The Milk Snatcher

[Protheroe]

And that really is the crux of it. Yes, the relationship between unions and management was dire, but whose fault was that? Thatcher chose to treat the unions as the enemy. In Germany, unions were embedded in decision-making, and free collective bargaining was seen as a strength, not a threat. What, exactly, is wrong with that?
A genuine leader would never have confronted the miners in the way she did, nor unleashed the police as a paramilitary force against people defending their livelihoods and their communities. A genuine leader would have had an industrial strategy, one that managed change while protecting industry and people.
Instead, Britain got confrontation, contempt, and a government that seemed to regard large sections of its own population as the problem. That sneering, superior attitude towards working people was unbearable.
How anyone can look back on that period with pride is beyond me. She was a disaster. supported by a disgusting right wing media, without whom she could not have existed. Talking about lives lost 255 service men and nearly 700 argies sustained her as PM

Remarkably, for a "disaster" she won three elections.

I am old enough to remember what a shitshow the 70s was. I was born at home in Joe Gormley power cut FFS. 

The Unions could have avoided the (by then) entirely necessary confrontation had they engaged with Barbara Castle & Harold Wilson in 1969. They didn't, because they've always been too arrogant and venal as a breed. They were also infected with extreme left leaders. 

My father was sworn at and spat at by his former apprentice colleagues goaded on by a TGWU shop steward at Fishers when he first deigned to do his exams and become a foreman. Imagine, being spat at by people you'd started working with at the age of 15, played football with, drank with - just because you wanted to actually train to be an engineer?

She didn't enter politics to be popular. She entered politics to do what she thought was necessary, and single mindedly did so.

We are all the poorer for the quality of politicians we've had since.