Margaret Thatcher

[YarnAddict]

Just a question, because I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to what was going on in England in the '80's.

If she was so hated, so awful, and so reviled by her own people, how come she was able to remain PM for lso long? Wasn't she elected? And re-elected?

[Rex]

1. They are not elected like here in America.

Prime Ministers are picked by their party and if one party is in power, then you guessed it - they stay in power for years.

[YarnAddict]

4. But how could that party stay in power?

Because the party is in power because they are supported by the people, right?

[Cleita]

8. Not necessarily. In a parliamentary system you have many parties ranging

from extreme left to extreme right. In order to form a majority you make coalitions with other parties close to your ideology. So you can have a majority of conservatives which Thatcher was which will keep her in power until they don't have the stomach for her sociopathic policies anymore and then they kick her out and find someone else. Also, the House of Lords is just that aristocracy that are born into their seats in parliament. The House of Commons are the only elected members.

[Prophet 451]

9. Not exactly

The Labour, Liberal and SDP parties during that period were all trying to destroy themselves so Thatcher's campaigns for office were effectively just a foregone conclusion.

[JoeBlowToo]

2. Oh really? Are you too lazy to Google this info?

Or perhaps you have another motive in you disingenuousness?

[YarnAddict]

5. No ulterior motive

Just not sure how I would Google that question. I figured others here would know, since I've been reading lots of things here that I hadn't known previously.

[Cleita]

3. She wasn't elected. Parliamentary system is different than ours.

She was able to convince her party to make her PM by saying the right words and the ability to form coalitions with other parties that kept her in power until her own peers decided she was too extreme. Then they booted her out. In the meantime she had tremendous power to make decisions that were very detrimental not only to her own citizens but other countries as well. As someone said today, she made a point of giving comfort to the comfortable, who were the only people she was interested in governing for. Anyone else who needed decent policies to survive were nothing but scum to her and she let them know it in often very cruel and heartless ways.

[YarnAddict]

6. but if the people were so unhappy with her

why did they keep her party in power. I would have thought that with her attacks on unions (which I hadn't been aware of til I read about it on DU) the opposition parties would have had such massive support that she'd have been kicked out of office much earlier.

[Prophet 451]

10. Nope

Labour fell out with the unions after the Winter of Discontent which resulted in Labour not having the union funding that they relied on to fight elections.

[Cleita]

11. This is why there was so much unrest and riots when she went around busting unions.

Yet, unless her peers in parliament decided they had enough of her, she could go on and did for years until she got unseated. Remember England is still a monarchy although the Queen no longer has the power but the Prime Minister does have tremendous power until they tell them they don't want them any more.

[Prophet 451]

7. It was a weird time

Firstly, you have to remember that the media, then and now, loved her. They were largely based in London and the city of London did very well because her privatisation of everything in sight made the City (financial sector) a lot of money.
Secondly, she was elected during the epic Winter of Discontent, when an overreaching by the unions had resulted in a backlash of hard-right feeling.
Thirdly, she was extraordinarily lucky to have an opposition that was determined to self-destruct. The Labour party was falling apart in the Eighties and in no shape to actively oppose her. They fell out with the unions, which cut off most of their funding, so they had no cash to fight elections; elected as their leader a man who, with the best will in the world, was too easily distracted and too prone to windbaggery to effectively oppose her. Labour wouldn't really recover until the mid-Ninties when they took a hard swing to the right under Blair and effectively ran as Tory-lite. The Liberal and SDP parties were characterised during this period by fratricidal in-fighting.
Fourth, she promised the earth and the media covered for her when she failed to deliver (the power of the media in this country really can't be overstated). The people who did well out of Thatcher's reign were the same people who had the ear of the media.
Fifth, the British Constitution means that we don't vote for Prime Ministers, we vote for parties and the head of the winning party becomes PM. While a huge amount of people loathed Thatcher, most people liked their local MP and voted for them. That meant that the Tories got a majority in Parliament and Thatcher became PM even though many people disliked her as a person.
Six, this was during the same time as Reagan was effectively telling America that greed is good, the same period when much of the world was trending to the right. We thought this was how things were done.

[Cleita]

13. You explained this very well. n/t

[Prophet 451]

16. Thank you n/t

[YarnAddict]

14. Thanks so much!

That clears up a lot of my confusion!

[Prophet 451]

17. You're welcome :)

[malaise]

12. Her own party kicked her out of the leadership

after the poll tax

[YarnAddict]

15. A POLL TAX?

Seriously??

[Prophet 451]

18. Seriously

She divided up local taxation equally by household (paying absolutely no attention to whether people could afford to pay) and if you didn't pay, you didn't get to vote. It made the poor choose between eating and voting and when there were riots, she simply dismissed them as "wickedness".

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. it was divided up by adult, not by household

There wasn't an official "if you didn't pay, you didn't get to vote" rule; but the way to try to avoid paying the tax was to not be registered at any address, officially - which included not being on the electoral roll. How well they would have caught people who didn't register we never really found out, because the Tories dropped it as soon as they'd dropped her.

[Prophet 451]

20. Which shows how unpopular it was

My mistake on the adult/household business.

Incidentally, the current vandals-in-charge have reintroduced the charging of the unemployed by telling local councils to charge the unemployed 30% of the council tax.

[dflprincess]

21. In typical right-wing hypocrite fashion Maggie apparently approved the plans for her funeral

though, as a rule, former Prime Ministers have private, not state funerals (Churchill being the exception)

The price of the Thatcher-palooza is expected to cost U.K. taxpayers at least £8 million.

In keeping with Maggie's beliefs wouldn't it be more appropriate to privatize it? If her son isn't willing to cost the money up (he's reputed to be worth £60 million+) maybe they could sell advertising space on her casket.

[tabasco]

22. Because there's always been a lot of gullible idiots

that believe propaganda.

HOPE IT HELPS!