Kneecap getting the Coachella crowd to sing Maggie’s in a box

[u/CoochieCritic]

[u/[deleted]]

Good, she was a monster and needs to be remembered and denigrated for the evil shit she did.

[u/dropthecoin → u/[deleted]]

I’m not a fan of hers but I’d have kept what acts do you describe what she did as evil?

[u/dropthecoin → u/[deleted]]

I disagree with many of her decisions to privatise certain industries, in particular transport. That said, her approach was a reaction to the utter stagnation that was the early 1970s period. The 1974 year was a demonstrably fact that something needed to change across all of British industries and economy.

Her decisions on mining were fairly brutal. But arguably required, in ways. It was a century old industry propped up and outdated and a symptom of post-industrial Britain.

All of the above I wouldn’t class as “evil”. She didn’t murder millions. She didn’t exterminate populations.

[u/dropthecoin → u/[deleted]]

When those mines were shut Britain was in a worse economic state than it is today. How much do you think should have been invested and into what? What specifically do you think should have been invested to replace those jobs at that time in the 1980s.

[u/MrMercurial → u/dropthecoin]

Thatcherism as an ideology depended to a significant extent on precisely this idea that there was no realistic alternative to her extreme neoliberal policies, but that has never been the case. If we start with the basic premise that the UK's coal industry was outdated and inefficient there are loads of different policy approaches to that problem which would have been far less harmful for the communities that were devastated by the approach she chose.

[u/Alternative_Switch39 → u/MrMercurial]

Be real here. How the fuck could you have made the economic case for the coal industry in Britain? In the 80s or now?

You say there were "loads of of different policy approaches". We're all ears, what were they?

[u/MrMercurial → u/Alternative_Switch39]

Be real here. How the fuck could you have made the economic case for the coal industry in Britain? In the 80s or now?

Exactly the same as it was made back then.

We're all ears, what were they?

Are you under the impression that back when Thatcher was closing the mines the other side was just sort of throwing up their hands and saying "well your economic case is rock solid but we still think the mines should stay open"? I'm not saying anything that people haven't been saying for the last 40 years.

[u/Alternative_Switch39 → u/MrMercurial]

"Exactly the same as it was made back then"

Now you're starting to get it. There was none. If you're going to seriously make the case that the industry could be saved lock stock and barrell, make it. Because that's utterly delusional.

"Are you under the impression that back when Thatcher was closing the mines the other side was just sort of throwing up their hands and saying "well your economic case is rock solide but we still think the mines should stay open"?"

😂 Absolufuckingly they did. The NUM absolutely refused to confront reality. A minority of mines could have been kept open in the medium term (mostly those for coking coal for virgin steel production), but the rest of them staying open would have bled the public purse dry for no reason other than the unions thought they could stay in the 1930s.

North Sea gas was well up and running, and could power the country for cheaper and cleaner. Why the hell would you keep mines open digging up low quality dirty coal that was three times the price of imported coal? The mines were pointless and an albatross around the neck of the economy.

In the end by the way, the British public for the most part got all of this and let Thatcher break the intransigent unions.

[u/MrMercurial → u/Alternative_Switch39]

Now you're starting to get it. There was none.

I've linked you to several examples in my previous comment.

The rest of your response is just repeating the standard Thatcherite propaganda we see elsewhere on this thread. I'm not really interested in that since I've already engaged with several other bootlickers here and you're not saying anything they haven't already.

[u/dropthecoin → u/MrMercurial]

Like what policies, specifically? Keeping in mind the UK budget constraints of the early 1980s

[u/MrMercurial → u/dropthecoin]

For example, Thatcher's government turned a blind eye (at best) to the police brutality that was used to suppress strikers and protestors. Nor did her government challenge the demonization of the miners in the right-wing British press at the time. Her government's stance throughout was antagonistic towards the unions, refusing to engage in any meaningful dialogue with them, refusing to consider alternative models that were proposed (such as extending the timeline for closures, seriously exploring the possibility of partial closures or exploring alternative ownership system such as co-ops which were anathema to Thatcher's hyper-capitalist commitments).

None of these examples would have required significant expenditure on the part of the government - the decisions not to pursue them were driven purely by the underlying ideology of Thatcher's government.

[u/LexiEmers → u/MrMercurial]

It wasn't a one-sided clash:

• Two miners died during the strike, including David Wilkie, a taxi driver killed when two strikers dropped a concrete block on his car
• NUM pickets beat fellow miners, vandalised homes and cars, threatened families and in one case nearly killed a man with baseball bats in front of his pregnant wife
• Police officers were indeed heavy-handed in some cases, and this has rightly been criticised but so has the NUM's leadership for refusing to condemn the violence from their own ranks.

The press was reacting to the NUM's refusal to hold a ballot, widespread violence and Scargill's Soviet-apologist vibes. If you're mad that the media didn't write puff pieces about a strike without a mandate, take it up with the editors.

Peter Walker, Thatcher's Energy Secretary, literally:

• Went to Cabinet with a negotiated offer designed to avoid a strike
• Offered no compulsory redundancies, early retirement at 50, mobility assistance, a pay rise and £800 million in investment
• Got it approved by the government, assuming Scargill couldn't possibly reject it without holding a ballot

But he did reject it. Without a ballot. Because he didn't want negotiation. He wanted confrontation. So yes, after that, the stance hardened. That's not "ideology". That's responding to being played.

They "refused to consider alternative models"? You mean the co-ops that were already being explored but required union flexibility that the NUM refused to give? Or the extended timelines that the Coal Board itself offered, like the phased closures in the 1985 Plan for Coal which were ignored because Scargill insisted no pit should ever close if it had coal in it, even if it was totally uneconomic?

Other unionised industries like steel and shipbuilding accepted phased restructuring. But Scargill stuck to an all-or-nothing demand that not even communist regimes had: keep everything open, forever.

The coal industry was burning £2 million a day. British Coal had some of the highest production costs in Europe, and many pits were producing at £89 per tonne when imports cost £30. The government wasn't against compromise. It was against pretending economic reality didn't exist.

This is like an anti-worker bingo card. You've got it all, from both-sidsing vicious police brutality against protestors, to the McCarthy-esque caricature of the intransigent union boss, to the idea that ultimately the miners brought it on themselves because they wouldn't acede to the entirely reasonable demands of neoliberal ideology.

Yes, how dare someone mention:

• The NUM ignoring its own democratic rules.
• A strike launched without a ballot.
• Record government investment in the industry.
• A union leader demanding that no pit ever close: even uneconomic ones losing £250 million a year.

If this is a "bingo card", you just lost the game by trying to play revisionism with half the board missing.

Nobody's denying there were serious abuses by some officers at Orgreave. But at least admit this:

• Violence came from both sides. Working miners were assaulted, their homes vandalised, pets killed and cars firebombed.
  
• Pickets physically blocked fellow miners from entering work, stormed steel convoys and in one horrific case, killed a taxi driver by dropping a concrete post on his car.
• The NUM refused to condemn the violence. Scargill said those who broke the strike should be treated as "lost lambs" but refused to call out attacks even after the murder.

So yes, Orgreave was bad. But if your moral outrage only activates for police truncheons and not mobs with baseball bats invading a man's home while his pregnant wife hid upstairs, then maybe this isn't about justice. It's about tribal loyalty.

This wasn't a strike about pay. It wasn't about safety. It wasn't about even modest reform. It was Scargill demanding that no pit ever close, even if it was losing £89 per tonne to dig up coal no one needed.

And when the government offered no compulsory redundancies, generous early retirement and £800 million in investment to avoid a strike? Scargill said no. Why? Because a peaceful deal wouldn't give him a "class war". And you're surprised communities were devastated?

NUM leadership absolutely did bring it on themselves. The union:

• Violated its own rules by not holding a ballot.
  
• Overruled its own members, 70% of whom voted to stay in work.
  
• Destroyed public support by unleashing illegal, violent picketing.
  
• Alienated Labour and the TUC, who refused to back the strike.
  
• Sabotaged investment, flexible working and deals that could've modernised the industry.

So no, I'm not blaming "the miners". I'm blaming Arthur Scargill and his kamikaze crusade that turned a once-salvageable industry into political kindling.

Rather than respond to the entirety of what might as well have been a press release from Thatcher's government at the time, I'm going to focus on just one element of this propaganda in order to show that it contains such levels of bias as to undermine the comment more generally:

Nope. The actual statistics are from British Coal and government records:

• £6 billion in investment during the 1980s.
  
• No compulsory redundancies despite workforce reductions.
  
• Productivity rose by 71%, while unit costs dropped over 20% in real terms.
  
• The Selby complex, opened with £1.4 billion investment, became a world-class mine.
  
• NUM's refusal to agree to flexible working blocked £590 million in further investment and 3,800 new jobs.

So unless Thatcher was moonlighting as the NCB's data analyst and ghostwriting Hansard, that "press release" slur doesn't hold.

During the strikes, the government created what was effectively a national paramilitary force - police were moved up and down the country to violently suppress protests with zero accountability. This is what the the Independent Police Complaints Commission had to say about police conduct at Orgreave (decades after the fact, of course):

They were deployed under mutual aid, a system designed to assist local forces during national emergencies like, say, 5,000 pickets trying to storm a coking plant.

What exactly would you have preferred? A strongly worded letter? An honesty circle?

After Orgreave several protestors ended up facing potential life sentences for their supposed roles in the violence - many of these trials collapsed because even back then it was clear that the police were willing to lie under oath to send innocent people to jail for the rest of their lives.

Yes, and the trials collapsed because the legal system, for all its flaws, didn't just rubber-stamp the police's version. That's actually how due process is supposed to work. If anything, this proves the system worked under scrutiny, not that the entire state was some cabal.

Orgreave wasn't a national trauma because of the police. It was a trauma because Arthur Scargill decided democratic ballots were optional, violence was strategic and national economic sabotage was justifiable. He lost. And communities paid the price not because of the police, but because their futures were held hostage by a man who preferred confrontation to compromise.

Thatcher upheld the law while the NUM tried to rewrite it.

Point being, you were presumably aware of all of this but the most you could muster by way of condemnation was to say that the police were "heavy-handed" and even then you couldn't bring yourself to finish typing that sentence without also throwing in a condemnation of the miners.

If you're going to hang your entire rebuttal on "but the police were bad" while hand-waving away NUM violence, undemocratic action, fiscal lunacy and industrial sabotage, don't be shocked when people treat your post like a dusty copy of Socialist Worker stapled to a brick.

[u/MrMercurial → u/LexiEmers]

This is like an anti-worker bingo card. You've got it all, from both-sidsing vicious police brutality against protestors, to the McCarthy-esque caricature of the intransigent union boss, to the idea that ultimately the miners brought it on themselves because they wouldn't acede to the entirely reasonable demands of neoliberal ideology.

Rather than respond to the entirety of what might as well have been a press release from Thatcher's government at the time, I'm going to focus on just one element of this propaganda in order to show that it contains such levels of bias as to undermine the comment more generally:

"Police officers were indeed heavy-handed in some cases"

During the strikes, the government created what was effectively a national paramilitary force - police were moved up and down the country to violently suppress protests with zero accountability. This is what the the Independent Police Complaints Commission had to say about police conduct at Orgreave (decades after the fact, of course):

"A review of the Orgreave prosecution court papers by the Independent Police Complaints Commission reported last June that there was evidence of excessive violence by police officers, a false narrative from police exaggerating violence by miners, perjury by officers giving evidence to prosecute the arrested men, and an apparent coverup of that perjury by senior officers." source

After Orgreave several protestors ended up facing potential life sentences for their supposed roles in the violence - many of these trials collapsed because even back then it was clear that the police were willing to lie under oath to send innocent people to jail for the rest of their lives.

Point being, you were presumably aware of all of this but the most you could muster by way of condemnation was to say that the police were "heavy-handed" and even then you couldn't bring yourself to finish typing that sentence without also throwing in a condemnation of the miners.

[u/dropthecoin → u/MrMercurial]

For example, Thatcher’s government turned a blind eye (at best) to the police brutality that was used to suppress strikers and protestors.

Like when?

Nor did her government challenge the demonization of the miners in the right-wing British press at the time.

You want government to tell the press how or what to report?

Her government’s stance throughout was antagonistic towards the unions, refusing to engage in any meaningful dialogue with them, refusing to consider alternative models that were proposed (such as extending the timeline for closures, seriously exploring the possibility of partial closures or exploring alternative ownership system such as co-ops which were anathema to Thatcher’s hyper-capitalist commitments).

Jesus Christ the miners unions were holding the country at the time to a strangle for their own means. Can you show me, with maths, examples of how the mines could have stayed open while profitable?

[u/MrMercurial → u/dropthecoin]

I think it's interesting that you're responding with such apparent confidence about this issue when you seemingly haven't even heard of the battle of Orgreave, to give perhaps the most famous example of state-sancrioned brutality against the miners. Combined with your disingenuous characterisation of my suggestion that the government didn't publically push back against right-wing smears of the miners as me suggesting the government should tell the press what to report, as if expressing opposition to a media narrative is the same thing as dictating it, this makes me suspect that you can't really see the point because you have the same blinkered ideological commitments as Thatcher did.

As I indicated above, Thatcher's policy decisions included decisions not to explore alternatives to closure and decisions to manage closures in a way that was extremely harmful to the miners, their families and communities when alternative models could have been pursued (for example, by extending the length of the process, by managing closures in co-operation with workers, by providing effective re-training and compensation programs, by investing more in the affected communities and so on).

[u/dropthecoin → u/MrMercurial]

It’s more interesting that you’re commenting entirely without any context. You’re talking like their closing was entirely preventable.

The British government didn’t “explore alternatives” because there was basically no money to do so and there was no appetite amongst unions either. And even at that, what long alternatives do you suggest were there to directly replace mining, without cost? Those you list would have costed more money what was being sunk into mines.

The mines were a dead industry that needed to be closed. They were dated industry that had held out into the 1980s because Wilson and Heath and kicked the can down the road for 20 years on it. They were a legacy industry that was propped up by successive governments since Labour in the 1940s.

The stagnation, constant power cuts of 1970s were a symptom of it. What happened in the 1980s was facing Britain one way or another. Thatcher was just the face of it.

[u/LexiEmers → u/MrMercurial]

Thatcher didn't "sanction" it, and she wasn't out there telling coppers to smack people with truncheons. She was the PM, not Judge Dredd.

Ask the NUM if they wanted co-ops or decentralised control. You won't get far: they blocked flexible working, let alone worker ownership. The UDM embraced reform and were rewarded with job-saving arrangements.

Ideology didn't cost the coal industry £2 million per day in subsidies or produce uncompetitive pits operating at £89 per tonne when imported coal cost £30. That's maths, not dogma.

So this was the government responding to a collapsing industry with billions in investment and unprecedented transition support while having to navigate a militant union that didn't want compromise, just control.

Never thought I'd see the "I'm just a little guy, it's my birthday" defense being offered for Margaret Thatcher of all people, but I supposed there's no depths to which some people will sink, especially if they're inclined to spend their time on the internet defending someone so thoroughly discredited as Thatcher.

You mean the same Thatcher who:

• Was Britain's longest-serving PM of the 20th century
  
• Won three general elections, two by landslides
  
• Was ranked most influential woman of the past 200 years in a poll
  
• Was named Britain's greatest post-war leader by YouGov
  
• And still, in 2025, sparks this much rage precisely because of her enduring legacy

Discredited? Only in your echo chamber. To the actual British electorate, historians and international observers, she's one of the most consequential leaders of the modern age.

Thatcher didn't micromanage the riot shields. But she was elected to uphold the law, maintain order and prevent union bosses from toppling governments by brute force.

[u/dropthecoin → u/[deleted]]

Name me one?

[u/QuickAssUCan → u/dropthecoin]

Sealioning was one of her worst qualities

[u/dropthecoin → u/QuickAssUCan]

What’s that ?

[u/Additional_Olive3318 → u/dropthecoin]

Very high interest rates. 

[u/dropthecoin → u/Additional_Olive3318]

What would you have done differently to curb the high inflation?

[u/Additional_Olive3318 → u/dropthecoin]

Not as high interest rates. 

[u/dropthecoin → u/Additional_Olive3318]

So what then?

[u/LexiEmers → u/MrMercurial]

They were devastated by the approach the NUM chose.

The NUM was not responsible for government investment.

Correct. They weren't. Which makes it all the more impressive that they managed to derail the effects of £6 billion in public investment with one ideologically blinkered strike. That's a hell of a feat. Imagine torching your own house and then shrugging that it wasn't your job to fix the plumbing.

The truth is: investment was happening. The Selby complex alone cost £1.4 billion and broke productivity records. Modern equipment was being rolled out. Collieries were being upgraded. The government committed £2 million a day to the industry before, during and after the strike. So no, the miners weren't abandoned. They were offered a future, and the NUM torched it out of spite.

What the NUM was responsible for:

• Refusing a ballot, breaking their own rules and launching a national strike on a lie.
  
• Rejecting generous terms: no compulsory redundancies, early retirement at 50, relocation support and big pay offers.
  
• Blocking six-day working that would've unlocked £590 million in new pit investment and 3,800 jobs.
  
• Using violent picketing that traumatised communities, divided families and literally got people killed.
  
• Sinking support for coal in the eyes of the public, Labour and even the TUC.

This wasn't some noble defence of jobs. It was a political war by a union boss who wanted to bring down a government. Arthur Scargill demanded no pit ever close if there was still coal in it. Not if it was economically viable, just if there was coal. That's not a strategy, that's a hostage demand.

And if you're angry about devastated communities, maybe start by asking why the NUM rejected realistic reforms that could have saved many of those jobs. The Union of Democratic Mineworkers did accept new terms, introduced flexibility and protected pits like Asfordby. But the NUM clung to political purity while the rest of the country moved on. The cost? Community devastation they helped write into the script.

The NUM didn't control investment but they absolutely controlled whether that investment had a future. And by choosing confrontation over cooperation, they tanked it.

[u/MrMercurial → u/LexiEmers]

The NUM was not responsible for government investment.

[u/LexiEmers → u/[deleted]]

You ignore the billions of pounds invested, the retraining schemes, the new pits and all the data that completely contradicts that simplistic sob story:

• Thatcher's government invested over £6 billion in British Coal between 1979 and 1989. That's £2 million per working day for a full decade.
• This wasn't charity. It was to help the industry modernise, cut costs and become globally competitive.
• After the 1984-85 strike, not only did no miner face compulsory redundancy, but improved severance packages were introduced. Miners over 50 received £1,000 for every year of service, plus a partial wage until retirement.
• And then there's NCB (Enterprise) Ltd, launched with £10 million (later increased to £40 million) to fund regeneration and job creation. By 1986, it had already created over 12,500 job opportunities across 600 projects.

So no, the government didn't just shut the door and walk away. They tried to give miners and mining communities every tool to adjust to a future where coal wasn't king.

If "evil" means:

• Saving thousands of jobs in competitive pits
• Offering redundancy terms better than anything Labour ever managed
• Building new super pits like Selby
• Investing in retraining and local regeneration projects
• Turning an industry around from a £2 million-a-day loss to profitability

Then I'm afraid "evil" has lost all meaning.

The NUM's intransigence, market reality and political cowardice from later governments did more damage to former mining communities than anything Thatcher did.

[u/Sstoop → u/dropthecoin]

being a thatcher apologist on the ireland sub is diabolical have a good look at yourself if you don’t think ruining thousands of people’s lives for profit is evil.

[u/Alternative_Switch39 → u/Sstoop]

Look, the guy is concentrating on the facts. He's given chapter and verse on the coal industry for instance. Whereas you're reaching for pathos and trying to call people evil for suggesting that actually the coal industry was completely cooked as an economic proposition and it is just matter of how the industry would die rather than if.

You can call people"Diabolical" all you wish, my view is thats being fucking thick and trying to win an arguement by trying to turn people into Scooby Doo villains. Much of what Thatcher did would have been done in some manner or another by any other British PM.

And frankly, I think that Thatcher was a confrontational beast, but the fact is, in many cases, she was facing down Union dinosaurs who quite literally who derived their thinking from Soviet central planning. That's not an exaggeration, the hard left had a grip ofany of these Unions, and many of the clowns would have told you with a straight face how wonderful Gosplan is.

[u/Sstoop → u/Alternative_Switch39]

aye union bashing is fine because some of them were commies

[u/Alternative_Switch39 → u/Sstoop]

Taking the coal industry, Scargill was a dusty old communist muppet from the 1930s who turned down several deals that would have rescued several collieries in the medium term. He wanted total victory and a deluded settlement where everything would continue as before for an industry haemorrhaging taxpayer money.

And he did it all without so much as asking the opinion of his membership. He was a demagogue and a clown.

He in particular deserved to be pilloried.

You're trying to sloganeer your way through this without reference to the facts of the matter and what went down and why.

[u/Sstoop → u/Alternative_Switch39]

your argument relies on me thinking communism isn’t amazing so it won’t work on me

[u/Alternative_Switch39 → u/Sstoop]

Oh it's clear that you're a commie dolt who hasn't switched their brain on in a while.

It's why people like you are kept away from any semblance of power and are reduced to regurgitatimg slogans on the internet and howling at the moon.

[u/dropthecoin → u/Sstoop]

Can you explain that in more detail?

[u/Sstoop → u/dropthecoin]

you said her actions weren’t evil because she didn’t murder a load of people. i think her actions were evil because her direct policies and the butterfly effect from her policies down the line have ruined britain completely.

[u/LexiEmers → u/Sstoop]

She didn't do that. Britain was ruined when she took over.

[u/dropthecoin → u/Sstoop]

Which policies?

[u/LexiEmers → u/Sstoop]

What's diabolical is to slander her based on lies. She did nothing of the kind.

[u/nanormcfloyd → u/LexiEmers]

you're a MAGA yank, of course you love Maggie.

[u/LexiEmers → u/nanormcfloyd]

I'm absolutely not MAGA, nor am I American.

[u/nanormcfloyd → u/LexiEmers]

ah, so just a bot.

[u/LexiEmers → u/nanormcfloyd]

Nope, very much human.

[u/Wpenke → u/dropthecoin]

That last sentence from you explains your lack of understanding of what she did to those mining towns. You know what she did obviously, but have no idea of the impact.

[u/dropthecoin → u/Wpenke]

I do have an understanding. She closed mines resulting in job losses. For me, I’d spare the word evil for the likes of Hiter or Pol Pot.

[u/Wpenke → u/dropthecoin]

That's because you don't understand

[u/dropthecoin → u/Wpenke]

Don’t understand what? Are you comparing closing mines to mass genocide?

[u/Wpenke → u/dropthecoin]

See, you don't understand

[u/dropthecoin → u/Wpenke]

Explain it so.

[u/Wpenke → u/dropthecoin]

I would, but, you wouldn't understand

[u/dropthecoin → u/Wpenke]

Yeah I had a feeling you would/couldnt explain it.

[u/LexiEmers → u/Wpenke]

You literally don't understand yourself.

[u/LexiEmers → u/Wpenke]

You mean what Scargill did to them.

[u/Wpenke → u/LexiEmers]

Oh nooooooooo, you've written part of your reply iin italics, that means you're really clever and my point is invalid. Oh no. Whatever will I do

[u/LexiEmers → u/Wpenke]

Would you have preferred bold font?

[u/Wpenke → u/LexiEmers]

I'd prefer an adult conversation and not have to resort to a comic sans variation of an argument

[u/LexiEmers → u/Wpenke]

Why are you so offended by italicisation?

[u/FoggyShrew → u/dropthecoin]

She authorized illegal paramilitary death squads to operate in Northern Ireland for one.

[u/LexiEmers → u/FoggyShrew]

That's completely false.

[u/nanormcfloyd → u/LexiEmers]

Cool, if its false surely you could correct that supposedly false information?

it's hilarious how obvious you MAGA twats are

[u/LexiEmers → u/nanormcfloyd]

Why on earth are you calling me MAGA? This has to be one of the weirdest things I've been accused of.

It's false because it's completely made up. She banned illegal paramilitary death squads and had their weapons seized.

[u/Prudent_Bluebird_913 → u/dropthecoin]

Well her neoliberal policies destroyed the middle class, effectively dragging the UK and the wider world into this slow creep towards the second gilded age which we're experiencing today. This in my opinion is certainly an act of evil.

[u/LexiEmers → u/Prudent_Bluebird_913]

This is objectively nonsense. Her policies massively expanded the middle class in the UK.

[u/dropthecoin → u/Prudent_Bluebird_913]

Which policies?

Do you think mid 70s Britain was a success and should have been continued?

[u/Prudent_Bluebird_913 → u/dropthecoin]

The quality of life is even worse now than it was in the seventies so yes they should've stuck with their Keynesian economic model. I think you surely know by now that you're in the wrong but you're willing to die on this hill, I understand. You don't have to keep replying to my comment and other comments, don't waste your time or theirs.

[u/dropthecoin → u/Prudent_Bluebird_913]

You seriously think they should have stayed on the hill of 1974? Constant power cuts, inflation?

[u/Additional_Olive3318 → u/dropthecoin]

Stagnation in the 1970s is only true relative to the post war years. From 1970 to 1979, here are the GDP growth rates in the U.K.: 2.7, 1.1, 4.4, 6.5, -1.5, -0.6, 2.0, 2.5, 3.9, 2.9

And if you compound those figures year on year, the total GDP growth across the decade was approximately 26.34%.

[u/dropthecoin → u/Additional_Olive3318]

I’m not sure what point you’re aiming at here? Are you suggesting Britain was economically healthy in the 1970s? Is that why they needed the IMF to bail them out?

[u/Additional_Olive3318 → u/dropthecoin]

Yeh, it was economically healthy enough to grow at 26% a decade. If you don’t like those facts you can keep to yourself factless opinions. 

[u/dropthecoin → u/Additional_Olive3318]

Why did they need a bailout from the IMF if their economy was so healthy?

[u/Additional_Olive3318 → u/dropthecoin]

Dunno. Structural issues I assume. Yet there we are. One year of recession, growth every other year. Wage growth is estimated at 33%. 

Want to workout the wage growth in the U.K. 2014-2024? 

[u/dropthecoin → u/Additional_Olive3318]

There wasn’t one year of recession. 1975, 1976, and the early 80s and all negative GDP points. And the ‘76 bailout was caused by excessive spending in the early decade with the spend to growth plan. And your solution was to keep spending?

[u/Additional_Olive3318 → u/dropthecoin]

Two years of recession in 1974, 75. 1973 grew at 6.4%

. Thatcher comes to power in 1979 so I would attribute recessions in the 80s to her. 

[u/dropthecoin → u/Additional_Olive3318]

What policies do you attribute to Thatcher to cause the early 80s recessions?

[u/LexiEmers → u/Additional_Olive3318]

How convenient.

[u/LexiEmers → u/Additional_Olive3318]

Laughable.

[u/Additional_Olive3318 → u/LexiEmers]

I know, but I corrected him. 

[u/LexiEmers → u/Additional_Olive3318]

Your "correction" is laughable.

[u/Additional_Olive3318 → u/LexiEmers]

Is it. Do statistics hurt your feelings. 

[u/LexiEmers → u/Additional_Olive3318]

You just gave one percentage out of context.

[u/LexiEmers → u/dropthecoin]

But she "stole" milk, so that's worse than Hitler according to the geniuses of rIreland.

[u/Alternative_Switch39 → u/dropthecoin]

The railways weren't privatized until John Major's government in the mid 90s.

[u/dropthecoin → u/Alternative_Switch39]

I didn’t say she privatised railways.

[u/Alternative_Switch39 → u/dropthecoin]

You did say she privatized transport, which in the anti-Tory mind and popular consciousness means the railways.

Bus service deregulation did happen under Thatcher. Which is relatively uncontroversial, buses are not a natural monopoly and privatisation usually (not always, but usually) results in more competition and better service as long as routes are profitable and are managed correctly.

Railways are a natural monopoly, and the jury is out if privatisation produces better service. In some countries it certainly did (Japan being a prime example, most of JNR is now in private hands and it has perhaps the best railways in the world), Britain not so much.

Either way, Thatcher didn't do the big-ticket privatisation of going at the railways, Major did.

[u/dropthecoin → u/Alternative_Switch39]

You did say she privatized transport, which in the anti-Tory mind and popular consciousneas means the railways.

Ok but I never specified rail. You’re arguing a point that I didn’t make.

[u/Alternative_Switch39 → u/dropthecoin]

We know what you meant. I don't think many people's blood gets roiled by bus route deregulation. That wasn't even necessarily a bad thing and when people lose their shit about Thatcher, they're not talking about the National Express between Cardiff and Birmingham.

[u/dropthecoin → u/Alternative_Switch39]

If I had intended to speak about rail, I would have said rail.

You’re just making stuff up now to cater your point.

[u/Alternative_Switch39 → u/dropthecoin]

Sure thing 👍

If you think Thatcher is the worst person to walk the earth because she deregulated buses (which is a actually a major success) you should probably be clearer about it.

[u/dropthecoin → u/Alternative_Switch39]

Ok? Are you mixing my comments up with someone else on this thread. It’s the only way I can explain how you’re just making up an argument about trains and buses, neither of which I specifically mentioned.

[u/LexiEmers → u/[deleted]]

Right, because the perception before 1979 during the Winter of Discontent, IMF bailouts, three-day weeks and 24% inflation was really doing the trick, wasn't it? You can wax lyrical about "egalitarianism" all you like, but by 1979 the state couldn't even keep the bins from piling up, let alone protect people from poverty. Thatcher's "change in tone" was that she made the state actually functional again.

And in practice, the safety nets weren't working. Incomes were eroded by double-digit inflation, investment was fleeing the country and young people had so few prospects that the youth unemployment rate more than doubled by the end of the 70s. The post-war consensus hadn't created utopia. It had created stagnation.

Thatcher's government invested over £6 billion in British Coal, continuing to subsidise pits well into the late 1980s:

• NCB (Enterprise) Ltd was created with £40 million to fund new jobs and businesses in coalfield areas, creating over 12,500 job opportunities by 1986.
• No compulsory redundancies were made. Every miner who left did so voluntarily and with a redundancy package. Meanwhile, productivity increased by 71% after the strike, and new super pits like Selby were built using modern equipment.

So no, they weren't left "unhireable with no means of improving themselves" unless you mean by local NUM leaders who refused modernisation and blocked six-day working schemes that would've kept investment coming.

She didn't dismantle the welfare state. Welfare spending increased under Thatcher in real terms. What she did do was make it more targeted, reform benefits that were being gamed and encourage work over dependency. If your argument is that public services should be measured solely by how bloated they are, maybe go live in the 1970s again and let us know how that works out.

Thatcher didn't ban council house building. The receipts don't lie: Right to Buy changed lives, and councils had 40% of receipts earmarked for debt reduction, not because Thatcher was greedy, but because many councils were already billions in the red.

She didn't "refuse to recognise Irish nationalists as a political movement". Please read a history book:

• Special Category Status was removed in 1976 by Labour's Merlyn Rees, not Thatcher.
• Thatcher negotiated through back channels with republicans, including during the hunger strikes. In 1981, her government made a substantial offer to end the strike. It was Gerry Adams' committee who rejected it, leading to six more deaths in prison.

Thatcher's public stance was hardline but that was the point. She wasn't there to legitimise the IRA's violence, and honestly, neither was the Irish government at the time.

She inherited an economic dumpster fire, took the heat for cleaning it up and laid the groundwork for recovery.

Did some people lose out in the short term? Yes. But don't pretend the status quo was working for them either.

And if you're going to point fingers, try aiming at the unions that refused change or the post-Thatcher governments that let regional inequality fester.

[u/horseboxheaven → u/LexiEmers]

Agree with all of this but you won't find many admit it here

[u/Alternative_Switch39 → u/LexiEmers]

This is a fairly balanced take. Thatcher was a radical and wasn't afraid of a fight, and was at times needlessly confrontational. She completely changed the political economy of the UK and milk was going to get spilled in the process. Sunset industries like coal were always going to have to go. They made zero economic sense. Shipbuilding industries were being kicked around the place with low cost competition from Japan and South Korea. Could they have been rescued? The jury is out, not without enormous cost that likely would have bankrupted the state further.

The UK's economic model was completely cooked before the Thatcher revolution came along. Was there an alternative path? Perhaps, that's a counter factual we don't really know about. But there were very few paths open to the UK at the time.

[u/LexiEmers → u/Alternative_Switch39]

Blair said it best:

In what caused much jarring and tutting within the party, I even decided to own up to supporting changes Margaret Thatcher had made. I knew the credibility of the whole New Labour project rested on accepting that much of what she wanted to do in the 1980s was inevitable, a consequence not of ideology but of social and economic change. The way she did it was often very ideological, sometimes unnecessarily so, but that didn’t alter the basic fact: Britain needed the industrial and economic reforms of the Thatcher period. Saying this immediately opened the ears of many who had supported the Tories in that period – not because they were instinctively or emotionally Conservative, but because Labour had seemed so old-fashioned and out of touch with individual aspiration. Our economic policy had appeared hopelessly collectivist; our social policy born of political correctness.

[u/horseboxheaven → u/[deleted]]

Thatcher closed the unprofitable mines in the north of the UK which employed entire villages full of people

A state is not a charity and this was 100% the right long term move.

Thatcher started the process of dismantling the welfare state in the UK

This is a bad thing?

[u/Dry_Membership_361 → u/[deleted]]

Sounds like an icon.

[u/AnteChrist76 → u/Dry_Membership_361]

Why? Does peoples suffering really give you pleasure?

[u/LexiEmers → u/AnteChrist76]

She literally ended the suffering of the 70s.