Published 10/14/2025 15:45 | Edited 10/14/2025 16:24
If she were alive, Margaret Thatcher would turn 100 years old on October 13, 2025. The first woman to hold the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1979–1990), she redefined British politics and, in a way, contemporary capitalism itself.
But, far from official celebrations and conservative tributes, the centenary of the “Iron Lady” reignites the debate about the human and social cost of her legacy — a legacy of mass unemployment, the dismantling of the welfare state and the historical weakening of the trade union movement.
Thatcher was not just a political leader: she was the main architect of neoliberalism applied as a government doctrine. Under his command, the United Kingdom became the first major laboratory of an ideology that placed profit and the market above social protection and public intervention.
The war against unions and the working class
The most striking point of his government was the declared war against the unions, especially the miners’ union, the most powerful in the country until then. Between 1984 and 1985, the miners’ strike was repressed with police brutality, surveillance and legal persecution.
Thatcher’s victory — not only political, but also symbolic — broke the backbone of British trade unionism, which never recovered the mobilization power it had had since the post-war period.
By turning social conflict into a “law and order” issue, Thatcher rewrote the political narrative about the working class. Workers stopped being agents of change and became, in the dominant discourse, “obstacles to efficiency”. This logic paved the way for job insecurity, flexible contracts and the rise of the so-called gig economy, which today characterizes the British market.
Privatization and deindustrialization: the price of “modernization”
Thatcher justified her reforms under the slogan of “restoring competitiveness” and “freeing individual initiative”. In practice, this meant an unprecedented wave of privatizations, including strategic sectors such as energy, telecommunications, transport and public housing.
More than 40 state-owned companies were sold and millions of workers were laid off. Entire regions, especially in the industrial north of England, collapsed economically and socially—a trauma that, decades later, still fuels resentment and far-right populism.
The immediate result was one of the biggest deindustrializations in Western Europe, with the country moving towards a services and finance economy. London flourished as a global financial center, but urban fringes and former mining areas were abandoned to structural poverty.
The neoliberal “revolution” and its global disciples
Thatcherism went beyond the borders of the United Kingdom and became a government model for neoliberal capitalism, inspiring leaders such as Ronald Reagan in the United States and, years later, Fernando Collor, Carlos Menem, Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Augusto Pinochet in Latin America.
The central axis of this doctrine was clear: less State, less rights, more market. Thatcher reduced taxes for the richest, cut subsidies, privatized public housing and transformed unemployment into an “incentive” for individual effort.
Inequality, which had decreased in previous decades, grew again at an explosive pace — and the model spread globally, consolidating the dominance of finance over politics and work.
The myth of “self-sufficiency” and the culture of individualism
Thatcher’s philosophy was based on a central principle: “Society does not exist. There are only individuals and families.”
With this phrase, pronounced in 1987, she synthesized the essence of neoliberalism: the denial of collectivity as the basis of public life. This vision naturalized inequality, blaming the poor for their own condition and delegitimizing the idea of social solidarity.
“Thatcher culture” helped shape the mentality of consumption, competition and meritocracy that dominates liberal democracies today. In the name of efficiency, he instituted an ethic of indifference, where failure came to be seen as a lack of effort, not as a product of unfair structures.
A legacy still alive — and contested
Three decades after her departure from power, the United Kingdom remains trapped by the economic model she imposed. The fiscal austerity of recent Conservative governments, the housing crisis, the weakening of the National Health Service (NHS) and the growth of child poverty are, to a large extent, direct legacies of the Thatcher era.
Even politicians who opposed her, such as Tony Blair, adopted many of her policies under the banner of the “Third Way”. The result is a deeply unequal country, where the profits of corporations and banks contrast with the precarious living conditions of the working class.
Between iron and rust
As she turns one hundred years old, Margaret Thatcher remains a divisive figure: celebrated by the markets, cursed by workers. Her biography is praised by those who see in the “Iron Lady” a strong-willed leader who saved the United Kingdom from “decline”, but detested by those who lived through the effects of the social destruction she left behind.
More than a historical character, Thatcher is a persistent symptom — the face of an era in which financial capitalism defeated the post-war social pact.
One hundred years later, its shadow remains cast over the world: the iron age has turned into the rust age—a time when markets thrive, and workers still foot the bill.
Source: vermelho.org.br
