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South Africa may have been, for Americans, the highest-profile issue with which she was involved. But her controversial decisions hardly ended there.
Her ruthless destruction of Arthur Scargill's National Union of Mineworkers didn't just close 150 of 174 state-owned coal mines, resulting in a degree of economic devastation from which many northern towns have still not recovered. It also marked a grievous blow to British organised labour as a whole, and maybe most fundamentally signaled the reconstruction of the British economy, from the largely industrial and technocratic-corporatist model which had developed after 1945, to the much more service- and finance-based, much more laissez-faire, economy of contemporary Britain.
There can be very few examples of a great nation being changed so thoroughly and dramatically in such a short span of time, and due largely to the decisions of a single person. The only modern parallel I can think of, ironically, is China under Mao.
She got rid of property tax that fell on wealthy individuals and replaced it with a per capita fee on every adult, which shifted the tax burden more to the middle class and poor. Typical right winger.
That's when the UK voters had had enough. She was forced out.
My own view is that, all things considered, she was a great PM. One could go on to list often callous or even spiteful acts: the Poll Tax was probably the most damning, whether assessed politically or on its merits as policy. But when one considers what the U.K. was like in the years before she gained power - the endless strikes, the social disintegration, the sheer squalor of British life in the late 70s - one begins to appreciate what was good about Maggie: she came to power at a time when the U.K. was teetering on the edge of the precipice, and if her cure was often bitter, it was necessary.
Just yesterday I posted that Liberals will come out and show their true colors when people they don't agree with dies. Today I am proven correct.
You bet. People are going to know the truth. You don't get to lie about her history, just because she's dead now. Right wingers try to pull this sham all the time.
Thankfully, the OP is OK with the good and the bad. Kudos to him/her for starting the thread.
One of the most remarkable political figures in the modern history of the English-speaking peoples is no more today. Opinion of her career and government is still starkly divided in the United Kingdom, much more so than in the United States, where if she's remembered at all it's as Ronald Reagan's "girlfriend". But clearly, however one felt about Maggie, she leaves an enormous legacy: for better or ill, the United Kingdom is a vastly different place now than before she gained office, and much of that change is a consequence of her very long tenure of power.
I recall the day she fell from power: I lived in London then, and walked around the city that afternoon and evening, from Whitehall up to Oxford Circus and back over to the City. With typical aplomb, the Londoners simply refused to note the occasion: they hadn't turned a hair for Hitler's bombs, so they certainly were not about to do so for the fall of the Iron Lady. But of course, everyone had an opinion of her, most very strong, one way or another. A very remarkable woman.
Brits are great at spinning Myths, Legends, and Lore.
My initial thought was: She is dead, the wicked witch is dead!
My second thought was: Not really. Her legacy of devastating the remote parts of Britain for the City of London financiers and her support of apartheid by the upper crust still live on to the detriment of much of the British.
You bet. People are going to know the truth. You don't get to lie about her history, just because she's dead now. Right wingers try to pull this sham all the time.
Thankfully, the OP is OK with the good and the bad. Kudos to him/her for starting the thread.
Didn't say people should lie.
If liberals wanna show their true colors when people die then so be it. Just don't turn around next week and claim the Liberals "care" about people as they obviously don't. Well, except for themselves.
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