It could have been a lot worse

However, unlike some correspondents, I also vividly remember the time before that. I lived through the three-day week, the 10pm TV blackout, power cuts and chronic shortages of basic commodities like bread, sugar and (cruelly when there was a power cut) candles. My father was a senior civil servant, present for some of the “beer and sandwiches” sessions at Downing Street in the ’60s and ’70s. I remember him coming home after these sessions and overhearing him talk to my mother about how hopeless the situation was. 

Most armchair critics forget just how bad a mess the UK was in at that time. Thatcher emerged as the one politician who was prepared to take the unpleasant yet essential steps to stop the rot that very clearly had set in to Britain in the 1970s. She did the things that had to be done: breaking the unions’ stranglehold on the economy and government, privatising utilities and, above all, encouraging the free market. The decline in Britain’s industrial base was probably faster as a result of Thatcher, but it was inevitable and already underway when she came along. Sadly, she carried on beyond the time she should have stepped down. If she had resigned, say, immediately after the 1987 general election, then I believe history would look upon her more favourably.

It wasn’t very nice living through the Thatcher era in Britain, but I shudder to think what it would have been like without her. 

Alan Mehew

Bangkok