Survey: Thatcher Ranks as Top Post-WW II British PM - Page 2

gunner · 04-22-08, 11:27 AM

seeing as Succa has brought up the Coal Mining Industry,

A passage from an educated ex-coal miner.

quote

include Wales and Scotland togther with England and say Britains's coal-fields, sadly, were not profitable. Prior to Mrs T the coal industry was subsidised by the government owning it. The major coal customers eg the power stations were also nationalised and everyone paid a subsidy to the coal industry through their electricity bill. This fed though into prices and the UK was a country with relatively high inflation.
Mining is a horrible, dangerous and dirty industry which was artificially kept going as a sort of branch of the social services. I know in the 'romance of coal' all those Welsh miners go off to the pits happily singing but in reality few would have liked their sons to follow them down there. The industry was recognised as having no significant future in the UK.
The correct thing to have done would have been to run down the industry in a controlled way as was done in Europe but Thatcher inherited an industry which was far too big because of over-dependence on coal as a prinary fuel for power generation and earlier coal strikes where the NUM (national union of mineworkers) had asserted that mines should only close when the last tonne of coal had been extracted. That led to the situation of men travelling miles underground to work seams only a few inches thick - no matter what the price of oil might be there was no way that could be profitable.
Foreign fuel was being purchased by the then CEGB (central electricity generating board) prior to the strike as an insurance policy in the event of a strike being called. The technolgy of coal transport had advanced since the war and very large bulk carriers could bring bring 50 thousand tonnes plus in a single cargo from any country in the world where steam coal was cheap because of lower cost operations which were really just like quarrying such as Autralia, South Africa and Colombia. While all this was going on gas and oil were at historically low prices and the problem is that burning coal in a clean and efficient way is always more expensive than burning other fuels. The technology for burning coal has not developed very quickly despite the recurrent talk of new technologies on the horizon and there has not really been a huge influx of steam coal into the UK for power generation and cement-making.
The other major sort of traded coal - coking coal for steel making - had for a long time been sourced from overseas such as the USA on quality grounds as there is just not enough good quality coking coal left in the UK.
My view is that the industry had to be reduced because of its cost which was holding back other areas of the economy but that a less confrontational resolution should have been found but of course you had a belligent president of the NUM (Arthur Scargill) who wanted to bring class war onto the streets and a prime minister who was determined not to be brushed aside as had been done to her Tory predecessor Edward Heath some years previously.
We have had new labour governments for some years now and to the best of my knowledge there has been no attempt to revive any of the closed mines. Sorry but coal mining in this country apart from some very specific mines dedicated to power stations is now history. quote

paul.

Scucca · 04-22-08, 12:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gunner

seeing as Succa has brought up the Coal Mining Industry

The miners were attacked as part of a revenge mission, given their part in the downfall of previous Tory regime. That revenge mission included ignoring the profit motive, with profitable pits closed down. Thatcherism was, in every way, an economic disaster: from monetarism to the crippling of our union movement (used, in conjunction with the elimination of the wages councils, to encourage low wage labour). We're still feeling the effects, as shown by our desperately high poverty rate and low skill equilibrium

mikhail · 04-22-08, 03:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scucca

The miners were attacked as part of a revenge mission, given their part in the downfall of previous Tory regime. That revenge mission included ignoring the profit motive, with profitable pits closed down. Thatcherism was, in every way, an economic disaster: from monetarism to the crippling of our union movement (used, in conjunction with the elimination of the wages councils, to encourage low wage labour). We're still feeling the effects, as shown by our desperately high poverty rate and low skill equilibrium

overall it wasnt profitable.People are generally better off.What you saying life was beautiful before thatcher?

Scucca · 04-22-08, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikhail

What you saying life was beautiful before thatcher?

We would be in a stronger position now without Thatcherism. We would not have experienced the same negative deindustrialisation, nor would we see our wages and skills skewed towards the generation of working poverty.

gunner · 04-22-08, 05:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scucca

We would be in a stronger position now without Thatcherism. We would not have experienced the same negative deindustrialisation, nor would we see our wages and skills skewed towards the generation of working poverty.

A generation of low wage family's were able to get there first rung on the housing ladder by purchasing there council house [A Thatcherite policy]. This has borne fruit for people in "our" generation because parents now have something to pass down thus enabling many a better start in life.
Your pedantic tone is most tedious and suggests clouded judgement in a lot of your posts. You are obviously articulate in your vocab but sheltered in your outlook, if you could just look beyond that socialist victim-hood you may start to reciprocate on the odd occasion.

edited to add. Have the present Labour Government not had long enough to eradicate all the harm left by the Conservatives?

paul.

Scucca · 04-22-08, 05:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gunner

A generation of low wage family's were able to get there first rung on the housing ladder by purchasing there council house [A Thatcherite policy]. This has borne fruit for people in "our" generation because parents now have something to pass down thus enabling many a better start in life.

They also, due to attempts to centralise power, stopped local councils from investing in their social housing stock. The homelessness problems (with reliance on low quality, high cost B&B accommodation) generated were substantial.

Quote:

Your pedantic tone is most tedious and suggests clouded judgement in a lot of your posts.

I'm just not easily kidded. Take the usual whinge about unions. Whilst Labour did have their "In Place of Strife", negative union behaviour is more focused on post-1979. As an example, we have Denny (1979, Productivity and trade unions in British manufacturing industry 1973-85, Applied Economics, Vol 29, pp 1403-1410) who finds no relationship between unions and productivity levels in the 1970s but a negative relationship post-1979.

I didn't bother with the rest of your comment. It was pure nonsense

aegyptos · 04-22-08, 08:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scucca

We would be in a stronger position now without Thatcherism.

You would be Moldova without Thatcherism.

Scucca · 04-23-08, 09:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aegyptos

You would be Moldova without Thatcherism.

Its a shame that you haven't taken time out to construct a serious comment.

To appreciate Thatcherism you have to refer to deindustrialisation. Its certainly the case that we shouldn't get all in a panic with the term. Indeed, we'd expect such a phenomena as economies mature and we see gains in productivity and income (reducing the demand for labour in the manufacturing sector but increasing opportunities in the service sector). However, with Thatcherism we have to make a distinction between this "positive deindustrialisation" and the "negative deindustrialisation" imposed by right wing folly. Industry was lost due to its uncompetitive nature. Not because of the nasty ole worker (i.e. impact of trade unions as they try to buck market trends), but because of a disastrious monetarist experiment. Its rather amusing that right wingers look back at Britain's worst ever recession (which quadrupled unemployment) now as a "market correction". And they wonder why they cant be trusted?

donsutherland1 · 04-23-08, 10:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scucca

...but because of a disastrious monetarist experiment.

I have to strongly disagree with respect to Britain's monetary policy. Britain, not unlike much of the world, faced a severe bout of inflation from the late 1970s into the early 1980s.

British Retail Price Data (Quarterly annualized figures):

The wrenching monetary policy was necessary to break the back of the inflation so that the environment could become conducive to sustained, long-term economic growth. Had tighter monetary policy been applied earlier, one would probably not have had the need for the magnitude of tightening that occurred once inflation had gotten out of hand on account of a toxic mix of food prices, fuel prices, wage-price dynamics, and inflation expectations (which reflected a combination of rising inflation begetting expectations for more inflation and leading to purchasing decisions that fueled even greater inflation and a crisis in the credibility of monetary policy on account of a regime of easy money that lasted too long despite rising inflation).

In a recent op-ed piece published in The Wall Street JournalCarnegie Mellon professor of political economy Allan Meltzer put the 1970s situation into perspective. He wrote:

One lesson of the inflationary 1970s: A country that will not accept the possibility of a small recession will end up having a big one when the politicians at last respond to the public's complaints about inflation. Instead of paying the relatively small cost of a possible recession, the public pays the much larger cost of sustained inflation and a deeper recession.

Both Britain and the United States entered the 1980s in just such a situation. The Bank of England, much like the U.S. Federal Reserve, entered a situation in which they had to, as Meltzer put it, "at last respond to the public's complaints about inflation." As a result, both Britain and the U.S. experienced a significant recession.

In my opinion, the tough monetary policy was necessary regardless of whom occupied 10 Downing Street. Had different policy choices been made during the 1970s, prior to Margaret Thatcher's becoming Prime Minister, the tough monetary policy medicine might not have been necessary. Unfortunately, that is not what happened. Therefore, inflation had to be curbed and a reasonable degree of price stability restored, and such efforts required a period of very tight money.

Scucca · 04-23-08, 11:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by donsutherland1

I have to strongly disagree with respect to Britain's monetary policy. Britain, not unlike much of the world, faced a severe bout of inflation from the late 1970s into the early 1980s.

You forgot to mention the resulting recession they managed to inflame. Monetarism (fortunately a dodo of an ideology now) ensured a collapse so extreme that it was arguably more extreme that our version of the Great Depression

Quote:

In my opinion, the tough monetary policy was necessary regardless of whom occupied 10 Downing Street.

The policies implemented were the result of ideological limitations in Tory economic knowledge. Read something like Backhouse (2002, The Macroeconomics of Margaret, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 24, pp.313-334) for an introduction. The negative deindustrialisation was caused by the interaction of several policies, examples include:

1) exchange controls abolished leading to Bank of England money supply techniques becoming ineffective

2) nasty increase in interest rates as the government tried to use monetarist policies to control inflation

3) introduction of tax and supply side policies that induced inflation (e.g. increase in VAT that increased the RPI immediately by 4%)

4) severely restrictive fiscal policy that impacted mainly on households and therefore consumption

Its easy to control inflation by crucifying the economy. As i remarked earlier, we are still feeling the consequences: with an unnatural shift to a low skilled equilibrium