'Maggie, Maggie, Maggie...out, out, out!

‘Call once yet

In a voice that she will know,

‘Margaret, Margaret’’.

Mathew Arnold.

I know it’s the silly season but those of a leftish bent (and to be leftish means you must be bent) are once more engaged in a round of Maggie-bashing. The old girl has been out of the fray for 20 years, for goodness sake.

There seem to be two threads. One is that her policies ruined the nation and second that as a result of her destruction of Britain’s industrial base we don’t make anything anymore, Maggie having created a country fit for casino bankers.

So let’s take the second point first – we don’t make things.

What are the facts (and I am using figures from before the banking crisis distorted them)? The UK is up there with the big boys in industrial output, in the top five or six. Ditto with manufacturing output. It is one of the world’s largest motor manufacturers – Ford, GM, Nissan, Toyota, Honda, JLR, Rolls Royce, Bentley and a raft of smaller firms. We make most of the world’s F1 racing cars. We have the world’s second largest aerospace firm. We are at the leading edge of development in electronics – there is a British-made component in almost every one of the world’s mobile phones. We are one of the world’s largest energy producers. We are in the top 5 exporters.

The downside?  Productivity; this is not because the Brits are bone idle – it is mostly a reflection of the fact that competing countries like France have higher levels of industrial investment and so better machinery and more efficient factories.

R&D which may at least in part be due to abysmal education standards.

We are also #4 in the world for service industries. That’s not just banks, whatever the left propaganda might say. It is tourism, hospitality, transport and distribution, entertainment, health services, and a whole raft more.

Maggie ruined the economy? Back in the late sixties it was already apparent that much of Britain’s industrial areas were in danger of becoming rust-belts. Manufacturing was being ruined by strong unions and week management. We used to be the #1 maker of motor bikes. The whole industry virtually disappeared. Ludicrous pay-demands, lost productivity caused by endless strikes, poor build-quality, lack of competitiveness very nearly did for the whole manufacturing sector. The newspaper industry was almost brought to its knees by criminal unions. The ship-building industry which once dominated the world was locked in a Victorian time warp for production methods and only worked in fits and starts due to ’industrial action’ – an oxymoron if ever there was.

Not only did all this happen before Maggie came on the scene but also it was largely the reason why she did.

But.........

She denationalised British Steel that was costing the taxpayer £1 million a day (10 times that now), she privatised BA so that it actually came to resemble an airline and not a job-creation scheme, she privatised the utilities giving us not only improved service and choice (who now remembers the ghastly service from the telephone monopoly of the GPO?), but also the chance to buy the shares preferentially, turning a large part of the population in to capitalists. And  so on.

She smashed Scargill and the NUM that had been holding the nation to ransom for most of the 20^th century (they went on strike during the last bitter winter of WW1 so that field hospitals in Flanders had no heating). She broke the power of the unions in the private sector (pity she didn’t tackle the NUT).

She created a real ‘property-owning  democracy’ with the sale of council houses to  the tenants at discounted prices.

She destroyed Old Labour, home to fruitcakes like Benn, Foot (who was subsidised by the USSR when he was editor of Tribune) and Jack Jones who was on the KGB payroll the whole time he was a union boss.

She brought down the vile and murderous regime in Argentina which became a democracy (not that we had any thanks for it).

And she created unprecedented national prosperity that lasted until Broon ruined it all. No, she didn’t create casino banking; Broon did.

Ah, those good old days.

    The three-day week (when Liverpool Corporation refused to work the extra time- allegedly).

    Income tax at 89%.

    Investment income tax at 98%.

    Double digit inflation.

    Exchange control so that you couldn’t waste what was left after tax on foreign travel.

    The miners, dockers, car workers, seamen, printers queuing to go on strike.

    Corpses unburied and rubbish piled in the streets in the ‘winter of discontent’.

    Wilson, Heath.

And after Heath’s dismal reforms of local government in 1973, the Loony-leftie councils sprang up like poison ivy – Ken Newt at the GLC, the egregious Margaret Hodge, the Tattinger Trot who became a disastrous Minister under Tone. Maggie loved them. They helped get her elected three times.