Imagine state of Britain without Margaret Thatcher’s revolution – Yorkshire Post letters

I ENJOYED reading Greg Wright’s compelling appraisal (The Yorkshire Post, May 4) of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership on the 40th anniversary of her first election victory.

Margaret Thatcher’s legacy 40 years on – Greg Wright

Although I admire the overall balance in Mr Wright’s and his contributors’ assessments, I would like to add a few of my own views which may not accord 100 per cent with Greg’s.

My life with Margaret Thatcher 40 years on and what it was like to work for the Iron Lady – Bernard Ingham

The uncompromising right-wing strategies, indeed I agree, got off to a terrible start and were extremely unpopular, even by mainstream economists, 364 of whom wrote to The Times utterly condemning them and forecasting a descent for the UK economy into near oblivion.

But such daring policies, like the cutting of the upper rate of income tax by Sir Geoffrey Howe from 83 per cent (98 per cent on investment income) to 60 per cent, take some time to work 
and so it was with wringing 
high inflation out of the economy.

Milton Friedman, the Chicago high priest of monetarism and free market economics, predicted pain before salvation and he calculated it would take at least two years before the benefits emerged.

Added to the turmoil, we must also take into account that a large segment of major industry, from coal to steel and motor vehicle manufacturing was in a state of near anarchy.

For the Iron Lady, it must have been like trying to climb Everest whilst being attacked by hostile sherpas.

The quote from Professor Theakston suggesting that most policies, introduced piecemeal, were not conceived beforehand is, I believe, to be mostly untrue.

Thatcher’s ideology was guided by Leeds MP Sir Keith Joseph, a disciple of the Institute of Economic Affairs that, for years, had been campaigning for such market-driven strategies including privatisation of the nationalised industries.

Lastly, he cites academic, Dr Christopher Fears, who presents both sides of the argument including the populist, ritual left-wing negative view of Mrs Thatcher’s governance – claiming poverty, the North/South divide and public service degeneration were the main legacies of those Thatcher years.

Do those who believe in this ever imagine what would have happened to the country if the Labour government had continued in office (but not in power) after 1979?

I suggest our status of the 
“sick man of Europe” would 
have shrivelled further to one little better than a “banana republic” with everyone impoverished.