Word: britain
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What is especially remarkable about the Thatcher victory is that it took place with Britain suffering its highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression. During four years of Tory rule, joblessness shot up from 5.4% to 13.3%, leaving 3,049,000 Britons out of work. Yet polls showed that voters generally did not blame Thatcher for the loss of their jobs, but accepted her argument that the world recession was chiefly at fault and that she was more
...than Labor was. Indeed, surveys taken shortly before the election indicated that an astonishing one out of three unemployed Britons planned to vote Tory. Many workers greatly appreciated her feat in bringing the inflation rate down from a high of 22% in 1980 to the current 4%. In addition, Britain's generous array of unemployment benefits, which Thatcher has left largely intact, has blunted the anger of many without jobs...
...mortgages have fallen from 15% to a more affordable 10%. Productivity is up, and the rate of wage hikes is down. But none of these signs of improving health are proof that the rebound will persist or that Thatcherism is a success. Although the Prime Minister is convinced that Britain is on the motorway to recovery, many economic experts have doubts. Even official Treasury projections indicate that growth will slow again, un employment will rise and inflation will creep upward over the next twelve to 18 months. Most of the government's economists are bracing for a jump in joblessness...
...blue-collar workers will be outnumbered by white-collar workers in the labor force. Meanwhile, surveys show that voters today are growing less and less likely to vote by class, simply along the lines of bowler hat vs. cloth cap. As if that were not advantage enough for Thatcher, Britain's population is shifting from the big cities that have long been Labor strongholds to the Tory enclaves of suburbia. Parliamentary districts were redrawn for last week's election to reflect that migration, and the Tories clearly gained. "Social changes are taking place which make the Conservatives the party...
...same time, she grandly envisions a computerized, microchipped Britain humming smartly into the future. Says an adviser: "She wants to modernize not just the technology but the attitudes of mtain. She would like to see in the United Kingdom the vigorous spirit she ad mires in the United States, that sense of enterprise and imagination...