Margaret Thatcher Will Be Missed | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The author, Andy Taylor, who is a professor of political science in the School of Public and International Affairs at N.C. State University, is a contributor for the John Locke Foundation.

    RALEIGH     For those of us who care about ideas and public affairs, a small handful of people, even if we have never met them, place an indelible mark on us. We follow their lives with great interest. Our words and deeds are influenced by theirs.

    Margaret Thatcher was one of those people for millions of Britons who came of age in the 1980s. As a tremendously polarizing figure, her impact differed greatly across impressionable young men and women. I was one of the legion for whom Thatcher's premiership and political philosophy had an edifyingly positive effect.

    I was 13 when she was elected prime minister in 1979. I was a political science graduate student in the United States when she was booted out of office by her Conservative Party colleagues in 1990. The period in between was transformative, and nobody was more responsible for that than she.

    Thatcher's ideas about liberty and the role of the state were her most important contributions. In the 1970s, Britain was widely known as the "sick man of Europe." Frequent strikes debilitated an already inefficient economy, and governments were paralyzed by corporatism -- a process in which the peak organizations of business and labor each effectively held vetoes over any policy decision. This forced the administration to mediate in industrial disputes rather than lead a way out of them.

    Labor unions' significant influence resulted in a massive state -- in 1975 government spending was about 50 percent of GDP -- and led to policies that brought about unemployment and runaway inflation -- UK prices in 1975 were 25 percent higher than 12 months earlier.

    Thatcher understood the importance of private property rights and economic liberty. She privatized huge swaths of uncompetitive industry, cut income tax rates, and greatly increased homeownership by allowing tenants to purchase their state-owned residences. My paternal grandmother, a die-hard Labor Party voter, gratefully became a homeowner as a result of this last policy.

    Thatcher and Thatcherism were not unalloyed successes. The prime minister put too much stock in the financial sector -- of which Britain is a world leader -- and did not create the economic conditions, by investing strategically in education, for example, for Britain to lead the next industrial revolution as it had the first.

    The UK stopped making a lot of things. There is now no domestic auto industry worth speaking of -- the Indians own Jaguar, the Germans the Mini, and the Chinese the famous London taxicab -- and the once large and innovative aerospace sector is depleted. The country lost the tech and research battles to the United States and Japan. It now enjoys only a small presence in the global marketplace in these areas.

    Thatcher had two additional impacts on my thinking. In the 1980s -- but unfortunately not today -- the United States was a fluid and socially mobile society. The UK, with its rigid class system, was not. Thatcher directly challenged the antiquated prejudices of the upper echelons of British society.

    Even though she shattered the last glass ceiling for women by becoming the first female head of state in a major industrialized democracy, feminists criticized her for not doing enough for her sex. This was in no small measure because she saw class divisions as more pernicious. Thatcher believed strongly that people should be valued by their work and contribution to society, not their breeding.

    This naturally upset many traditionalists in her Conservative Party. It also grated on many working-class people who drew comfort from blaming their plight on social stratification, and criticized ambitious and industrious people with a kind of inverse snobbery.

    Millions of Britons benefited from Thatcher's thinking, including my father, who was able to break free from societal expectations for a man of his background and forge a successful business career. It helped me recognize the possibilities that a place like the United States could offer -- and it also explains my concern about declining social mobility here.

    The strength of her leadership was also influential. It is true that in some regards Thatcher was not a skilled leader. She was often dogmatic and inflexible and put little stock in deliberation. But her governing style provides a superb example of execution of a decision after it has been made.

    Too many large organizations, both public and private, suffer from leaders who confuse pandering with consultation, vacillation with pragmatism, and extortion from those with minority points of view with democratic decision making. They do not understand the importance of steady administration and the respect holding one's ground engenders, even from critics. Because of Thatcher, I do.

    I am no Thatcher clone. She might have found me a little too "intellectual" for her action-oriented politics, a little too interested in process and not enough in outcomes. But my deep love of meritocracy and liberty are directly attributable to her. She will be missed.