Liverpool FC Forum

[Big Niall]

i'm not sure why but there was a documentary on her last days last night and a drama on them tonight on BBC. I'm just wondering what peoples view on her is.

i guess that people from the north of england don't like her as she basically ended the coal mines (although i think that was probably just the way technology went, nucleur is more efficient than industrial revolution idea of coal).

Others will view her as a churchill like  person who took on europe, won a war against argentina and probably improved the economy - 1990 seems better than 1979 to me.

What is her legacy in Britain (I generally think of the tories as being english, but I may be wrong, maybe some welsh, scots, northern irish rate her highly)

[Sabre]

La Dama de Hierro was the last woman I remember of the old England.

If you ask any Spaniard <35 years about England, most of them will talk nicely. The older people, under the influence of Franco developed a dislike for England because of things like Gibraltar.  La Dama de Hierro was a bit the last English seen as "intransigent", she was a bit the stereotype of the old England.

That's the vague idea the Spaniards have. I'd say that she was as disliked as respected, if you know what I mean, disliked, but the Spanish diplomats knew that she was a tough negotiator.

Myself I've had some english friends and I have not found anyone so far talking nicely about how she dealt with the reconversion of some industries. I know a guy from Maidenhead, one from London, one from Sheffield, one from Leeds, and they all hated her for how she treated the working class.

[Effes]

She sh@t on less well off people.

There is talk of her having a state funeral - only if she's still alive in the box if you ask me.

Liverpool really suffered in the 80's - there was a mass exodus of people who left to find work.

Ive got 3 brothers and 3 sisters - all 3 brothers left, and 2 sisters left. Never to return.
So in effect, she broke up my family.

Witch.

[account deleted by request]

I made a lot of money out of Margaret Thatcher, but a lot of my friends didn't. She was a first class c'nt in my opinion. She tried to Americanise the whole of Britain, and finished up almost bankrupting the country. She destroyed the town in which I live. Leigh was a thriving mining town until she closed the mines, now its just a dump.


Manufacturing industry/shipping/mining/steel ....... just some of the things she helped destroy.

[Big Niall]

She sh@t on less well off people.

There is talk of her having a state funeral - only if she's still alive in the box if you ask me.

Liverpool really suffered in the 80's - there was a mass exodus of people who left to find work.

Ive got 3 brothers and 3 sisters - all 3 brothers left, and 2 sisters left. Never to return.
So in effect, she broke up my family.

Witch.

i obviously don't know the ins and outs of england but was it generally coal mine related?


the coal mines had to end surely?

I may be wrong and she did other things to the north of england?


was there always a bit of a north/south divide or did thatcher create it as the financial centre thrived in london

[Sabre]

What was the problem of steel and coal in your country?

In my country we had a problem, we made our steel, it was a quality one, but the one of Korea was cheaper. And the enterprises would buy Korean steel. What can you do with your steel if your production costs are so much expensive than in Korea? It's a tough one.

What you can't do though, is to give up an industry and leave the workers with no production. It's a matter of the State, and perhaps one of the differences of a right and left winged policy (In my country those industries ended with a left winged government).

[NANNY RED]

She sh@t on less well off people.

There is talk of her having a state funeral - only if she's still alive in the box if you ask me.

Liverpool really suffered in the 80's - there was a mass exodus of people who left to find work.

Ive got 3 brothers and 3 sisters - all 3 brothers left, and 2 sisters left. Never to return.
So in effect, she broke up my family.

Witch.

ONE BITCH OF THE HIGHEST ORDER.

[Cool Hand Luke]

She sh@t on less well off people.

There is talk of her having a state funeral - only if she's still alive in the box if you ask me.

Liverpool really suffered in the 80's - there was a mass exodus of people who left to find work.

Ive got 3 brothers and 3 sisters - all 3 brothers left, and 2 sisters left. Never to return.
So in effect, she broke up my family.

Witch.

Say what you want about her but she is seriously hot and I would not say no to a rumble under the sheets.

Each to their own.

[bigmick]

She was a c... cast iron, 100%. In 1984 she picked a fight with the miners union, having stock piled huge amounts of coal in readyness for the fight. The name of the Colliery escapes me now which kicked it off (stats with a C, Cortonwood maybe?) but essentially six weeks after installing million of pounds worth of equipment, the NCB decided to close it down. There was a review proceedure laid down which had been in operation for years and had worked perfectly well, this involved consultation with the Miners Union and a good look at it before any final decisions were made. The government of the time in cahoots with the NCB and Ian McGregor decided to rip up all prior agreements and put the miners in a position where they positively had no option but to strike. The Union tried to delay the action as it was at the start of the Summer, the absolute worst time to go out but the government had chosen carefully, they weren't budging and out came the miners. 

The full wieght of the state swung behind the effort to break the backs of the NUM. The televison news, the Police, the press, the secret service infiltrating the higher echelons of the Union, ancient laws on tresspess and restriction of movement were invoked as busloads of pickets were stopped on motorways miles away from where they were headed. Honest working people were beaten, battered and starved into submission and even to this day, the scars on communities and families remain. Honourable men, men who had risked their lives underground to save their fellow workers were labelled "scabs", when in some cases a year after going on strike they went back to work with broken hearts.

Around that time I was a lefty student and I spent a bit of time around the soup kitchens of South Yorkshire, as well as on the picket lines of Markham Main and Hickleton Collieries. These people were in many cases fourth and fifth generation miners, men who worked hard for their money, loved their beer and their football and lived in villages miles from anywhere which depended upon the employment the mine provided. They weren't on strike for work, they were on strike for their lives and their livelyhoods, and as a country it is a dark period in our domestic history in my view.

It was all about economics apparently. The coal was too expensive to mine. I wonder if it would be too expensive to mine today, and I wonder if the idea of 300+ years of energy which would make the Uk self sufficient is something which we throw away so readily today.

Course it wasn't about economics really though. Those at the sharp end knew that. Break the miners Union and you break the Trade Union movement, that's what it was all about. Maybe some of it needed breaking up, but not like that, not with that blunt an instrument.

The positive thing which came out of it for me was that although many good men were broken through no fault of their own, many weren't as well. Collieries such as mardi in South Wales stayed 100% solid behind the strike, the whole community pulling together and when the strike was called off, the men marched back in unbowed, behind their banners with the brass bands playing. That scene was played out throughout the coalfields of the country, men sticking together and fighting for what was right. They did as their forefathers had done before them, and they weren't beaten.

Thatcher is ferrel, and I wouldn't p!ss on the c... if she was on fire.

[Effes]

She sh@t on less well off people.

There is talk of her having a state funeral - only if she's still alive in the box if you ask me.

Liverpool really suffered in the 80's - there was a mass exodus of people who left to find work.

Ive got 3 brothers and 3 sisters - all 3 brothers left, and 2 sisters left. Never to return.
So in effect, she broke up my family.

Witch.

i obviously don't know the ins and outs of england but was it generally coal mine related?


the coal mines had to end surely?

I couldn't say whether they HAD to go, not clued up enough on that.
But there is a way of doing things.

For example - I was made redundant in 2002.
But the company were great. Gave us loads of time to look for another job (18 months), let us have time off for interviews,
got in people to help look for jobs/give advice etc, beefed up our pensions, and gave us a great pay off.

Some companies just give yer your P45 and tell you to feck off.

Thatcher falls into the 2nd category.

[bigmick]

The coal mines didn't have to end at all. We made a short term decision based on the financial calculation at the time. Even then, making men redundant and importing coal from Poland which was slightly cheaper made no sense. Why pay your blokes dole money and spend extra on keeping someone else mines going ?

We had 300+ years of coal, and we closed the mines. Now of course as petrol prices are at the mercy of whether some Sheikh is making any cash out of his horse breeding exploits, it doesn't seem such a great idea.

[red37]

TW@T end of.

Isn't she dead yet 

[Woollyback]

thatcher was a hard faced bitch but say what you like about her, she dragged britain kicking and screaming into the harsh reality of the late 20th century. she was the ideal PM for her time.

i'll probably get flamed to f**k for this but britain needed an almighty kick up the @rse otherwise we were about to join the 2nd world along with (at the time) eastern european countries. mining was dead - the state (ie the taxpayer, you and me) was subsidising the mining industry silly so it could compete with foreign cheap coal. that's not sustainable, that's la-la land. the unions had the country by the balls hence why we ended up with a laughing stock of a car industry who couldn't make a car if their life depended on it. but the unions insisted the shambles of a company was propped up by taxpayers cash to protect the jobs of its members. that's not economics, that's an unsustainable fantasy

i don't like the woman at all, i think she's a cold old bag, but without her (or somebody like her) britain would be a complete economic retard. the changes she pushed through were painful alright, but they were necessary. her biggest problem was that she lasted in power for too long and started to lose the plot with her deregulation of EVERYTHING

[Dundalk]

I'll be interested when its her funeral.

[tonyeh]

In short, to me she sybolises everything that was wrong with the British Conservative political movement during the 1980's.

Elitist, uncaring, un-cooperative, out of touch, pandering to the "upper" echelons of society to the utter detriment of the rest of society.

The Britain of the 1980's looked like a wasteland to me when I lived in Ireland. When I lived in Derby in 1987, it felt like a wasteland.