The legacy of Thatcherism.

 

Margaret Thatcher

I'm inclined to agree that everything that's shit in Britain today, stems from the Thatcher period, because I lived through that period and experienced it. It certainly became more difficult to get a job after she became PM. Privatizations, selling off the utilities, financial deregulation, the poll tax, deindustrialization, exporting jobs overseas, anti-union laws, all characterised 'Thatcherism'. 

A generation of young people were forced onto the YTS program and there were fewer apprenticeships. She wanted to privatize the NHS but she knew it would be political suicide for the Tories. Her government never really cracked down on the welfare state or people on state benefits. Many older workers, like redundant miners, were transferred onto Incapacity Benefit. It was George Osborne who said that New Labour had shown how cracking down on welfare claimants was popular with British voters. He said had they realised how popular it was, they would have done it during the Thatcher years.

The Tory grandees didn't always agree with Maggie and they looked down their nose at the greengrocer's daughter from Grantham. There were four people who had a lot of influence over Maggie Thatcher and they were Sir Keith Joseph, the economists Alan Walters and Friedrich von Hayek, and a former communist, called Alfred Sherman, who had fought in the Spanish Civil War. Hayek was never part of her government and neither was Sherman, but the former communist, was one of the early architects of what became known as "Thatcherism."