‘She saved the country’. This was just some of the hyperbole evoked by David Cameron following the passing of Margaret Thatcher last month. Well I’m sorry, Mr Cameron, I must have missed that!
Mrs Thatcher is largely remembered in Northern Ireland for her misjudged response to the hunger strike and for the much reviled Anglo Irish Agreement, which some now say paved the way for the eventual success of the Good Friday Agreement. But her economic legacy in Northern Ireland has been largely overlooked. Unfortunately, it was even less successful than her political interventions.
I spent the first half of Mrs T’s tenure as Prime Minister working in Northern Ireland as an economist in the public sector before moving to the private sector in the mid eighties. I watched therefore as unemployment in Northern Ireland rose to a peak of 18.1% in 1986 (compare this to a rate of 8.5% today), with over 120,000 people claiming unemployment benefit. The Thatcher government also preached the message to our businesses that they had to face up to the ‘cold hard winds of competition’, resulting in the collapse of our manufacturing sector where employment fell by around 40,000 in the first half of the eighties to less than 100,000 jobs.
In many ways, the Northern Ireland economy suffered more under Thatcher than in the present recession. While she did push through important structural reforms in the UK, her economic policies were little short of disastrous for Northern Ireland, even given the context of the Troubles which curtailed inward investment. The drive for home ownership was widely welcomed but also laid the seeds of the property boom of the first decade of this century. Ironically, where the Northern Ireland economy did benefit in the 1980’s was the huge growth in public spending which led to our current overdependence on the public sector.
In the so-called ‘Sermon on the Mound’ to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1988, Mrs Thatcher linked her economic and political policies to her Christian faith. ‘Christianity is about spiritual redemption not social reform’, she pronounced. This led her to conclude that our social and economic arrangements must be founded on the acceptance of individual responsibility which ‘comes with freedom and the supreme sacrifice of Christ’.
While I accept the basis of her belief, the implications for social and economic policy and the role of the state do not follow for me. Unfettered wealth creation was considered to be entirely acceptable as long as it was accompanied by a degree of altruism. The role of the state was not to ‘intervene’ in the market but to promote the market so that individuals could exercise their choice freely.
Michael Sandel has attributed to Thatcher and her American buddy, Ronald Reagan, the responsibility for turning our ‘market economy’ into a ‘market society’, a trend which was picked up enthusiastically by their successors Blair and Clinton, a society in which we have lost our moral values in pursuit of the market. The capitalist market economy is the best system available for allocation of resources but capitalism must be accompanied by compassion and concern for those who lose out. I look to government to support and promote these principles, not to ignore them.
Philip McDonagh
Philip McDonagh is an economist and a member of the Society of Friends.
The horseburger scandal started in Ireland and as a meat-eating Irishman I need to confess that I am at least partly responsible. The drama unfolded when the Food Safety Authority of Ireland tested a range of ready meals and beefburgers from a number of supermarkets. These DNA tests found that there was pig meat in 85 per cent of the ‘beef’-burgers and horse meat in 33 per cent. The web of contamination quickly grew to Northern Ireland, England, Holland, France, Romania and it continues to grow . . . Read the rest of this entry »
The recent scandal about hospital care in the Stafford Hospital has not shown the NHS in a good light and, although not on such a systemic scale, there are recurring media reports about failures of care locally. Last week the Health Secretary (England and Wales) urged the NHS to find its moral purpose. But what is the moral purpose of a health service? It seems to me that it is inevitably related to the issue of what promotes good care. But what does good care look like? Read the rest of this entry »
Not again! I thought we’d got beyond all that. Are we going back to the old days. Are the jobs going to disappear? Do they not realise what they’re doing?
Day after day of protests, riots, stone throwing, petrol bombs, attacks on the police, illegal parades. It’s all so very familiar if you were around at the beginning of the troubles. And the places are the same: Albertbridge Road, Lower Newtownards Road, the Short Strand. The slogans may be focused on something different, the controversy over the flying of the flag on the City Hall in Belfast, but they expose the presence of familiar attitudes. Read the rest of this entry »
In Northern Ireland, there has been a big increase in suicides since the early-nineties, before the first ceasefire in 1994, rising particularly throughout the period after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Many are concerned about the trend, which is often seen when peace comes to a country – whatever side people are on, the cohesiveness that being involved in conflict brings to communities is weakened post conflict. And the situation may actually be worse than people think. Read the rest of this entry »
(Note: This article first appeared on www.eamonnmallie.com on 2 Dec 2012, and is distributed with the author’s permission)
Is it just me, or is there anyone else out there getting more and more dispirited about the quality of public discourse? Arguments on an ad hominem basis; speeches with barbed phrases, and interviews that both lower the tone and lessen understanding of the issues apparently under consideration. Read the rest of this entry »
I stood bedside a person paralytic on their sofa covered in blood and bodily fluids. The Emergency Service could not take this person to hospital as they became conscious and refused to go.Social Services could not work with them due to their addiction. Read the rest of this entry »
In a recent book, War and the American Difference*, Stanley Hauerwas explores why it is that Americans have a distinct lack of unease with war. War, he says, ‘is America’s central liturgical act necessary to renew our sense that we are a nation unlike other nations.’ In other words, the war on terror means that Americans have a common enemy that unites them nationally. War is a moral good. It is the pursuit and defence of ‘freedom’. Read the rest of this entry »
There was a hint of specks and planks (Matthew 7: 2-5) in recent statements in the Northern Ireland Assembly by unionist political representatives. Demanding apologies from the Irish government about their predecessors’ undoubted ambivalence towards IRA activity in the border areas in the past rings a bit hollow Read the rest of this entry »
On 16 October 2012, Philip McDonagh facilitated a lively discussion on this book by Michael Sandel, who is political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University.
In What Money Can’t Buy, Sandel examines one of the biggest ethical questions of our time and provokes a debate that’s been missing in our market-driven age: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society, and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets do not honour and money cannot buy?
Philip McDonagh is an economist. He formerly worked for Price Waterhouse Coopers; he has over 30 years experience in dealing with local economic matters. He is a Charity Commissioner with the new Charity Commission for Northern Ireland. He is also a member of the Society of Friends.
On 16 October 2012, Philip McDonagh facilitated a lively discussion on this book by Michael Sandel, who is political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University.