Re: National Champions
. . .
History lesson: Thatcher inherited a economy where shipbuilding, aircraft manufacture, the railways, the post office (the GPO was also BT), coal mining, every utility, etc, etc etc had all been bought by the government and was in public ownership. It was also all loss making, and the country was literally bankrupt and had to go with the begging bowl to the International Monetary Fund in 1976.
They imposed conditions upon the loan, ie sort out the fact that the entire country was in public ownership and loss making. Labour tried to sort out the problems with these industries as hard as was politically possible. The unions responded with mass strikes and in the winter of discontent in 1978 the country had a 3 day working week and only had power for parts of the day.
The country was tired of the unions and the entire mess generally, and put Thatcher in with a strong mandate to sort the entire mess out in 1979. There was frankly fuck all anybody could do in this situation but the course that was picked; sell everything loss making off and let the industries sink or swim.
There are four sets of people that have a fair share of the blame here.
1) The people who bought companies/industries for UK PLC to start with (most of which were at least breakeven when they were bought, to be converted to loss making entities when owned by UK PLC)
2) The unions who prevented the loss making industries from being reformed to profitability, which enmasse actually bankrupted the country.
3) The people who privatized the entire sorry loss making lot.
4) The people running those businesses who then went bust.
If you think that only one of these groups was responsible; why is that? Have you been the victim of propaganda filled stories? Additional exercise for the reader; what are the people lying about it hoping to gain via those lies? Public support for buying up every industry again, by any chance?