In 1982, Margaret Thatcher, who came to China to negotiate the Hong Kong issue, accidentally fell when she walked down the steps of the north gate of the Great Hall of the People after the talks. And this wrestling is still talked about by many Chinese to this day when talking about Margaret Thatcher herself and the negotiations that year. There are still many opinions about why Margaret Thatcher fell at that time, but this accident undoubtedly contradicted the impression that Margaret Thatcher, who was known as the "Iron Lady" at the time.
Thatcher who fell
But looking at Margaret Thatcher's governing resume, it can be said that except for the victory in the "Falklands War", the rest of the performance can be described as mixed. So much so that in 2003, in a poll on the "100 worst Britons you hate" organized by the British television station Channel 4, Margaret Thatcher was the flower of the flower - ahead of her former Prime Minister Tony Blair and star Jordan. But why is such a prime minister, whom the British themselves hate, known as the "Iron Lady"?
Mixed performance in governance
Large-scale privatization
Margaret Thatcher embraced the theory of monetarism and underwent drastic reforms after coming to power. She mainly took four measures: privatization, currency control, welfare spending, and trade union forces.
After taking office, the privatization of state-owned enterprises became the focus of Thatcher's new policy. In 1979, the British government sold a 19% stake in BP (a monopoly state-owned enterprise), kicking off the privatization of the Thatcher era. In his first term, Thatcher's privatization took the form of deregulation and encouraging private participation: for example, the government stipulated that highway construction and local motor transport industries must be open to private enterprises and free competition. At that time, more than 1 million public homes were sold directly to private individuals at discounted prices
Margaret Thatcher who won the election
After winning a second term, Thatcher's privatization was about the large-scale sale of state-owned enterprises. At that time, the shares of monopoly giants such as British Telecommunications, Aerospace, Gas, Steel, and Water were sold to the people, and even the Royal Ordnance Company was sold to the privatized Aerospace Company.
At the same time, Thatcher also actively introduced "social public services" to the market, encouraging private enterprises to participate in social services, those park maintenance, garbage cleaning, school meals, psychiatric hospitals, welfare hospitals that were originally borne by the government were all provided by private individuals, and even juvenile detention centers and prisons could be built by enterprises with the assistance of the government. At the 1988 annual meeting of the British Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher even declared that "privatization is no no-go zone".
But many of the capitalists who bought out state-owned enterprises were not British, but from the United States across the ocean. A series of privatization measures left Britain with only more than fifty state-owned enterprises.
The capitalists who took over the state-owned enterprises, in order to control production costs, have transferred factories to overseas markets where labor is cheap, which not only led to a sharp reduction in the wages of many low-level workers in Britain at that time, but even led to many people losing their jobs and having to rely on social assistance and welfare to live, and the gap between the rich and the poor in Britain increased sharply. But then another measure by Thatcher made life more difficult for these unemployed workers at the bottom.
Drastically cut welfare spending
When Margaret Thatcher attended an election rally, an elderly man present told her, "Just because I saved a little of my own money, I can't get 'bailouts.'" But if I spend all my money, they will come to my rescue. ”
This remark made Margaret Thatcher at the time think about the personal laziness and heavy social burden caused by universal welfare policies.
Before Margaret Thatcher came to power, social welfare spending accounted for a large proportion of the British government, and with the wave of strikes rising year by year, in 1970, the proportion of British welfare expenditure in government expenditure reached 59.93%, and in 1976 it increased to 63.25%. Long-term and growing welfare spending has caused the British government to make ends meet and the fiscal deficit has worsened.
Thatcher believed that Britain's welfare policy at that time made ordinary people dependent on social welfare, especially when Britain was facing huge inflation and economic contraction, this problem became more urgent and prominent, and major reforms were necessary. Thatcher decided to drastically cut public and social welfare spending.
The first is to directly reduce the amount of benefits. In 1980-1981, the Thatcher government reduced short-term subsidies for the sick, the unemployed, and the incapacitated by 5 per cent; The Social Security Act of 1986 also lowered the pension subsidy standard, changing the average level of earner-related pensions based on the pensioner's best income for 20 years to the average lifetime income level;
The second is to revise the coverage of social security, and the Social Security Law of 1986 stipulates that the new income supplement is limited to families with children and incapacitated to work, and not to all families whose income is below the prescribed standard. The "additional subsistence" is also no longer available to all persons below the subsistence minimum, but only to two categories of persons: the first is single persons aged 18-24. The second category is persons with special difficulties, such as single-parent families and persons incapacitated for work. In addition, maternity allowance can only be claimed by low-income families.
In 1990, the Thatcher government promulgated the new National Health Service and Social Care Act, which privatized and market-oriented the national health service system. The decree stipulates that hospitals and social care institutions should be freed from the direct control of local health authorities and set up self-operated national health service companies, with medical expenses settled by local health bureaus and hospitals.
Thatcher and her husband enjoyed tea together
In addition to the reduction of social benefits, Thatcher also reduced the welfare of education. At that time, British students had a glass of free milk a day, but Margaret Thatcher felt that the cost of a glass of milk a day could be borne by British families themselves, and this cost would be a serious waste if borne by the state, so she decided to stop providing this free milk. This move sparked a series of public demonstrations, which also gave Margaret Thatcher a resounding nickname - "the thief who stole milk".
Pursue a tough foreign policy
One of Thatcher's best-known exploits to Britain was the Falklands War. In fact, the strength of the British Navy at that time was not as good as before, only 2 aircraft carriers could be dispatched, and the number of warships and combat effectiveness were not as good as in World War II, but after Argentina sent troops to attack the Malvinas Islands, Thatcher quickly made the decision to send troops to the Falklands. The recapture of the Falklands restored dignity to Britain at that time, and enabled the British people to regain their confidence after losing the title of "British Empire". So even though Margaret Thatcher's reform initiatives faced enormous popular pressure and dissatisfaction at the time, the Falklands victory became an important achievement for her future re-election.
On the other hand, Thatcher's toughness towards the Soviet Union was also widely known. After coming to power, she firmly defended the interests of Britain and the Western world, adopted a tough foreign policy towards the Soviet Union, and according to the disclosure of Lukyanov, the former chairman of the Soviet Supreme Soviet, Margaret Thatcher even talked about destroying the Soviet Union in a speech. It was precisely because Thatcher was so vocal in her opposition to communism and the Soviet Union that she was jokingly called the "Iron Lady" by the Soviet media to ridicule the chaos she caused in British internal affairs, but I never thought that this nickname would later become the main symbol of Margaret Thatcher and become widely known.
It can be said that Margaret Thatcher's series of economic measures effectively curbed inflation, and the economy began to recover, and Britain's GDP also increased significantly, but these achievements came at the cost of aggravating social contradictions. In her Britain, unemployment almost tripled, from 1.1 million to 3 million, or about 13 percent of the total labor force, while tax reform benefited the rich and burdened the general population, making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
During her tenure, the gap between rich and poor in Britain widened dramatically, and the lives of some people did improve greatly, but British society paid a great price for it, crime rates rose, communities were broken and divided, and it can be said that Margaret Thatcher brought not only the division of British society, but also the division of British thinking. Supporters believe she led LinkedIn country out of economic distress and improved Britain's international standing; Opponents see her as an out-and-out dictator, megalomaniac, who nearly destroyed Britain's welfare system.
So it's no surprise, then, that Margaret Thatcher came third in the "100 Worst Britons You Hate" poll held by the British media. What do you think about this?