R.I.P. Maggie

[The Beard]

Never liked her at all and have always felt she left everything a little worse than it was before.........Crushed the Unions and also devestated our manufacturing industry. We have lost skills that will never breturn.
She told us that the financial hub of London would be the new engine room of our economy and look what's happened to that. We can't make stuff to sell because no one knows how to any more..

But...

I must be wrong as now she is passed everyone sez how nice she was....

Hmm?

I've been a member of a number of Unions over the years and, thankfully they were all quite moderate, however, I wonder if you've ever heard of the term, Flying Pickets. During a number of disputes, but especially the miners' strike, union officials could call in pickets from other pits, or factories. If you wanted to go into work because you didn't agree with it you were threatened, spat at and otherwise intimidated by up to several hundred people. Your wife would be threatened and assaulted in the street and your kids bullied at school.

As for destroying industry, I'm sorry mate but you're way out. There were so many restrictive practices in British industry the writing was on the wall by the late '60s. Shipyards were a prime example. If one man was off sick his work just didn't get done because nobody else was allowed to do it. Upper Clyde Shipbuilders had full order books but were losing money hand over fist. The Germans, French and Italians were, and still are building large ships, partly because their shipyards were re-built after being destroyed during the war and could build ships under cover. Our men couldn't work in winter because of high winds, ice and snow, the Europeans could work all year round. The rise of the Japanese and Korean yards put the final nail in their coffin.

Successive governments failed to get a grip on BL. Their was Austin, Morris, Wolseley, Riley, MG, Triumph, Rover, Jaguar and Land Rover. In the heavy arena there was Leyland, AEC, Albion, Scammel, Thorneycroft. The Leyland Trucks were quite profitable and the government of the day decided the success of the HGV maker would be good for the car divisions. Unfortunately it turned out that the car factories brought down the truck maker.

The 1100/1300 competed with Triumph Heralds, 1300s and Toledo yet used different engines and running gear. There was the A/M 1800 competing with Rover 2000 and Triumph 2000. The A/M 2200 was up against the Rover 2200, Triumph 2500 and Jaguar 240/XJ6 2.8 and so on.

If you look at engines, the A-Series was really well used in the Mini, Riley Elf, Wolseley Hornet, Sprite and Midget, but in the 1100/1300 it was up against the Triumph 1300 and Toledo which used different motors. When the Allegro and Marina came along they also used the A-Series, but in addition they had the 1500 & 1750 which were made in addition to the B-Series and were also up against the Triumph 1500. When you moved up the range it was even worse, the A/M 2200 6 Cylinder was pitted against the Rover 2000/2200 4 pot the Triumph 2000/2500 6 cylinder Jag 240XK, 2.8XK, A/M 3 litre 6 as used in the Healey 3000 but in a saloon, 3 litre Triumph V8, 3.4 XK, 3.5 Rover (Buick) V8 and Jag 4.2

There was widespread industrial sabotage in the car industry as well, and although it was sometimes put down to competitors, my knowledge of it was confined to Chrysler and BL which suggests it was internal.

I believe we now make more cars in Britain than ever before.

I don't know much about high finance, but my understanding is that Britain, up to the recent crash has a vastly more dynamic and prosperous financial sector than at any time in the past.

 

[The Beard]

Exactly. My family are from Barnsley and my dad was a miner and went through the miners strike. She wasn't very popular up here in the North!

Phil

I'm sure mining communities were devastated by pit closures, unfortunately, mining was a dying industry. Up to WW2, ships, trains, domestic heating and factories were all powered or heated by coal. Even then steam turbines in liners and battle ships were powered by oil, not coal. Now, almost every ship in the world is powered by diesel. By the late '60s BR was phasing out steam locomotives, more and more clothing and fabric was being made abroad, mainly because we didn't want to pay for British products and would rather buy cheaper foreign made goods instead of the home grown variety. Clothing was made in large mills that used to use steam power to drive the looms, large factories also used coal to power boilers to drive lathes.

We moved into a new house in 1966 that had, like the other 50 houses on the estate, coal fired central heating. Within 5 years, ours and most of the others in the close had converted to gas. By the time we left there in 1975, all the other 17 houses in the close had converted and today, Now, I only know two people who use solid fuel.

So industry, domestic heating, ships and the railways had all converted to diesel or gas. The only real cock-up along the way was majoring on oil for some power stations, but then Norway and Sweden were complaining our coal fired power stations were causing acid rain and killing their forests.

I can't see anyone campaigning to subsidise lamplighters, horse manure collectors or chamber pot collectors because no-one wants their services. The world had moved on. Margaret Thatcher's government, if guilty of anything is not to provide suitable alternatives to mining, but then perhaps if Scargill and Mick McGahey had been more flexible that might have happened.

By the way, on a personal note, the miners' strike brought on the 3 Day Week and lost me my first job. They didn't give a s**t about what happened to anyone else, or the country for that matter. If you want to know what the strike was all about, it was an ideological dispute between Communists, both McGahey and Scargill were members as were plenty of others, and Westminster. They were only slightly more opposed to the Tories than they were to Labour.

 

[The Beard]

same round here she also had a big impact on the closure of the uk's ship building industry

If we had/have a problem in this country it's an inability to grasp reality. No-one wanted our ships. They were too expensive and took too long to build. I think that's a shame because I'm a big fan of the shipbuilding industry.

But, bear in mind that in 1935 Britain had 15 battleships. Each cost somewhere in the region of £2 to £3 million to build and took three to four years to build. That means an entire shipyard would have been fully occupied for that period with just one order. HMS Howe was a battleship laid down in 1937 and launched in 1940 on the Clyde. HMS Liverpool was a cruiser launched in 1937 at the same yard as was HMS Implacable, launched in 1944. Even ships such as HMS Howe also had re-fits which had to be carried out at shipyards, Howe underwent them in 1943, 1945 and for 12 months in 1948 & 1949.

After the war there were hundreds of surplus Liberty ships and we were withdrawing from empire so there were no more battleships and far fewer cargo ships, and although there were a few aircraft carriers, we were building fewer and smaller ships. Because we were losing the empire we were able less and less to rely on old allies buying our ships, in fact, most countries like India bought our surplus warships not new ones. As old allegencies went by the board developing countries bought cheaper from countries that were closer, geographically and philosophically.

So along with foreign competition and restrictive practices, shipbuilding was another great industry down the toilet.

 

[The Beard]

I never got my daily quota either

Anyone else suffer because of the poll tax? It was supposedly a tax on the person - not the house.
At the time, I was on paternal leave, it made more sense for me to take the year off as SWMBO's job was more important than mine (so she also earned more). The leave was simply an agreement with my managers - I took a year out without pay so they could pay my temp replacement.
Despite having zero income, I was still expected to pay my poll tax - with what? I wasn't even entitled to benefits.
So, despite this being a tax on the individual, my refusal to pay resulted in my tax being deducted from SWMBO's wage at source - how fair is that?
Also, the rate of tax was set so high that it meant we were WORSE off as the poll tax was almost double our rates.

My manager, on the other hand, was absolutely delighted - she lived in a 5-bed detached property with over an acre of land, swimming pool etc. Her & hubby were now paying exactly the same as us in our 2.5 bed end of terrace (the so-called 3rd bedroom is a box room).

The so-called Poll Tax was a good idea badly implemented. On a similar vein, we lived in a two bedroom house, whereas two doors down was a family of 5, 2 adults and 3 kids. Their house was 3 bedroom but only marginally bigger than ours. We had two wage earning adults, both paying tax and N.I. and no kids. They had 1 adult earning a wage, paying tax and N.I. and 3 kids. They were putting far more of a strain on local services; more doctor's appointments, ambulances, school places, use of swimming pools and way more refuse. As was usual at the time they were using the facilities and we were paying for them.

My parents, on the other hand had both worked hard and my Mother was the youngest head teacher in the North of England when she was appointed, this despite having to leave teaching for 9 years while having and bringing up 2 kids. My brother and I had both left home so the house they lived in, 5 bedrooms (no pool) meant that they used very little water, waste or any of the above that our neighbours were getting through. Why should they have had to pay 3 or 4 times more yet use far less. You aren't charged more for your petrol, beer, fags or anything else that you pay for because of how much you earn with the exception of Income Tax.

Instead of wasting their money they decided to buy a bigger house, not to show how clever or rich they are, but to provide them with something to fall back on financially and leave a legacy for their children and grandchildren. They could have bought Mercedes or BMWs but stayed with Vauxhalls, Nissans, Fords and Renaults. They didn't go on holidays to the Dominican Republic or Egypt, yet like many they were having to subsidise those who can't deal with the concept of birth control and personal pigacy.

 

[The Beard]

I would dance a jig, but lack of calcium has left my bones too frail for activities like that.

I remember school milk very well. It was frozen at the top in winter and sour in summer because it was left outside until needed. When I went to secondary school we were allowed to choose whether we wanted milk or not, almost nobody did, so much so that the school stopped offering it, and this was between 1968 and 1973, well before Thatcher had much of an impact.

Despite having three terms of New Labour, you're far more likely to find Coke in schools than milk, they could have redressed the balance if they felt like it

 

[The Beard]

she killed the north and didn't do much for the south either, she made the rich richer and the poor poorer, the next labour government didn't have the time put right the mess she left, now present government blames the last labour government for it.

she was no princess Diana

People need to get a grip. I live in the North and the late '60s and early '70s were an unmitigated disaster for this country. No-one wanted the coal yet the miners still expected everybody to work to keep them in a job. As I've stated elsewhere, I lost my first job because of the selfish, self centrered, conceited miners.

I used to travel by train to work in 1973 and 1974 in the guards van. Not because I wanted to but because at least half the time it was full because the earlier trains had gone AWOL. Not as a result of mechanical failures or the wrong kind of snow, but because the NUR had an agreement with BR that staff could take a certain number of sick days per year and they were going to take them. So 40+ people crammed in a guards van so close that you couldn't read a paper.



A mate of mine worked for a Chrysler dealer in the bodyshop. The dealer's still there but now sells Peugeots. In the '70s they had a lot of cars returned by customers because of strange smells. They were always traced to fish or cheese placed in the heater matrix or under the back seat when the cars were made. It was always in Avengers or Hunters, never French made models. My Mum bought a new Mini in 1979 and when they got it back home my Dad had a good look over it and found the boot seal was so badly fitted the boot had 2" of water in it. They'd only been making the damn thing for 20 years so it's unbelievable it was the wrong design, it was just crap workmanship. On top of that, at some stage a worker had so much contempt for whoever was going to shell out their hard earned cash for that piece of s**t that he dumped his bacon sandwich in there as well.

As for Labour not having enough time to put things right, come on dave, they had 13 years, how long did they need. Blair and Brown have presided over much more of a demolition job on British Industry than Thatcher ever did. Under their period of care Austin Rover and LDV vans went down the toilet. They introduced so many young people to degrees that they were queuing up to do Media Studies, Tourism, Website Design, Child Care and Nursing. While the Chinese were coming to Manchester Uni to study Advanced Mathematics, Electronic Engineering, Computer Design, Mechanical Engineering and the like so they can go back home and reverse engineer all the electronic and mechanical products companies are stupid enough to get China to make and we're stupid enough to buy. Nurses are being poached by places like Australia and the US while we're trying to attract them from Eastern Europe and Africa to make up the shortfall.

Perhaps if Labour had made more effort to re-build the country instead of committing us to massively expensive foreign adventures in the 2nd Gulf War and Afghanistan we might be better off.

Make no mistake, this country, north and south was a mess. It really was the "Sick Man of Europe". As another example, Mrs. Beard left home in Middlesbrough because there was no work, that was in 1975, she moved to London and later worked in casinos on North Sea ferries and cruise ships.

 

[The Beard]

how come German industry survives then?

Because we bombed the living c**p out of it for 6 years. After the war it was realised, mainly by the Americans, that the main reason Hitler managed to gain power was because Germany was so badly punished after WW1.

The British army was responsible for getting VW up and running again and among other things shipyards were rebuilt with covered slipways so that they could build ships whatever the weather. They were also trying to build up their merchant navy fleet while we had a surplus of ships.

Mind you, Germany received half of what Britain received via the Marshall Plan, so perhaps you can work out what we did with all that money. Germany received $1.5 Billion whereas we got $3.3 Billion. Personally I think the problems that the nasty Thatcher dealt with were why we got nowhere with all that money.

 

[The Beard]

The same way that BMW survive compared to Rover....

Don't forget that BMW used to own Rover and couldn't wait to get the hell out of Dodge. It cost them billions and the only thing they got out of it was Hill Descent Control from Land Rover and a contract to supply diesels to Range Rover.

 

[The Beard]

She gone, the real problem is nothing has been learnt by our glorious leaders regardless of which party they belong to. the richer still get extraordinary richer and the rest of us,well we pay our tax and just get extraordinary poorer in comparison!

According to a source I saw on t'internet Blair is expected to earn £7,000,000 this year, including a million from one directorship alone.

According to a colleague who grew up around Barnsley and Doncaster, the only people who benefitted from the miners' strike were NUM officials. I was shown Scargill's house, which while not being a mansion, was a lot nicer than the archetypal miner's terrace house.

 

[The Beard]

You seriously didnt expect on a public forum with people based all over the country and with people on here that were effected or had family members that were effected during the thatcher era to praise her or be dignified when she passed?

Communities, families and lives were destroyed by ultimately this woman and her puppets

You are living in cloud coockoo land if you thought that

I'm sorry, but the cloud cuckoo land is occupied here by those that swallow the rhetoric about that period and the people involved. The Manchester I grew up in was black. Every building in the city centre were stained by soot. Nobody wanted coal. Nobody.....except miners. They moaned about doing a dangerous job, and it was, with collapses, explosions and men dying of emphysema, so why were they so keen to stay working there? Did the unions ask about alternative sources of employment? Sony and Sharp built factories in this country, as did Toyota, Nissan and Honda.

Now there's a thing, aren't Toyotas built in Derbyshire? Weren't there pits around there? Their engines are made on Deeside which lost a lot of steel works. Nissan is near Sunderland, weren't there a lot of pits in Co. Durham?

I'd be interested in knowing what the death rate is for workers in those factories as opposed to working down the mines. Or the percentage of workers with respiratory problems is compared with mine workers. Or the life expectancy.

In the late '90s I was driving along the M4 one night heading for Bristol when I was about to overtake a truck in lane 1. I noticed it because it had a large Union flag emblazoned across the rear panel of the trailer, on which was loaded 20+ tons of steel. The legend on the flag read:

Llewellyn Brothers (or similar) proud to be hauling British Steel.

The tractor unit was a Scania. A small firm who depend for their livelihood on British steel won't even buy a truck that uses the product he hauls.

Mind you, I do like the irony of members of a foreign car forum moaning about someone allegedly ruining British industry when we've (probably) all bought foreign cars. Maybe that's the reason.

 

[ban1111]

"I believe we now make more cars in Britain than ever before."

just to clarify a small piont
1968/1969/. Britain was the largest builder of cars in Europe with almost 2 million units...I do not believe we build 2 millions cars a year today..

 

[ban1111]

According to a source I saw on t'internet Blair is expected to earn £7,000,000 this year, including a million from one directorship alone.

According to a colleague who grew up around Barnsley and Doncaster, the only people who benefitted from the miners' strike were NUM officials. I was shown Scargill's house, which while not being a mansion, was a lot nicer than the archetypal miner's terrace house.

nice term "benefited"
I left school in july 1979. went to college and was a firm believer in maggie's principal "anyone can be a millionaire" Of course the economics of that statement is hogwash but it kinda taught you a bit later in life politicians tell you what they think the majority want to hear. was it tebbet
who said "get on your bike" a mentality that assumed you had a bike or the next village town city did indeed have streets paved with Gold!.
British industry was corrupt sorry too corrupt poorly managed and of course
then there were the unions" the Tories had 21 years that's two decades to sort it out, and what did they do? nothing, just crushed all opponents!
History teaches us that the crushing of opponents hardly ever works.but like i said in my earlier posting nothing seems to change.
The 21 years i talk about are 1970 to 1974 and then 1979 onwards no party in the 20th century had such a long run in parliament of almost uninterpreted power in fact you can add from 1951 to 1997 the Tories ruled for all but two sessions 1964 to 70 and 1974 to 79.. over Four decades in which to sort things out! especially our industries and what did they do? merely butt heads......

 

[dave]

coal has also been on the up in the UK over the past 5 years – some 50 opencast related applications have been approved in that time, and currently there are around 40 at various stages of the planning system.
7 new coal fired power stations have approval.

but people are still brainwashed by thatchers rubbish that coal wasn't needed.

opencast mines cause more damage to the environment than the pits and create hardly any jobs, but massive profits for them at the top.

 

[ban1111]

MARGARET Thatcher reaped a massive Scottish tax windfall while her policies wiped out 250,000 jobs north of the Border, it was claimed last night.

Extra Scottish revenues handed to the UK Treasury during the Iron Lady’s 1980s heyday would be worth a staggering £130billion at today’s prices.

That s the headlines from a Scottish paper today..
And i am sure its already been said privatization of all our commodities, energy into the private sector and into private shareholders at knockdown prices is also something she can be proud of!

 

[pooroldcodger]

I have just come back from being in a certain southern European country all week, and feel I have stepped back in time by 30 years!
Just bear this in mind.
Somebody I was with this week, on hearing of the death said that if we hadn't had her legacy, we would be in the same Euro mess as they are in. Governments unable to achieve anything (even if they know what to do) as at every turn they are stymied by self-interest groups and Unions.
To use a footballing analogy she could have had her pick of any club in the world, with the possible exception of Cuba.

 

[ban1111]

I have just come back from being in a certain southern European country all week, and feel I have stepped back in time by 30 years!
Just bear this in mind.
Somebody I was with this week, on hearing of the death said that if we hadn't had her legacy, we would be in the same Euro mess as they are in. Governments unable to achieve anything (even if they know what to do) as at every turn they are stymied by self-interest groups and Unions.
To use a footballing analogy she could have had her pick of any club in the world, with the possible exception of Cuba.

Mmmm interesting are you comparing great Britain, past industrial superpower with Greece? or cyprus small but great errrrrrrr? we used to be compared with Germany and we still do like to think that way but that's a laugh.

one would imagine with Europe supposedly on the brink of collapse! investors would dump the Euro and buy our wonderful pound! and yet
it transpire the pound has crashed worse than the Euro since 2009!

 

[pooroldcodger]

Being yorkshire born and bred i can tell you there are not a lot of tears shed round here - street parties etc are planned

I lived in Yorkshire at the time - sorry, socialist republic of South Yorkshire.
Do you remember the power cuts? Trying to do your homework by candlelight and huddled round a single fire? Shops and factories rationed for electricity?
Miners, already the best paid "manual" (no disrespect to miners, but can't think of a more accurate terminology) and asking ever more greedy and ludicrous demands year on year, or they went on strike again?
Arthur Scargill in his union-funded castle, earning a fortune.
Communist Mick McGahey, head of NUM?
Of course she was hated in Yorkshire. Nobody had previously had the ba*lls or the intelligence to outwit the union leadership who couldn't see past the next big wage settlement, whilst the world laughed at us and our position as "the sick man of Europe".
If the unions had not been brought in to the 20th century, we would never had attracted investment from Japan that have provided jobs today.
Do you not think that Honda/Toyota/Nissan could have set up shop anywhere in Europe? Why do you think they came here?

 

[pooroldcodger]

Mmmm interesting are you comparing great Britain, past industrial superpower with Greece? or cyprus small but great errrrrrrr? we used to be compared with Germany and we still do like to think that way but that's a laugh.

one would imagine with Europe supposedly on the brink of collapse! investors would dump the Euro and buy our wonderful pound! and yet
it transpire the pound has crashed worse than the Euro since 2009!

You can't judge the strength of the Euro on any logical basis as it is being shored up politically. Basically it is a political project that is just too big to allow to find its true level.
And no, I wasn't comparing us with any other country, and that isn't what I said.
The point that was being made to me was that we had been fortunate enough to have a leader who could see through all the Euro gravy train, when it would have been much easier for her to have jumped on board. She could see that it was really a Federal Europe project, and that was never what this country agreed to join.
Don't get me wrong, I wish we were still turning out heavy engineering as Germany is, but I'm afraid that was never going to happen after the legacy of the 70's . In fact if Michael Foot had won an election we would probably by now be using the Euro and being told what to do by Germany.

 

[simmo999]

Ding dong the witch is dead.

 

[pooroldcodger]

she killed the north and didn't do much for the south either, she made the rich richer and the poor poorer, the next labour government didn't have the time put right the mess she left, now present government blames the last labour government for it.

she was no princess Diana

Blimey Dave - how long did they need?