Why is Margaret Thatcher a controversial figure? | AskHistorians Archive Observer

Firstly, her personality was confrontational rather than consensual. She naturally loved debating and was outspoken. She did not hide her opinions or cater them to who she was talking to. She was very direct. Inevitably, this was polarising.

Secondly, her policies were hugely controversial. Since 1945 there prevailed in British politics the post-war Keynesian consensus. Governments, whether Conservative or Labour, maintained a mixed economy of nationalised industries with a private sphere of a limited degree. Also, the memories of mass unemployment of the 1930s ensured that governments pursued a full employment strategy that was generally successful. However this model broke down in the 1970s with unemployment reaching one million for the first time since the War.

When Thatcher came to power in 1979 she broke with the consensus by not pursuing interventionist policies to ensure full employment. The recession of the early 80s led to unemployment reaching over three million and led to much bitterness in industrial communities that were destroyed by the decline in coal, steel, iron, shipbuilding etc. According to Thatcher's belief in liberal economics, it was not the government's duty to bail out unprofitable companies. The effects of this de-industrialisation are still felt to this day in the Midlands and the North.

Amongst the intelligentsia and the arts world, the grocer's daughter was complete anathema and provoked strong (sometimes snobbish) reactions. A director of the National Theatre, Sir Peter Hall, claimed that "well over 90 per cent of the people in the performing arts, education and the creative world are against her". The novelist Angela Carter wrote: "Of all the elements combined in the complex of signs labelled Margaret Thatcher it is her voice that sums up the ambiguity of the entire construct. She coos like a dove, hisses like a serpent, bays like a hound [in a voice] not of real toffs but of Wodehouse aunts". Dr Jonathan Miller, the theatre director, said that Thatcher was "loathsome, repulsive in almost every way...her odious suburban gentility and sentimental, saccharine patriotism, catering to the worst elements of commuter idiocy". Lady Warnock, an Oxford philosopher, said Thatcher had a "patronising, elocution voice" and that it was "obscene" that the Prime Minister should be seen on television in Marks & Spencers choosing clothes. Warnock found it "not exactly vulgar, just low" and said she felt "a kind of rage" whenever she thought about her.

Recommended: John Campbell's superb, balanced two-volume biography.