She sold off the public utilities at a discount, to be bought up by the elite 12% who now own 40% of Britain's wealth. She oversaw the decimation of the coal, steel, rail, and other major manufacturing industries, and showed precious little compassion while doing so. Above all, she is identified with hard times by families throughout the country.
" ...Mrs T shared the same reductionism. The organised working class, almost alone, had put Britain on the skids. Not the loss of imperial markets, not lazy management, not the education system, not the decline of the industrial ethic: bitter men standing on platforms and asking for a show of hands to down tools were solely to blame.
It may be wrong to imagine that she intended to de-industrialise Britain, but the policies followed by her government had that effect. A strong pound crippled exports and emptied factories. Having no social or political connection with the class most affected, she gave a very good impression of not caring. The south of England and the City of London were the future; the revenues from North Sea oil would pay for the unemployed in the old zones of manufacturing industry.
The day before she died I passed through Greenock on the train. In 1979 it had a mile or so of shipyards, a sugar works and factories that still made rope and ship's fittings. On Sunday, looking down at the waterfront, I could see how these had been replaced by a housing estate, a supermarket, and sometimes by nothing at all.
We can't blame (or credit) her for all of this, of course. But she personified the change from meaning to meaninglessness in so many settlements and lives, and for this reason she is hard to forgive
Strident, divisive, and in her own view infallible, and for these reasons hard to mourn..."
Why Margaret Thatcher is hard to mourn | Politics | The Guardian
