She was in power for just on 11 years and during those short 11yrs (or long years as the case maybe) she caused division, created social and industrial unrest the like of which had most likely never been seen before in this country.
She created wealth but as always in the most part only for the already wealthy. In her world, we were all going to be home owning shareholders sitting on little piles of wealth (well that was the lie!) and looking forward to a future of earlier retirement and more leisure time. The reality is that after nearly 30yrs since she left office far from all being home owners we have record numbers of homeless people as a direct result of all the social housing that she helped sell off. We are instead of being shareholders in our essential utilities and services just a captive market which most of the companies running them are now able to hold to ransom with crippling yearly or seasonal price increases.
As for retirement well instead of looking forward to longer retirement and/or more leisure time during our working lives the reality is that we are now being expected to stay in work longer, only then to retire with less of a pension.
I could ramble on all day about Thatcher but all I am going to say now is that our present trouble and strife has not been much helped by the fact that Tony Blair did very little to reverse her policies, in fact, he just took them over and then handed them over (via Brown) to Cameron & Co.
Vijay Saini
