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Originally Posted by PeteEU  Thatcher did do one thing right, even though it was a tad drastic... broke the stranglehold of certain unions on British society. |
What unions are they then? The attack on the Unions first focused on revenge (i.e. the miners). It then became about a reaction against the success of the worker movement leading to increased underpayment and a labour flexibility that maximised working poverty (and other disagreeable results such as child poverty)
Howe in the New Statesman (25/9/2006, Vol. 135 Issue 4811) offered an interesting perspective on the negative effect of the collapse of trade unionism on our culture:
"When trade unionism was defeated in Britain, a process that began with Mrs T but was completed by Mr T, we lost much of that energy and democratic drive, and the consequences were so great that we have yet to grasp them fully. Communities that had a sense of themselves as a class, at work and at home, began to drift into the dark. A generation has grown up without a compass, floating hither and thither, into substance abuse and mindless violence. A workingclass hero is no longer something to be; you have to be a celebrity now. In the black communities the consequences have, if anything, been even more damaging. The local trades councils have been replaced by mosques, mandirs and versions of Christianity which allow scam artists to pass themselves off as priests."