Margaret Thatcher permanently changed the course of British history

The death on Monday of Margaret Thatcher - the 'Iron Lady' as she came to be called by the Soviet Union, not as a compliment - has evoked an outpouring of both grief and criticism in Britain by those who knew her.

To some she was resolute, refusing to compromise or fudge issues of right and wrong. To others, she was divisive and responsible for the de-industrialisation of the United Kingdom with the disastrous effects we can see today. Both views are rather naïve about the realities of British politics at the time and the impact she had on the British people in the 11 years of her premiership from 1979 to 1990.

Margaret Thatcher divided opinion in Britain throughout her time as Prime Minister. She was loved and hated in equal measure. She is remembered, in general, with love in the south of England and with the middle classes, and with hate in Scotland, parts of Wales and northern England.

Thatcher came to power in May 1979 on the back of the so-called 'winter of discontent' six months earlier, when trade union unrest had shut down public services, paralysing the nation. The British economy was corporatist and uncompetitive. Inflation was in double figures and accelerating. Public expenditure was out of control.

What followed in Britain under Thatcher was a revolution. The Unions were tackled head-on. Legislation was enacted to bring those 'over-mighty subjects' under control. The mine-workers, the steel-workers, car-workers, ship-builders and the railwaymen were taken on. Unemployment was used as a weapon with which to bludgeon the Unions into submission. Within months of her becoming prime minister, unemployment rose rapidly from around one million to around 3.5 million.

Monetarism and free market economics were to become the dominant economic force. Thatcher believed strongly in popular capitalism, free enterprise, privatisation, property ownership, firm control over public expenditure and tax cuts. Individualism, not corporatism, was the order of the day.

The Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher explicitly turned its back on the post-war consensus that had prevailed of exercising economic management for full employment, a mixed economy with a substantial public sector, and the commitment to social welfare. Thatcher waged a political and intellectual assault on the whole set of assumptions that had underpinned British politics since 1945. In a decisive break with 'One Nation' conservatism, Thatcherite apostles of the new neo-liberal conservatism set about dismantling the political and economic orthodoxy of the previous 34 years.

These apostles attacked a bloated State and rolled back its frontiers in the name of market liberalism. They championed self-reliance, denounced 'dependency' on the Welfare State and disciplined the trade unions in the cause of enterprise. Hardest of all for those who had been attracted to the intrinsic qualities of British tolerance, fairness and concern for the under-dog, they consigned to the scrap-heap of the then prevailing ideas about social justice and equality in favour, overwhelmingly, for a creed of individual mobility and liberty. Their model was the free market capitalism of the United States. Their enemy was the social model of continental Europe.

It was this potent combination which transformed the face of British politics and its economy. But a large majority of the British people paid a heavy social price. For many who had been attracted by those British qualities of tolerance, fair play for all and social justice for which the country was renowned, it was a hard pill to swallow.

During this tumultuous period, British society changed irrevocably. In the old order, fairness, the benign state and the dispersal of power were the common strands of governance. Instead, fairness was displaced by success at any cost and the devil take the hind-most. Social justice was replaced by the overriding commercial imperative.

There was, and is, nothing the matter with free market enterprise. Economic and business success is indeed a necessary catalyst for a thriving modern economy. In her time as prime minister, the British economy went from being 'the sick man of Europe' to one of the most dynamic.

The objection was then, and remains today, to the ruthless way the transformation was carried out, and the effects which persist in Britain to this day, almost 30 years later. Perhaps the most telling indication of Margaret Thatcher's philosophy was her statement in an interview that:  "There is no such thing as society", followed with a snort against "those who drool and drivel about caring". This was free market capitalism red in tooth and claw, a medicine which was administered - unflinchingly, it must be said - on the nation.

To produce a stronger economy, Thatcher appealed to some of the worst instincts of the British character. She articulated something new, but stayed close to something which was already there. Margaret Thatcher spoke, with eloquence, for the materialism and self-interest of the decade of the 1980s.

Throughout the period, she exercised the most formidable leadership. By dint of sheer willpower and consistency, seasoned cleverly by well-judged deviations (until her refusal to budge on the poll-tax undid her), she was able to tap into some deep British national sentiments. Three were particularly notable. The first was that British masochism - that innate self-deprecation, self-criticism and willingness to accept pain stoically and to take the medicine - saw her through the unemployment crisis, albeit at great social and financial cost buffered by British oil revenue earnings which were then at their peak.

Secondly, it was the British bloody-mindedness that took on and won the Falklands Conflict. This was the turning point in the Thatcher story. Without victory in the Falklands, Thatcher would have almost certainly been a one-term prime minister, such was the depth of her unpopularity at the start of 1982 (one year or so before the next election was due) when the crisis erupted. Her resolution, the outstanding courage and competence of the British armed forces and not a little luck, saw the birth of 'The Iron Lady', and her sweeping electoral victories in 1983 and 1987.            

Thirdly, she shared with the majority of people who supported her, that trait of 'Little Englandism' which was the guide to the way she approached most of her foreign crises. It is hard to think of an issue on which, whatever her governments may have actually done, her personal attitudes were not populist and, thanks to the UK tabloid media, universally known to be so. On Europe, on the (nuclear) Bomb, on South Africa (then still practising apartheid), on hanging, on culture and intellectual life, on welfare scroungers and on union bosses, she could rarely be accused of failing to speak for a certain kind of Briton.

However, despite widespread alienation from the policies she espoused and the way in which she inflicted them on a nation - no other nation but the British would have withstood them without bloody revolt - Margaret Thatcher permanently changed the course of British history as no other figure in Britain in the last hundred years, save Churchill. To that extent, her legacy and place in history is assured and she must be admired.