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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nHaving read a couple of books about Thatcher before, I appreciate that in this book Ferguson connected his own experience and perspectives of 1970s and 1980s with the social and political environment of Thatcher time. Perhaps my own admiration (whether blind or not) towards Thatcher leads me to a very favorable opinion of this book. When I met Ferguson recently, I did not realise that he was the author of Always Right. Our brief conversation left me feel the chasm between us, a British historian and writer, vs, a scientist with endless fascination of history and literature, despite a shared strongly favorable view of Thatcher. But then I hope many many millions of people across the globe would find Thatcher a great leader of her time despite the flaws. At the very minimum, keep an open mind, read and discover before forming a strong opinion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By contrast, Thatcher \u2014 rather to our surprise, it must be said \u2014 gave us hope. And part of the reason was her refusal to give answers like Callaghan\u2019s. \u201cMy job is to stop Britain going red,\u201d she had declared in November 1977. This refreshing directness was a very large part of her appeal. Yes, of course, her policies were a vast improvement on the dismal mix of corporatism and stagflation that had gone before. But what made Thatcherism so impressive to a young punk like me was Thatcher\u2019s own aggressiveness. Yes, there was a streak of punk in her, too \u2014 in the way she gloried in confrontation, right to the very end of her eleven years in power.
As early as 1975 she had come up with a wonderful line about the Labour Party: \u201cThey\u2019ve got the usual Socialist disease \u2014 they\u2019ve run out of other people\u2019s money.\u201d This she contrasted memorably with what she called \u201cthe British inheritance\u201d: \u201cA man\u2019s right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the State as servant and not as master \u2026 They are the essence of a free economy. And on that freedom all our other freedoms depend.\u201d
Like a true punk, Thatcher loved a fight. \u201cOh, but you know,\u201d she said in a 1984 TV interview, \u201cyou do not achieve anything without trouble, ever.\u201d And she could put the boot in to lethal effect. \u201cThe trouble with you John,\u201d she told a wavering back-bencher in her last, desperate days in office, \u201cis that your spine does not reach your brain.\u201d That was a condition from which a great many Britons suffered in the late 1970s. But not Margaret Thatcher.
\u201cIf you are looking for somebody to pick up principles trampled in the mud, the place to look is not among the tramplers.\u201d
Thatcherism was not just about raising productivity or reducing unemployment. Far more important was the goal of defeating inflation and restoring prosperity to the middle class\u2026.Na\u00efve economists look at the wrong indicators when trying to assess the Thatcher achievement. They fail to see what the project to restore British capitalism should be measured by capitalist, not socialist standards. They also fail to see that to break the inflationary spiral that had eroded British competitiveness in the 1970s required a measure of what would come to be known as \u201cshock therapy\u201d.
The point about privatization, however, was not just to make money for investors. It was to increase the efficiency of the privatized utilities.
\u201cIt is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation…\u201d
\u201cI knew that I could save this country and that no one else could,\u201d Thatcher wrote in her memoirs. \u201cThere was a revolution to be made but too few revolutionaries. \u2026 I believed that (my Cabinet colleagues) had \u2026 become convinced of my basic principles \u2026 I now know that such arguments are never finally won.\u201d These words sum up the events that led to her resignation.
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nFerguson wrote: Nevertheless, we should never understate the magnitude of her achievement\u2026.She was the leader, proof that sometimes it really is a single individual who can change the course of history. <\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\nTo me, personally, Thatcher achieved in inspiring me to find my way to London; she and other women in history instilled in me the belief that a woman can achieve what she sets her mind on and can change the history. Meanwhile, her style, hair or handbag or pearls, could be as iconic as Churchill\u2019s cigar.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It has been nearly six years since Margaret Thatcher passed away. I was on my way to board an aeroplane from London to California. By the entrance door to the plane, there were dozens of newspapers on the shelf, with their front pages announcing her death. Looking at the iconic images of her, my heart … Continue reading Always Right<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-rant"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paFL7T-jP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1231,"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229\/revisions\/1231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}