Rhodri Morgan, the former First Minister of Wales, gives his thoughts on four aspects of Margaret Thatcher.
Thatcher’s benefits legacy
Margaret Thatcher's death happened on the very day that the coalition government cuts started to the overblown sickness and disability benefit system—the irony is that this was a system that Thatcher herself created.
When I became an MP in 1987, unemployment stood at 3m: two and a half times higher than in 1979. Thatcher appointed David, now Lord Young, to stop the inexorable rise. (She famously praised Young, saying that while some ministers “bring me problems, David brings me answers!”)
The answers to unemployment were threefold: first, change the way the statistics were collected; second, get as many people onto Manpower Sevices schemes as possible; and third and most pernicious of all, encourage GPs to sign people on to permanent sickness or disability benefit. These people were effectively removed from the dole queue and in this way the number of unemployed was controlled. This was fine, so long as these was money from North Sea oil to fund it, but it is unaffordable now that the gusher is running dry. It is much harder to get people back into the workforce than onto disability benefits.
When I became First minister of Wales in 2000, I saw the startling statistics on long-term Sickness and Disability dependence: 14 per cent of working age Welsh adults were on it. That figure rose to an astonishing 25 per cent in Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr. We got the Welsh figure down to 12 per cent by 2005, by which time our Welfare to Work programmes were undermined by Eastern European immigration.
For true Thatcherite believers, this may contradict the notion that she was needed because she had the backbone, which Edward Heath did not, to take on the unions and to get the country back to work.
Industrial chemistry
I joined the old Department of Trade and Industry as an Economic Adviser in January 1972, right in the middle of the Big U-turn. Was it all bad? After all, if Heath hadn't had the courage to nationalise Rolls-Royce in late 1971 thereby saving the RB 211 Rolls Royce engine from the scrapheap, there would be very little base for the coalition government's strategy of re-industialising and re-balancing of the economy that she unbalanced.
Although she famously gave up industrial chemistry for commercial law, unlike that other woman chemist-cum-political leader, Angela Merkel, she often harked back to her scientific background. When the late Sir Gareth Roberts, vice-chancellor of Sheffield met her to discuss science policy, she told him her real interest in chemistry had been “thin films.” “Ah well,” essayed Roberts, “that would explain why you get on so well with President Reagan.” The icy stare he got for his pains would have burnt paint off at 50 paces.
The ideological divide
There was something I agreed with her on. We walked into the same division lobby in 1988 to vote through the War Crimes Bill. This enabled prosecutions of elderly Nazi collaborators living in the UK—this put her at odds with many of the younger Tories, who had swallowed the new revisionist view of the second world war that Communism was the ultimate evil and that Churchill had been wrong to side with Stalin against Hitler. She took the same view as me. Nazism had no redeeming features, no capacity to reform itself and thus was the ultimate evil. Whether her empathy with Gorbachev in seeking the reform of Communism was a thought-out position or personal and instinctive, I don't know, but she was a child of the thirties and of the second world war. New Tory MPs who opposed the Bill, were children of the Cold War.
Thatcher and the Eisteddfod
Finally what of Thatcher and Wales? The devolution referendum was won partly by arguing that the Welsh Assembly was an insurance policy against the return of Thatcher. Welsh opposition to her went deep. It was Geoffrey Howe (Port Talbot) who delivered the devastating resignation speech that effectively did for her. It was Michael Heseltine (Swansea) who challenged her in the ballot of Tory MPs. If he hadn't come forward, the late Peter Walker (secretary of state for Wales) would have. It was Sir Anthony Meyer (Clwyd North-West) who was the stalking horse candidate.
There just wasn't any empathy between Wales and Thatcher, except for one moment from her childhood. She entered the public-speaking contest in the Grantham Eisteddfod. Probably her father pushed her into it. She won and developed a taste for the world of politics because of it. It is strange to think that if Wales hadn't exported the Eisteddfod to Grantham, Thatcher might well have remained an industrial chemist.
Thatcher’s benefits legacy
Margaret Thatcher's death happened on the very day that the coalition government cuts started to the overblown sickness and disability benefit system—the irony is that this was a system that Thatcher herself created.
When I became an MP in 1987, unemployment stood at 3m: two and a half times higher than in 1979. Thatcher appointed David, now Lord Young, to stop the inexorable rise. (She famously praised Young, saying that while some ministers “bring me problems, David brings me answers!”)
The answers to unemployment were threefold: first, change the way the statistics were collected; second, get as many people onto Manpower Sevices schemes as possible; and third and most pernicious of all, encourage GPs to sign people on to permanent sickness or disability benefit. These people were effectively removed from the dole queue and in this way the number of unemployed was controlled. This was fine, so long as these was money from North Sea oil to fund it, but it is unaffordable now that the gusher is running dry. It is much harder to get people back into the workforce than onto disability benefits.
When I became First minister of Wales in 2000, I saw the startling statistics on long-term Sickness and Disability dependence: 14 per cent of working age Welsh adults were on it. That figure rose to an astonishing 25 per cent in Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr. We got the Welsh figure down to 12 per cent by 2005, by which time our Welfare to Work programmes were undermined by Eastern European immigration.
For true Thatcherite believers, this may contradict the notion that she was needed because she had the backbone, which Edward Heath did not, to take on the unions and to get the country back to work.
Industrial chemistry
I joined the old Department of Trade and Industry as an Economic Adviser in January 1972, right in the middle of the Big U-turn. Was it all bad? After all, if Heath hadn't had the courage to nationalise Rolls-Royce in late 1971 thereby saving the RB 211 Rolls Royce engine from the scrapheap, there would be very little base for the coalition government's strategy of re-industialising and re-balancing of the economy that she unbalanced.
Although she famously gave up industrial chemistry for commercial law, unlike that other woman chemist-cum-political leader, Angela Merkel, she often harked back to her scientific background. When the late Sir Gareth Roberts, vice-chancellor of Sheffield met her to discuss science policy, she told him her real interest in chemistry had been “thin films.” “Ah well,” essayed Roberts, “that would explain why you get on so well with President Reagan.” The icy stare he got for his pains would have burnt paint off at 50 paces.
The ideological divide
There was something I agreed with her on. We walked into the same division lobby in 1988 to vote through the War Crimes Bill. This enabled prosecutions of elderly Nazi collaborators living in the UK—this put her at odds with many of the younger Tories, who had swallowed the new revisionist view of the second world war that Communism was the ultimate evil and that Churchill had been wrong to side with Stalin against Hitler. She took the same view as me. Nazism had no redeeming features, no capacity to reform itself and thus was the ultimate evil. Whether her empathy with Gorbachev in seeking the reform of Communism was a thought-out position or personal and instinctive, I don't know, but she was a child of the thirties and of the second world war. New Tory MPs who opposed the Bill, were children of the Cold War.
Thatcher and the Eisteddfod
Finally what of Thatcher and Wales? The devolution referendum was won partly by arguing that the Welsh Assembly was an insurance policy against the return of Thatcher. Welsh opposition to her went deep. It was Geoffrey Howe (Port Talbot) who delivered the devastating resignation speech that effectively did for her. It was Michael Heseltine (Swansea) who challenged her in the ballot of Tory MPs. If he hadn't come forward, the late Peter Walker (secretary of state for Wales) would have. It was Sir Anthony Meyer (Clwyd North-West) who was the stalking horse candidate.
There just wasn't any empathy between Wales and Thatcher, except for one moment from her childhood. She entered the public-speaking contest in the Grantham Eisteddfod. Probably her father pushed her into it. She won and developed a taste for the world of politics because of it. It is strange to think that if Wales hadn't exported the Eisteddfod to Grantham, Thatcher might well have remained an industrial chemist.
