Christopher Hitchens: What Did Margaret Thatcher Do for Britain? Iron Lady & British Politics (1987)

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• published: 24 Mar 2014
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By leading her party to victory in the 1987 general election with a 102 seat majority, riding the Lawson boom against a weak Labour opposition advocating unilateral nuclear disarmament, Margaret Thatcher became the longest continuously serving British prime minister since Lord Liverpool (1812 to 1827), and the first to win three successive elections since Lord Palmerston in 1865. Most national newspapers supported her—with the exception of The Daily Mirror, The Guardian and The Independent—and were rewarded with regular press briefings by her press secretary, Bernard Ingham. She was informally dubbed 'Maggie' by the tabloids, and political protesters were given to chanting the slogan 'Maggie Out!' Despite her third straight victory she remained a polarising figure, her unpopularity on the left is evident from the lyrics of several contemporary pop-music songs. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, overreacted to a market fall with his reflationary 1988 budget, stoking inflation and precipitating a slide in the government's fortunes. By the time of Thatcher's resignation in 1990, inflation had again hit 10%, the same level she had found it in 1979. Overall, the Thatcher government's economic record is disputed. In relative terms, it could be held there was a modest revival of British fortunes. Real gross domestic product had grown by 26.8% over 1979--89 in the United Kingdom as against 24.3% for the EC-12 average.[83] Measured by total factor productivity, labour, and capital, British productivity growth between 1979 and 1993 compared favourably with the OECD average.[11] However under Thatcherite management the macro-economy was unstable, even by the standards of the Keynesian era of stop-go. The amplitude of fluctuations in gross domestic product and real gross private non-residential fixed capital formation was greater in the United Kingdom than for the OECD.[84] In the Thatcher years the top 10% of earners received almost 50% of the tax remissions,[82] but there proved to be no simple trade-off between equality and efficiency.[82] The receipts ratio did not fall below the 1979 level until 1992.[82] The expenditure ratio rose again after Thatcher's resignation in 1990, even climbing for a time above the 1979 figure.[85] The cause was the heavy budget charge of the recessions of 1979--81 and 1990--92 and the extra funding required to meet the higher level of unemployment.[82] Though an early backer of decriminalisation of male homosexuality, Thatcher, at the 1987 Conservative party conference, issued the statement that "Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay". Backbench Conservative MPs and Peers had already begun a backlash against the 'promotion' of homosexuality and, in December 1987, the controversial 'Section 28' was added as an amendment to what became the Local Government Act 1988. This legislation was repealed by Tony Blair's Labour administration between 2000 and 2003. Welfare reforms in her third term created an adult Employment Training system that included full-time work done for the dole plus a £10 top-up, on the workfare model from the United States. Thatcher, the former chemist, became publicly concerned with environmental issues in the late 1980s. In 1988, she made a major speech [86] accepting the problems of global warming, ozone depletion and acid rain. In 1990, she opened the Hadley Centre for climate prediction and research.[87] In her book Statecraft (2002), she described her later regret in supporting the concept of human-induced global warming, outlining the negative effects she perceived it had upon the policy-making process. "Whatever international action we agree upon to deal with environmental problems, we must enable our economies to grow and develop, because without growth you cannot generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premiership_of_Margaret_Thatcher