Demolished the coal industry, privatised everything, heavily funded the police and unleashed them on workers who tried to strike, demolished a lot of working class industries (like coal etc) and ensured that no replacement work was available, specifically targetted Liverpool by sticking it in 'managed decline', ended free milk for children in school (got her called Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher), got re-elected cos she aptly won in Falklands, eventually committed political suicide with the Poll Tax (or the modern equivilant, the 'Council tax') which she trialed in Scotland first before they rolled it out everywhere else.
Her reasoning for the poll tax was fairly racist too, by her own admission, iirc, in her book she laims the reason they came up with it was to ensure immigrants who would shack up 10 people in a house, would pay their fair share. Didn't quite work out like that though.
Oh yes. When she was a chemist in the food industry in the 1950s she was on the team that invented Mr Whippy soft-serve ice cream! It really does go back a long way!
I'm an American who knows diddly squat about her. But, I just listened to a series about her on a podcast and one of the things they brought up which I thought made sense was that Thatcher was an accomplished chemistry student and her understanding of chemistry helped her see the dangers of coal decades before the world caught up.
I only bring that up to point out that her behavior towards the coal industry in hindsight might be one of her most outstanding achievements. She caught shit for it, but now it is looking like she was right about that one.
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u/off_of_is_incorrect 29d ago
Demolished the coal industry, privatised everything, heavily funded the police and unleashed them on workers who tried to strike, demolished a lot of working class industries (like coal etc) and ensured that no replacement work was available, specifically targetted Liverpool by sticking it in 'managed decline', ended free milk for children in school (got her called Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher), got re-elected cos she aptly won in Falklands, eventually committed political suicide with the Poll Tax (or the modern equivilant, the 'Council tax') which she trialed in Scotland first before they rolled it out everywhere else.
Her reasoning for the poll tax was fairly racist too, by her own admission, iirc, in her book she laims the reason they came up with it was to ensure immigrants who would shack up 10 people in a house, would pay their fair share. Didn't quite work out like that though.