From sinner to saint, quite a transformation.

Wyllow3

Now forgiveness, thats another matter.

True.
Repentance and change of heart is up to the person committing the crime.

Forgiveness is up to the victim and doesn’t have to include forgetting or future trust.

I forgave the person who stole some money from me, but I wouldn’t ever trust them again.

Dickens

25Avalon

If you lived ina council house and had paid rent for years, if someone came along and offered you to buy it at a fraction of the market price, you’d jump at it if you could. Having said that you may well have more than paid for that house already in rent. It gave you the right to buy your own home and not have to face the Council being able to move you out as circumstances changed. Now everyone wants to own their own house and the cry is for affordable housing, but the problem is wages have not kept pace with housing costs so the differential is that much bigger.

I wouldn't blame anyone for opting to buy their council house if given the chance.
... but Councils were blocked from replacing the homes they sold - government would not allow them to use the receipts to build new housing, with the inevitable result that there was less housing for rent - and people still needed to rent.
And then, there were borrowing limits placed on Councils, too.
So there were winners, but definitely losers.
But of course, not many people bought properties in those ugly concrete tower blocks I don't think. They became sink estates for the have-nots.

A friend of mine, a lifelong Labour voter in Leeds, was only too happy to buy the council house where she’d lived for 40 odd years, having inherited the tenancy from her father. IIRC she paid around £7k, shortly after the law was introduced.

Around 10 yers ago our dd2 bought an ex council house in Oxford. The former owners (it was a probate sale) had lived there for 60 years, having bought the house in 1971, so well before Thatcher. So sales were evidently happening to some extent anyway.

After a good old nose on the Land Reg, dh found that they’d paid almost exactly 1% of what dd did.

That's interesting, I didn't know!

How many people, having lived in a Council property for that length of time, 40 years, would - on being offered the sale - sit back and think, hmm, is this this the right thing for the working class... truly, I believe I'd have done the same.

And, perhaps - if the receipts could've been used to build more housing, it would've been a very good scheme. But Thatcher believed in the open market...

Which leads me to add what I forgot in my original comment.

To some she was a sinner, and others very much a saint.

She was so committed to her branch of economics - she was no bouncy-Boris Johnson who looked to see which way the wind was blowing - that I doubt she'd regard herself as a sinner in need of redemption.

Much as I disliked her ideology, and I really did/do - I have a little bat-squeak of admiration for her total commitment and determination. This is kind of rare in politicians. I think she did what she did because she genuinely believed in Hayekian principles... I saw a photo of her somewhere on the net, sitting among other people kind of 'at his feet' during a talk at the Institute of Economic Affairs, looking like (it was said) a "meek schoolgirl".

She was absolutely scathing about Socialism - and did in fact mis-represent what some of us consider it to be. I think I am a Socialist, but not in the popularly depicted sense of the word. My brand of Socialism is more of the Scandi variety. Many people think that both Norway and Sweden are 'socialist' countries, in reality - they are anything but. Norway, in particular, has a very robust Capitalist economy and also embraces the free-market. But it bases its ideology on investing in its people to get the best out of them, which means providing education, health, and welfare programmes that are accessible to everyone. It is people that drive an economy to success I guess which is the principle behind this mixed-economy model.

Anyway, I don't really think Thatcher can be included in the group of people who need to seek redemption for their sins - you'd have to get her to acknowledge the 'sin' first and I don't believe she ever did/could/would. She followed a school of thought which believed basically created a better society.

I do know a couple who refused to buy their council house, and it was an absolute steal.
They firmly believed it should go on to house others who rented.

I am not remotely suggesting that Thatcher might have repented had she lived. Such a thing was not in her repertoire!

The lady wasn't for turning.