bashi-bazouk:

Her government was happy to let a massive British city collapse, forcibly evacuate the city - because it elected a left-wing council.

She put millions out of work, following Monetarist policy that she had to abandon when it was clear the situation was getting worse.

She shut down democratically-elected local government when it disagreed with her.

She shut down independent television when it disagreed with her.

She let a British MP starve to death on hunger strike.

She believed homosexuality was something dirty, wrong, and something to not be talked about.

She propped up the racist apartheid South African government.

She considered Nelson Mandela to be a terrorist.

She supported the fascist Chilean dictator Pinochet.

She stockpiled coal for months before provoking a fight with the coal unions - knowing they’d go on strike, and leaving them to starve.

She used the Hillsborough disaster as another excuse to demonise Liverpool and the working class - when it was actually caused by shoddy policing.

She deregulated the banking system and the stock exchange - leading to the current economic crisis we are in today.

‘There is no such thing as society - only the individual’.

She actually believed poor working class pensioners and millionaires should pay the same amount of council tax - the Poll Tax.

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This is just off the top of my head - please add to it.

1. She nearly destroyed Scotland’s economy (“I’m from the north, where there were no jobs, where the industry was rapidly disappearing, and her policies ensured it went more quickly.”)

2. She committed what many consider to be a war crime in the Falklands, where she ordered British forces to attack an Argentinian ship that was stationed outside of the British Exclusion Zone, killing 323 Argentinian sailors.

3. In the process of trying to fix inflation, she actually doubled it in a year, requiring massive VAT increases and sending interest rates to 17% before inflation finally receded to 2—3% in 1986.

4. Inspired record number of labor strikes, and increased Britain’s Gini coefficient to record levels, from which it still has not recovered.

5. Mobilized the British SAS to train Khmer Rouge forces in Cambodia, denied it, and supported granting prospective amnesty for the “more reasonable” members of the Khmer Rouge government. (”‘Thatcher, Reagan, Kissinger - they should all be on trial along with Ta Mok,’”)

6. Undermined the Irish peace process by refusing to compromise with Irish Nationalists, particularly during the Hunger Strikes of 1980-81.

7. Reduced the quality of virtually every public service she touched via many of her failed attempts to privatize the same. (”I worked at a large hospital for learning disabled people…Within months of the cleaning being contracted out the wards were filthy, morale was appalling, and the most vulnerable suffered the most.”).

And more of the same along those lines.  Thatcher was a disgusting human being.  She started a war in the Falklands to reverse her own political fortunes, put millions of British and Scottish citizens out of work with her misguided monetary & industrial policies, used the levers of Executive state power to coerce local elected officials whose local policies were inconvenient for her agenda, and her Ireland policy was a complete and utter failure for all stakeholders in the peace process.  

While not every one of her reforms were unproductive, they simply do not measure up well against her less savory behavior.  Thatcher was a cantankerous Sycophant who embodied the worst stereotypes and excesses of Machiavelli’s Prince.  Her ability to play the part of a truculent bully in public contributed to the myth that her policies were instrumental in helping to end the Cold War— which remains an insufferable canard that continues to pollute contemporary political discourse.  And the irony of her constantly being wrapped up with Churchill’s legacy is laid bare when one considers the fact that the crown jewel of Britain’s welfare state—the NHS—was created at the behest of Churchill after WW2.

Thatcher was not good for Britain, or the world.  Even if one believes that her ends (reducing the size of government) were desirable, her means were so clumsy and ham-fisted that she caused an unbelievable amount of unnecessary suffering, at home and abroad.  This is made even more intolerable by the fact that she was unafraid to bolster and mobilize the same public sector resources she abhorred so much when it was in her interest to do so.

As the Sabotage Times recently put it: “The Best Way to Deal with Margaret Thatcher’s Legacy is to Kill It.”  The sooner, the better.