Strikes were everyday life; the state had Europe’s both largestdeficit and inflation. Some workers were only able to work 4 days per week due to the coal strikes in the north which lead to power failures in big parts of Britain. The British industry was both out dated and moving overseas. Undeceive politicians failed to do the reforms that were needed. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher was elected Europe’s first female PM. When she entered 10 Downing Street she was facing one of the worst economies in Europe.
Margaret Thatcher reformed the British school system; she implemented a national curriculum and allowed the schools to manage their own economy. She brought in regular school inspections, and her reforms made the school more effective.
A part of Thatcherism is that the state should be limited and only provide the country with the vital needs to sustain modern society, such as defence, health care and security. Before Thatcher and under the Labour government many companieswere bought up by the state due to that the companies wereoutdated and malfunctioning this made the state inflexible. Under Thatcher over 50 out dated state run companies were sold and privatised. Competiveness between the companies then grew stronger and the out dated industries were either moved abroad or went bankrupt. This boosted the service sector which leads to a modernised British economy. A consequence of the privatisation was that many people from the former old industries were unemployed. This leads to critique against Thatcher. But these reforms were needed to tackle the British economy and it resulted in a stable British economy and in the long run unemployment decreased.
One of the biggest problems Thatcher faced was the record high inflation of 20% in the UK at the time. Money was losing its value and salaries did not increase at the same pace as the coast of living. There was simply too much money on the market. What Thatcher did was to implement higher taxes and the interest rates increased, this made the inflation decrease from the 20% down to 5%.
In 1982 British soil was invaded by the dictatorship of Argentina. Margaret Thatcher’s response was to send a task force to save the innocent British citizens of the Falkland Islands. The task force succeeded in its mission of liberating the islands from the Argentinian invaders and the people of Britain saw Thatcher’s achievement as a great deed for the British Empire and re-elected her to four more years as the British Prime Minister. She now maintained a position, both domestic and international, as a strong and firm leader.
Margaret Thatcher played a key role in the ending of the cold war due to her good relations with both the US president Ronald Regan and the Soviet president Gorbachev. Thatcher was a symbol of liberty to the soviet people and also a representant of the western world.
Margaret Thatcher pledged a great scepticism towards the EU. A British membership did lead to an increased political impact from other countries according to Thatcher.
/Evelina, Jakob, Carl, Viktoria L & Rebecca
Sources:
http://www.theweek.co.uk/politics/margaret-thatcher/52391/margaret-thatcher-legacy-pros-cons
http://www.theweek.co.uk/politics/margaret-thatcher/24403/how-margaret-thatcher-made-britain-great-again
No comments:
Post a Comment