Iron Lady: The Legacy of Margaret Thatcher

Thomas O'Donoghue
4 min readDec 2, 2020

The longest reigning Prime Minister in British history, Margaret Thatcher left a lasting legacy.

Steadfast in her belief that economic freedom and individual liberty are essentially interdependent, Thatcher sincerely believed that personal responsibility and hard work were the only way to National prosperity.

As part of her collective policies she opted during her 11 year reign as Prime Minister to expand the tax burden going against the advice of mainstream economists.

Anticipating that a slump would occur, many of Britain’s economists feared that her policies would lead to a recession in a Britain already marked by mass unemployment.

Thatcher also pursued a hard line with labor unions, opting to stand against the influential National Union of Mineworkers and announcing plans to shut down several plants leading to a labor crisis in which a violent strike of coal miners erupted.

After a year or so the miners strike ended without settlement — a clear victory for Thatcher.

Thatcher’s victory angered many in the coal mining communities in the northeast, and many still begrudge her for destroying jobs, lives and communities.

Thatcher also left in her legacy the mass privatization of utilities like telephone and gas supply industries ushering in a global era of privatization the world over.

During her tenure, Britain’s economy swelled as Thatcher was able to successfully close the deficit in 1985.

Despite great success pursuing her agenda of “popular capitalism”, Thatcher was met with many obstacles.

Thatcher was unsuccessful in her plans to privatize the water industry let alone Britain’s profoundly popular National Health Service while she also failed to re-engineer Britain’s Social Security administration.

Thatcher was also unable to bring inflation under control.

Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power in 1979 marked a dramatic change from Britain’s post war consensus.

Thatcherism ushered in an era of dissent from Keynesianism, the welfare state, nationalized industry and the close regulation of the economy.

Although Margaret Thatcher was critical of the British welfare state, she ultimately opted to reform it rather than replace it entirely.

Less broad in her initial reforming forays, Thatcher eventually broadened her attack to privatize select industries.

Thatcherism as her legacy became styled, eventually came to encompass moral absolutism, nationalism, individualism and a steadfast commitment to Thatcher’s own political goals.

Thatcher oversaw a burgeoning economy as personal wealth rose by 80 percent in real terms during the 1980s amidst rising housing prices and increased earnings.

However, during Thatcher’s tenure, there was also high unemployment and a great deal of social unrest which many of her left-wing critics attributed to her economic policies.

Mass unemployment remained a major issue during her tenure and there was much drug abuse and family breakdown in her wake as Prime Minister.

The legacy of Thatcherism on manufacturing still remains controversial and unclear.

Thatcher’s neoliberal policies eschewed the growth of the manufacturing industry in favor of the burgeoning financial trading and speculation industries in what Political economist Susan Strange calls ‘casino capitalism’.

Today, many of her policies are perceived as being a mixed bag.

Thatcher did little to advance the cause of women despite being the first female Prime Minister

Indeed, some British feminists consider her to be an enemy noting that Thatcher, despite putting up with a tremendous amount of sexism, opted not to make the trail she blazed any easier for other women to follow.

Thatcher famously contended that women’s rights were not being deprived.

Thatcher had at once recommended the shortlisting of women by default for public appointments while also strongly suggesting that women with young children ought to leave the labor force.

Nonetheless, Thatcher’s political impact was immense.

Hoping to win over voters from the far right National Front whose own popularity in the mid-seventies swelled over fears that swarms of immigrants were arriving to take precious jobs away, Thatcher criticized contemporary Labour immigration policy along similar lines as the NF.

This was followed by a swell in conservative support at the expense of the NF, a phenomenon that many on the left regarded as Thatcher’s appeal to racism.

Thatcher’s policies were so influential that in 1994 opposition leader Tony Blair rebranded the Labour party “new labour” in his successful attempt to increase his appeal beyond Labour’s traditional supporters and to attract those who had supported Thatcher.

Thatcher regarded this rebranding of the Labour party as her greatest achievement as she was able to profoundly influence her longtime opposition into adopting her policies in order to come back to power after 18 years in opposition.

However, Thatcher’s influence may have also had a less than desirable effect on the road to Scottish independence.

Such policy makers as Alex Salmond argued that Thatcherism may have actually encouraged ‘devolution’ — i.e. the re-enactment of a Scottish Parliament in 1999 — after almost three centuries of lacking its own parliament.

All in all, Thatcher was a controversial and polarizing figure.

She was the first woman and longest serving Prime Minister in modern times, and was one of the most loved and most hated public figures of the second half of the twentieth century.

To some she was a savior who created a long lasting enterprise economy which steadily outperformed many of the more regulated economies on the continent.

To others she was a dark figure who enabled greed, and whose policies deliberately caused inequality.

--

--

No responses yet