Quote:
Originally Posted by hip hop bunny hop
Not at all.
Care to cite specific examples, or elaborate why defending the Falklands from Argentina's aggression or defending Britain from terrorists was bad?
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Exhibit A:
Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the trade unions, whose leadership she accused of undermining parliamentary democracy and economic performance through strike action.[99] Several unions launched strikes in response to legislation introduced to curb their power, but resistance eventually collapsed.[100] Only 39% of union members voted for Labour in the 1983 general election.[101] According to the BBC, Thatcher "managed to destroy the power of the trade unions for almost a generation".[102]
The miners' strike was the biggest confrontation between the unions and the Thatcher government. In March 1984 the National Coal Board (NCB) proposed to close 20 of the 174 state-owned mines and cut 20,000 jobs out of 187,000.[103][104][105] Two-thirds of the country's miners, led by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) under Arthur Scargill, downed tools in protest.[103][106][107] Scargill had refused to hold a ballot on the strike,[108] having previously lost three ballots on a national strike (January '82, October '82, March '83).[109] This led to the strike's being declared illegal.[110][111]
Thatcher refused to meet the union's demands and compared the miners' dispute to the Falklands conflict two years earlier, declaring in a speech in 1984: "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty."[112] After a year out on strike, in March 1985, the NUM leadership conceded without a deal. The cost to the economy was estimated to be at least £1.5 billion, and the strike was blamed for much of the pound's fall against the US dollar.[113] The government closed 25 unprofitable coal mines in 1985, and by 1992 a total of 97 had been closed;[105] those that remained were privatised in 1994.[114] The eventual closure of 150 coal mines, not all of which were losing money, resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and devastated entire communities.[105][115] Miners had helped bring down the Heath government, and Thatcher was determined to succeed where he had failed. Her strategy of preparing fuel stocks, appointing a union-busting NCB leader in Ian MacGregor, and ensuring police were adequately trained and equipped with riot gear, contributed to her victory.
Exhibit B:
In 1980 and 1981, Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison carried out hunger strikes in an effort to regain the status of political prisoners that had been removed in 1976 under the preceding Labour government.[127] Bobby Sands began the 1981 strike, saying that he would fast until death unless prison inmates won concessions over their living conditions.[127] Thatcher refused to countenance a return to political status for the prisoners, declaring "Crime is crime is crime; it is not political",[127] but nevertheless the UK government privately contacted republican leaders in a bid to bring the hunger strikes to an end.[128] After the deaths of Sands and nine others, some rights were restored to paramilitary prisoners, but not official recognition of their political status.[129] Violence in Northern Ireland escalated significantly during the hunger strikes; in 1982 Sinn Féin politician Danny Morrison described Thatcher as "the biggest bastard we have ever known".[130]
Thatcher narrowly escaped injury in an IRA assassination attempt at a Brighton hotel early in the morning on 12 October 1984.[131] Five people were killed, including the wife of Cabinet Minister John Wakeham. Thatcher was staying at the hotel to attend the Conservative Party Conference, which she insisted should open as scheduled the following day.[131] She delivered her speech as planned,[132] a move that was widely supported across the political spectrum and enhanced her popularity with the public.[133]
And I don't know where you got the idea (or care, since you're American) that she was "defending the Falklands from Argentina's aggression" when they had as much historical right to those islands as the British; more, as they were in their waters. It was all a big show, something to assure her re-election. If the Argentines had been proper opposition she would soon have got out of there and left them to it.
