One of the most prominent figures of my childhood has died.
Mrs Margaret Thatcher, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979
to 1990 died of a stroke at the age of 87 on the 8th of April, 2013.
By the time of her death, Baroness Thatcher (as she was
officially known) had become something of a recluse in her final years. You
might say calling her senile was an act of kindness.
The Margaret Thatcher that died was far removed from the
Margaret Thatcher I grew up with in the early years that I lived in the UK. Mrs
Thatcher, as she was then known, was THE dominant figure in British politics
and she made her presence felt in European Union (then known as the EEC) and
global meetings.
As a leader, she became known for holding onto positions
that were vastly unpopular at the time. She was loathed in liberal establishments
for appearing ‘unsympathetic’ to the plight of the poor, though she was revered
in business circles for cutting taxes and deregulating things. She was unafraid
to speak her mind – something which a few attributed to the downfall of her
successor.
You could say the extreme feelings that she generated, made
her one of the last politicians to be driven by ideology. The Economist
Newspaper described her as the “Last Victorian,” a politician from an era that
had long gone by.
As the tributes pour in for the departed, “Iron Lady,” there
will undoubtedly be a flurry of editorials about her legacy. I would say that
Baroness Thatcher was responsible for putting the “Great” back into “Great
Britain.”
Let’s start with the obvious. When Mrs Thatcher took over
the UK in 1979, the country was going through a period of social disruption.
The unions, particularly the miners’ union (NUM) lead by Arthur Scargill were
particularly militant (enough to bring down governments). The state controlled
vast chunks that mattered and public services were a mess. The situation was
such that it was impossible to run a small business let alone get rich (one of
the reasons why the second most infamous member of the OCC made a dash to
Africa).
Within a decade of her premiership, Mrs Thatcher had faced
down the unions, slashed taxes and regulations. Entrepreneurs like Lord’s
Hanson and White of Hanson PLC and Sir James Goldsmith became household names
both in the UK and the USA. The disruption that such men caused to the
established order helped unleash a bout of entrepreneurial activity on both
sides of the Atlantic.
The best part about Mrs Thatcher’s creation of prosperity
was the fact that it came from creating greater social mobility. In the words
of Uncle Nick (A Brit who married my mother’s cousin, Auntie Terresa), “Thatcherism
has made people in England work harder.” If you study the Sunday Times rich
list of people in Britain, the number of ‘self-made’ men is growing and crowding
out the Old Money of the aristocracy.
The Thatcher era for the UK was not just about economics or
social change. It was about the victory of a set of ideas. The idea that
individuals were responsible for their own lives rather than the state
triumphed over the idea that the State knew best. This is most visible in the
fact that the Labour Party under Tony Blair only became electable after they
moved towards the Thatcherite point of view. The idea of privitisation has
become nearly universal.
You could even say that the current mess that the UK is in,
is Mrs Thatcher’s belief that free markets are the answer to everything. The “Big
Bang” in the 1980s made the City of London a global financial centre. This
created jobs and wealth. However, you could argue that things were brought to
an extreme. The UK became so dependent on finance that everything else was lost
and there was very little to the UK other than the dreams of financiers to make
more money out of nothing.
While there is a case for all of these arguments, Mrs
Thatcher’s legacy should, on the whole, be considered a decent one. Under her leadership,
Britain went from being a poor country run by a group of blind bureaucrats to a
country that encourages innovation and rewards entrepreneurship from wherever
you may come from. Surely that has to be considered progress.
