What's your opinion of Margaret Thatcher's time as Prime Minister, was she good or bad for the country?

Answer 1

If anybody can name an industry that Margaret Thatcher shut down I will give them my house! It was the unions that killed our industry!! By the way,somebody previously said that she shut down the coal mines. Well I think that Arthur Scargill was the one who did that and anyway,after nearly ten years in power has Tony Blair reopened them?
Before Margaret Thatcher came into power this country was the sick man of Europe. Remember? She took a knife and cut out the cancer of Socialism.

Answer 2

Thatcher came along at a time when the British Labour movement was actually dead on it's feet. Far from being this powerful force holding the country to ransom the British Labour movement had long ago abdicated its power to the Parliamentary Labour party, which had always done a job for the establishment whenever the Tories fell out of favour with the voters.

The unions were simply focused on fighting localised narrow economic struggles against individual employees. There was no effective independent, united working class political movement for representing workers interests.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in the lack of solidarity for the miners and even between miners during the Miners Strike. Thatcher and her cronies presided over a stagnating British economy and knew that the only way to revive the fortunes of capitalism would be to put the boot into the workers. They had a relatively easy time doing this because of the factors already mentioned. This did allow Britains economy to streamline, at the expense of workers rights, wages and conditions and at the expense of British manufacturing and tertiary sectors. Other economies in the world like the US and Germany were not as backward as Britains, but they too began to feel the pinch once the post war feel good years began to wane and have in their own ways done or are doing what Thatcher did.

Thatcher simply did what was best for British capitalists. We can only watch helplessly as Tony Blair and co take the process forward with impunity. The workers of the world have been defeated and with the failure of the commmunist enterprise across the globe (for reasons too complex to go into here), socialism and left wingers generally have been discredited. The tide will turn, but it may not happen for a long time and by then it may be too late. Thatcher (and her chum Ronald Reagan) was a ruthless capitalist lackey - they were also crazy - now we have Blair and (Bush) no change there then!

Answer 3

Maggie the Thatch destroyed the British way of life more completely than the Luftwaffe ever did. She gave away millions to all her already obscenely rich friends, made everybody greedy and selfish, destroyed the health service, raped the schools, destroyed industry and hated the working class with a vengeance. All in the name of a mad monetarist ideology designed to destroy the workers. (Invented by Keith Joseph after a dyspeptic lunch) Look around parts of Wales and the North, there are 35 year old men and women there who have never had a job in their lives, all down to Thatcherism.
Personally I could quite easily torture her to death extremely slowly. It would be a privelige and pleasure to connect her to the national grid while burning her face off with a welding torch. I would video it and put it on Youtube while doing it as well. If you like I will say what I really mean instead of beating around the bush.

Answer 4

Completely ruined the country and it`s prospects for millions of people.
She dismantled the education system and now we have a dismally ill prepared population who have very little chance of succeeding in the modern world.
House repossessions ?
Beggars ?
Remember the interest rates?

Oh ! If you were educated at a state school in the 80`s you would not understand what interest rates do would you ?
What happened to all the shares that the `public` bought when everything was privatised ? Who has them now ? Not all those members of the public that forked out their hard earned cash, my guess is they are now in the hands of the very rich and powerful.
Yup...we sure had the wool pulled over our eyes didn`t we ?
Rich got much richer, poor got much poorer, the wealth of the country was manipulated away from normal hard working folk and shoved gleefully into the pockets of the super rich and multi-national corporations.
The worst government the UK ever had and I am sure that history will prove it to have been the most corrupt too.
Lied continually and was the archetypal american puppet.

How many millions did her corrupt, warmongering, arms dealing son make ?

Answer 5

She was very strong-willed and had backbone. Her stance over the Falklands was something I always admired her for. Things like the poll tax and the recession in the early 1980s were not exactly her finest moments, but that aside, she was an excellent Prime Minister. Her best ever cabinet minister was Norman Tebbitt. A man who in my opinion would have been a very worthy successor. Coming from a conservative background, I have always been inclined towards the Tories, but as a eurosceptic, have voted UKIP for the past thirteen years. Too many pro-Europeans in the Tory party now.

Answer 6

Margaret Thatcher was a god Prime Minister because she was able to make the UK as a superpower during her time. Diplomacy and economy make UK at par with the US and Russia to which Thatcher used to a maximum.

Answer 7

Defo Bad for the country.

She split the country into 'haves' and 'have nots'.
For a while it was actually considered that "greed is good"-remember the vulgar Yuppies.

Many people in the south of Britain loved her and voted for her as they made pots of money, but her legacy of dividing the country and reducing the social welfare of Britain has put us way behind the standard of living and quality of life of the Scandinavian countries.

Controversially you could argue that she was actually a feminist
as she more than made her way in a male dominated political world.

Unfortunately two generations of kids grew up under this legacy and that is why there is an underlying 'i'm alright jack' selfish attutude in the UK.

For Godfrey...........I hope you still manage to keep hold of your little slice of the empire called your house with the rise in interest rates lol !!

Former RJB Mining and UK Coal chief, Richard Budge has unveiled plans to reopen the Hatfield colliery in Yorkshire, UK by May of next year as a reflection of the revived fortunes in the UK coal industry.

Mr Budge – or King Coal as he’s dubbed due to him once buying up most of the UK coal industry – has taken advantage of continued high international coal prices and governmental concern over energy security by breathing life into the previously mothballed Yorkshire colliery.

Answer 8

Thatcher destroyed British industry, making many of her friends rich in the process.
The effects today are mass-unemployment, seen by the twelve year olds here as being just normal.
A whole generation is on government training schemes and studying for useless degrees because of this woman and her policies.
A small number of people prospered under her despicable regime and with the press telling the stupid English how to vote, we can look forward to more Tory devastation.
The thickos here (most people) want change for the sake of it and their ill-informed opinions of the current government is based on child-like conversations on mobile phones.
And it is they who will suffer most.
And their children beyond them.
How sad.
How awful.

Answer 9

She didn't kill the bloody industry, she just took power away from the unions. That our mining industries died was for completely different reasons. The unions weren't good for British industry, they were just trying to line their own pockets.

Good! A Labour PM would never have contested the Falklands, and I think that war was the best option. The people there wanted to be ruled by Britain, not the invading Argentines, and she helped them.

Answer 10

She was extremely bad for the country. Only the wealthy prospered under her government and she did not have all the family orientated policies that we have today. She did nothing for families and children. She also started the poll tax, she was a vile PM that was completely out of touch with the working class.