Question about Winston Churchill (1 Viewer)

[BrianB]

Also Thatcher remains very popular in Britain; every where except in the popular press

That is complete & utter nonsense. TOTAL nonsense. Go upto Glasgow & ask about Thatcher, see what sort of reaction you get.

 

[TheoGB]

Yeah, I'm with Brian!
Though, she's certainly more popular now than 5 or 6 years ago. I think that's true of most/all leaders. They tend to be pretty much looked as failures in their own time.
Hence I'm sure there was a period when Churchill was very much not looked on with the respect he gets now.
The most obvious case would be John Major - I seem to remember he was our most unpopular PM (or something) when he was in power, yet now you don't seem to get that so much...
I guess it's that rose-tinted "It wasn't like that in my day". Like people claiming, against all evidence, that children were safer 50 or 100 years ago!!

 

[Larry Schneider]

Agreed, Maurice, but we do get to claim a little credit because of the mother - I believe he spoke to the US Congress: "If my father had been American and my mother British instead of the other way around, I might have got here on my own!"

 

[BrianB]

Though, she's certainly more popular now than 5 or 6 years ago.

I think the Tories have suffered such a complete vacuum of power & charisma since she left office that she's "missed" by a lot of the party. Combine that with Blair's spin-doctoring image.

But that's not even close to making here "popular" around the country. I know people that still resent her for stealing their milk never mind the chaos of the Poll Tax.

 

[Maurice McCone]

.

Go upto Glasgow & ask about Thatcher

Brian, go down to Surrey and ask about Blair - he is detested by huge swathes of middle Britain, witness the recent council elections.
Yes, his mother was American,but Winston was brought up and raised in Britain.
I believe that 13 of your presidents come directly from Ulster protestant stock - doesn't make them Orange men does it ?
The vilification of Thatcher, stems from the fact that she stood up to the foundations of state socialism in the late 70's and early 80's and brushed them aside ie Nationalisation, Union supremacy, and introduced Privatisation and increased freedoms in rights to buy housing etc....
all of which turned this country around and stopped the phrase 'sick man of Europe' (remember?) from ever being used to describe this country again.
These also became the cornerstone of New Labour who have not repealled any of her steps forward. If anything the conservatives demise came about because they stopped short of continuing the big ideas.
Tony Blair will always be in the shadow of the second greatest PM this country has produced and he and his media cronies don't like it and are attempting a Stalinist purge of her achievements from the history books.
The positive impact of Thatcher remains, while the weak Labour PM's who preceded her, Callaghan / Wilson, are remembered for....well actually not for much really.
PS - Brian , Tony hasn't actually restored milk for all has he ?

 

[BrianB]

Brian, go down to Surrey and ask about Blair - he is detested by huge swathes of middle Britain, witness the recent council elections.

Where did I say he wasn't? I'm no fan of Blair either - that doesn't mean I have to automatically love Thatcher.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

no hands off !!

Sorry Maurice, but that's the truth. May I direct you to US Public Law 88-6, Stat. 77, enacted 9 April 1963 at 2:45 PM:
"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, Tht the President of the United States is hereby authorized and directed to declare by proclamation that Sir Winston Churchill shall be an honorary citizen of the United States of America"
JFK quickly signed it into law and sent the citizenship papers to Winston. That same week a M91/38 Mannlicher-Carcano rifle arrived in the Dallas PO box of Lee Harvey Oswald....

 

[TheoGB]

Maurice, stop trying to get the thread closed. You stated that Thatcher remained very popular, which Brian rightly pulled you up on. It's just not a statement the majority of the British public would agree on, even the ones that do like her - face it.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Continuing about Coventry, the confusion of the early post-Ultra histories had quelled by the time Manchester wrote his Vol. I, published in 1983. I quote from page 8 of the 1st edition:

"He wanted to be wherever the bombs were falling. It is a lie that he knew Coventry would be destroyed on November 14, 1940, and didn't alert the city because the Germans would have known their code had been broken. Sir John Martin was with him that evening. They were driving out of the capital when a motorcyclist stopped them; word had just arrived that the Luftwaffe was headed for London. So the prime minister ordered the car turned round. It was early morning before he knew that the real target had been Coventry."

 

[andrew markworthy]

I offer the following as a cultural aid to American readers of this thread:

(a) Margaret Thatcher and Conservative policies have been and continue to be very popular in relatively affluent areas of the country, such as London and the South-East of England (including the county of Surrey, mentioned above). They also tend to be popular in geographical 'pockets' of relative affluence in other areas of the country, such as Cheshire (highest per capita ownership of Mercedes cars for anywhere in the world).

(b) MT and Conservative policies have been and continue to be loathed in less affluent areas. E.g. all or nearly all of Scotland has no Conservative members of parliament.

(c) MT's reforms to prune down uneconomic industries resulted in mass closures or scalings-down of factories and businesses. These tended to be in geographical areas described in (b) rather than (a).

(d) from this can be gathered why some people have vested interests in supporting one party rather than another.

 

[CharlesD]

'Thatcherism' is in the latest Oxford English Dictionary. So is 'mad cow disease'.

hehehe
I spent some of the "Thatcher years" in school in Surrey, and it was pretty obvious that she was very very unpopular at the time. Her personal popularity rating was only slightly above that of Hitler's. She did make huge changes in the U.K. especially when it comes to the power of the unions. Obviously her legacy is still deeply divisive in the U.K. I doubt, however, that anyone wants to go back to the 70s where a Coal Miner's strike would quickly lead to power cuts all over the country.

 

[Graham Perks]

I would say that Thatcher is looked upon much like Reagan in the US. Some people can't stand Reagan and insist that he ruined the US economy. Some people say the same about Thatcherism.

However "unpopular" those two might be, note that they both got re-elected. Thatcher twice. They can't have been that bad! In fact the British public never voted Thatcher out.

I remember Britain in the 70s - 95% tax rate, 3 day work weeks, the army having to drive ambulances and nobody picking up the rubbish/trash; high inflation and having to ask the IMF for money. Bad economic times! The early 80s were not easy but considering what a bad State the country had got into it's amazing how it turned around.

I went to school and watched horrible videos of what happens to people in a nuclear war (all your hair falls out and then you die, assuming you avoided any initial blast). I will be forever grateful to these two politicians for facing and bankrupting the USSR to the point where children don't have to see those videos anymore.

 

[BrianB]

However "unpopular" those two might be, note that they both got re-elected. Thatcher twice. They can't have been that bad! In fact the British public never voted Thatcher out.

The British public, maybe not. The Scottish public most certainly attempted to. At one point, there were *no* Conservative MPs from Scotland. To fill the Scottish Cabinet, they had to draft in nobodies from 'down South' etc.

 

[TheoGB]

Margaret Thatcher and Conservative policies have been and continue to be very popular in relatively affluent areas of the country, such as London

Andrew, please don't perpetuate the myth that London is partisan to any political party. The inner city areas are very strongly left-wing due to the lack of affluence of the residents so as a whole it could be considered 'neutral' territory.

 

[Bhagi Katbamna]

). I will be forever grateful to these two politicians for facing and bankrupting the USSR to the point where children don't have to see those videos anymore.

Don't let them see Sum of All Fears.

 

[Ben Motley]

]Quote:

G.J.A. O'Toole, from his book, "Honorable Treachery"

 

[andrew markworthy]

However "unpopular" those two might be, note that they both got re-elected. Thatcher twice. They can't have been that bad! In fact the British public never voted Thatcher out.

The reasons they got re-elected were complex, but the most important include:

(a) the Falklands War; MT was seen as having been leader of the 'winning team'. The fact that government cutbacks had left the Falklands inadequately defended in the first place was conveniently forgotten.

(b) the very poor level of opposition offered by sucessive leaders of the Labour Party; i.e. it wasn't that the public didn't want a change, it's just that they liked the alternatives even less;

(c) press coverage was almost universally pro-Thatcher (largely because she was offering business opportunities the newspaper proprietors liked);

(d) the electoral system; the majority of people voted for other parties, but since elections of MPs are done on districts, it's perfectly possible for a minority party to gain the most seats (trust me, this works out!)

Perhaps the biggest myth is that without MT's firm government, Britain would have got worse and worse. The simple facts are:

(a) we don't know, because alternatives weren't tried; however, economic modelling suggests that the proposed actions of the Labour party, had it been re-elected, would also have worked.

(b) the UK recovered in tandem with the rest of Europe, most of which was also in pretty bad shape at the time. I.e. recovery might have happened as part of a general revival of fortunes anyway.

(c) for all those who think that MT slashed public spending, please note that taxes went *up* in several years of her rule. There were greater tax perks for the rich (all the higher bands of taxation disappeared with the exception of a 40% higher tax band which kicks in at circa 27k p.a.), but these brought in v. little revenue anyway, so their loss wasn't a big deal for the national economy. Also, civil service numbers remained the same (so much for cutting back on red tape).

(d) she didn't 'tame the unions' as much as emasculate the industries with the most militant union members (thereby removing their power base). It's like saying someone tamed a vicious dog by cutting its legs off. She introduced legislation which was sufficient to keep the other unions in check, but they had never been particularly militant anyway.

 

[TheoGB]

You've got to admit that you are far more likely to find a Thatcherite in London than e.g. Glasgow.

I don't actually know for sure that you're right there. Just because you're more likely to find one doesn't mean there aren't lots in London. Don't forget that actual London residents are different to your commuters coming in from...well, Surrey!!

 

[Maurice McCone]

Andrew,
did Alastair Campbell help you write the above ?
Whats with the everything good MT did was by good fortune and luck....?
a) the Falklands was a tradegy, caused solely by the desire of a military Junta in Argentina to hold on to power; they have declared that nothing we could have reasonably done prior to invasion would have deterred them.
Labour would have appeased this Junta, and therefore dammed both the population of the Falklands and the good people of Argentina to years of Dictatorship.
How about credit where credit is due?
b)Labour had poor leaders and poor outdated policies.
c) True the press was and still is pro- conservative; however, the more influencial TV medium was and is pro Labour...sort of balances out don't you think?
d)Blaming the electoral system ? a bit desperate ...
I am afraid I can't buy the rest of your thesis that Britain would have got better anyway under Labour over the same period; this just doesn't hold any credibility.
The 18 years of conservatism resulted in 1997 an economy stronger than anything else in 'mostly centre left' rest of Europe; and with Blair continuing Thatchers legacy and handling of the economy and keeping Unions down, we continue to be stronger than the rest of Europe; which appears to recognise it needs to move to the right (not extreme mind) to succeed.
Anyway this thread serves to illustrate the real 'British Disease' that of playing down British successes and heroes, even to the point of allowing others to claim them as their own (see U571).

 

[TheoGB]

Hmm. Possibly Maurice but as with everything, there are downsides too. Possibly the most expensive country in the world? Maybe...:frowning: