There was a third way, the unions could have compromised as they did on the earlier pit closures. The car workers could have abandoned their spanish practices etc.
Private enterprise could have lobbied for tax incentives and invested in the future as Germany & Japan did, and as India & China are doing now.
Apparently Thatcher is responsible for closing all the profitable and well run private industry, the exceptionally cheap coal mines and ultra reliable car works that we used to have. Personally I remember them all being heavily subsidised, rubbish quality and on strike all the time.
Yet at the same time equivalent German plants with established workers councils built cars for a profit & to a quality we couldn't achieve.
I remember BT taking a month to come out & fix your phone. The water & gas board being even more arrogant with their customers than they are today. Do you?
Mechanisation & computers have removed hundreds of times more jobs than any government. Miners used to use pickaxes, now there are 3 miners and a million pounds worth of mining equipment in a colliery. Factories have 5 workers and the rest are machines. Admin staff have gone from a thousand secretaries to one computer. This is the back drop to the 'Tory job cuts'.
If you want to go back to full employment like in the 1800s then you have 3 choices
1. Have some serious wars or a plague. (did for 1914 - 1918)
2. Smash all the machines.
3. Create innovative new jobs that can only be done in the UK by humans.
Again apart from stopping the Milk what else can you lay at Thatchers door?
Private enterprise could have lobbied for tax incentives and invested in the future as Germany & Japan did, and as India & China are doing now.
Apparently Thatcher is responsible for closing all the profitable and well run private industry, the exceptionally cheap coal mines and ultra reliable car works that we used to have. Personally I remember them all being heavily subsidised, rubbish quality and on strike all the time.
Yet at the same time equivalent German plants with established workers councils built cars for a profit & to a quality we couldn't achieve.
I remember BT taking a month to come out & fix your phone. The water & gas board being even more arrogant with their customers than they are today. Do you?
Mechanisation & computers have removed hundreds of times more jobs than any government. Miners used to use pickaxes, now there are 3 miners and a million pounds worth of mining equipment in a colliery. Factories have 5 workers and the rest are machines. Admin staff have gone from a thousand secretaries to one computer. This is the back drop to the 'Tory job cuts'.
If you want to go back to full employment like in the 1800s then you have 3 choices
1. Have some serious wars or a plague. (did for 1914 - 1918)
2. Smash all the machines.
3. Create innovative new jobs that can only be done in the UK by humans.
Again apart from stopping the Milk what else can you lay at Thatchers door?
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