THIS!!!!!!

Only in the "common Market" not the US of E

Broke the power of the unions to hold the country to ransom.

(And so much for the Union/Labour pact - any one remember the 'Winter of Discontent' under Slimey Jim Callaghan in 78/79? When the unions caused power cuts and three-day weeks?

If you're too young to remember look it up.

Yep sitting in the dark with candles waiting for the power to come back on. Like being in an air raid without the bombs

Are you talking about this from personal experience, or is that a quote from the 'My Little Pony, How to be a Socialist' quote book?

Before Auntie Maggie only three people in our street could afford a car. after Maggie everyone over the age of 19 had their own car.
So I blame all the hold ups on the M25 on the bloody tories.

Aw boo hoo - somebody not likey the tories?

Get over yourself. Not everyone who bone deep hates the Tories is a Socialist.

Whether you like it or not, there are many areas of the country for whom twelve years is nowhere long enough for the Tories to have been in the wilderness. They were poisonous for the Northern Manufacturing cities and their Mantra of "Let it Break, and the Devil take the Hindmost" will not be forgotten.

Incidentally, for those of you who regularly rail against the benefits lifestyle choice (as I do regularly), which wonderful party was in Government when these families were forced on to the Rock and Roll in the first place?

I hate "New" Labour. But I hate the Tories more.

The 'industries' in the midlands and north were terminally broken and needed culling.


And the OP still hasn't answered my question.

Really? All of them? They are were all Terminal? Try telling that to the millions who lost their Jobs.

Try telling that to the families who were promised "Labour isn't working" and then found they weren't.

Try telling that to Germany, Spain, Italy, France and any other Nation that has profitable manufacturing industries that are at least contributing to the tax take of their nations, that were propped up by their respective Governments just as the Tories were selling them off to get the short term, as opposed to long term gain.

The Tories, next time round, are going to struggle to find anything to sell. Perhaps we'll just have "The Army, sponsored by McDonalds" instead.

There is just the small problem of.... China!

Do you really expect that our manufacturing base would now be able to compete with Chinese on $10 a day?

Thatcher didnt stick a padlock on the gates, she simply said no subsidies. Whilst the inefficient industries died off, the rest of them (read, the ones who can make money!) are still around.

There is no Industry in the NE linky

Interesting fact, do you know that we now (2000's) produce as much Iron with two factories as an entire industry back in the 70's?

So you are blaming the Conservatives for the p*ss poor management, radical unionisation, lack on innovation and generally poor products our factorys were turning out?
I'm dreading in 12 years time when my youngest stares at the desolation of her first pay packet as taxes swallow up most of her wages to pay for the bank bail outs and I can say, in the same kind of voice that idiots now do in some areas when they tell their kids 'The Tories did that to our town' that 'You can thank Labour for that'.

The ones that went bust, yes…

BL was not only a national joke, it was also an international one and encapsulated in a nutshell what was wrong with British manufacturing industry in the 70's.

Not sold us out to Europe.
Whats is the alternative
Not sold us out to the US.
Do you remember Grenada, Cruise Missles, Bombing Libya?Not allowed immigration to go out of control.
Careful before the credit crunch what narionality was the checkout girl at Tescos?Not allowed PC to get out of control.
Grow up. Only dead 70's comedians and the Daily Balckshirt (Mail) believe thatNot sold of our gold reserves to fill their own pockets.
Really is Gordo now a multi billionaire like the key Tory backersNot brought the country to its knees.
Define on our knees? 3 million or 5 million unemployed. Closed hosiptal wards, unemployed nurses and rotting classrooms
Not gotten us involved in needless costly wars.
Define needless how about avoidable. In 82 it was Maggie who ignored the intelligence from the Americans about the Falklands
The list is endless.
Yea and so is peoples hatred of anything that isn't a rebrith of Thatcherism.

"Appear to hate the EU/single currency/Brussels + Strasbourg/Whole EU zone as much as I do".

That would explain the Tories signing the Maastricht Treaty which brought in the EU and before that, the Single European Act.

Hard job since he has been dead since 2005

No, I blame most of that on Poor Managers, Radical Unions, lack of innovation and a willingness to accept shoddy workmanship.

Odd though, that exactly the same people, managers, workers and unions were able - with HUGE investment, to turn out what was, by comparison, Quality Products in Sunderland (Nissan) and Longridge (Honda tie in with Rover). Yes, it was the Tories tax incentives that brought them in, my point is that you can't blame Labour for the Little Englander self satisfaction that allowed such shoddy practice in the first place.

And before you say "It's all the Unions fault", I agree that the Unions were out of hand (printers being amongst the worst offenders). But there was no negotiation - from either side. "My way or the Highway" said the Government / Management, "We'll strike unless we get everything we want" said the Unions.

From there on in it was only too easy for both sides to portray this as class war. My point is that there were alternatives to the Tory Policy of "Let it break". They had a big enough Majority to ignore those alternatives. Just like the current bunch of Shoddy incumbents.

I do only recall only once chancellor in recent memory announcing to the house that he had 'Balanced the budget'.

....and the party ?

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1849

As someone was was 15yrs old in 1972 I was pretty well placed to see the Before and After picture. The first miners strike saw the country on a 3 day week and regular power cuts that had us recruits sitting round a Hurricane lamp in our Spider bulling our boots. The country was an economic basket case and known internationally as "the Sick man of Europe. Trade union militancy was rampant and there was a real question of "Who Runs Britain", Govt. or the Unions. In fact Ted Heath went to the country on that question and the country, fed up to the back teeth of endless strikes and industrial strife bravely answered "Well not you mate" and he was out. Labour got back in and more importantly Maggie was made leader of the Tories, the long national nightmare was about to end.....well in about 4 years time anyway. The continuing mismanagement of the country under Wilson and then Callaghan was sufficient to convince anyone with a brain that Labour wasn't the answer and the Unions helped a few waverers across the line by helpfully bringing the country to its knees again in 1979 with their "Winter of Discontent" (in the middle of which I read recently, Tony Benn, then a Govt. Minister, circulated a 19 page letter to all ministers laying out the case for Marxism!!!).
It is not a myth that bodies went unburied because the Unions wouldn't allow the graves to be dug, and refuse was piled high in the streets as the bin-men were on strike. The mess was cleared up by the Army of course. This was a time when our so-called industries, inefficient,unprofitable and
all riddled with bloody-minded openly-communist wreckers like Red Robbo at Longbridge, Mick Mcgahey and of course Arthur Scargill, were writing their own suicide notes. In a nutshel we were producing nothing that anyone wanted to buy at a price no-one would pay anyway, these weren't industries, they were an elaborate system of outdoor relief, like the Bog roads in Ireland, and subsidizing them was bleeding the country dry and preventing it's modernisation. Anyway, the Japanese and Koreans made bigger and better ships, faster and at a lower price than us. Ditto for steel, car-making, coal production and just about everything else you could think.
The forces were starved of cash and I recall little meaningfull training apart from that required for Op. Banner, everything else was in short suppply and morale was pretty poor. In most areas of life we were years behind everybody else and the state owned all sorts of thing which it had no business owning. it took f**king ages to get a phone line installed and the only phones available were black or white, like it or lump it. You had no choice as to who supplied your gas, electricity, water etc and you paid what was asked and put-up or shut-up. Honestly it was a differnt world, think East Germany with a Queen and you wouldn't be far off, and we all wore flares, platform shoes and and big F**k-Off collars too!

Onlt once the workers, managers and other staff had been completely retrained to another countries working practices, including management havign shop floor experience and gettign the workers involved more in working practices.
As I said, the UK was working with outmoded practices, machinery and techniques, and as a result we were beaten by the rest of the world. Yes, the govt invested heavily in getting Japanese car plants into the UK because they knew it was far cheaper than trying to fix our own crippled motor industry.

Very well put and probably the best description of life in the 70's.

You forgot to add for us slightly (not much) younger was the long hair