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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Guardian readers

How did Margaret Thatcher's policies affect you?

Margaret Thatcher hands over the deeds to a council house buyer
Margaret Thatcher hands over the deeds to a council house buyer in 1980. A million homes were sold by 1987. Photograph: Press Association

The form for contributing your story has now closed.

Read a selection of the responses in our interactive.

We would like to hear your experiences of Margaret Thatcher's policies and how you feel her legacy affects you. A selection of responses will be posted on the site as a Guardian readers' panel.

As our editorial on Monday argued, "British public life is still defined to an extraordinary degree by the argument between those who wish to continue or refine what she started and those who want to mitigate or turn it back."

Were you affected by the sale of council houses? Did you live in a community where a mine was closed? What impact did Thatcher's policies as education secretary have on you?

Pelegia

I met her in 1973 when she became education minister – certainly an impressive woman – but following her visit to the music school where I was a pupil, all scholarships for foreign students were stopped straight away. Since the school was international and by no means predominantly English and also very small in numbers, her policy was felt first hand immediately.

When she lost her last election, this was an enormous relief. Remember all those hospitals that she was closing down?

At the time I lived in the centre of London, five doors away from one of the main soup kitchens, and quite a few of the homeless people were in that plight because of psychiatric hospital closures. Her breaking of the miners and destroying whole generations of people and their lives and their livelihood surely is something that should never be forgotten lest it happen again. This current Tory government looks set to bring the UK to its knees.

Thatcher's legacy of absolute selfishness and greed and her ruthless hunger for power, caused great damage to the collective psyche of Great Britain and set in motion bankers bonuses and home ownership madness.

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