But one can maintain a quiet respect without succumbing to the torrent of hyperbole and gushing propaganda about her economic policies that is already being unleashed by her supporters now she is no more.
While I am minded to write a longer post on Thatcherite economics, just one important metric will do for now: unemployment.
An honest economic verdict on Thatcher’s years is revealed starkly by these graphs of unemployment in the UK. The first is a long-run graph from 1870 to 1999, and the second a post-WWII graph from 1946 to 1999. The data come from Boyer and Hatton (2002). The first simply omits unemployment statistics from the two World Wars. Compare the graphs with the data in the Appendix below.
Remember that Thatcher was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990.
They both paint a damning picture: unemployment under Thatcher was the second worst in modern British history, second only to the Great Depression. I hope we will hear all about this as the obituaries appear.
Appendix: UK Unemployment, 1971–1999
Year | Unemployment RateBIBLIOGRAPHY
1971 | 3.4%
1972 | 3.7%
1973 | 2.6%
1974 | 2.6%
1975 | 4.1%
1976 | 5.6%
1977 | 5.7%
1978 | 5.6%
1979 | 5.2%
1980 | 6.7%
1981 | 10.2%
1982 | 11.9%
1983 | 13.0%
1984 | 14.1%
1985 | 14.5%
1986 | 14.8%
1987 | 13.3%
1988 | 10.7%
1989 | 8.3%
1990 | 7.7%
1991 | 10.6%
1992 | 12.7%
1993 | 13.4%
1994 | 12.2%
1995 | 10.8%
1996 | 9.8%
1997 | 7.4%
1998 | 6.3%
1999 | 5.8%
(Boyer and Hatton 2002: 667).
Boyer, George R. and Timothy J. Hatton. 2002. “New Estimates of British Unemployment, 1870–1913,” The Journal of Economic History 62.3: 643–667.
