Let’s Not Forget: While Y’all Trip Over Yourselves to Give Meryl Streep another Oscar, There are Damn Good Reasons to Despise Margaret Thatcher

rubyvroom:

• As Secretary of Education in 1971, Margaret Thatcher cut the free school milk program in order to save money. This earned her the lasting nickname, “Thatcher Thatcher Milk Snatcher” http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/15/newsid_4486000/4486571.stm
• She implemented the Poll Tax/Community Charge, which replaced a tax system based on property value and income with a council tax based on the number of people in a household. This made a huge increase for big families. It also meant a millionaire could pay the same rate as a working-class person. The taxes induced rioting all over the UK until they were finally repealed, eventually lead to Thatcher’s resignation from office.http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/ukandireland/p/prpolltax.htm
• In Scotland, which was a test case for implementation of the Poll Tax, Thatcher is pretty much universally hated. http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2009/02/scottish-scotland-thatcher and  http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2009/04/27/mrs-thatcher-i-won-t-say-sorry-to-scotland-for-job-cuts-and-poll-tax-86908-21311791/
• Her privitization and monetarism policies sowed the seeds for today’s economic crisis (hand-in-hand with the Reagan policies that did the same for the US)  http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/05/04/thatcher-s-legacy-from-the-poll-tax-to-privatisation-how-the-iron-lady-s-policies-altered-britain-115875-21330205/ and http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/05/miners-strike-thatcherism-billy-bragg
• Complained publicly that England was being “swamped” with immigrants, and in private papers complained that it was wrong for asian immigrants to get council houses ahead of white citizens http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/6906503/Margaret-Thatcher-complained-about-Asian-immigration-to-Britain.html
• The Falkland Islands War, which could be its own topic by itself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War
• The Miner’s Strike, which was only the beginning of the loss of industry and jobs for working-class England http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3494024.stm
• Opposed the reunification of Germany, and wrote to Gorbachev two months before the Berlin Wall fell to ask him to intervene against it.  http://www.rferl.org/content/British_Paper_Says_Thatcher_Opposed_German_Reunification_/1820460.html
• She was, and is, friends with brutal Chilean dictator Pinochet, under whose rule 1,200–3,200 chilean people were killed, up to 80,000 were interned, and up to 30,000 were tortured by his regime including women and children. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/198604.stm
• Her son Mark Thatcher tried to bankroll an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Thatcher#Equatorial_Guinea_affair
• Introduced the horrible Section 28 law, which banned any positive portrayal of homosexuality in anything funded by the government http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/clause_28.html
• Along with their rampant homophobia, Thatcher’s advisors openly proposed internment camps for people with HIV/AIDS. One of them wrote in the American Spectator  ”there is only one way to stop AIDS. That is to screen the entire population regularly and to quarantine all carriers of the disease for life. Every member of the population should be blood-tested every month … all those found to be infected with the virus, even if only as carriers, should be isolated compulsorily, immediately, and permanently.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Monckton,_3rd_Viscount_Monckton_of_Brenchley#Views_on_AIDS
• More on the homophobia of the Thatcher years in regards tot he AIDS epidemic http://inourwordsblog.com/2011/12/13/2425/

That’s just all I could come up with this morning.. feel free to add to this list.

This is a great list. There are so many amazing women’s stories that still aren’t widely known, but instead we get this neoconservative oscar bait crap. At least Meryl Streep’s paycheck is going to the National Women’s History Museum.