The Statement of Margaret Thatcher social policy

Résumé du document

Margaret Thatcher is not consensual, her policy is voluntarist, often authoritative, sometimes aggressive. Thatcher's strategy concerning social policy consists in favouring the middle and upper classes, which constitutes the conservative electorate, without caring about the working class. Actually, Margaret Thatcher thinks poverty, unemployment, increased inequalities are a necessary harm and certainly temporary to economical prosperity and growth, because prosperity is the key of social progress. Moreover, she rejects egalitarianism as a social policy objective. Thus, she doesn't hesitate to collide with her opponents. But Margaret Thatcher's strategy concerning social policy is above all marked by public spending reduction. What have been the main consequences of Margaret Thatcher's social policy on the English society?

Extraits

[...] Then, television and cinema are accused of incentive to violence and criminality. For others, they reflect a society in crisis: disintegration of families, abandonment of working-class areas, situation of children left to themselves By the way, children condition became a social priority for associations and churches and a public debate is opened on ill-treatment of children. Furthermore, in 1985 an awareness campaign of the National Children's Homes, entitled Children in danger denounced growing poverty, drug, housing conditions, sexual abuses, violence on children and drastic cuts in public service (nurseries, hospitals). [...]

[...] Excesses are born out of this competition: two-speed medicine of the population are treated in the private sector), insufficient hospital budgets to treat all the patients, waiting list for operations without any life-and-death emergency, a few minutes consultations, However, this catastrophic approach can be level-headed because of the reduction of the infant mortality, of the increase of life expectancy, of Health spending, of the average standard of living, of the average income after tax, of the number of owners, of the consumption thanks to the progress of credit, of the equipment rate in consumption goods, in leisure activities, in holidays, of the unemployment drop in level, although slow. Precariousness increased for unemployed persons, for those who find a first job, through the too many families living in squalid housing and in the inner cities, through the multiplication of the homeless in London. Pauperism is back: easy enrichment, reduction of tax rate on high incomes. The social reforms have gone deeply into gaps between rich and poor. [...]

[...] So Margaret Thatcher and the Miners' National Union started a showdown. All the more so, since 1980 the government has multiplied laws destined to reduce the union power. On the one hand, the Prior Law of 1980 limits the closed up practice, which binds hiring or maintenance in a job to the membership of a monopoly union in a company. This law forbids the secondary picket lines, which prevents non-strikers from working, and abolishes criminal immunity for solidarity actions. On the other hand, the Tebbit Law of 1982 obliges the organizations to pay back damages caused by illegal actions by deducting directly from the union funds. [...]

[...] Actually, Margaret Thatcher thinks poverty, unemployment, increased inequalities are a necessary harm and certainly temporary to economical prosperity and growth, because prosperity is the key of social progress, not the inverse. Moreover, she rejects egalitarianism as a social policy objective. Thus, she doesn't hesitate to collide with her opponents, as unions. But Margaret Thatcher strategy concerning social policy is above all marked by public spending reduction. What have been the main consequences of Margaret Thatcher's social policy on English society? Her social policy has lead to the decline of the union power to a two-speed society and to violence (III). I. [...]

[...] The movement in the mines took place in a tensed and violent climate in the middle of lots of confrontations between police and strikers. Through Medias, miners seemed to deeply disturb public order. Their failure led paradoxically to a political of the Miners' National Union. In the 90'-96', union is renovated. New methods of action don't exclude anymore neither dialogue nor concessions to employers. A great union of the white collars UNISON, arose from the merger of public organizations, while the Trade Union Congress appeared more and more favourable to social regulation on a European scale. II. [...]