by St. Elmo's Fire » Mon Apr 08, 2013 7:01 pm
She didn't shut down the mines, she was pushing for more modern equipment to make them more efficient, which would lower the price of coal to compete with foreign prices but lead to job losses. The unions fought against this. Many mines were forced to close because union pickets wouldn't allow maintenance crews in to keep the mines workable (pumping out water, shoring up tunnels etc.)
But yes, she also fully intended to ensure that Unions couldn't hold the rest of the country to ransom like they had in the 70s. Definitely the right thing to do, since Unions having the power to hold the rest of us to ransom (3 day weeks, not always having power, winter of discontent, etc) is just madness. Their greed and power got the better of them, just like it very nearly did in America with the Union workers on silly money holding a blade to the throat of the automakers. That situation also WILL have to end soon. Unions are a bit outdated by concept now anyway, IMO. The UK has, by and large, a pretty decent set of employment laws for its workers.
The UK was also well able to fuck itself up without political intervention, also. The cars that we made were crap compared to what the competition was selling.
Margaret Thatcher was one of the last old-school politicians, in the sense that she had her convictions and believed that the purpose of politics was to have the argument, to convince people about your way of thinking, even if you failed. She is disliked by many people, primarily those who can't see that what she did was necessary at the time, as unpleasant as it was for many. But it is arrant nonsense to assert that she didn't care, or that her personal image was what mattered to her.
If you define success in politics as changing the country you govern in accordance with your convictions, she's probably the single most successful peacetime Prime Minister this country has ever seen. And even if you don't, irrespective of your view on her policies, it's worth remembering that she was born a grocer's daughter and went on to study Chemistry at Oxford, qualify as a barrister, and become this country's first female PM (and the longest serving). All at a time when class and the 'gentleman's club' both had far more influence generally than they do now.