AHC: Margaret Thatcher remembered warmly by the left-wing

Optical_Illusion

Banned
V-J said:
There's also a lot of younger people now who aren't swayed by all this historical stuff who are doing pretty okay. When people project the issue with house prices in the south onto the north, a lot of people in the north ask 'What issue with house prices?'
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Even within the South, it's an issue more for those that don't have inheritances yet and won't see them coming. However those will be gradual and substantial over the next 5 election cycles and probably offset some hypothesized trends around how electoral aging around housing policy. But this is current politics, and not much to do with Thatcher, except inasmuch as she's responsible for our current housing ownership structure, and that's responsible for current sentiment... which I think is substantial but maybe not among the really commited Left (more floating voters/swing voters, who often are people who see the economic changes under Thatcher towards more deindustrialization and more well paid financial service spinoff jobs for graduates as good yet "Why can't I buy a house?").
 

Thomas Jefferson

If Thatcher had explicitly justified closing the mines on environmental grounds, rather than economic grounds, she might have been reappraised by some segments of the left as environmental issues came to the forefront of politics in the late 2000s, although its more likely that this would create a split between the environmentalists and other segments of the left wing than have her be positively viewed by the left in general.
 

Baker Easy

I had a thought about Thatcher deciding to play judo instead of head-on confrontation as she did; suppose she announces, in the run-up to the strike, the privatisation of the NCB - by transferring it to the ownership of the NUM.
I don't know if that would be better done with the union as a whole as sole owner, or if each member gets one share; meanwhile, Scargill now has to take responsibility for wages and pit closures, while I suspect there'd be little public sympathy for further complaining.

I doubt anything was going to save coal mining in Britain, but having to face that reality themselves, the left might find themselves looking back on Thatcher a bit more oddly, if not fondly - "at least she gave us a fair go at it," if not quite "based syndie Maggie".
 

TDM

Thomas Jefferson said:
If Thatcher had explicitly justified closing the mines on environmental grounds, rather than economic grounds, she might have been reappraised by some segments of the left as environmental issues came to the forefront of politics in the late 2000s, although its more likely that this would create a split between the environmentalists and other segments of the left wing than have her be positively viewed by the left in general.
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Yep, but here were we get into the nature of how she went about stuff.

She made a virtue of doing things the way she did them, i.e. she was never someone who looked for mitigating factors to soften or make what she did seem more appealing.

And I don't even really mean that in a bad way in abstract. She not only thought what she was doing was right, but that she was doing it for the right reasons as well so went with both.

She at times seemed to relish not only making the hard decisions (plenty do that) but also implementing them the hard way. Almost as a test of her own resolve and righteousness. I.e. 'if I can manage to not only do this but do it the hard way without compromising my principles and reasoning to do it, then it justifies me doing it and doing it that way". i.e. a real puritanical streak to her.

I find her a really complex and compelling character. So yes I consider her damaging for the country both short and long-term, but frankly if I step back and look more abstractly there is plenty to admire :openedeyewink: (but the former will always outweigh the latter)

Honestly I think she would have made a good wartime leader, it's just she didn't have a war to fight (the problem was she certainly thought she did)

Or to put it another way while I wished they hadn't, I have always seen why people voted for her!
 
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Simreeve

Politibrit said:
It's actually relatively easy, in that the Alliance (which the Liberals were then a part of) were very popular at certain points of Thatcher's earlier Premiership. What's harder is to make Thatcher a Liberal without fundamentally changing her views. The only way I could see of doing that would be to have the Liberals be a party of the right, in which case they won't have much more love from the left than the Tories.
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Ideologically, I'd consider her closer to the old-style Whigs than the old-style Tories, anyway: So, maybe if the Whigs had never merged with the Radicals to form the Liberal Party... ?
 

hammo1j

Donor
She was willing to reform Coal mining in cooperation with the miners, but Scargill was hell bent on revolutionary Socialism.

If a 'Who rules Britain' could have been avoided the mining industry would still have been drastically reduced but with retraining and investment.

Thatcher wanted to make things more favourable to Capital for investment and efficiency, but ended up fighting an industrial war that was horrible for everyone but necessary.
 

hammo1j

Donor
ECavalier said:
Railway privatisation was Major not Thatcher: you’re blaming her for things she didn’t even do.
As for utilities why shouldn’t they have been privatised, what advantages did their being under state ownership bring?
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A lot of financial plundering went on like Thames water.

Thatcher championed unbridled capitalism when I believe there are some capitalists who are so greedy without counter balances they will be destructive to the nation.
 

Politibrit

Simreeve said:
Ideologically, I'd consider her closer to the old-style Whigs than the old-style Tories, anyway: So, maybe if the Whigs had never merged with the Radicals to form the Liberal Party... ?
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My understanding of the Whigs is that they were (relatively) socially liberal as well as economically liberal, which is something Thatcher decidedly wasn't. So either her views change to the point that she is no longer the same as OTL Thatcher, or she is a marginalised figure who is unlikely to gain enough support to ever become leader, or the Whigs gradually transform themselves into a more traditional right wing party similar to what the Tories become, which the left would still hate.
 

Peg Leg Pom

hammo1j said:
She was willing to reform Coal mining in cooperation with the miners, but Scargill was hell bent on revolutionary Socialism.

If a 'Who rules Britain' could have been avoided the mining industry would still have been drastically reduced but with retraining and investment.

Thatcher wanted to make things more favourable to Capital for investment and efficiency, but ended up fighting an industrial war that was horrible for everyone but necessary.
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The miners strike had very little to do with the coal industry, it was an attempt to topple the democratically elected government by industrial action. Just like the miners had done in the early 70's. I have many, many problems with Thatcher but crushing that attempted coup is not one of them.
 

overoceans

Politibrit said:
My understanding of the Whigs is that they were (relatively) socially liberal as well as economically liberal, which is something Thatcher decidedly wasn't. So either her views change to the point that she is no longer the same as OTL Thatcher, or she is a marginalised figure who is unlikely to gain enough support to ever become leader, or the Whigs gradually transform themselves into a more traditional right wing party similar to what the Tories become, which the left would still hate.
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Thatcher voted in the 1960s to legalize homosexuality and abortion(and as PM resisted attempts to tighten the abortion law), so she was socially liberal in that sense.

Of course, in the 80s, her government enacted that Clause 28(I think was the name), prohibiting schools from promoting homosexuality. In her autobiography, she tried to reconcile that with her earlier votes, by saying that pro-gay curricula represented state interference in the psychological development of young people. Don't agree with that myself, though it's probably a position that would not contradict a strictly laissiez-faire approach to moral legislation.
 

Dr Dee

Peg Leg Pom said:
The miners strike had very little to do with the coal industry, it was an attempt to topple the democratically elected government by industrial action. Just like the miners had done in the early 70's. I have many, many problems with Thatcher but crushing that attempted coup is not one of them.
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It sounds like both the extreme right and the extreme left were both wanting to topple HMG in the 70s. Scargill was an idiot. The miners I knew who went on strike in 84-5 didn’t give a monkeys about overthrowing a distant govt; they wanted to save their jobs and their communities. They ended up losing both.
 

hammo1j

Donor
Dr Dee said:
It sounds like both the extreme right and the extreme left were both wanting to topple HMG in the 70s. Scargill was an idiot. The miners I knew who went on strike in 84-5 didn’t give a monkeys about overthrowing a distant govt; they wanted to save their jobs and their communities. They ended up losing both.
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The foot soldiers on both sides of any War are generally alright, I agree.
 

George Carty

Banned
Dr Dee said:
The miners I knew who went on strike in 84-5 didn’t give a monkeys about overthrowing a distant govt; they wanted to save their jobs and their communities. They ended up losing both.
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I thought the miners went on strike to overthrow the government in order to save their jobs and communities?
 

CaptainCalvert

Closest I can do is "considered better than...". To avoid current politics, I'll stop at the Cameron government, which brought in austerity measures that were viewed very unfavourably, and arguably (though not in this forum because it is current politics) have adverse effects today.
We don't know if Thatcher would have supported Cameron's austerity policy, but it made the Thatcher years look good in comparison, including to people who did badly out of Thatcherism.

Minor edit made to (hopefully) clarify what I meant.
 

FlyingSquirrel

In terms of the tendency of the left to look fondly upon past conservative leaders in comparison to present-day ones, maybe some far-right xenophobe wins the leadership election to succeed Cameron and crashes the UK out of the EU without a deal, imposes draconian new immigration restrictions, ignores warnings about what this will do to the economy, and causes serious disruption of imports and availability of goods. This causes the Conservatives to drop in the polls and thus a snap election *isn't* called, so this parliament's life is coming to an end right as Covid hits, and the government initially responds with "this is just another cold/flu" denialism at first, with the result that the UK gets hit much harder than most of Europe in the initial wave of hospitalizations and deaths.

I'm still not sure if this would get the left to *like* Thatcher, but I could imagine some on the left starting to make comments like, "Margaret Thatcher would be appalled at this," or "Even Thatcher wouldn't have been this idiotic and destructive."

On whether there was a sitting Tory MP at the time who might have done this and actually could have won the leadership election, I'll have to defer to our British members. Maybe if the final leadership round was between this unnamed far-right Tory and, say, Anna Soubry?
 

Dr Dee

George Carty said:
I thought the miners went on strike to overthrow the government in order to save their jobs and communities?
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Er…are you referring to the NUM leadership or the rank and file? I only know my granddad wasn’t interested in revolution; he just wanted the industry to survive and therefore he went on strike.
 
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