Margaret Thatcher - Legacy

Legacy

Part of the politics series on
Thatcherism
Philosophy Conservatism Libertarianism Capitalism • Privatisation Anti-communism • Anti-trade unionism British unionism • Euroscepticism Home ownership • Entrepreneurship Monarchism • Traditionalism
People Margaret Thatcher Nigel Lawson • Keith Joseph Milton Friedman • Friedrich Hayek Ralph Harris • Arthur Seldon Norman Tebbit • Michael Portillo John Redwood • Francis Maude Augusto Pinochet • Ronald Reagan
Organisations Conservative Party Bruges Group Centre for Policy Studies Conservative Way Forward Institute of Economic Affairs Mont Pelerin Society No Turning Back The Freedom Association
Related movements Economic rationalism (Australia) Reaganomics (United States) Rogernomics (New Zealand) Libertarianism in the UK
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Thatcher defined her own political philosophy, in a major and controversial break with One Nation Conservatives like her predecessor Edward Heath, in her statement to Douglas Keay, published in Woman's Own magazine in September 1987:

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand "I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!" or "I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!" "I am homeless, the Government must house me!" and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations.

To her supporters, Margaret Thatcher remains a figure who revitalised Britain's economy, curbed the trade unions, and re-established the nation as a world power. She oversaw an increase from 7% to 25% of adults owning shares, and more than a million families bought their council houses, giving an increase from 55% to 67% in owner-occupiers. Total personal wealth rose by 80%.

Thatcher's premiership was also marked by high unemployment and social unrest, and many critics fault her economic policies for the unemployment level; many of the areas affected by high unemployment as a result of her monetarist economic policies have still not fully recovered and are blighted by social problems such as drug abuse and family breakdown. Speaking in Scotland in April 2009, before the 30th anniversary of her election as Prime Minister, Thatcher insisted she had no regrets and was right to introduce the poll tax, and to withdraw subsidies from "outdated industries, whose markets were in terminal decline", subsidies that created "the culture of dependency, which had done such damage to Britain". Political economist Susan Strange called the new financial growth model "casino capitalism", reflecting her view that speculation and financial trading were becoming more important to the economy than industry.

Critics have regretted Thatcher's influence in the abandonment of full employment, poverty reduction and a consensual civility as bedrock policy objectives. She has been criticised as being divisive and for promoting greed and selfishness. Many recent biographers have been critical of aspects of the Thatcher years and Michael White, writing in New Statesman in February 2009, challenged the view that her reforms had brought a net benefit. Despite being Britain's first woman Prime Minister, some critics contend Thatcher did "little to advance the political cause of women", either within her party or the government, and some British feminists regarded her as "an enemy". Her stance on immigration was perceived as part of a rising racist public discourse, which Professor Martin Barker has called "new racism".

Influenced at the outset by Keith Joseph, the term "Thatcherism" came to refer to her policies as well as aspects of her ethical outlook and personal style, including moral absolutism, nationalism, interest in the individual, and an uncompromising approach to achieving political goals. The nickname "Iron Lady", originally given to her by the Soviets, became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style.

In 2011, Labour leader Ed Miliband praised some of Thatcher's key policies, stating: "Some of what happened in the 1980s was right. It was right to let people buy their council houses. It was right to cut tax rates of 60, 70, 80 per cent. And it was right to change the rules on the closed shop, on strikes before ballots. These changes were right, and we were wrong to oppose it at the time." In September 2012 Miliband was reported to have praised Thatcher for creating an era of aspiration in the 1980s, and is quoted as having said "My dad was sceptical of all the Thatcher aspirational stuff. But I felt you sort of had to recognise that what she was talking about struck a chord."

Thatcher's tenure of 11 years and 209 days as Prime Minister was the longest since Lord Salisbury (13 years and 252 days in three spells starting in 1885), and the longest continuous period in office since Lord Liverpool (14 years and 305 days starting in 1812).

Thatcher was voted the fourth greatest British Prime Minister of the 20th century in a poll of 139 academics organised by MORI, and in 2002 was ranked number 16 in the BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.