The other thing she did which I thought was interesting was giving working people the chance to buy their own council flats/homes. As someone from North America living in Britain at the time of the winter of discontent, I was quite surprised when I was told that this was a radical idea!!! It was clear then (and clearer now) that people like to have equity in their own homes, and that lefties needed to rethink the role of property rights in modern societies. I think it is pretty clear that this was a stark challenge to the utopian kibbutz model that underlay a lot of socialist rhetoric. It made people smarten up.

Her real damage was rhetorical: the stance that vicious "take-no-prisoners" language and ideas were part of modern conservatism. She was the model for the vicious neo-conservative vulcanism that goes on now.

yours,

Peter T.