08 April, 2013

Reddit on Thatcher

Ex-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has died following a stroke : worldnews: She implemented policies, based purely on a right-wing ideology, which caused massive unemployment and poverty, whilst at the same time leading a government which demonised the unemployed as work-shy scroungers.

Whole communities were destroyed when their main employers closed down, either as an indirect result of the government's laissez-faire policies, or were directly closed down by the government, i.e. most of the country's coal mines. Through all of this her government really didn't seem to care about the people, the human misery involved. See unemployed = work-shy scroungers, above.

She created an us-and-them mentality, whereby those who disagreed were "the enemy within". There is much evidence that the police were deliberately politicised and used to suppress opposition. Having been part of that opposition myself, I can say that it felt like we were nearing a police state.

It's difficult now to really give a flavour of how things were back then; it was a deeply divided society. For those of us on the opposite side of the political spectrum it wasn't just a political difference, it was a fight for the soul of our country, which was being sold off to the highest bidder. And the government used all the powers it had, the press barons, the spin doctors, the police, to beat down the opposition.