by Ian Stewart
For the past week those of us who remember the 1980s have been in our own ways reliving them. It has been neither a pleasant nor edifying spectacle to watch friends and family tear lumps off each other over the legacy of the frail old woman who died at the Ritz. Facebook accounts are now covered in the detritus of real life as well as online friendships wrecked by casual or bombastic posts that reopened the wounds long thought healed.
To watch a crowd of idiots vandalise my local cinema – which by the way was showing the excellent Spirit of ’45 – and then break the windows of the bastion of Thatcherism that is Brixton’s Banardos shop defied all logic. I mean, Foxtons – I understand that, but Banardos? Please explain?
I still cannot forgive or forget Mrs Thatcher and her government – not for the miners, nor for Corby, nor for letting the free market rip in such a way that highly skilled industrial jobs in my home town were butchered (Lowestoft men built the Virgin Atlantic Challenger that won the blue riband – using state of the art plasma welding – then were left on the scrapheap). I doubt that Germany, Holland or Norway would have done the same. Eastern Coachworks shut down, north sea oil and gas money frittered away, leaving behind an economy reliant on food processing plants and moving away as the only serious option if you have ambition.
What I also cannot forgive is the fact that ever since 1990, every single succeeding government has attempted not to alter the Thatcher consensus, but simply to give it a “human face”. Up until the great crash Major, Blair and Brown had all seemingly achieved this – balancing social spending with deregulation, further privatisation and tax cuts for the rich.
