Tell me about United Kingdom Pre-Thatcher

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me about United Kingdom Pre-Thatcher

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

Margret Thatcher isn't looked too kindly here on these boards. But from what I have heard from some people in the United Kingdom is that prior to Thatcher the country was a bureaucratic nightmare. The unions would regularly shutdown the cities over strikes. Nationalization of many key industries severely underperformed. The country was way behind in innovation. And taxes were insanely high. Essentially the country was a basketcase and the privatizations Thatcher did, while some going too far, were mostly necessary.

Can someone who is knowledgeable about this time period or was even there tell me about this?

# ¿ Mar 23, 2016 21:24

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 23:38

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

Prince John posted:

It's too late for an effort post, but broadly speaking the key historical facts taken in isolation are correct.

Nationalised industries were uncompetitive and lossmaking. There were significant strikes during the 70s compared to previous decades (although more days lost to strike in individual years after Thatcher's election). Investment was low and income taxes were higher in the 70s than in the 80s (although overall tax take as a % of GDP was higher under Thatcher.) The UK had to go to the IMF for a loan in the late 70s which was something of a knock to our national prestige.

There are a ton of reasons for why each of these things was true and blaming it on the unions or bureaucracy is too simplistic.

This is far more controversial for a short post and I'll leave it for someone else to talk about it properly. My one sentence summary is that just because the UK economy was messed up in the 70s doesn't mean that Thatcherism, a fixation on money supply, privatisation and de-industrialisation was the optimal strategy for dealing with it - the human cost was enormous (e.g. doubling of unemployment and long-term devastation of mining regions) and it potentially didn't need to be.

I see. What were the reasons for why these things happened IYO? Do you feel that the United Kingdom's then left wing route was something they could have continued? How far to the left was U.K.s economy back then? Like does any modern country compare.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2016 05:27

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

Tesseraction posted:

To break your post down into a few key points, you address bureaucracy, union strikes, nationalised industry sucking, innovation and taxes.

On the bureaucracy front, the only thing reduced there was via privatisation - pushing the books out of government and into private hands. One of the 'problems' of stable governments is that regulation only increases as more edge cases or technologies emerge. Thatcher's deregulation was seen as easing the bureaucracy of, for instance, the banking system, but also set the scene for problems down the line (that link being one of the causes cited for the 2008 financial crisis).

Unions-wise, as another poster pointed out, strike action increased under Thatcher. By the time she came to power the Winter of Discontent was over and settled, but by then the damage had been done. The classic example of a strike during her time was the 1984-85 miners' strike, which she manage to defeat by using stockpiled coal the government had built up to prevent the National Union of Miners from taking down another government (they were seen as responsible for the defeat of Ted Heath's government in the 74 elections based on their strike in 72 crushing Britain's electricity grid). Defeating the NUM was basically a death knell to the trade unions' position as a political power.

Nationalised industry being poo poo was definitely a thing. I can't really say much on this subject, though, so I'll let someone else field that one.

In terms of innovation, that's a hard one to say, really. The first hand-held television was released in 1970 and the first laptop in 1979. The best invention was probably the World Wide Web in 1989, but while Tim Berners-Lee is British, he developed it while working at CERN (his example image on the test page actually contained a schematic of the large hadron collider). Since discovering one little gem I've often cited how Thatcher single-handedly destroyed fibre broadband in the UK, where she was shown how to roll out fibre cables cheaper than copper wire, and decided that because a nationalised industry was doing it and not a private company, it was bad, so she killed the project. Read the article, it's pretty short. Our slow lovely internet in the late 90s up 'til now are entirely of that decision.

And finally taxes. She increased corporation tax, but she also near-doubled VAT, which hurts the poor way more than the rich.

Fantastic post. I really would like to know more about the nationalized industries. Were they all bad but NHS? Why were they bad? Could they have been fixed? Hopefully someone could chime in.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2016 17:04

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

team overhead smash posted:

Before Thatcher we had a strong commitment to Jungle Canyon Rope bridges. They're now always broken and it's completely unnecessary. She even said "A mystery investigating teenager or dog who beyond the age of 26 finds himself still using a jungle canyon rope bridge can count himself a failure in life"

Can you explain what this means?

# ¿ Mar 25, 2016 14:14

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

Incredible write up!

Is there anyway the traditional left wing Britain could come back?

I have heard of Corbyn, but unlike America's Sanders he doesn't appeal to the youth that much from what I've heard.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2016 02:44

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

I see, thank you, more input is always welcomed. I was under the impression that Corbyn doesn't appeal to the youth, but maybe that is just a smear campaign on the media.

IIRC I remember reading articles a few years ago about how the British youth were moving to the right wing and not the left wing.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2016 04:41

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

By all means post more. The information you give is interesting.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2016 06:46

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

You should really write some books. That was extremely informative.

It's sad that the cooperative like structure failed. Has something like that with a company so large ever succeeded in Britain or anywhere in the modern era?

# ¿ Mar 27, 2016 19:20

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

BalloonFish posted:

Germany is very big on worker representation, and has been since it was rebuilt after WW2. As I understand it union membership is mandatory in many German industries and every German company over a certain size has to have a proportion of union representatives on its board. A lot of the German federal states have shares in big regional employers, too. Basically Germany runs something similar to the pre-1979 Postwar Consensus in the UK only it actually works.

Didn't know that Germany was that left wing when it came to worker representation. I always saw Germany as the number two most right wing modern European country after U.K.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 00:11

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

You'd think Germany would be very anti-left due to the whole East Germany being Communist thing.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 02:51

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

Tesseraction posted:

The former East Germany regions are actually the strongest voting bloc for Die Linke (lit: 'The Left') in terms of political parties. The rest of the country are stronger on Merkel's Christian Democratic Union & friends coalition.

I thought East Germany hated Communism?

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 04:07

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

blowfish posted:

The really far right countries in Europe are mostly in the East.

Good write up as well. Though I was thinking solely of economics when I thought of right wing.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 12:35

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 23:38

punk rebel ecks: Dec 11, 2010; A shitty post? This calls for a dance of deduction.

Tesseraction posted:

East Germany also required them to read about left-wing political thought, so while they saw the problems of the Soviet Union's policies, they also could see how it was different from what left-wing intellectuals had written about. Similarly Zizek was born and raised in Communist Yugoslavia and was told his writings were not sufficiently Marxist to be valid, yet here in the west he's considered an orthodox Marxist theorist (and rather unreadable, in my opinion).

I was under the impression that Yugoslavia was different from the other Sovient occupied countries and is where Communism somewhat worked.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2016 17:34

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me about United Kingdom Pre-Thatcher