Herald Sun
A LITTLE-noted feature of Margaret Thatcher's prime ministership of Britain was her interest in Australia.
She has been Britain's greatest prime minister since Winston Churchill. As leader of the Conservative Party in Britain she has been the most successful of all in the past 100 years. It should be remembered that Churchill led a coalition national government during World War II.
The real measure of Margaret Thatcher's greatness was that she brought about profound change domestically and internationally.
The British economy was in a downward spiral when she won office in May 1979; Britons were working a three-day week; uncollected garbage piled up in the streets of London; the all-powerful trade unions effectively ran the country and Britain's influence in world affairs was dwindling rapidly. She changed this by restraining government spending, removing legal privileges enjoyed by the unions, privatising government services and building a society focused on enterprise and effort.
By the simple device of allowing tenants of state-owned houses and flats to buy them, she built a powerful property-owning democracy.
Her determination to keep the Falklands British told the world that although Britain's greatness of the 19th century would never return, it was still a country that would stand up for the rights of those who looked to it for protection and would resist unprovoked aggression.
The most significant transformation in the political architecture of the world, since the end of World War II, has been the collapse of Soviet imperialism, which not only ended the Cold War but dissolved communist domination of millions of people in Eastern Europe. Thatcher's partnership with Ronald Reagan, combined with the moral authority of the Polish-born Pope John Paul II, was instrumental in ending Moscow's hegemony over its then satellite states.
Her single-minded assault on the evils of communism was ridiculed by many on the Left of politics who saw some moral equivalence between the command economies of Eastern Europe and competitive capitalism. When Ronald Reagan famously said to the then Soviet president, "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall", the same temporisers shuffled their feet in mock embarrassment. Yet both were to be proved right.
The massive increase in American defence spending by the Reagan administration confronted the Soviet Union with the bitter reality that it could no longer match the United States-led West, because it was economically too weak. In other words, the free market capitalism championed by both Thatcher and Reagan had proved too much for the command economies of the Eastern Bloc to match.
Growing hostility within the governing Conservative Party, in 1990, towards Thatcher's opposition to further European integration, was one of the developments that led to her removal as prime minister.
It is ironic that today that same Conservative Party is consumed with debate about Britain's place in Europe. Thatcher's stance has been vindicated. So, far from greater European integration being seen as a panacea to Europe's problems, an increasing number of Britons, in particular, question the wisdom of the European project.
Margaret Thatcher's great political success was due to the strength and directness of her values and principles. She was a conviction politician before that term came into general use. Love her or loathe her people knew where she stood. Her political views were a career expression of her lifetime values. She believed in the strength and resourcefulness of the family; the value of individual effort and ownership; the virtue of hard work bringing its own reward, and the importance of self-reliance.
CONTRARY to popular belief, Margaret Thatcher enjoyed significant support from blue-collar workers in Britain. Otherwise she would never have won three comfortable election victories. Many of her conservative instincts appealed to them, and they admired the way in which she had restored Britain's self-respect and their country's esteem around the world.
The toughest domestic fight Thatcher waged was against the coal mining unions. Earlier disputes of this kind had seen the miners victorious, and the authority of governments flouted. With Thatcher it was different, and the rule of law was upheld.
Not far behind was the epic fight against the print unions at Wapping in the mid-1980s. At a time when Australia has just seen off a bungled government attempt to interfere with the freedom of the press, it is worth recalling how important to the freedom of the press in Britain was the victory at Wapping.
There can be no greater testament to the wisdom of Margaret Thatcher's curbs on the power of trade unions than the decision of her Labour successor, Tony Blair, to keep the changes Thatcher had made. He knew that they had been in the interests of Britain, and he was eternally grateful that she had brought them in.
Several people have asked me what I think of those in Britain who have openly celebrated Margaret Thatcher's death.
My reply has been that it is a commentary not just on their poor taste but, more importantly, a mark of the lasting influence of the late former prime minister.
No one celebrates the death of political figures who have made no impact on the society of which they were part.
John Howard served as prime minister from 1996 to 2007
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/margaret-thatcher-was-the-greatest-british-pm-since-winston-churchill-says-john-howard/story-e6frfhqf-1226616166966
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