CM invited senior industry figures working in construction in the 1980s to share their personal memories of the late Baroness Thatcher, and to sum up how her policies helped re-shape the industry then and now. And David Pretty, former chief executive of housebuilder Barratt, recalls sealing the deal to sell the Thatchers a Barratt house in Dulwich, south London, and sharing fish paste sandwiches at No 10.
Stephen Ratcliffe
Director of the UKCG, and a former private secretary to Lord Young of Graffham during the latter’s time in the Cabinet (1984-9)
I remember when I worked in her government with David Young at the Department of Trade and Industry she was very supportive of the Channel Tunnel project. She really pushed that scheme forward.
On the plus side her re-engineering of the economy contributed not just to the eighties building boom during her time in power but also to the nineties building boom under Labour. On the debit side, her keenness to balance the books meant she ignored the need for capital investment to improve the country’s still creaking infrastructure.
She firmly believed that market demand should drive construction but of course, market forces were never going to build and pay for new hospitals or new schools and in that respect the Labour government of Tony Blair did much better for construction. We are still paying today for her failure to spend money to improve our infrastructure.
Above: Margaret Thatcher with CIOB president Norman Wakefield in 1985
Roger Humber
Strategic Policy Adviser with the House Builders Association
I remember being at a meeting of contractors Mrs Thatcher attended in the early seventies when she was shadow environment secretary and frankly she treated them pretty roughly. Construction had grown fat on government projects and had been used to lobbying government for grand infrastructure schemes. She would have none of it. She wanted construction, but didn’t want it paid for by the government. A few years later when she was prime minister there was much less emphasis on the kind of public sector projects the post war industry had relied on. She insisted the industry became more reliant on the overall economy producing demand from private clients for construction.
Obviously her support for home ownership through the right to buy and the liberalisation of the mortgage market were important for construction and indeed the country. The tragedy was that while demand for homes increased the planning process wasn’t overhauled and that failure played a large part in the house price bubble in the 1980s. She, like the current Tory government, failed to deal with the Tory Shire backbench MPs and the nimbys.
More broadly, Canary Wharf was a product of the new demand that her economic reforms created, the Big Bang and the new importance of the financial markets. But as a designated Enterprise Zone, Canary Wharf also showed what could be achieved if you didn’t have to deal with the quagmire of the planning process and planning departments.
Thanks to her, the industry is now more international and more in tune with private sector demand. Her legacy to construction, and indeed to the nation, is that you have to stand on your own two feet.
Margaret Thatcher signs autographs during the historic lunch in the undersea Channel Tunnel Crossover in 1994. Photo: Alamy
Jerry Swain
UCATT official for London and the south east
In terms of London, where we saw the start and end of the building boom during the eighties, I see her policies as being entirely detrimental for not just our industry but for the UK as a whole. Her neglect of infrastructure spending, leaves us to this day still relying on what the Victorians built in terms of infrastructure.
Her refusal to let councils use the money raised from her right to buy policy to build new council homes has had a devastating effect in the south east, Thatcher’s policies towards house building and ownership have created a situation in London where decent housing is now a luxury.
The destruction of local authority direct labour organisations, which maintained and built council properties, meant that the last employers with a social conscience would be run out of the London construction industry. Construction workers under a Thatcher government would not get a pension, paid holidays or sick pay, the things enjoyed by employees in every other sector. Her ‘flexible employment’ polices effectively casualised the construction industry and in doing so destroyed the traditional apprenticeship system which had served the industry well for generations.
Her primary legacy is that the industry I served my apprenticeship in no longer has a career structure for craft workers. The rapid growth of bogus self-employment under her government meant construction became an insecure way to make a living, which denied a generation of young people the opportunity of coming into the industry. We are still living with the consequences of that today. Her policies have resulted in an ageing workforce and a lack of trades people. It is almost impossible to find local skilled labour for any major construction site in London and the south east.
I will never forget during the early eighties wandering around from site to site in the city of London with my tool bag on my back looking for work after I had been laid off when I completed my apprenticeship. Then at night I would see her on the news talking about ‘ending the national decline’ when from where I was sitting she was cause of it.
David Pretty
Former chief executive, Barratt
Before she bought the Barratt home in Dulwich she visited our showroom on the site. She and Denis wanted a retirement home, one beside a golf course for Dennis and Dulwich offered that. But it was only when I took her into the kitchen I knew I could make a sale. She looked at it and turned to Denis and said: "Denis, I would love a kitchen like this".
Despite her stern Iron Lady image she was very approachable and friendly. After she and Denis had bought a plot at Dulwich I remember her visiting the show home again. She kicked off her shoes and sat on the floor with my wife, who was our interior designer, drinking tea and eating biscuits and discussing fittings and furnishings.
It was Denis I dealt with mostly over the purchase and often had to meet him in the upstairs flat at Number 10 at night, mostly to discuss the security arrangements for the house. One night, quite late as I recall, she arrived back whilst I was there and heard I hadn’t eaten. She turned to me and said ‘I can offer you a fish paste sandwich’ and went into the kitchen and made tea and fish paste sandwiches for the three of us. When we finished she got up and left for a late night sitting in the House of Commons.
On the policy side, she created a thoroughly pro-business environment which benefited construction and house building. We built more homes during her time in office than we did under the later Blair governments. The right to buy policy was a great boon to the market and to low income families that wanted to own their own home. The creation of the London Docklands Development Corporation was another policy that was a great success, transforming that entire area.
Her legacy is a positive one for the most part. The negative side to it would be that we now have a much lower stock of social housing today than our country needs. Successive governments failed to replace the houses that were sold off during her term of office so in some ways the right to buy proved to be a double edged sword in the long term because we never replaced those homes with new stock.
Tony Pidgley
Co-founder and chairman of housebuilder Berkeley Group
Margaret Thatcher was a politician who was pro-construction. You have to remember that when she came to power the country was in recession. She changed all that. At the same time her policies put many more people on the housing ladder, people who might never have owned homes without her, and that was a good thing for them and for the industry.
I would say that she had a lot of integrity. In fact the word integrity pretty much sums her up. Her legacy was that she gave this country back its pride.
Scottish contractor
Who preferred to remain anonymous
She did a great deal for the construction and house building industry during her time in power. She was one of the best prime ministers for our industry.
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There are arguments for and against the policies during the Thatcher period, some good and some not so good.
I recall in a conversation with general site operatives in the mid 80s while working in London that they admitted to me that they voted Conservative. I found this bizarre that construction workers should vote this way but their reasoning was that Thatcherism permitted them to buy their own property and that the rate of income tax was reduced giving more money in the pocket. In reality these actions actively bought votes keeping her in power. Good politics? But this all changed as time moved on, when interest rates climbed, unemployment increased and property repossessions accumulated. Granted through the Thatcher reign there was champagne, wealth and prosperity for some and for others there was stress, poverty and hardship.
Every one will have their own views on that period in history, some good some not so good.
Some of us are old enough to remember different times. Baroness Thatcher did not, in my view destroy apprenticeships. The story is longer than that. Harold Wilson with Selective Employment Tax in the 1960’s did far more harm, because it forced the start of Self employment in the industry. When working on a large site at that time, we had over 100 employees directly employed. When the site closed, the guiys went of and became self-employed. They did not take on apprentices. Also, the training boards took away the incentive for firms to train, ie you want the levy, you train the craftsmen.
We might bear in mind that until the late ’70s apprenticeships were quite cumbersome and long winded. During the early ’80s the YTS prelude to apprenticeships, especially as managed by CITB, was a massive positive step towards properly managed on-the-job learning. Paid for, I might add, by public funds.
As a young construction manager in the eighties, my company, part of a large and famous British engineering conglomerate decided to abandon its two construction contracting divisions and I, with most of my colleagues were made redundant.
I took NormanTebbits advice and got on my bike – to Iraq building a railway.
3 years later I returned and following Thatcher’s encouragement for entrepeneurialism, started my own construction business.
Things were looking up – I couldn’t go into my bank without being offered yet another low interest loan and the bank manager and his good lady even drove out to inspect one of my sites. One of his fellow managers even bought a property from me.
Alas, in the late eighties, Maggie and Nigel(Lawson) decided that this culture they had created was overheating the economy. They made a terrible mistake by announcing 6 months in advance that dual tax relief for unmarried couples would be abolished. Subsequently property prices rocketed in the rush to buy and then immediatelly collapsed when the relief ended. At almost the same time, interest rates were raised to 18% creating a disaster for small businessmen like me with unfinished properties and business loans to service.
Thatcher and her government betrayed those she had encouraged to take risks and start a business.
I will never forgive her.
Thatcher did much to rejuvenate the nation. She changed the economic culture in Britain at a time when the country was effectively on its knees. Individuals can disagree with her policies but no-one can deny her motives were for the greater good. Her approach gave Britain an opportunity to become more than it was and for that I will always be grateful.
During Mrs Thatcher’s reign I was made redundant three times, the last being in 1990 when 1.5 million others in the construction and related industries also lost their jobs. I was lucky and was never out of work. Others were not and many were lost to the industry and never returned. There were no golden handshakes for construction workers, no one gave a toss.
Self employment had become the norm and apprenticeships as a result were kicked into touch. The Blair years were better but we are now back to square one if not a bit behind SQUARE ONE. Construction is a barometer for the economy people in power should realise that and not be surprised when every 8 to 10 years there is a recession. No one saves or invests for the future, if they did we would not have continuous boom and bust!
Excellent roundup of views, all of which are correct from their own particular standpoint.
Periodically during Lady Thatcher’s “reign” I discussed the latent problems of abandoning apprenticeships and selling off council housing, with my late father. Regrettably all came true. Not because of her basic housekeeping approach, but though failures on all sides to contemplate the unintended consequences of such actions. The same holds true today, and the decimation caused over the last few years to even the rump of our industry left over from the ‘80’s will, I fear, lead to further unexpected difficulties.
People either do not know their history or have selective amnesia. I started an apprenticeship of sorts in the late seventies when the economy was in a mess, it wasn’t until Maggie came in that things started to move in an upward direction and gave a lot of my generation some direction. Yes her administration made mistakes, but considering the state of the country when she took office I know she did her best.
With regard to apprenticeships their decimation has more to do with short term/short sighted management policies in both the public and private sector. Current management and past management practices and outsourcing all and sundry leads to profit over all else.