Why do people hate Margaret Thatcher?

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People generally don't like Reagan either.

Thing is, Thatcher is is an especially weird position. She was the most influential Conservative since Churchhill but British Conservatism has changed since her times. She supported the EU and basically founded it. Now most cons are against the EU. Her policies also went against more populist ideas like employment as a national interest. Privatizing everything just lead to coal being imported from other countries and masses of people being unemployed.
 
Thatcher is primarily disliked, particularly up North, because of how her policies are perceived to have led to the decline of British industry. She was one of the main architects of the current neoliberal economic era, and there are many areas of the UK (particularly those where heavy industry used to dominate) that have never really recovered from her tenure.

The working class as a unified entity no longer really exists because of her. Those that were lucky enough were able to take advantage of new economic opportunities and graduate into the middle class, while the rest were left permanently underemployed. Where there was once a reasonable guarantee of a stable job; now there are zero-hour contracts and the gig economy, and to many people, that is Thatcher's main legacy.

The hatred for her aside, she remains broadly quite popular in the UK. She is admired for pulling the country back from the brink following the Winter of Discontent, defending the Falklands from annexation, and being on the right side of the Cold War, and she allowed millions to become home owners for the first time by giving them the right to buy their council houses (though this arguably had dire long-term consequences in terms of exacerbating housing costs).

Overall, I would say she is a polarizing figure in the UK. Many admire her; many despise her.
 
People already talked about her being hatred in the UK. Outside of the UK there seems to be more of an effort to have her memory-holed than actively despised. My opinion is that Thatcher is hated outside the UK for being a prominent female right winger, which is inconceivable to most modern feminist organizations that are as left as they come and would, if they could, mandate that women can only vote in a single way.
 
Emperor Julian dijo:
Is it 80's Brtain?
Are you from the north?
Do you have a job?

....Well not anymore!

Also she cancelled the free m-ilk for school kids, which sets the norm for the tories attitude to infrastructure for the next 40 years.
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You sound really bitter about having to close factories and pits that should have been closed by 1955. Should the country be held hostage by unions that would have made the country a shithole? It’s hard to get new industries if you have people going on strike if someone looked at them funny. Explain to me how keeping unprofitable businesses afloat with government money is a better solution than shutting them down? Defend British Leyland and the Coal Board as they are the worst examples of being owned by the government. Honestly though, I’m just an American that studied British economic policies in college and I don’t understand how modernizing industry across the country was viewed as taking jobs away from people? Why were the unions so against change by modernizing factories that might still be working today? Lastly many of the closings happened after Thatcher by Major and Blair.
 
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Kornheiser dijo:
You sound really bitter about having to close factories and pits that should have been closed by 1955. Should the country be held hostage by unions that would have made the country a shithole? It’s hard to get new industries if you have people going on strike if someone looked at them funny. Explain to me how keeping unprofitable businesses afloat with government money is a better solution than shutting them down? Defend British Leyland and the Coal Board as they are the worst examples of being owned by the government. Honestly though, I’m just an American that studied British economic policies in college and I don’t understand how modernizing industry across the country was viewed as taking jobs away from people? Why were the unions so against change by modernizing factories that might still be working today? Lastly many of the closings happened after Thatcher by Major and Blair.
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More defeated than anything, the country is a shithole and the economy is a house of cards. Even if I agreed with Thatchers approach her long term strategy which was followed by later leaders is slowly degenerating into a failure.

But my answer was to why "why people hate thatcher" not "why do you think Thatchers a bad leader?" my thoughts are way more naunced on that, were I would take your arguement into account.
 
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Margaret Thatcher was a proto-neocon just like Reagan, except she was given the reins of a dead empire and an economy that was somehow even worse than the one Reagan inherited.

Reagan is less universally reviled in America partly due to Americans typically being somewhat more right-leaning than Brits or Eurotrash and partly because Reagan had a lot of charisma and he oversaw the end of the Cold War, especially if you consider the Bush Sr. presidency as a third term of Reagan in all but name (and it largely was)

Plus, the rise of Reagan was essentially the codification of the Sixth Party System of today, and he's seen as a hero of the Religious Right and the Neocons, who were dominant in the GOP for thirty years at least.

Liberals view him as a villain, conservatives view him as a hero while the reverse is true for Bill Clinton, and both presidents presided over an era of vibrant pop culture, economic prosperity, technological innovation, and the peak of American hegemony.

Granted, I'm an American and I'm sure the British Kiwis can give a much better perspective on the Thatcher years.
 
If it means anything, Reagan’s reputation has been sliding in the last 10 years amongst conservatives, primarily due to his support for amnesty and offshoring of industry that accelerated on his watch.
 
Kornheiser dijo:
You sound really bitter about having to close factories and pits that should have been closed by 1955. Should the country be held hostage by unions that would have made the country a shithole? It’s hard to get new industries if you have people going on strike if someone looked at them funny. Explain to me how keeping unprofitable businesses afloat with government money is a better solution than shutting them down? Defend British Leyland and the Coal Board as they are the worst examples of being owned by the government. Honestly though, I’m just an American that studied British economic policies in college and I don’t understand how modernizing industry across the country was viewed as taking jobs away from people? Why were the unions so against change by modernizing factories that might still be working today? Lastly many of the closings happened after Thatcher by Major and Blair.
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I can answer the last question. Modernizing an industry necessities adding new blood, new blood that will be far more important than anyone before (and likely justifies firing large chunks of the old blood). This will severely weaken the Union members who'd rather have the whole company go down than let go an iota of power.
 
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