Defenders of the late Baroness Thatcher's industrial policy that had at its core privatization of nationalized industries cannot ignore the dire consequences of this policy. Selectively lauding as iconic one example of these reforms, as Mr. Fedorkew does in his article of April 11 - The Power of Thatcher, ignores the fact that one swallow does not a summer make. The wholesale disgorging of public assets was a tragedy that to this day impacts British society, which of course Thatcher conveniently denied existed.
As reported in 1989 by Harding, and in 1999 by Feigenbaun, et al, top quintile taxpayers and foreigners were the main beneficiaries of Thatcher's privatization policies. Public assets were sold at huge discounts. For example: Rolls Royce 73 per cent and British Airways 70 per cent. Similarly, sales of Jaguar and British Telecom resulted in scandalous profit-taking by insiders - in BT's case the premium was 2.5 billion pounds on the offer price in the first day of trading. Indeed the massive over-subscriptions for such plumbs - for example eight times for Jaguar and four for BT - point inexorably to lining the pockets of the few by fire-sales of what belonged to the country as a whole.
The irony is that Thatcher's obsessions with smaller government came to naught largely through the neo-liberal policies she championed. For the efficiencies gained for investors came at the cost of millions out of work in England and Scotland, millions with no bread to eat and only the government to provide what passed for cake. Four years after the great fraud on the British people began, government expenditures were at the same level as had obtained when the lady came to power. What could she do but sell more and more furniture to pay for groceries? (Eventually, the railways fiasco - including the moral hazard of government guarantees to so-called investors - would be the crowning financial disaster of the Thatcher doctrine.)
If your reporter's subliminal message is that we should sell B.C. Hydro he has chosen the right person to prove him wrong. For the events that saved the Iron Lady's bacon - the first electorally and the second financially - had nothing to do with privatization.
One was an act of war and the other an Act of God: The Falklands and North Sea Oil. Unfortunately for Britain today, the first is not over and the second is.
Dereck Sale
Prince George
