YP Letters: Thatcher's policies transformed the UK's fortunes

Margaret Thatcher still divides opinion among people. (PA).

Bernard Ingram certainly draws the Maggie-haters out of their aggrieved fortresses.

His comparative assessment of PMs, May and the erstwhile Iron Lady, full of insight and well reasoned argument, in my opinion, was strongly criticised by Ian Richardson (The Yorkshire Post, July 16) for not taking into account the simmering resentment that Mrs Thatcher still stirs up in the hard Left and the unionised areas of Liverpool, South Yorkshire and Glasgow.

I’m afraid the vast majority of English, people including many miners, desperate to lead normal lives, were rapturously relieved when the NUM accepted defeat.

Of course, there were, and are, a large minority of pink ideologues including grandstanding celebs who will forever condemn Mrs Thatcher for her highly successful market-orientated economic policies.

This policies subsequently transformed the UK from a chaotic, rapidly declining basket case to a country that could hold its own with the best.

Her reputation for fostering selfishness was largely generated by the time-worn socialist axioms that capitalism is inherently a race for greed.

This opinion, uncritically, has unfortunately been passed on to a new generation of naive Maggie-haters, who are unaware of the historic truth and are only too happy to follow the hard Left’s populist line.

Mr Richardson’s other test for greatness “lies with those who bring us together not those who tear us apart”.

But I fail to see how you can unite or even compromise with a ruthless individual about to attack with a cleaver, for such a scenario is the one that Arthur Scargill and the politically motivated NUM leadership created in their undemocratic attempt to overthrow a democratic government.

It was Arthur, in fact, who dug the final hole that the entire coal mining industry was to subside into.

Abe Lincoln, often regarded as the greatest US president, refutes Ian Richardson’s second test of greatness.

Although Lincoln united America politically, the South smouldered with rancour and hate for decades after the Civil War. Divisiveness did not deny his place in the Olympian pantheon nor should it deny Margaret Thatcher!