United Kingdom before Margaret Thatcher

It is absolutely amazing how what seems to have been the state of the political system in the pre-Thatcher UK resembled the state of affairs in late (and crumbling) Byzantine Empire. This video shows some of the beauties of large governments:



I’ve posted this before. An excerpt from an interview of a Soviet dissident who had come to the UK just before Thatcher came to power (translated from Russian):

[After arriving to the UK] I was astonished by the extremely low level of life. Not as in the famished Soviet Union, of course, but impossible to compare with Switzerland, from which I escaped. London was filled with garbage, lines were snaking around the streets, stores were standing half-empty… The winter of 1978-79 was a winter of destruction.

The thing is: by that time, Britain was already long-ruled by socialists who destroyed the economy as only they know how. At that point, everybody was on strike — garbage collectors, transport workers… It was a sight to see! As soon as the railroad workers’ strike ended, the train drivers’ strike began. Then went the ticket collectors. Labor unions had huge power, and the country was inevitably rolling towards a cliff. I was just amazed — after Geneva I’d thought that all of the West was prospering. And it turned out that socialism got its hands on England too. Unbelievable! Such a great country brought to a level of some Bulgaria.

Fortunately, the elections were won by Margaret Thatcher. She came to power and started breaking apart socialism and saving Britain. The most difficult thing was to defeat the miners. It was unprofitable to mine coal in England, and every ton of coal was impoverishing the country. Just like in the Soviet Union — the more meat a collective farm produced, the more losses for the country’s budget. Thatcher started closing down the mines; the miners started striking, since they were accustomed to robbing their own country, being parasites on it. But the Iron Lady did not give up.

It wasn’t just the miners either! Dockers were the second major enemy. All the world by that time was already using high-efficiency container unloading of ships. But English dockers’ union was against the innovations, because container unloading increased productivity, leading to firing of additional workers. Sometimes it was like a comics strip: container-carrying ships would arrive at Dutch Rotterdam; there, everything was unloaded on trains and delivered to England by railroad. While the dockers were still getting paid, since the labor union forced this out of the business owners.

Or another idiocy… Socialists decided to defend English cinematography. Before, cameras were inefficient and had to be assisted by three people. Then cameras became better and could be served only by one person. But the socialists enacted a law where three people had to work on a camera anyway! What, should we fire a worker because of some progress?! At that point English cinematography could not compete with Hollywood and lost the juice.

Socialism is a national suicide. And Margaret with her iron hand started to choke it, saving her country. She showed utmost will not to give up. And she won. After that, the country started climbing out of the nightmare. And now England is one of the world leaders. It blossomed virtually in front of my eyes. No wonder Russian oligarchs come here…

Yet, socialism is not dead everywhere. [He goes on to give some modern examples where unions or state-sponsored monopolies drive prices up and slow down the progress.]