Margaret Thatcher’s industrial and economic ideology gave rise to privatisation and free market policy in Britain, and her stern economic reforms indirectly affected the work culture and lifestyle of the people.

Thatcher was a follower of the American economist and writer Milton Friedman. She firmly believed in indirect taxes over direct taxes. She believed that lowering public spending would help bring down inflation.

During her tenure, she was successful in bringing down inflation but unfortunately her reforms gave rise to unemployment and labour-related discontent. Thatcher single-handedly wanted to change the dynamics of Britain’s economy but this led to serious unemployment in the mining sector.

It is believed that during the 1980s, one out of every five people in Northern Ireland was unemployed. Thatcher’s government decided to remove power from the hands of the state-run legacy firms and as a result declared the shutdown of 20 of Britain’s 174 coal mines. The mining community called for a nationwide strike. A bomb was planted by the IRA at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England, where the Prime Minister was staying but miraculously she escaped the assassination attempt.Even today economists all over the world continue to argue over the economic policies introduced by Thatcher. She threw open the market for the entrepreneurs and made way for the starting of businesses which, in today’s world, is a widely accepted concept.

The execution of strong policies such as privatisation and indirect taxes had a deleterious effect on the labour-intensive society. The people, therefore, definitely deserve an answer from her government for all the chaos and misery they went through during her tenure.

Even then, from a wider perspective, her ideologies definitely have a different standing in today’s society.

(Sneha studied engineering at SRM University, worked in IBM for a year, and then studied journalism at the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media, Bangalore.)

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