WSJ op ed: “The World-Changing Margaret Thatcher – Not since Catherine the Great has there been a woman of such consequence.”

Paul Johnson the British historian –

Margaret Thatcher had more impact on the world than any woman ruler since Catherine the Great of Russia. Not only did she turn around—decisively—the British economy in the 1980s, she also saw her methods copied in more than 50 countries. "Thatcherism" was the most popular and successful way of running a country in the last quarter of the 20th century and into the 21st.

Thatcher's long ministry of nearly a dozen years is often mistakenly
described as ideological in tone. In fact Thatcherism was (and is)
essentially pragmatic and empirical. She tackled the unions not by
producing, like Heath, a single comprehensive statute but by a series of
measures, each dealing with a particular abuse, such as aggressive
picketing. At the same time she, and the police, prepared for trouble by
a number of ingenious administrative changes allowing the country's
different police forces to concentrate large and mobile columns wherever
needed. Then she calmly waited, relying on the stupidity of the union
leaders to fall into the trap, which they duly did.

She fought and won two pitched battles with the two strongest unions,
the miners and the printers. In both cases, victory came at the cost of
weeks of fighting and some loss of life. After the hard men had been
vanquished, the other unions surrendered, and the new legislation was
meekly accepted, no attempt being made to repeal or change it when
Labour eventually returned to power. Britain was transformed from the
most strike-ridden country in Europe to a place where industrial action
is a rarity. The effect on the freedom of managers to run their
businesses and introduce innovations was almost miraculous and has
continued.

Thatcher reinforced this essential improvement by a revolutionary
simplification of the tax system, reducing a score or more "bands" to
two and lowering the top rates from 83% (earned income) and 98%
(unearned) to the single band of 40%.

She also reduced Britain's huge and loss-making state-owned
industries, nearly a third of the economy, to less than one-tenth, by
her new policy of privatization—inviting the public to buy from the
state industries, such as coal, steel, utilities and transport by
bargain share offers. Hence loss-makers, funded from taxes, became
themselves profit-making and so massive tax contributors.

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