MARGARET THATCHER DIDN'T SAVE THE COUNTRY - SHE RUINED IT

NOW that the hyperbole surrounding Margaret Thatcher’s funeral has calmed down, we can perhaps examine her legacy more objectively.  Contrary to David Cameron’s overblown assertion, Margaret Thatcher did not save the country; she ruined it.

The impact of her government’s ill judged and damaging policies were felt particularly acutely in Derby and Derbyshire.
 

It was Margaret Thatcher’s obsession with deregulation, privatisation and tax handouts to the rich that heralded widening inequality and mass unemployment.  In short, the poor got poorer and the already wealthy got even wealthier.

Her dogmatic fixation resulted in crushing deindustrialisation, disastrous financial services deregulation and made a virtue of selfishness and greed.  The rich and powerful saw unearned income rocket, while the share of national income going to employees was slashed as a result of her relentless assault on trade unions. 

Her flawed ideology obliterated Derbyshire’s coalfields and wiped out much of the county’s manufacturing industry.  Her addiction to privatisation saw Derby’s railway loco and carriage & wagon works sold off. 

Tens of thousands of local people used to work there and thousands more worked in Derbyshire’s coal industry.  Nowadays Bombardier’s workforce is a fraction of those who used to build trains in the city and there are now no Derbyshire miners left. 

But it wasn’t just miners and railway engineers that bore the brunt of Mrs Thatcher’s doctrine.  Whole swathes of manufacturing jobs throughout Derbyshire were laid waste. 

None of the pain she inflicted was necessary.  She inherited a North Sea oil bonanza amounting to 16 per cent of the UK’s GDP.

Instead of using it to modernise British industry, she squandered it on tax cuts for the wealthy and unemployment benefit for people who had needlessly lost their jobs. 

Even with the gargantuan North Sea oil revenues flowing into the exchequer, economic growth during her period in office was no better than the 1970s and lower than the 1960s. 

Furthermore, her decision to join President Reagan in deregulating the financial services sector on both sides of the Atlantic led directly to the banking crash of 2008.

Today’s housing crisis can also be traced back to the decisions her government made.  She sold off council houses, penalising any local authority that built replacements and deregulated private rented housing, using taxpayers money to subsidise landlords who cashed in charging ever increasing rents.

She sold off our utilities claiming it would create a share owning democracy, but consumers are now paying exorbitant bills to companies that are mainly in foreign hands.  And the energy giant npower hasn’t paid any corporation tax in the last three years.

She was gripped by a fanatical desire to undermine the role of the state and told us there was “no such thing as society”.  She trashed our public services, devalued our public sector workers, undermined their terms and conditions through measures like compulsory competitive tendering and brought our NHS to its knees.

In truth, she was an ideologue who divided the nation economically, geographically and philosophically.  Baroness Thatcher may have died, but Britain won’t prosper as one nation until Thatcherism has finally been laid to rest.