Originally Posted by donsutherland1 On April 14, 2008, the Daily Telegraph reported that a poll ranked Margaret Thatcher as Britain's top post-World War II Prime Minister.

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.

Originally Posted by donsutherland1 On April 14, 2008, the Daily Telegraph reported that a poll ranked Margaret Thatcher as Britain's top post-World War II Prime Minister. "Margaret Thatcher at her peak would sweep to power in a general election held today, according to an opinion poll for The Daily Telegraph," the newspaper reported. When it came to achievements, respondents ranked her becoming Britain's first woman Prime Minister, curbing the power of the trade unions, and winning the Falklands conflict as her top three accomplishments. The complete story can be found at: Margaret Thatcher 'would win election today' - Telegraph

I don't trust a communist, do you? ~ Margaret Thatcher

Originally Posted by MC.no.spin Margaret Thatcher was instrumental in the fight against communism and winning the Cold War. It's not surprising to hear the wimperings of socialists that she is still so popular. Few like to recall the feelings of resignation or even despair that many in the West felt in the 1970s as countries from Angola to Nicaragua became Soviet proxies. Mrs. Thatcher says that the West was "slowly but surely losing" the Cold War, and she eagerly embraced Reagan's strategy to win it by becoming "his principal cheerleader" in NATO. That strategy rested on six pillars: support internal disruption in Soviet satellites, especially Poland; dry up sources of hard currency; overload the Soviet economy with a technology-based arms race; slow the flow of Western technology to Moscow; raise the cost of the wars it was fighting; and demoralize the Soviets by generating pressure for change. On June 7, 1982, the day before Reagan gave his "ash heap" speech at Westminster Abbey, he met alone with the pope in the Vatican. Richard Allen, Reagan's first national security adviser, says the two men "agreed to undertake a clandestine campaign to hasten the dissolution of the communist empire." Until it was legalized in 1989, Poland's Solidarity union was kept alive by the U.S. and the Vatican. Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, who later became president of free Poland, has said that "we owe our freedom to their unstinting efforts." A new book by former Air Force secretary Thomas Reed reveals that the Reagan administration allowed a Soviet agent to steal gas-pipeline software that had been secretly designed to go haywire on a catastrophic scale. The ruse led to a June 1982 explosion in the Siberian wilderness that Mr. Reed says was "the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space." It crippled the Soviet's secret techno-piracy operation because they could longer be sure if what they were buying or stealing was similarly booby-trapped. They had reason to worry: Contrived computer chips found their way into Soviet military equipment, flawed turbines were installed on a gas pipeline, and defective plans disrupted chemical plants and tractor factories. Reagan's arms buildup also unhinged the Kremlin. His clarion call for a missile-based defense system against nuclear weapons in 1983 helped convince the Politburo to select Mikhail Gorbachev as a less hard-line Soviet leader in 1985. "Reagan's SDI was a very successful blackmail," says Gennady Gerasimov, the Soviet Foreign Ministry's top spokesman during the 1980s. "The Soviet economy couldn't endure such competition." Mr. Gorbachev himself agrees the U.S. exhausted his country economically and acknowledges Reagan's place in history. "Who knows what would have happened if he wasn't there?" he told the History Channel in 2002.

Originally Posted by Scucca 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."

Originally Posted by MC.no.spin Margaret Thatcher was instrumental in the fight against communism and winning the Cold War. It's not surprising to hear the wimperings of socialists that she is still so popular. Few like to recall the feelings of resignation or even despair that many in the West felt in the 1970s as countries from Angola to Nicaragua became Soviet proxies. Mrs. Thatcher says that the West was "slowly but surely losing" the Cold War, and she eagerly embraced Reagan's strategy to win it by becoming "his principal cheerleader" in NATO. That strategy rested on six pillars: support internal disruption in Soviet satellites, especially Poland; dry up sources of hard currency; overload the Soviet economy with a technology-based arms race; slow the flow of Western technology to Moscow; raise the cost of the wars it was fighting; and demoralize the Soviets by generating pressure for change. On June 7, 1982, the day before Reagan gave his "ash heap" speech at Westminster Abbey, he met alone with the pope in the Vatican. Richard Allen, Reagan's first national security adviser, says the two men "agreed to undertake a clandestine campaign to hasten the dissolution of the communist empire." Until it was legalized in 1989, Poland's Solidarity union was kept alive by the U.S. and the Vatican. Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, who later became president of free Poland, has said that "we owe our freedom to their unstinting efforts." A new book by former Air Force secretary Thomas Reed reveals that the Reagan administration allowed a Soviet agent to steal gas-pipeline software that had been secretly designed to go haywire on a catastrophic scale. The ruse led to a June 1982 explosion in the Siberian wilderness that Mr. Reed says was "the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space." It crippled the Soviet's secret techno-piracy operation because they could longer be sure if what they were buying or stealing was similarly booby-trapped. They had reason to worry: Contrived computer chips found their way into Soviet military equipment, flawed turbines were installed on a gas pipeline, and defective plans disrupted chemical plants and tractor factories. Reagan's arms buildup also unhinged the Kremlin. His clarion call for a missile-based defense system against nuclear weapons in 1983 helped convince the Politburo to select Mikhail Gorbachev as a less hard-line Soviet leader in 1985. "Reagan's SDI was a very successful blackmail," says Gennady Gerasimov, the Soviet Foreign Ministry's top spokesman during the 1980s. "The Soviet economy couldn't endure such competition." Mr. Gorbachev himself agrees the U.S. exhausted his country economically and acknowledges Reagan's place in history. "Who knows what would have happened if he wasn't there?" he told the History Channel in 2002.

MC.no.spin,

I believe some of the hostility toward former PM Thatcher comes from her decisive victory over the radical National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) led by avowed Marxist Arthur Scargill. I do not believe some of Ms. Thatcher's more contemporary criticis fully understand the extent of Mr. Scargill's extremism nor the nature of the labor union he headed. The NUM was no ordinary labor union in the sense that most people think of such organizations e.g., seeking better wages or working conditions. It long pursued a radical agenda tied to its leader's Marxist philosophy. It had demonstrated little concern for the plight of the British people who were harmed by its actions, it resorted to violence to push its agenda, and it even cavorted with hostile states such as Libya.

Britain lost much economic growth and opportunity during the 1970s into the early 1980s on account of militant labor actions, particularly strikes led by Mr. Scargill. Indeed, at the height of the 1973-74 energy crisis brought on by the Arab oil embargo, Mr. Scargill launched a coalworkers strike that held the British people "hostage" at a time when the nation was most vulnerable. In response to an acute energy shortage, the British government mandated a three-day work week, among other steps. Such measures cost Britain economic production and its workers reduced wages. That strike culminated in the fall of the British government headed by Edward Heath.

With Britain facing up to the need to close 20 coal pits that had become uneconomical, Mr. Scargill's NUM seized the opportunity to launch yet another strike in 1984. Rather than seeking worker assistance aimed at helping ease the transition, he again pursued a hardline position aimed at forcing the British government to change course.

By early November 1984, the NUM had rejected the 10th settlement offer it had received, in a bid aimed at breaking the Thatcher government as winter 1984-85 approached. By that time, the labor strike had already cost the Brkitish economy some $1.2 billion in lost production and nearly 8,000 miners had been arrested for violence. Furthermore, Mr. Scargill admitted that the NUM had sent a senior official, Roger Windsor, to talk with the Libyans about financial assistance to the union. Less than two weeks after that revelation, the NUM noted that it expected to be receiving funds from Libya. The NUM's reaching out to Libya was condemned by Labor and Conservative political leaders alike, ranging from Labor leader Neil Kinnock to British PM Margaret Thatcher, especially as Britain had previously broken diplomatic relations with Libya after a British policewoman was killed from gunfire originating from Libya's Embassy in London.

Following an unusually severe winter in which the NUM remained intransigent, the union had lost its last vestiges of credibility. British public opinion was running strongly against the union.

In the end, British parliamentary government held and the NUM's strike collapsed. What few knew then, the NUM's defeat marked a turning point in which the era of British labor militancy had come to an end.

Freed from the recurrent disruptions brought about by labor militancy, the British economy revived. According to statistics published by the UN Development Program, growth in British per capita GDP, which averaged an anemic 1.8% per year in the 1975-85 period, rose to 3.0% in the immediate post-NUM period of 1985-90. From 1985-2005, British per capita GDP rose by an average of 3.9%.

Overall, the British people are far better for PM Thatcher's defeating the radical NUM. That current polling recalls the "Iron Lady" quite fondly, is no accident.