The (American) Iron Lady

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I'm expecting the film to show both her rise and her downfall, or I shan't go to see it. I doubt that it will be contentious enough to show her destruction of the coal mining and UK manufacturing industries, the neutering of the unions, or the promotion of a loadsamoney, phoney economy that most benefited those in the financial sector.

 

[Starkers]

Well I suppose its only fair given that a Brit is now Batman/Spiderman/Superman

Not that I'm claiming Maggie is a super hero of course!

I hope its a balanced portrayal, though I guess that isn't likely given how much she divides opinion. Personally I don't particularly like her, but I do have respect for her. This country had become a laughing stock before she took over, and if nothing else she gave us back some national pride, and for all her love of America and Reagan, she treated it as a more equal partnership and wasn't afraid to stand up and say no...she was never the simpering poodle that Blair was.

You can lay a portion of blame for the financial crisis at her feet, but as Andrew Marr points out, her problem was that she wanted to give people the freedom to make theiur own choices, but people didn't respond in the way she would have expected.

I'd take her as my PM over Blair any day of the week.

By the way, the coal industry was in decline way before she came to power, in fact more pits closed before she was PM than during her tensure. As for the manufacturing industry how much of that was down to her and how much down to the unions who helped drive British manufacturing into the ground is debatable. She's credited--even by Labour MPs--with playing a large part in ensuring the set up of car plans in the North East that created shed loads of jobs.

And I say this as someone working class and poor who grew up while she was PM, but also as someone who still remembers the power going out in the 70s cos someone or another was always on strike.

 

[Deckerd]

She's a bastard and she destroyed our country. I reckon Meryl Streep can carry that off convincingly.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I wonder how well the film will fare in the US -- when I was over there while she was in office, a lot of Americans that I talked to described her as a "socialist", and they weren't kidding.

 

[Starkers]

Yeah, Great Britain in the 70s was a shining paradise where everyone was happy and healthy

Asbo, I've long come to the conclusion that being right of centre in the UK doesn't remotely equate to being right of centre in the US, so that doesn't surprise me. and yet Americans love Blair, obviously they don't realise he's a socialist (yeah I know, I don't believe it either!)

 

[Deckerd]

70's?

 

[cardinal biggles]

Biopics always interest me, and regardless of where you come down on her, Thatcher makes for an interesting subject. So long as the film doesn't suck, this looks like another sure-fire Oscar nom for Streep.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ The idea of coming down on Margaret Thatcher could be patented as an antidote to viagra.

 

[cardinal biggles]

I said "come down on," not "go down on." There's a big difference.

 

[Starkers]

^ The idea of coming down on Margaret Thatcher could be patented as an antidote to viagra.

"Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day, Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day!"

I have an urge to watch Austin Powers now...

The reference to the 70s was just a comment about the impressions people have nothing more. I don't agree with absolutely everything the woman did, but it isn't like the UKwas a paradise before she arrived and she somehow destroyed the country. In reality the UK in the 70s was in a mess, and something needed doing. People everywhere were always striking, we were having to go cap in hand to the IMF, we were a joke on the world stage. None of those things were true by the end of her tenure.

Did she intentially decide to smash the union movment? Probably, but blame Scargill and co for marching into her trap with their eyes wide open for their own ends which had very little to do with the welfare of their members.

They should so get Pachino to play him though...

 

[Deckerd]

The union movement is moot. What she did do was destroy the coal industry, the steel industry and sold off every nationalised industry for a few squid to her mates. I'm not saying the industries needed to be publicly owned but they sure as hellfire should have been sold at something approximating their value.

She presided over the most shamefully self-centred period in modern UK history. Her doctrine of personal gain and stuff everyone else was disgusting and repugnant. Nothing David Cameron could do would ever come close to her destruction of social conscience on a national level.

 

[Starkers]

With regards to Thatcher destroying the coal industry...

Link

The miners are often said to have ended the Heath government in 1974, and used their muscle to force higher wages. But is that the best measure of their power when they had been unable to prevent their industry halving in 15 years - before Margaret Thatcher even took office?

Half a million mining jobs were lost in the 30 years before Mrs Thatcher, 70% of the workforce. How radically different to what went before was the challenge from Mrs Thatcher herself?

 

[Deckerd]

Even an innumerate nerd like myself can work out that if 70% is half a million, then the remainder is a hoor of a lot of jobs to casually crush under the wheels of her chariot. Modernisation and reduced resources will always eat into any workforce. If you want to see real decimation, look at the number of agricultural jobs which have disappeared in the last 50 years, without any help from politicians.

 

[LOKAI of CHERON]

evil bitch to many.

Yes.

She's a bastard and she destroyed our country.

...and yes.

 

[Starkers]

It's weird you know, but I look out of the window now and don't see a ruined post apocolyptic wasteland...

Never let the facts get in the way of the hate guys!

This is why it's pointless making this film, the people who hate her won't ever accept anything good she might have done, just as the supporters tend to be blinded to the faults.

Ah well this is the internet and the internet doesn't do shades of grey does it?

 

[Deckerd]

I've been messed around by Scotrail all week. The railway network is a disgrace and is, in fact, ruined. Now I don't know if it would be any better if it were still British Rail but it sure as fuck couldn't be any worse.

Shall I go on?

 

[Holdfast]

Never let the facts get in the way of the hate guys!

I wouldn't bother having this argument if I were you. In terms of active UK members, the TBBS tilts quite heavily left, and Thatcher is person the left loves to hate the most, largely because to the great irritation of many of them, she not only confronted and broke the left as a political force in the 80s, but she also forced them to abandon many of their founding principles in order to (eventually) gain power.

The facts are that Britain is now essentially cemented as a centre-right capitalist country and in many ways Labour actually maintained/increased that positioning under Blair (Brown reversed a few things, but wasn't in office long enough to make any permanent changes). That is in large part due to Thatcher (and people like Keith Joseph providing the intellectual buttressing), breaking the consensus of a gradual ratcheting increase of socialist measures through the 40s-70s.

Let people talk about how much they hate Thatcher; they can't change the fact that she changed the country whether they like that or not.

 

[Rush Limborg]

^

Hmm...I wonder if Ronaldus Magnus will make an appearence in the film--and if so, who would play him?

Or the late, great St. John Paul II?

(BTW, congrats on the coming sainthood to a LEGEND! Here's hoping Mother Teresa and Rev. Billy Graham--after he passes away, of course--aren't that far off from titles of their own....)

 

[Starkers]

Let people talk about how much they hate Thatcher; they can't change the fact that she changed the country whether they like that or not.

This is true, whatever your view she did radically alter the way we all live (its kinda funny cos I know several middle aged blokes who still hate her from their youth, one of them even rattles on about how she should be tried for war crimes...of course he drove a porche not to long ago, and the other lives in a nice big house...)

Don't get me wrong, even though I'd class myself as a Tory I'm a pretty wet one and I do think she went a tad too far in places, and she was awfully naive in imagining people would be sensible with greater access to debt, and frankly I dislike her as a person, but as a leader she changed the face of our country, and I don't really think it was for the worst!

Deckerd, I'm never certain re trains whether they're really any better or any worse. I remember trains being late and overcrowded back in the day, and things don't seem to have altered too much, although I have to travel a fair bit with work and I rarely have a nightmare journey. I think we're still paying the price for the Germans not destrying nearly enough of our rail infrastructure during WW2. I don't actually hold that everything should be privatised, I think some things should stay state owned (I wish we had France's nuclear power infrastructure if I'm honest) and to be honest you could argue that the public and private sectors each have their pluses and minuses (having worked in both).

 

[Captaindemotion]

^


(BTW, congrats on the coming sainthood to a LEGEND! Here's hoping Mother Teresa and Rev. Billy Graham--after he passes away, of course--aren't that far off from titles of their own....)

Yes, JPII can become the Patron Saint of Paedophiles, having done so much to protect them during his lifetime.

Incidentally, the book How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World by Francis Wheen offers an interesting argument that for all of Thatcherism's much-vaunted efficiency and modernisation, the UK was actually a more productive and efficient country in the 1970s. Wheen, a Private Eye writer, isn't a knee-jerk lefty but he makes his argument very scientifically and thoroughly. Worth a read.