Thatcher was highly regarded as role model how profitable it is to go for more privatization. But the result is, that today the UK is in worse state as it was before Thatcher.
It was profitable of course! But not for the 99% of the people.
It was profitable of course! But not for the 99% of the people.
For example a combination of very high inflation (above 15% pa for the 4 years between 1974 and 1977[1]) combined with huge strikes by unions led to incidents like the "three day week"[2] (where the conservative UK government rationed electricity to businesses: they could only use it 3 days per week) and the "Winter of Discontent"[3] (where the Labour government failed to reach a wage control agreement with unions, leading to more strikes and the Thatcher government).
Official unemployment figures throughout the 1970's look much better than today (eg, 5-6% unemployment rather than ~7.5% now), but that doesn't take into account the fact that many were not being paid because of strike action, and also that the high inflation meant people were chronically underpaid (hence the strikes).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6729683.stm is worth reading to get some idea of just how bad it was.
[1] http://safalra.com/other/historical-uk-inflation-price-conve...
I also don't want to say that everything was good before Thatcher or that a socialistic approach is always better or even good. But what I wanted to say, that many of the long term results of Thatcherism are hurting the country till today, even when it was brought out of economic decline.
I think, that neither socialism nor pure thinking that capitalism and market will "just make it all right" work in the long run.
The results of "market makes it alright" are visible in the sweat shops of the 3rd world countries. In the western countries we have a long tradition of market regulation and that is our luck -- but it seems we are running out of luck.
It's not at all clear to me that it was Thatcher's amazing economic policies that turned the economy around rather than the boom years of North Sea oil.
Even if Thatcher's policies did stimulate the economy at the time, from where we're sitting now, what is clear is that that stimulus was not sustainable, and that all that privatisation and the Big Bang did was borrow from the future to splash the cash in the then-present.
Many things Thatcher did were terrible, but at the same time (for example) it's difficult to argue that a national government should be in the business of running road transport for the country[1]. There's a reasonable argument that some utilities work best in state ownership in some cases, but many of the other things that were run by the government prior to Thatcher were complete disasters.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Transport_Commission