The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #83512   Message #1537076
Posted By: Richard Bridge
07-Aug-05 - 05:34 PM
Thread Name: BS: Was Thatcher right?
Subject: RE: BS: Was Thatcher right?
Thatcher was of course wrong on most things.

1.    There is such a thing as society - the collective will - and it is one of the functions of "society", through the political and fiscal system, to provide for those less privileged, and to arrange to fund such provision by those proprotionatley able to fund it. Otherwise all you have is the law of the jungle (or of the Hell Fire Club viz "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law").

2.    Although she did not need to declare war to use military force within the boundaries of the Falklands against an invader, it was unlawful (without first declaring war) to use such force outside those boundaries.

Scargill was right about most things - where he failed was that he allowed his enemy to choose the timing and terms of battle.   The union/capitalism problem of the Wilson and Heath years lay in the fact that both leaders of capital had the power to extract money from enterprise to the detriment of labour and the leaders of labour had the power to coerce the leaders of capital to provide for labour. What was of course necessary was to curb the power of management to pay excessive salaries to management and excessive dividends to shareholders (and excessive interst to loan funders eg banks). In stead Thatcher stage managed a conflict with Scargill at a time when coal stocks had never been higher (and she had arranged for them to be stockpiled). From this power base, with the aid of legislation intended to emasculate unions, and without putting any restrictions on teh power of capital and management, she sought to reduce the working man (and indeed workers by brain as well as hand) to reliance on capital.

This, as will be seen, is adverse to the benefit of soceity.

The woman was the enemy of the people and of civilisation. I wish her much suffering. I wish her as much suffering as she caused others.