Margaret Thatcher had more impact on the world than any woman ruler since Catherine the Great of Russia. Not only did she turn around\u2014decisively\u2014the 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.<\/a><\/p>\nThatcher's long ministry of nearly a dozen years is often mistakenly
\ndescribed as ideological in tone. In fact Thatcherism was (and is)
\nessentially pragmatic and empirical. She tackled the unions not by
\nproducing, like Heath, a single comprehensive statute but by a series of
\nmeasures, each dealing with a particular abuse, such as aggressive
\npicketing. At the same time she, and the police, prepared for trouble by
\na number of ingenious administrative changes allowing the country's
\ndifferent police forces to concentrate large and mobile columns wherever
\nneeded. Then she calmly waited, relying on the stupidity of the union
\nleaders to fall into the trap, which they duly did. <\/p>\n
She fought and won two pitched battles with the two strongest unions,
\nthe miners and the printers. In both cases, victory came at the cost of
\nweeks of fighting and some loss of life. After the hard men had been
\nvanquished, the other unions surrendered, and the new legislation was
\nmeekly accepted, no attempt being made to repeal or change it when
\nLabour eventually returned to power. Britain was transformed from the
\nmost strike-ridden country in Europe to a place where industrial action
\nis a rarity. The effect on the freedom of managers to run their
\nbusinesses and introduce innovations was almost miraculous and has
\ncontinued.<\/p>\n
Thatcher reinforced this essential improvement by a revolutionary
\nsimplification of the tax system, reducing a score or more "bands" to
\ntwo and lowering the top rates from 83% (earned income) and 98%
\n(unearned) to the single band of 40%.<\/p>\n
She also reduced Britain's huge and loss-making state-owned
\nindustries, nearly a third of the economy, to less than one-tenth, by
\nher new policy of privatization\u2014inviting the public to buy from the
\nstate industries, such as coal, steel, utilities and transport by
\nbargain share offers. Hence loss-makers, funded from taxes, became
\nthemselves profit-making and so massive tax contributors.<\/p>\n
There's more – hit the link. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2014decisively\u2014the 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8501,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758\/revisions\/8501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}