Thatcher: truths & lies

The massive media outpourings on the death of Margaret Thatcher have been long on opinion but short on fact, so I will try to redress the balance.

 

Anti-Europe? This is far from the truth. She was anti the notion of Europe as a political entity. This is what she said.

 

“The President of the Commission, Mr. Delors, said  that he wanted the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the Community, he wanted the Commission to be the Executive and he wanted the Council of Ministers to be the Senate. No. No. No."

 

"What is the point of trying to get elected to Parliament only to hand over sterling and the powers of this House to Europe?” 

 

“Europe is not the creation of the Treaty of Rome. Nor is the European idea the property of any group or institution. We British are as much heirs to the legacy of European culture as any other nation. Our links to the rest of Europe, the continent of Europe, have been the dominant factor in our history…"

 

“Let Europe be a family of nations, understanding each other better, appreciating each other more, doing more together but relishing our national identity no less than our common European endeavour. Let us have a Europe which plays its full part in the wider world, which looks outward not inward, and which preserves that Atlantic community—that Europe on both sides of the Atlantic—which is our noblest inheritance and our greatest strength.” 

 

She was anti the Euro and the abandonment of national currencies, but she was not averse to the Ecu as a European trading monetary unit, which was how it operated until the Euro was introduced .

 

She received endorsement of her stand just a few days ago from a Eurocrat.

 

Former Dutch Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkesten :"The Netherlands has to exit the euro as quickly as possible... The monetary union has totally failed. The euro turned out to be a sleeping pill which made Europe doze off instead of thinking about our competitiveness... Let’s stop with the euro and instead strengthen the Single Market... We don't need the euro for that."

 

Pit closures?

 

Wilson closed 211 mines in 5 years. MT closed 154 in 11 years. There was no alternative, to use one of her favourite phrases. British coal cost more to produce than its selling price. It was 3 times the cost of imported Polish coal. And North Sea oil provided a plentiful and cheap alternative.

 

The miners’ strike?

 

This was not industrial action. It was ideological class warfare by Scargill and the NUM. Maggie did not provoke it, as many would have us believe. I recall that there were  three ballots all of which rejected strike action. But Scargill, the Marxist who allegedly took money from Gadaffi for strike funds, ignored them.

 

It is said that she ‘decimated’ industry. In fact, in the decade after MT became PM, manufacturing grew at an exceptionally rapid rate. This was the era that brought Nissan, Toyota, Honda and other major manufacturers to the UK.

 

Because of industrial relations laws introduced during that time, private sector strikes are now minimal as a consequence of the requirement for strike ballots. And she banned ‘flying pickets’ whereby unions interfered in disputes with which they had no direct interest.

 

Divisive? Of course; that is what the British political tradition is all about. Consensus politics is for the political class alone: it enables them to share out the spoils.  Her constituency was the aspirational working class, Mondeo man, the ‘class traitors’ who wanted to get on.

 

We forget what the UK was like before Thatcher; top rate of tax of 83%; exchange controls; incessant strikes that gained Britain the sobriquet of the Sick Man of Europe. ‘Thatcherism’ has made sure that there is no going back.