I thought the free market was forever

I remember 1974 well. With inflation on growth, the government was shut down in a fight with trade unions on activist salary. The government appeared paralyzed: Mining can shut down mines and attacks standing power systems, but pay more money and inflation to them.

And then the global oil crisis came out from anywhere. This threw economies including Britain into chaos. The government introduced a three -day week. Power cuts were common – we would drown in darkness without warning. And it seems, the government expected us that we would deal with it.

It was also the year when I started presenting BBC’s current affairs program Panorama. We spent a lot of time to debate these issues. People came with all kinds of different ideas as to what to do.

Even suggestions were that the country actually needed to withdraw control from unions, a military acquisition – a coup.

There was also another idea. This conservative politician was proposed by Keith Joseph and was completely radical – so was removed from the mainstream, in fact, during the filming of Panorama, Joseph turned to the production team and asked if they understand what they mean.

This idea was a free market.

This meant that Britain departed with two consent after World War World War that the government should control the economy and instead you leave the markets alone, they would provide more prosperity and security to the country.

If, in 2025, the idea seems to be anything but the radical, it is absolutely point.

What we saw in Britain in the 1980s under the government of Margaret Thatcher, how quickly the market had transitioned a radical idea in new reality. Then before a long time it was assumed that it was the system that would last forever.

US President Donald Trump is a billionaire businessman who has clearly performed financially out of capitalism. But suddenly, thanks to him, the free market system finds itself under the attack as if never before.

This can be a storm season yet. Although other people are asking, is the free market system roughly flawed and wasted for failure?

In view of the 1983 general election victory, what Thecher did is very clear now. We believe that private companies play an important role in providing our water, electricity, gas, railways, ports and goods.

But at that time some people believed what he had done – it looked like a fictional world, completely separated from how things were done after the war.

I was six years old when the war ended. Rationing – was a coupon that allowed you to buy meat or clothes, or of course, dessert. But among these difficult times and on the heels of victory, a new vision of society was emerging in Britain.

With the election victory of Clement Atley’s landslide in July 1945, the first majority in Britain’s political history cast their votes for a party dedicated to socialism.

But even more, a new consensus on how the country should run, which widely leads to singing and conservative parties from the same sheet.

“We have created our defense against want and disease, and we are proud of it,” was not by a labor Prime Minister but from 1957 to 1963 by the Orthodox Prime Minister Herold McMillan. It was how things were done.

However, not everyone bought under consensus. Antony Fisher, who was a chicken farmer, was seen as an egg marketing board mediation. He founded the Institute of Economic Affairs Think Tank, inspired Keith Joseph and got the thecher’s ear in turn.

That the current attack on the free market is coming, from a Republican US President, it seems that all the irony seems to be with how popular Thaccher’s reforms were with American rights.

Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan shared a similar world approach, and Trump spoke of his praise for both, with warnings that he did not agree with Reagan’s some business policies.

Thatcher was sure that the country would be much better if gas and water and electricity were removed from the hands of the state. And sold in the open market. Free market. Like buying bread bread.

The big idea of ​​the Thaccher government was that they were not going to sell shares only to big businesses or investors in state -owned utilities. They were going to give them to the British people.

In December 1984, the British Telecom (BT) moved on shares on sale. The next morning, the number was shocked: more than two million Britains were now Bt shareholders.

And Thecher began to realize that selling these companies was not just about breaking the hut of government control. This can be something big – transforming every person from Britain into a capitalist and popularizing capitalism in doing so.

In the UK, by the late 1980s, the scale of change was shocking. The yoga of £ 60BN was raised by selling to state run companies. UK was now a shareholder up to 15 million.

Britain was embracing the free market. This was not just an economic change. It was a cultural revolution. Relable relationships with Britain’s money, government and with itself.

And if the privatization of Thaccher gave the common people a chance to buy shares, then in 1986, its improvement in the Financial Services Sector of Britain, known as Big Bang, gave the common people a chance to sell them to get a job in the first closed world of the city.

On the left, there were many people for whom the principle of these reforms was something to object alone. Some right market is not about the principles of attack reforms on the free market, but the result.

At the core of Thaccher’s thinking was a belief that free market capitalism can only work when many people have a direct stake. And with the share ownership of the first state -run utilities, many people did it. But before a long time, the alarm bell started ringing. And their chime is only loud.

James Goldsmith was a businessman who created a fortune to buy struggling companies cheaply, maximize them and then sell them in profit. The reforms of the 1980s were like Manna from heaven for him.

But then he was changing his mind about things. In 1994, he told a committee of American senators that there was a fatal defect in its base – that the system demanded maximum profit, but to get maximum benefits which meant that you separated the umbilical cord link with many of your own voters.

“You reach a system that makes the best corporate profits, you have to leave your country. You can not use your sales force, we can’t use you anymore – you are very expensive ‘.

“You have found unions. You want holidays. You want security. So we are going to be offshore.”

Goldsmith was predicting that companies would take their business where they would earn the most money. If you are a CEO responsible for shareholders who are really your job details. And the result, he said, there will be loss of job in the West, with the collapse of communities.

And to make things worse, he argued that Britain had cited sovereignty to the choice of European Union and World Trade Organization, Britain binds itself to an economic system run by undisclosed bureaucrats in Brussels, only added the feeling of separation felt in collapse of communities. And fixing a policy with global markets. If an industry was not profitable, it was left to die.

Today, the UK can be a global leader in science and financial services, but is it very consoled for communities where we have once made things that are now offshore?

On the basis of what I heard in many years, while presenting the question time to the country, I am not sure it is.

Goldsmith was trying to enter politics. In the 1997 general election, his referendum party was tried to the party, but he planted a seed. He argued that the global free market path that was going down Britain and the rest of the world was dangerous. It will spread partitions across the world.

Fast-forwarded from about 20 years 2016 and his warning passed. Britain voted to leave the European Union and the decision could not be clear: the holiday vote was the highest in those leftist communities, which felt globalization that they were not working for them.

The dream of a nation of shareholders has also become sour.

The water of Tems was privatized in 1989. We were promised to invest in low bills, better infrastructure, low red tape and a system on edges. The investment was the best placed to provide that the global capitalist system is believed to be.

After this there was some more completely. Debt balloons and dividends flow to shareholders. The company took advantage of, while the pipes were leaked and sewage was inserted into the rivers. And our bills now pay for interest on that loan – it seems that we have come a long way from the nation of Thaccher’s shareholders.

Back in 1994, James Goldsmith said that the problem with the dream of the free market was that it did not protect the base of the house.

Now, someone is more powerful that takes that scene.

President Trump’s methods are so uncertain that it is difficult to tell him what is going on. Their readiness to slap a highly resulting tariff on those countries is both traditional enemies and assumed friends who many times suggest the easy clarification.

But what we can say is that he is trying to return to the ideas that were before the free market. He is trying to strengthen America through protectionism, which makes it difficult to sell anyone anywhere.

There is an argument that if you take a long view then the duration of the free market is external. Britain had a long, long period of protectionism before adopting free trade.

Tariff is not new in world economic history and in a sense Trump is just trying to return to America how things were, although in a very chaotic way.

The rule of free market is facing its biggest challenge. But this challenge is not coming from supporters of socialism who play a big role for the state ideologically. Instead, the challenge is coming from Trump, a person who is roughly talking about authority and has no merit with capitalism, which can make people very rich.

This challenge is coming from within which makes it so powerful.

Top Image Credit: Getty Pictures

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