Commemorating Thatcherism

THE EDITOR: Thank you for the space to contribute to the commemoration of the 25th Anniversary (May 4, 1979) of the ideals of Thatcherism bequeathed to Britain by its first woman Prime Minister, the Iron Lady, Baroness Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990). For all its vaunted opposition to Thatcherism, Labour’s current PM Tony Blair and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown are born again disciples and re-makes of the persistence of the new political paradigm initiated by one of Britain’s most radically reforming and fearless Prime Ministers in 1980s. She descended unto Britain after defeating Tory Callaghan like an avalanche of virgin white snow from a British middle class grocer’s lineage sanitising the political landscape.

Labour’s impending local elections manifesto is like the casking of the old wine of Thatcherism into the new wine skins of globalisation. It is premised on Thatcherite’s ideas on housing, more choices in education and public services and decentralisation of Government — all fundamentals of Thatcherism. The 1979, the pre-Thatcherite  British political landscape was scarred by high taxation, double digit inflation, trade union intransigence, high interest rates, a bloated nationalised public sector and a virtual collapse of the entrepreneurial ethic. Maggie Thatcher changed the face of Britain forever by introducing new found freedoms that displaced the bankruptcy and sterility of Labour’s socialist pyrotechnic rhetoric. Thatcherism is credited to being the precursor of the demise of the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall and the political waterloo of mad dogs of Stalinism.

The heart and soul of Thatcher’s monetarist policy were bringing inflation into single digit and the privatisation of the cash-hungry State Sector. Her privatisation policy/monetarism was introduced in TT by the fiscal discipline of the Chambers regime (81-86) and followed by the NAR regime under the guise of divestment of state enterprises. Thatcherism successfully transformed a languishing British economy into a modern, private sector, market-driven engine of growth  culminating into a viable share and house-owning democracy. Thatcherism was all about freedoms and market-forces — the hall marks of globalisation. No wonder she was celebrated and adulated in London on Tuesday 4 May.

STEPHEN KANGAL
England