State funeral for Thatcher
Relax, she isn’t dead yet although the Iron Lady may be rusting slightly at the seams. The Mail’s exclusive that on her death, she will enter the pantheon of British heroes in company with Churchill, Gladstone, Wellington and Nelson will attract approval and anger in equal measure – plus I guess quite a lot of unease throughout the establishment. The Mail’s line, Palace fears there might not be enough troops to line streets of London is I think, an unconscious irony.
The creation of Thatcher as icon gathered pace when Gordon Brown welcomed her to Downing St during his short-lived honeymoon last September.
The iconclasm began much earlier, five years ago, when a theatre producer decapitated her statue 
It was since repaired and installed in the member’s lobby at the entrance to the Commons, amid complaints that it was too big.
A state funeral will be deemed appropriate for the first woman Prime Minister.
But in death as in life, Lady Thatcher is fated to remain a divisive – if definitive – figure.
Was the site down earlier?
Anyone who wishes to know what British life was like prior to Maggie Thatcher they can find out very easily.
Just go up to Glasgow East whose dreary life stunting environment is largely due to being ruled by a one party Old Labour administration. When you’re up there throw away your mobile phone and ask the Post Office to send you a landline phone but tell them not to actually deliver it for three months. Disconnect your broadband internet, do not subscribe to cable tv, restrict yourself to watching the two BBC channels and ITV.
Then get a job in a coalyard where you can lug bags of coal for eight hours a day, ask the boss to give an extra fifteen percent of your hard earned wages to the government too while you’re at it. Tell your son to drop out of school at 16 as demeaning manual labour is all he can expect in life and if you talk nicely to the union boss at the coal yard he might give him a start there.
You won’t of course own your own home because you won’t get a mortgage so you can either rent some hovel from a private landlord or apply to the council. When they get around to processing your application you might get some damp council flat but don’t dare think of improving it yourself, no way that’s the council’s job and who knows some day they might actually get around to sending out a worker who might do some repairs.
Every so often it will be necessary to not buy things, unimportant things like sugar, or bread, or newspapers or petrol because the dockers, or bakers, or tanker drivers, or printers are on strike for months on end. For the real taste of pre Thatcher Britain restrict your work to three days a week and go to bed by candle light to discover the joys of life in a country where the National Union of Mineworkers decrees economic policy rather than the democratically elected government.
You want to buy a British manufactured car? No problem be sure it’s one of those built by the permanently striking workers of Longbridge or Linwood, nice and rusty with electrics that don’t work, doors that don’t open and windows that don’t close. Don’t worry about spare parts, there are none; the blokes that should make them are out on strike over a dispute about the rights of night shift workers to sleep while on the job (I’m not making this up).
Got some time off? It’ll be a week by the British seaside then, you certainly won’t be getting a cheap flight to Riga or Prague because there are no cheap flights and these places are still Stalinist run shiteholes. Even if you did go abroad you’d only be allowed by the government to take five pounds with you. Go to a football match? Well you can do that, you’ll be crammed onto terraces where some bloke who isn’t pissing on your back is having a pitched battle with the opposing fans, hopefully you won’t be crushed against the anti-hooligan wire fences.
See what you missed growing up in Thatcher’s Britain? The bitch took all that away from you.
It’s a waste of time, Harry. The worker’s create the wealth, and the capitalist class just steal it from them, forcing them to live in penury. As Gerry Adams said to Michael McDowell during a debate on economics on RTE, “The people create the wealth.” Gerry Adams retreated back across the border to howls of derision for the South, but the voting punter’s love that stuff up North where they are dependent on the Welfare State and see attacks on it as being an attack on their ‘livelihood.’ That’s why Thatcher is their perfect hate figure. It doesn’t occur to them that Sinn Fein policies have not created any jobs, but then economic policies are irrelevant when you believe in entitlement.
Prionsa:
A Thatcherite as well as a Majorite……………..Tooooooooooooo much!;¬)
I’m really neither, I try to be objective. But New Labour seems to stoop to a new low every day to the point where it’s easy to forget how miserable life was when the Tories were in power. However, I’m a full-on Liberal Democrat, and have been for years.
Ok the bBritish economy was in need of reform, she took a hatchet to it instead of a snipper.
I agree, the shock tactics were not necessary. While I believe that the government should not underpin failing industries, I think that state intervention should be an option for governments in order to solve temporary cashflow problems and get around minor issues in otherwise sound businesses, like the one that happened at the De Lorean plant here which could have been successful had it not been swatted down by a Prime Minister who (coincidentally) sat on the board of one of DeL’s major competitors.
She was saved from doing a u-turn by two things. Scottish oil and the Falklands. These allowed her to barge on with her failed policies and ramrod them through at the expense of millions, even those in the south eventually suffered from the boom and bust. She was also lucky with her enemies according to Andrew Marr, harsh but probably true. Scargill was perhaps not the man to take her on and win, and Kinnock was just too nice.
Scargill picked the wrong fight and the left split.
The huge, union-dominated and vastly inefficient industries had to modernize or die. In the end Thatcher killed them off rather than help them modernize, which I don’t think was necessary, but we’ll never know whether or not they would have been up to the challenge.
The question I always have is this. How come British car manufacturing firms, like Rover, could produce nothing but crap, whereas Japanese manufacturers such as Nissan and Honda have large, well-run plants in the UK, which by all accounts turn out high-quality and well engineered goods ? The Honda plant builds cars that are sold in the US as well as the current Civic here in the UK, and the Nissan plant builds the popular Micra. The conclusion I tend to arrive at is that British workers can succeed and be among the best in the world. It’s the management who suck, and we need the Japanese to show us how it’s done. Of course, both the management and the workers paid the price when the old nationalized heavy industries were swept away.
She was guilty of allowing a member of her Parliament to die just for the sake of it,
She was/is a cold, heartless old hag, but don’t you think the IRA army council share an equal burden of guilt here ?
only to gradually u-turn shortly thereafter on these simple and doable rights. She was indeed the architect of the Scottish Parliament as someone inferred earlier. So good can come from evil.
She was the architect of Blairism and the modern “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” politics. Amusingly, with Cameron, it’s going full circle. She was the last nail in the coffin for Old Labour. Although, I’d have loved to have seen how we would have done had John Smith had his chance.
It is no surprise to me that some people still worship a person like this, sure there is a cult of Stalin in the Russia of today.
Exactly, people are always nostalgic about the “good old days” which, by my recollection, where none too good. The Conservative Party just could not get that “feelgood factor” on the go when they were in power. I don’t believe it was their economic policy, which was essentially unchanged under New Labour, but instead because working and middle classes felt oppressed when they were in power, and just couldn’t work up a positive feeling about anything. I don’t mean oppressed as in beaten off the streets, but oppressed as in constantly having the feeling of an axe swinging over them. I think this is as much of the reason for the 10 years of good economic stability as anything else.
I am no fan of Thatcher, and in face, I will probably say a little cheer when she finally pops it, but I do think it’s a little distasteful to discuss her funeral when she’s still very much with us.
Tovarich
Quite a good piece from you there. Not nice of me to say it, but perhaps John Smith dying was a good thing for Scotland in the long run. I wouldn’t envisage us being on the cusp of independence with him still here or his legacy.
“The question I always have is this. How come British car manufacturing firms, like Rover, could produce nothing but crap, whereas Japanese manufacturers such as Nissan and Honda have large, well-run plants in the UK, which by all accounts turn out high-quality and well engineered goods ? The Honda plant builds cars that are sold in the US as well as the current Civic here in the UK, and the Nissan plant builds the popular Micra. The conclusion I tend to arrive at is that British workers can succeed and be among the best in the world. It’s the management who suck”
Not for a second will I deny that British management – of mainly government owned businesses it must be remembered – was for the most part dreadful, indeed Maggie agreed with you that’s why she hated the old school network of duffers that were running the economy and instead favoured new aggressive blood like Michael Edwardes at Leyland and Bob MacGregor at British Steel and the National Coal Board.
But aren’t you forgetting the elephant in the corner? Let me give you a wee reminder, Red Robbo? The unions wrecked the British manufacturing industry with their endless ‘demarcation disputes’, ‘work to rules’, ‘go slows’ (did anyone notice the difference?) etc.
Maggie, like you, favoured the Japanese model of business, Nissan and Honda are positively thatcherite in how they run their companies, they insisted on only one union per plant, Maggie supported this, the unions bitterly resisted it.
There’s enough blame to go around for the demise of British manufacturing but to ignore the devastation caused by the neanderthal trades union movement is to ignore 90% of the issue.
90% of the issue. So how big a proportion were factors like cheaper wages and materials abroad, often in economies directed by less than democratic governments in the far east, a lack of investment in modern equipment, a deliberate decision to weaken the basis of the labour movement by Thatcher, Tebbit and co, and other international factors? All less than 10%? All the unions’ fault? Am I convinced? I think not.
You know Gari the more you post the more you prove Thatcher was correct.
First you talk of the marvellously run Japanese car factories that Maggie actively sought to bring to the UK but which were resisted tooth and nail by the British unions.
Then you mention how British workers faced competition from cheaper workers in Asia, yes and Maggie knew that too, that is why she insisted British industry must become more competitive, restrictive practices had to end, feather bedding could not be afforded, productivity had to be increased, massive overmanning had to be reduced, all things the unions bitterly resisted.
Then you talk about old outdated plant, yes and who was to the forefront in blocking the introduction of new equipment and working practices? Yup our old friends the trades unions. Even after the introduction of diesel locomotives there were “firemen” employed on British trains, not having a boiler to stoke they had the onerous task of checking the heat in the carriages, all union men, paid the skilled union rate, with pension, and overtime, all courtesy of the British tax payer.
Remember the Times headline in 1979? Er no of course you won’t because the Times wasn’t published that year because neanderthal printers’ unions blocked the introduction of new printing technology, they wanted to use the old hot stone presses from the Victorian era, Murdoch ended up getting the paper for cheap and when he tried to move it from the cramped old premises in Fleet Street to a new bright airy purpose built plant at Wapping, who fought viciously, literally rioted, to stop this move? It wasn’t Maggie Thatcher that’s for sure.
Face it Garibaldy you’re an advocate of Thatcherite industrial reform you just can’t bring yourself to admit it!
By the way sorry for the delay in replying all last night I was unable to connect to Slugger, this is the second evening running this has happened, is it just me or is everyone experiencing this problem?
I see that this most inappropriate thread – talking about a most controversial conclusion to a still living politician’s career – has deteriorated into a discussion of the ‘Iron Lady’s ideas on industry and trade policy, as if she were the female equivalent of Alan Clark.
Actually, as PM, she spent almost all her time, dealing with foreign affairs, particularly with its covert aspects – what I think, based upon my research, would have resulted in a nuclear war which would have destroyed us all if it had not been for the spying for the Soviets by Ames, Hanssen, Pollard et al. She allowed MI6 to supply the assassin, Captain Simon Hayward, it seems, to kill Sweden’s statsminister Olof Palme – what was intended to initiate a surprise non-nuclear conclusion to the Cold War.
Thanks to the spying, though, Moscow was not fooled by the assassination in Stockholm, and, consequently, not required to resort to the use of its unknown 82 nuclear-armed SS-23 missiles in the confrontation. If it had been, a full scale nuclear war would have resulted.
This was the most reckless conspiracy which she, Howe, the secuirty chiefs, Younger et al. should be made to account for before she is given a most undeserved, highly partisan state funeral. And if it still happens, Ames, Hanssen, Pollard et al. should be released from life imprisonment for services rendered to us all.
Harry,
Connecting to slugger has been difficult over the last few days I’ve found as well. As for me being an advocate of Thatcherite reforms, you of course absolutely correct. I like to put on stockings and a blonde wig and run around saying I’m as British as Finchley.
Harry
I reckon that they are trying to keep the undesirables out.;¬) Me too as it happens.
Gari
Now that you have put that picture in my mind I’ll never be able to take you seriously again.
PE,
I know. It’s the British as Finchley bit. Simply impossible to believe.
Is the video on YouTube?
Premium rate website only.
‘I like to put on stockings and a blonde wig and run around saying I’m as British as Finchley.’
Just so long as you don’t run a motel Gari, I think we’ll be alright.
Harry,
It was me who made the point that foreign firms have been able to establish successful manufacturing businesses in the UK. I do agree that part of the responsibility for the failure of the manufacturing sector in the UK was the stubborn attitude to the unions when it came to reform. They expected the government to use protectionism and tariffs to ensure that they could sell their goods, rather than building the goods that the market wanted. You can only fight that off for so long. The same problem is occurring right now in the Irish republic. A few years ago, I remember hearing about how the DART drivers were demanding a significant extra sum in return for agreeing to drive new trains, due to the “extra stress”. This isn’t what “socialism” is supposed to be; those unnecessary pay rises came out of public money, out of taxes paid by ordinary working people as well as the better off, which could have been better spent on hospitals or schools. This is just unions using their leverage for pure greed.
The other side of the car manufacturing coin is the French crowds, such as Renault and Peugeot-Citroen. They’re heavily unionized, but they manage to sell a significant proportion of the cars on our streets right now and they seem to be quite capable of keeping pace with the demands of the market. I wonder what their secret is ? And of course, you’ve got what is rapidly becoming the largest car manufacturer in the world, Volkswagen. In Germany, the Bosch conglomerate funnels all of it’s money into a huge charitable trust. Despite not being driven by the need to provide profits to private shareholders and institutions, it makes high quality goods that command a premium price.
It’s worth a closer look at the Japanese firms. The Japanese business culture is quite different to ours. The major firms are huge, and (certainly a while ago) they were all invested in each other and lent each other money – keiretsu is I think what they call it. Of course, this helped them to be resilient, but in time it caused them to resist market forces, and when the major Japanese recession came a lot of them ended up in big trouble. Japan itself was stuck in deflation and recession for around 15 years, continuously. Larger Japanese firms, such as Sony, are tottering and are increasingly reliant on a smaller number of revenue streams. The other attitude with the Japanese firms was their ability to learn from their mistakes, refine the product and patiently spend time getting it right – not sack the bosses for designing a product which could not sell.
The age-old problem with the UK manufacturing sector is also prevalent in the USA. Detroit’s car manufacturers put out pure crap, and they cannot turn a profit, and are in fact being subsidized by the government, and this tradition has been continued by both Democrat and Republican administrations. Once again, Toyota and Honda have large manufacturing presence in the USA and they manage to make profits, which are of course taxed. In a perverse way, the companies who have the agility and the innovative capability to be profitable are subsidizing those who refuse to do the same.
So I don’t accept the idea that pure Thatcherite ideology is the solution to all possible economic ills. The market is the only way to efficiently distribute resources and provide the innovation that improves the quality of life for ordinary people; and clearly unions, while they are entitled to bargain for a fair deal, should not be allowed to strangle things. However, the government has a role to play in providing help to businesses, particularly smaller firms, to help them train their workforces in new methods and technologies, and commit to new capital investment to improve quality and efficiency.
Good post, CS, but I think you extrapolate too much from the British car manufacturing industry in producing your judgement on what factors have major “responsibility for the failure of the manufacturing sector in the UK.”
Firstly, the UK’s manufacturing industry hasn’t failed. Its output has continued to expand (with ups and downs). It is, however, in relative decline to the faster growth of other sectors. Some industries such as the textiles have declined (with a drop of almost half in employment within a decade) due to cheaper imports (with the deficit on trade in clothing rising by £5bn to £7bn during the same period), but the upside is that consumers’ are paying less for clothes and shoes (prices have dropped by 37% on average), so they have more disposable income to spend elsewhere in the economy.
Secondly, this slower growth is related to a failure of British manufacturing to produce innovative, high-margin products that can be ruthlessly commercialised in the global marketplace. The British are second only to the Americans in ability to commercialise their research and development, but the British are way off base in the viable commercial focus of their initial R&D;compared to the Americans. The clothing industry is a creative one but if you are making low value cloths that buyers won’t pay a premium for (and that don’t exploit the creativity of the industry), then you are going to suffer from lower cost suppliers in other countries who can do ‘cheaper’ better than you can. The slower growth is also related to non-manufacturing sectors having much lower start-up costs and higher ROI yields, thereby attracting the new generation of creative entrepreneurs to those sectors to the detriment of the manufacturing sector.
This medium is a good example of both of those dynamics in play: while British businessmen were busy wondering what damn use the Internet would ever be to business, the American entrepreneurs were busy hyping the value of the Internet to businesses and making billions of dollars in the process. It takes make money and time (lots of both) to make money from manufacturing industry whereas those handicaps don’t apply, or apply with a lot less risk, in the service sector, for example. Clearly, the smarter brains will go with the option that produces the greatest reward for the least risk, so that’s what the manufacturing sector is up against.
One way to help out is to have much lower rates of corporate taxes on manufacturing industry compared to businesses in the service sector. Admittedly, this won’t make manufacturing a lower risk business for investors than the service sector but it will reward those investors by allowing them to retain a greater share of their profits. Other initiatives would be offer greater tax incentives for R&D;activities in increasingly competitive markets, with the highest allowances going to industries that are in preferred industries such as software engineering, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, electronics, science, automotive industry, etc.
At any rate, it’s a tad more complex than the vagaries of unionised labour.
@CS
“It was me who made the point that foreign firms have been able to establish successful manufacturing businesses in the UK.”
Indeed it was, my apologies, I don’t think we disagree much with our analysis of the decline of the British owned manufacturing sector (as Dave rightly points out there is still a huge manufacturing sector in the UK but it’s foreign owned), although I suggest we won’t be long in seeing the eventual decline of the French car producers too, outside of Europe they really don’t have a presence at all.
The purpose of my original post was to deflate a lot of the hyped up nonsense about Margaret Thatcher “destroying” the British manufacturing industry, she did no such thing, it was in a death spiral largely of its own making (I’ll agree to differ over the percentage of blame to be handed around between the management and unions) she merely let the hopeless cases die off instead of throwing billions of tax payer pounds at what were glorified welfare schemes for members of the trade unions.
I have spoken before about the sentimentalised nonsense surrounding much of British heavy industry, if they opened up the coal mines and steel mills today they would be highly automated concerns employing very few workers and any really dirty manual tasks would probably be done by Polish immigrants.
Maggie did what she had to do, we all know that now, we are all actually much wealthier now than when she took power, let’s leave the hysterical hype (I’m not referring to your measured posts of course) surrounding simple necessary economic decisions a quarter of a century ago behind in history where it belongs.
More on the big picture of what the ‘Iron Lady’ thought she had to do, and almost got us all killed in the process just in case anyone is still interested in what she primarily did:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5318.htm
Simon Jenkins has the case for no state funeral about right in today’s Guardian, though tastefully and contradictorily leaving out all the dirty bits, especially in the foreign arena, in this pre-demise obituary.