth would trickle down the poorest. It didn’t, the rich kept it. Many of those who bought their own council houses sold them on and they are now in the hands of unscrupulous private landlords and we do not have enough social housing. Her brand of libertarianism and deregulation has bankrupted the western world.

      Too much socialism like too much capitalism is bad. Most British want a mixed economy with some nationalisation and some socialism. Most people here agree that she made of Britain a very uncaring society. But she said there is no such thing as society, just rootless consumers. She was a libertarian globalist who turned Britain into a very heartless place. But then she did not have much of a heart herself.

      • “Too much socialism like too much capitalism is bad.” Yes, indeed– save us from the ideological purists on both sides of the political spectrum.

        Most of the reforms here in Australia were less divisive as they initiated by Labor governments with the general cooperation of the unions, however, no government, Conservative or Labor, was crazy enough to “de-regulate” the banks on the Anglo-American model.

        “..we are being ripped off right left and centre by our privatised utility companies..” Unfortunately the privatisation mania seems to be universal.

        In contrast to the promise of more efficient power generation due to the magic of privatisation, utility prices have doubled and competition led to such lunacies as the duplication of cable TV lines and lower maintenance standards on electricity networks.

      • Stop using “anonymous” as a handle.

        Use any number of invented Internet nic’s.

        It’s impossible for anyone to properly respond in a blog thread to “anonymous” because posters like you are too common — and not unique.

        It doesn’t matter if the nic is a non-word, either. Just use a handle that’s at least unique enough to have pointing power — and hopefully shorter than “anonymous” which is no fun to type, either.

        As it stands, most readers are skipping past anything you post — merely BECAUSE you’ve used “anonymous” as your ‘name.’

        I know I do.

        [redacted]

        And, yes, I didn’t read a word you wrote, would you if the tables were turned? I thought not.

      • Sadly, you chose to be completely anonymous, however, I agree totally with what you have written and would add that many commentators on her “success” are foreigners and did not have to live under “Thatcherism” or face its present day fall out.

      • Anonymous,
        There is some truth in what you say, but your criticisms of Thatcher lack perspective and appear to fault her for not fixing everything.

        Rather than go into boring detail I’ll summarise with this example:
        much better to be freely complaining about the smell of [excrement] and have a chance of doing something about it, than to be ideologically forced to drown to death in [excrement] with no hope.

  2. “If a working class person had ambitions, s/he could do nothing, there was no way for him/her to climb the social ladder out of the housing estate where this person was born”

    That isn’t actually true as the grammar schools took children from any background and gave them a first rate education. The only selection criterion was academic ability as determined by the 11-plus examination. The system was far from perfect, but it did take children from a poor background and offer them a means of climbing the social ladder.

    Socialist interference in education, starting in the late 1960s and continuing until this day, has resulted in the closure of nearly all such schools in Britain and their replacement by comprehensives offering a greatly inferior education to their pupils. So a child born on a poor housing estate today is actually far worse off than they would have been forty or fifty years ago in terms of their chances of getting a decent education.

    It is perfectly true that the left objected to the aspirations of working people. One of Mrs Thatcher’s most popular policies was selling council houses, which enabled millions of tenants to become homeowners. The left hated the idea, perhaps partly out of self interest as homeowners were far less likely to vote for them than council tenants. Many formerly rock solid Labour estates started voting Conservative, particularly in southern and central England.

    Mrs Thatcher connected easily with the aspirations of normal people, perhaps reflecting her own very average background as the daughter of a grocer. She freed them from the tyranny of militant, communist dominated unions by insisting on ballots before strikes could be called, cut taxes so they could keep more of their earnings, reduced inflation so those earnings weren’t being constantly eroded, and gave millions the right to buy their homes. . They were hooked and the left had lost millions of its voters. Even more importantly the whole reason for the left’s existence had been brought into question. If the right could better satisfy the aspirations of the working class then what need was there for the left?

  3. I appreciate greatly the informative articles in this blog. Conservativism is taking a beating worldwide. It is nice to know not everyone has thrown in the towel and gone over to complete apathy and defeat.

  4. Thatcher was not a Conservative. When she came to power she told the Tories they were going to be following a Hayekian model. In 1960 Hayek wrote a powerful essay called “Why I am not a Conservative”. The bottom line: conservatism has no project, and it will simply act as a brake on those who do have a project: the socialists.

    The true Tories hated Thatcher. As last week’s Channel 4 documentary pointed out, these were the kind of Tories who were happy to side with (socialist) fascism in the 1930s. They want to rule. They are not interested in freedom or the market. They are interested in power at any cost. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/margaret-death-of-a-revolutionary

    Following the ousting of Thatcher, the Tories returned to what Hayek, von Mises, Burnham all said of them in the early 1960s: the Tories are socialists, they believe in state control, and the bigger the state the better.

    • Conservatives supported Hitler, whom they did not see as a socialist but an anti-communist, because, like the aristocracy on the Continent, they saw him as a way of stopping communism sweeping across Europe and sweeping them away in the same way it had their Russian cousins. After the General Strike in 1928 even here in Britain there was a fear of communism taking hold. A bit strange to call them socialists then. Like most British they did not want the unbridled capitalism of Libertarianism but a mixture that would ensure a caring society. The aristocracy always felt a duty towards those beneath them and always treated them better than the greedy grabbers with new money who, of course, thrive under Libertarianism. Thatcher left the north as much of a wasteland as did William the Conqueror. But then the north has always been more caring than the south of England.

      • Hitler was primarily an anti-communist having seen what they were doing to the Russian people, and also of course being aware of the roots of communism.
        Britain was floundering in the 1970s under union disruption,
        Maggie went in and sorted them out, but she went too far in the mass-privatisations. She certainly should not have
        instigated the buying of council houses, that left most councils with nowhere near enough council properties to house the really needy such as the disabled and elderly. Most councils have not caught up and with mass immigration
        never will.

      • “Conservatives supported Hitler” if you mean Arthur Neville Chamberlain – he did not ‘support’ the national socialist labor party of Germany, he merely appeaed it – in an attempt to avoid an outright war.
        Churchill – of the Liberal party – was 100% against the NSDAP.
        While many claim that Hitler only used the labour party as a tool against communism, being a fervent catholic and therefore might be considered right-wing somehow – the fact remains that the majority of the nazi party (NSDAP) were socialists and religious.
        The fact that most right wing, coservatives today are religious, does not mean that just because Hitler was religious he was also right-wing.

  5. Regardless of all the obfuscating about Thatcher and her policies. They stood Britain in better stead than it is now. Bliar Blair and his cronies have seen the end of much that represented the British spirit – letting in thousands of immigrants – most of whom just came to enjoy the welfare state – letting others work whilst THEY reaped the rewards. The cancer that is Islam is now spreading like wildfire – they breed like rabbits – most of them abhor the work ethic – and are intent on bringing about the Islamisation of Britain. This won’t be hard as there are no leaders- like Thatcher – to turn back the tide.
    The worst thing Britain ever did was join the EU. It has been divested of its sovereignty and much of what we held dear.
    It should have stayed as an associate partner. After all, Britain buys more from the EU than the other way round.

  6. I come belatedly to this thread.

    Thatcher was a disaster for Britain and her legacy (especially Blair and his slavish imitator, Cameron) is toxic. She was no friend of traditional conservatives or nationalists, although neoconservatives will obviously find her congenial.

    Regarding the economic situation that she allegedly remedied, I suggest that you study the relevant writings of Robin Ramsay, a trenchant and well-informed Old Labour critic of New Labour and all its works.

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