Thatcher had to take on the forces of reaction and win

THE Margaret Thatcher debate rumbles on. From the harsh invective of Parliamentarians like Glenda Jackson, the ritual hatred displayed in the Goldthorpe celebrations, and the tirades of George Galloway to the more reasoned but often virulent responses of liberal and social democratic opinion, little account is taken of the immense strength of the entrenched forces that were ranged against our female prime minister.

It wasn’t just the rampant, marauding trade unions, whom Macmillan, Wilson, Heath and Callaghan had failed to tame, but also the intellectual establishment who were strenuously opposed to most of her policies.

No fewer than 364 eminent economists denounced her agenda in the Times; they were utterly opposed to the monetarist and supply side theories her government adopted.

They were in the thrall of post-Keynesian economics where demand management and credit controls had, in fact, wrapped a strait-jacket, coupled with high inflation and rising unemployment, round the economy.

We were falling further and further behind our competitors. “The Sick Man of Europe” was no false sobriquet. The post-war Left establishment consensus had failed. But the resistance to change was on an unparalleled level; it was a painful process causing the innocent as well as the pro-active to suffer in the turmoil.

The divisions in our society she is so often alleged to have created were already there but they were inflamed by the defeat of a ruthless, frequently undemocratic and aggressive Labour movement that has retained and exploited the memory of that defeat to vilify her name.

Those critics who sit on the fence and say most of the reforms were necessary but compassion and tolerance were in short supply, or she could have done it in a more moderate way, little understand the deep-rooted powers of reaction confronting Mrs Thatcher. Without the single-mindedness and resolution, where niceties were at a premium, nothing would have been done.

And if the happy revellers at Goldthorpe were not so introspectively embittered and knew what was going on in the world they would comprehend that Margaret Thatcher was a prime mover in lifting the Iron Curtain that enabled millions of working people, like themselves, to be free from State totalitarianism.

However, the freedom of expression our revellers were all too happy to enjoy, as revealed in their antics on national television, hardly enhanced their own reputation nor the prestige of their own good county.