MARGARET THATCHER – A QUICK SUMMARY
Did she make the country? Or did she break the country?
Some are for Thatcher while others are against her; and they want to let the world know it by celebrating her death. But is this not too far and morbid? Maybe the choices she made weren’t all right but did she not take hold of our country and save it?
Here below I have listed some of Thatcher’s good points and some of her bad points, I’ll let you have a read and decide on your own opinion.
GOOD POINTS • Privatisation of British Gas, BT and many other state run industries since this then allowed competition within those sectors and therefore created economic growth. • Encouraged the free market economy – She let capitalism and innovation thrive. She said ‘Every regulation represents a restriction of liberty, every regulation has a cost’ • Falklands War in 1982 when Argentina invaded the Falklands. Margaret sent a strong and swift military response which led to our quick victory. • Housing Act 1980 which allowed council tenants to buy their own home cheaply. • She also introduced core curriculum in schools which included English, Maths and Science
• She confronted the unions head-on when their industries were shrinking and had no growth prospects. She sat out the miner’s strike until the mining union ran out of money for any more striker’s pay. Ex-miners might argue that this is a bad point but for the country as a whole it saved wasting lots of money as most mines were state owned and had very little coal left.
BAD POINTS • Housing Act 1980 didn’t build new council houses to replace the ones that were bought off, so there has been a shortage ever since. • Poll Tax – She wanted to get rid of council tax which is a tax that each household pays, and instead tried to introduce a poll tax which is where each individual would pay tax. She would have let the councils set their rates which meant some households would end up paying a third more. This never happened because her own party rebelled against this and forced her to resign before the Poll Tax Act could ever be passed.
• Apartheid – She wasn’t seen to do enough to prevent Apartheid. She allowed the pro-Apartheid South African president to visit Britain and described Nelson Mandela as a terrorist. In later years she condemned what was going on in South Africa but was not seen to have done enough earlier on.
By Kylie Slevin
