What criticisms can be made of Margaret Thatcher's policies as Prime Essay

What criticisms can be made of Margaret Thatcher's policies as Prime Minister - Essay Example Thatcher's policies which include the reduction of taxes, reduction of inflation through the manipulation of money supply, privatization of public industries, suppressing trade union powers through introduction of laws, reduction of the role played by the government in the economy.According to Young (1993), Margaret Thatcher was the first female to become a prime minister in the UK. She was the leader of the Conservative Party and was in office for three consecutive terms. She is known to be the longest serving prime minister as she governed office from 1979 up to 1990. In most cases, she is referred to as the most divisive prime minister of the century. She was greatly reverence but also hated by the divided members of the public particularly because of her reaction towards the trade unions. Margaret Thatcher rule has been criticized as lacking proper and unified policies. Together with her government, she has been associated with several practices and ideals referred to as Thatcher ism (Evans, 2004). Critics have argued that Thatcherism is well known for its rhetoric and not what it achieved. It is viewed as being contradictory and that Thatcher’s rule was differentiated by its strategic purpose. In considering its challenges to the states existing features, Thatcherism is considered as a radical force. The presumptions and priorities which had been established in the prior years were criticized and then discarded. In 1979 when Margaret Thatcher came to power as the first prime minister in the UK,... She established several policies which included; reduction of inflation through the manipulation of money supply. She focused on the idea of monetarism and the free market economics. The conservative administration’s first policies were to handle the inflation and the budget deficit. The monetarism belief indicated that money supply had to be controlled in order to successfully control the inflation. The entire government deficit had to be reduced in order to be able to control money supply. This led to the implementation of deflationary policies. There was increase in tax rates and reduction on government spending. The policies which were intended to reduce inflation in return led to increase in the interest rates. It was possible to reduce inflation through the deflationary policies of both monetary and fiscal nature. This could be attained at the cost of reduced aggregate demand and reduced economic growth. The government continued to pursue deflationary policies regardless of the economy going down to full scale recession, and unemployment being on the rise. It led to several criticisms and a number of economists in the country signed a letter addressing the government to bring the recession to an end and to change the economic policy. Thatcher was greatly criticized by different individuals including those from her own party. According to critics, the reduction of inflation could have been performed with minimal impact. It caused unexpected level of unemployment, while seeking to attain bogus money supply. The unemployment affected individuals in different ways in that it resulted in personal and several social problems. The different riots that came up in Britain in 1981 were attributed to the high rate