Breaking news: Margaret Thatcher has died

[Jacob]

Anyhow, the argument that Blair is an heir to Thatcher apparently includes MiM's libertarian associates and noted Third Way proponent Mandelson as mentioned.

It seems like someone at Forbes magazine agrees: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2013/04/08/without-margaret-thatcher-theres-no-cool-britannia-for-tony-blair/

As his former press secretary Alastair Campbell wrote in The Blair Years, "TB said it was important I understood why parts of Thatcherism were right." And then when pressed by his advisers, including Campbell, to "be more progressive and radical," Blair responded that "What gives me real edge is that I'm not as Labour as you lot." Implicit from Blair was that Thatcher's success had moved the discussion to the right, so for Labor to succeed it would have to be far more Tory, more Thatcher, less Attlee.

On the far left, the charming Trots seem to agree as well: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/united-kingdom/2371-margaret-thatchers-true-legacy-was-the-war-criminal-tony-blair

Thatcher was no longer in office but her influence lingered, and not simply within her own Conservative party. Her true legacy was Tony Blair, who matched his zeal for neoliberal policies and privatisation with a propensity for war mongering which Thatcher can only have envied. Blair built on her record. He followed her in deep devotion to US presidents and complete accord with US foreign policy.

[garbon]

Jos said we shouldn't dismiss them out of hand - I'm saying that we should.

Dismiss them out of hand meaning we ignore them?  We've failed that in this thread.  Assume they have no relevency?  I think they do, if only as a marker of the beliefs of a segment of the population.  Even if those beliefs don't go much beyond "we didn't like this person".

What could stem from that?

[MadImmortalMan]

What could stem from that?

Just about anything. Just look at the Thatcher thread on pdoxOT. 

[garbon]

What could stem from that?

Just about anything. Just look at the Thatcher thread on pdoxOT. 

Exec Summ?

[Valmy]

I guess that commie thing goes to my point.  They act like Thatcher invented privatisation and "neoliberalism" and act like like everybody who does it is following in her footsteps.  Which creates the absurd situation that unless you are nationalizing things you are a Thatcherite.

[crazy canuck]

Really, that is about as convincing as the other stuff you said about how she destroyed otherwise prosperous communities.

Alright, maybe not uncontroversial but certainly not an uncommon argument to make.

Really, sometimes you seem so sheltered.

You mean sometimes I reject arguments that make no sense.

I was surprised by the vitriol in the musical Billy Elliot performed by an American touring company for a Vancouver audience not because I dont know the history but because I do.  As I said I am not surprised by 20 somethings who need no excuse to have a street party to act poorly.  I am surprised by those who defend it.  Not because I dont know the history but because I do.

I am equally surprised that you readily buy into any argument posted on the internet that supports that postion.  Sometimes I think you lack the ability to think critically about these things.

Thatcher made many changes but to really suggest that she is the single cause for the whole of teh world to shift to the right is a bit much.  We are all Thatcherites in the sense that we all rejected the silliness of government intervention as demonstrated by the disasterous policies of the 60s and 70s.  In that sense we are all Reaganits as well.

Really Jake, think about these claims for just half a second before you pass them on as your opinion.

[crazy canuck]

I guess that commie thing goes to my point.  They act like Thatcher invented privatisation and "neoliberalism" and act like like everybody who does it is following in her footsteps.  Which creates the absurd situation that unless you are nationalizing things you are a Thatcherite.

Yeah, exactly.

[MadImmortalMan]

I guess that commie thing goes to my point.  They act like Thatcher invented privatisation and "neoliberalism" and act like like everybody who does it is following in her footsteps.  Which creates the absurd situation that unless you are nationalizing things you are a Thatcherite.

I think people do tend to take the things they don't like and attribute them to polarizing figures of the past this way pretty often. Neoliberalism is really nothing more than a pejorative now. Calling her that is absurd if the word has a definition, considering the actual policies. It's no different than calling FDR a communist, which people on the fringe do all the time.

[Jacob]

Really Jake, think about these claims for just half a second before you pass them on as your opinion.

I haven't passed on anything as my opinion in this thread

I've conveyed my understanding of how many of the people who hate Thatcher came by their opinions and try to put it into context to people who expressed puzzlement at something that I did not find puzzling at all. I've described a phenomenon as I observed it, not endorsed it.

For what it's worth, my understanding - nonsensical as you may think it - is not primarily based on internet readings. I lived through the Reagan-Thatcher years too.

I'm curious about the virulent anti-Thatcherism in the Billy Elliot production you saw, if you don't mind expanding on it. How does it compare to the film? As I recall it the backdrop was indeed virulently anti-Thatcher, but that's what I'd expect given the time and place; these are Tyr's people after all. And the prevailing anti-Thatcher mood - rage really - provide some pretty key context for Billy's father and his actions - at least in the film as I remember it.

[Jacob]

I guess that commie thing goes to my point.  They act like Thatcher invented privatisation and "neoliberalism" and act like like everybody who does it is following in her footsteps.  Which creates the absurd situation that unless you are nationalizing things you are a Thatcherite.

Fair enough, but I suggest you take it up with the Trots

There's the Mandelson thing and the Forbes thing too, and I expect they have a slightly more nuanced view.

I mean, it's no skin off my back if you disagree with the argument that Blair is an heir to Thatcher's legacy because ultimately it's just an empty bit of rhetoric. My only real point is that it's a piece of rhetoric that's been used both by proponents of Blair's Third Way, as well as it's opponents on both the right and left.

[Valmy]

I don't disagree with the arguement.  I just think she, in Britain anyway, gets credit with basically creating the modern world to an absurd degree by both modern world's beneficiaries and malcontents.  That somehow without her everything would have stayed the same.  Blair is her heir simply because one could not help but be her heir if that is what she represents.  In the 90s it would have been absurd to the extreme to start nationalizing things.

[grumbler]

I'm guessing a part where they haven't had any street parties to celebrate the death of a former president?

That's your bar for "extremely respected?"  I thought you had a better command of the language than that.

[Ed Anger]

His first language is commie Chinese.

[Sheilbh]

I think that people like Shielbh don't really understand how draining the Seventies were on the British psyche simply because they were born after it was over; I can barely get a sense of it myself due to my earliest memories and the hold it has on the previous generation of all my relatives, not just my immediate family. It was a decade when if it could go wrong it did go wrong, where Britain flailed about aimlessly, where the Unions sometimes seemed to run the country...where a generation that had grown up on tales of the War and the semi-dignified retreat from Empire faced the shame of their government needing to ask for the help of the IMF.

Maybe. But this argument is one I've been hearing and having for as long as I can remember. My first political memories are of my parents arguing with the my granddad and uncle, who were both fierce Thatcherites, over Tony Blair. Did we really want to go back to the dead left unburied (and this was Liverpool, remember, where that did happen)? They also thought that Blair was actually like Derek Hatton, on that they were wrong. But the context even then, was Thatcher.

Similarly I remember arguments between my parents and godparents (very hard-left) over Blair selling out to Thatcherism. Though they were, by then, willing to concede that Kinnock had been right to face Militant. It wasn't really until Iraq that I think the arguments stopped being mainly about Thatcher in some way or other. Had she destroyed Liverpool? Did she know about Hillsborough? Was Blair just a kinder, gentler Thatcherite? They'd always been on the centre-left, and were positively counter-revolutionary in Liverpool in the 80s, but it lead them to becoming very Blairite. They almost always disagreed with him and wanted far more left-wing policies. But they were willing to trust him because they thought he could smash the Tories for 18 years, which by then was all they wanted.

In fairness more or less my entire family are Irish, so there's no nostalgia about Britain's place in the world

The issue as I see it is more one of democratic legitimacy rather than reverance for an office.  Part of being the citizen of a democracy IMO is accepting the will of the voting public when it goes against your own.

This sounds like Raz. I've said before but I think for the NUM leadership the miners' strike was an attempt to destroy Thatcher and her government. To stop her from being able to govern and to bring them down. The experience of Heath gave them an overinflated sense of their own power and with Scargill's leadership lead to disaster. That was an assault on democratic legitimacy.

Opposition however angry and emotional isn't, that's part of democracy.

The NUM had been the muscle of the British labour movement for years.  In a very real sense, Scargill was the most powerful man in the world of British labour.  You tend to think that history began in 1979.

You're wrong. The NUM was part of the labour movement but it wasn't a militant part and it wasn't very vocal. I think the 1972 strike was the first strike by the miners in the post-war era. By then they were some of the lowest-paid workers in the country. That combined with the health effects of their job gave them a lot of public sympathy even after it forced a three day week. They only really become radical and Militant - like the rest of the left - in the late 70s-on. Scargill (elected to head them in 1982) represents their turn to radicalism, not their past.

Have you been to a Young Tories meeting recently?

I once knew a gay young Tory at uni. He had a poster of Thatcher and one of Boris in his room. I was a little freaked out.

That's...surprising.

I'd agree, it's a pretty common view. She moved the centre ground of British politics - like Attlee. All the other's have been in their shadows.

Well they didn't really win did they? Her policies still happened and influenced Britain's subsequent history. How does her death (at 87) in any way count as a win? This sounds like the thoughts of people who are a bit soft in the head.

I think Viking's right, that's part of why her and Blair attract such hatred. They can always claim that the British people never rejected them, they were betrayed by their parties.

That's actually a pretty common sentiment as I understand it, to the point of being fairly uncontroversial. I think the term is "heir to Thatcher" rather than "creature", but otherwise I've seen it getting some play.

Yeah. It's absolutely the norm, I think every news report and obit I've read basically says New Labour was about accepting the Thatcherite settlement. It's so common that lefties have to write articles like this (I agree with them):
http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2013/04/09/labour-ended-thatcherism/

I really don't get the logic of complaining that Thatcher moved the center of British politics to the right.  If you don't like the way the British electorate thinks and votes, yell at them.

I don't think there's any complaining about it.

They act like Thatcher invented privatisation and "neoliberalism" and act like like everybody who does it is following in her footsteps.  Which creates the absurd situation that unless you are nationalizing things you are a Thatcherite.

Okay. But she kind of did, or at least she was a pioneer. She was elected in 1979. Within a decade you had Thatcherism, Reaganomics, Rogernomics and privatisations in South America - often explicitly modelled on British examples - and a decade later you had the same in Eastern Europe.

It's a bit like Clinton. He started the 'Third Way' which within a decade would be joined by similar figures like Blair and Schroeder.

The other point is that like Attlee she built a settlement that lasted. The Tories opposed the NHS and large chunks of the welfare state in the late 1940s. Attlee passed them and the Tories accepted them; they realised they couldn't win if they didn't accept that bedrock of the welfare state. The next thirty years did so companies bouncing back and forth from being nationalised and privatised. Thatcher's broad policies were low inflation, if necessary at the expense of full employment; unions that are reined in; property ownership; and generally minimal government interference in most markets (for me that's a decent definition of 'neo-liberalism'). Only when Labour showed that they accepted the broad Thatcherite settlement did they win again. We've not had any increase of the relevance of unions, generally low inflation, no great new labour legislation, no significant government intervention and certainly no nationalisations (with the brief exception of emergency measures in 2008).

I think it's that the post-war Labour government settled social issues in a way that endures. There was broad consensus over that and the need for a generally planned economy for the next 30 years, with differences within that. But Labour never won because they failed to deal with inflation and with the unions. Thatcherism did and that's broadly settled economic debates and there's been a broad consensus over that ever since.

[Jacob]

I'm guessing a part where they haven't had any street parties to celebrate the death of a former president?

That's your bar for "extremely respected?"  I thought you had a better command of the language than that.

Point conceded.