Margaret Thatcher remains a truly hated figure in the north of England. The 1984 Miners’ Strike and retrenchment of the shipyards had a phenomenal social impact which has pretty much written off a generation (or more) of voters for the Conservative party.
Sunderland makes a good case study of the challenges faced by Tories in the wake of Thatcherism. As this anecdote from a Tory activist on the stump highlights, voters in the neck of those woods seem unable to forgive her:
“I met a man in his mid 60s from Morton. He started to call Thatcher all the names under the sun for no apparent reason — I had not remotely mentioned her — and said that the “only thing that f***ing woman had ever done for me was let me buy my council house and my British Gas shares”. He then spat on the pavement in memory of the former Prime Minister and walked off.’
Robert Oliver, head of Sunderland Conservatives for the past two years, says those who do approve of Thatcher admire her bravery ‘whether it be facing down aggression in the Falklands War or standing up for us in Europe’, along with some of her more populist policies:
‘Policies that appealed to independent-minded people such as the right to buy and low tax are often mentioned [on the doorstep] especially by people who bought their council house and improved it.
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