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Social Inequality and Thatchers ideologies - Coggle Diagram
Social Inequality and Thatchers ideologies
Political ideology
Strict on spending moeny
Believed people should work hard
Individualistic - people should stand on their own two feet
Monetarism
Reduced government spending
Increased interest rates
Reduced government intervention into peoples lives
Thatcher called anyone in her party who did not tow the party line, or looked to negotiate with Labour ‘wet’.
Wets were old consensus Conservatives, who were against policies that attacked the unions and were against total privatisation.
Anyone who constantly agreed with Thatcher were ‘dry’.
The dries wanted to avoid Keynesian economics, avoid attacking the unions and reduce state control in general.
Thatcher believed there was very few differences between the Soviet Union and the Socialists in Labour.
She distrusted them and believed that the idea of Socialism was totally against the idea of ‘freedom and opportunity’ – equality cannot exist if people want to be free.
She wanted to bring in free enterprise and return Britain to its pre-war power
1980 Oil Boom
Thatcher’s position was instantly boosted by the discovery of a number of North Sea oil fields – this meant Britain became self-sufficient for a period and began to sell their oil as well.
This almost single-handedly solved most of the major financial crises we have looked at so far.
The Winter of Discontent
22nd January 1979
Biggest day of public sector strikes since the general strike
Basic rate of income tax was cut from 33% to 25% however the average tax bill rise by 6% during the 1980s
Trade Unions
1980 Employment Act - Workers didnt have to join a union in a closed shop and you could only stike f the issue was related to your employment
1982 Employment Act - unions could be sued for illegal strike action
1984 Trade Unions Act - strike could only take place if there was majority in a secret ballot
Miners Strike 1984 - Arthur Scargill used out of date poll data so was ruled illegal as ge used flying pickerters.
Scargill never got more than 21% popularity in polls.Miners in nottingham left the NUM and started their own union.
Ended a year later in March 1985.
1979 - 13.5 million union members
1990 - 6.7 million
1980 - 10.5 million working days lost to strikes 1994 - only 800,000 lost
Further employment acts reduced union power and cut government funding to old industries from 200,000 miners in 1974 to only 10,000 in 1991
Social Division
Regressive taxation meant that the poor paid a larger percentage of their incomes on tax
From 1979-89, the bottom 10% paid £400 million less tax whilst the top 10% paid £9.36 billion less.
The number of pensioners living below the poverty line went from 13% to 43% under Thatcher.
The richest 10% saw their incomes rise by 61% whilst the poorest 10% saw an 18% decrease
The richest 10% earned 26.1% of the total UK income in 1991
The middle classes were torn between being better or worse off - many didn't vote conservative in 1987 - only 55%
Thatcher created enterprise zones to reverse the north-south divide.Government paid businesses to move into deprived areas to promote economic gorwth.It worked in places like the albert docks in liverpool but was largely unsuccessful.
Many manual workers remained out of work. BY 2000 20% of men who worked in coal mines were still unemployed.