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.
Yes, that’s’ right – Blair and Brown – our two last Labour premiers. We could and should have done more to challenge the consensus of the 1980s. The expensive and inefficient railways could have been taken back into public ownership with little fuss at the end of each franchise, saving us billions in bailing out private companies.
We could have diffused the time-bomb of MPs expenses that a mid-80s compromise left us with. We should have effectively regulated the financial sector, and made steps to promote mutualisation. We should have built more council homes, and we should not have embraced PFI.
We could, and definitely should, have been less than “extremely relaxed” at the very wealthy becoming the “filthy rich” (thanks Mandy), and according them privileges that would make a robber baron blush.
Nowadays of course, the “human face” stuff is all but forgotten – it is so much easier to wage an open war on the poor and defenceless, especially if HM opposition decides to abstain rather than actually oppose you. “Austerity” – what a fantastic catch all term for privatising misery whilst leaving “socialism for the rich” intact.
So forgive me, if I don’t party with the ghouls on Wednesday, you see Thatcherism is still alive and well. In fact it is kicking the teeth out of what is left of our welfare state. If you must commemorate her death, then emulate the Durham miners and remember the strike, or go watch Ken Loach’s latest film, or listen to Elvis Costello.
In fact please do anything other than boo her ridiculous cortege and get your face in the papers as some kind of immature fool. Instead why not sign up for the Peoples’ Assembly, or join a union or work within Labour to rebuild a real alternative, whilst regaining our party’s soul.
Ian Stewart is a Labour party member and blogs athttp://clemthegem.wordpress.com/
Tags: 1980s, Ian Stewart, Margaret Thatcher, miners, neo-liberals
Yes, it takes quite something to wait until a frail old lady passes away to come out and challange after she is gone…must be a new kind of courage the sort we see exhibited in the Labour Party all too often.
Protesting against her now is purely an attack on a single person who cannot defend herself, it is not challenging the politics of what she did when alive. The time to challenge her was when she was in power, in political life not when the politics, her politics has left the arena.
Dishonoring the dead, no matter what they have done, is appalling and cowardly, if those wanting to protest against Margaret Thatcher were believers that all people are equal, then they would realise the importance of treating all dead people with respect. Their time on this earth is done, there are still appalling events occurring in the world, politics is in a mire, a corrupt one of its own making. There has never been a better time for people to collectively affect change using their own skills and abilities and use energy for the better rather than waste it on vain hatred against those they no longer have any power to influence or affect in any case.
I don’t think people in London have much to complain about. My dominant memory of the time was everyone buying their own council houses.
Slightly different for the people up north, I’m sure, but it’s a bit weird when people down this way are bothered 23 years later.
Weird such as “parliamentary expenses”. As if that was her fault.
McCurry – re expenses: In 1983 John Biffen and Margaret Thatcher rejected the cross-party report recommending both a single pay rise for MPs, and linking their income to annual pay rates. Instead they decided that MPs should be able to clam expenses of up to £6,000 tax free – after a long battle with both Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson, and be taxed after that. the whole shoddy deal was hidden in a Bill going through the committee stage rather than put in Lawsons budget. As Thatcher said her self at the time:
“If details of what was being allowed and disallowed became public knowledge, the House would be brought into ridicule.”
Of course, Londoners were all joyous at the abolition of the GLC, and Wapping is near Hull.
Blairism was the only face of Labour that was electable because it was founded in common sense. Something that built on Thatcherism.
You say condone the vandalising of Foxtons, a company that employs 1,000 people, that makes you the idiot.
The idiocy continues with your assertion on Germany, Holland or Norway. Germany with brands such as Porsche, Mercedes, Bosch, Siemens et al are leading the world in High tech quality manufacture. In 79, what would you have bought a Morris Ital or a Golf? The fact that Lowestoft men built the Virgin Atlantic Challenger is not a universal indictment of the capability of British Industry. Unions destroyed our competitiveness, we made crap products in general.
Thatcher knew that a government could never create any form of viable industry. In fact everyone except the left knows it. Lowestoft needed its people to innovate and create jobs. If they didn’t of course the population would move away.
Please show us 1 example of a country anywhere where your ideological claptrap works? THE LEFT ARE SO THICK, that they can’t understand 40 or 45% tax rates bring in more MONEY than 50%. The thicko’s want to see 80% coz they sleep well……. Nose and spiting your face anyone? The left are sat in loopy la la land pontificating about things that they have no grasp of. Fortunately the people aren’t that thick. Remember that rally in Sheffield? When push comes to shove they know the left will ruin it.
I think it’s morose that welfare can offer more than a job. Its morose not to accept there will be people taking the mick.
When idiots like you and McCurry open your traps on the internet, it makes Labour totally unelectable.
Actually Fred, I wrote that I understand Foxtons office being vandalised, not that I condoned it.
Brooke Marine were using cutting edge technology to build great small ships. All they needed was a little help, you know, the sot of thing that Porsche, Seimens, Bosch and Vw have received from time to time from the German government. They also have high levels of worker and union participation when compared to any British firm at any time. In point of fact, much of the basis for German recovery was set up during the post-war occupation, using Marshall Aid, state investment and the help of loopy la la land leftists from… err, Britain.
Still, a good rant Fred – well done you.
No Ian, please don’t dismiss my post as a rant, that is the usual cheap lefty tactic whne faced with the inconvenient truth.
Again you revert to unsubstantiated tripe.
The British ship building industry was never allowed to modernise to compete, they were aleways reliant on the government; what you are asking for was an endless supply of money to keep a ship yard open. Thatcher had the vision to know that was a flawed plan and did something about it. There was no way a Labour government was going to do anything.
Germany started from scratch and built an industrial foundation driven by people who wanted to work. Britain was stuck with pre war work practices and increasingly militant Union barons and shop stewards.
As for trying to compare German unions vs ours that is a class one joke. Workers councils in Germany looked after the workers and the companies that they were involved in. They didn’t walk out on strike every 5 minutes. The Germans were pragmatic, our left are stupid. REMEMBER IT WAS CALLED THE BRITISH DISEASE?
@ McCurry
Well you’re wrong. Plenty of Londoners and those elsewhere in the south were affected by the customary short-sighted bigotry of the time. You write as if anyone living south of Watford was in a position to gain from “right to buy” and that this justified all other iniquities. Surely, if nothing else, the realities of today’s housing market and the way in which today’s Tories are using this to justify heaping yet more stress on London’s lowest income households alerts you to the fact that something might be missing from your picture of what was. But then; maybe not….your belief in a geographically based “right to complain” is indicative of the myopia which allowed New Labour to ignore so much of what was evidently negative about Thatcher’s legacy here in the South as elsewhere in the nation…
Why, its not a Bank Holiday or St Margaret’s Day or Holocaust Day.
Its a normal working day for those people who have at least got some work.
Hope this funeral doesn’t set a precedent for any more like it.
@ swatantra – I think we both know who I mean here…
@ e and Dan McCurry – ok, this could get very silly, creating a North/South divide between Labour supporters. I know I was a little sarcastic in my reply, so lets call a truce eh?
Off to work now…
Im sorry but I cant see much difference except age between you & the Brixton “Idiots”, you have grown older but not up. Like the whole of what you would call “The Left” you wallow in endless nostalgia, the only difference being whether you place your “Golden Age” in 1997, 1945 or 1917.
As you haven’t put up anything against:
The destructive force Unions in the UK are.
The disastrous effect they had on traditional British Industry.
The parlous state of industrial relations.
The impact of marginal tax rates and the associated tax take.
so you have accepted my points and scurried off to wherever you’re going??
Or will you do what every other lefty does and call me a right winger.. Go on you know you want to.
@Fred Smith
Germany has always supported its own businesses; the German government as recently as 2011 was being investigated by the EC for giving aid to BMW and volskwagen http://en.mercopress.com/2011/07/13/ec-checks-into-german-government-aid-to-car-manufacturers.
The Lower Saxony State owns 20% of Volkswagen and the Volkswagen Unions are still relatively powerful; furthermore they are backed by the federal government. http://www.dw.de/merkel-affirms-support-for-volkswagen-veto/a-3665534
In addition German workers have much greater representation on boards and greater job security. This job security means that it is easier for management to introduce new, more efficient technologies. http://prospect.org/article/germanys-economic-engine-0
The key to their success is really the close link between (government funded) University research and industry This symbiosis between government funded research and high-tech manufacturing is the same model that underpinned the growth of the USA in the post-war era. Their industry relied heavily on state funding of NASA. Silicon Valley would not exist without the advances in electronic and material engineering made on the back of federal investment in NASA.
I appreciate that your argument is predicated on excessive use of strike powers by militant Unions. I am not sure of the history of this but I think you are probably right on this. Mistakes were made on both sides but the biggest mistake (which is being repeated now) was that the government did not have a long-term plan. Heavy industry was swept away because it was not efficiently run. But no thought was given to what would replace it. I believe that it was assumed that private industry would step in and fill the gap; would provide jobs for all these semi-literate men and women with very specific skills. Private industry has not filled that gap and a generation of highly-skilled (albeit specialised) people were left on the proverbial scrap-heap. I used to live near Sheffield and large parts of South Yorkshire have never recovered. I left to go to University and never went back; not everyone gets that chance.
Fred Smith, you tell the truth, the Labour party is more like a dead parrot. The idea that the state can run big enterprises as a social make work programme is ludicrous, look at France or Greece or the EU as a whole. What Margret Thatcher did was to let the workers be free from the idea that the state controlled everything, she let the workers own their own homes, demolished the state run industries and made millions shareholders in their own companies, leading to the idea the more you worked the better you were rewarded. Industries now have to be privatised under EU edict, as the French have found out when one of their steel companies when bust and the state tried to nationalise it and were told only until a buyer could be found to sell it on to.
The unions after the disasters of Heath Wilson and Callaghan governments had to be brought to heel, the elected politicians have to run the country not an unelected or unrepresentative cabal of union barons, wielding thousands of votes at a conference. The revelations by Gordievski that at least some were agents of influence for the KGB/GRU, STB or Stasi, the use of funds from a supporter of funding the IRA in their terror campaign for the furtherance of a strike that never even had a ballot for action. The stupidity of Scargill and his hard left cabal did not realise who they were up against and did expect that the Thatcher government would roll over to their demands, Ha, some chance, she planned for this, by stocking coal at the power stations, had central control of the police, the miners never stood a chance. Lions led by donkeys, on a false promise of victory. She learnt for the weakness of Heath, she aquessed the first time in 1980, but she was not prepared at that time but did prepare and plan later as she knew that it would happen again.
Margret Thatcher brought in laws that enforced union democracy, made paying the political levy optional, destroyed the closed shop system that stopped workers having employment if they did not join or belong to a union, and the nepotism that happened in places like the car factories or docks, know nobody on the inside equaled NO job. Scargill and others always said ‘our communities’ as if it belonged to them and their union influence, not the people. That is socialism/communism or fascism for you, don’t follow the party equals no job education or healthcare.
NO LABOUR PM HAS REVERSED THE LAWS THAT THE CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT PLACED ON THE STATUTE BOOKS, thankfully, strike rates have dropped to a level not seen for years.
The only people who can afford to pay union fees are the public sector, who if they went on strike most people would not notice and many in the public sector will not strike anyway unless they intimidated or are already fellow travelers from their training in the form of teacher, social work or police (who by law, cannot strike) training colleges, who are as we speak the enemy within, trying to bring in a PC attitude to society. Remember Victoria Climbie, baby Peter, Doncaster social services and as far back as Maria Cauldwell all casualties of PC.
The Labour government of Blair and Brown embraced the PFI/PPI concept, I note the unions kept their mouths shut/ did not complain when you had the disgrace that was Stafford or East Kent, where thousands of patients died needlessly and a LABOUR health secretary tried desperately not to have a PUBLIC enquirey into the Stafford case, which only happened under Lansley producing the Francis Report. Labour and compatriots in the unions, do have, in my opinion have blood on their hands. Look what happened to previous SoS for Health, Hewitt went to Boots, Milburn to Allied Healthcare, providers of MRI/CT scan services to the NHS, Reid to G4S, the only honourable one being Frank Dobson.
I was a member of a union, in this case Unison, not there and too cowardly to take on the management when staff were being bullied by management and being discriminatory in the promotion of colleagues. They were no more use than a chocolate teapot.
The Labour party, are of no use to those who wish to move on, improve their lives and generally decide for themselves what they want to achieve. Champagne socialists in the form of Miliband Balls and their cabal, Toynbee and Shoesmith, have no idea of the ambitions of people in the streets roads and avenues only of their closed world of the Westminster bubble, the Guardian readers and the areas such as Highgate and Primrose Hill.
I do hope that the Labour party is dead and buried preferably at sea in the deepest part of the ocean, ‘For all the use you have been in the name of God go’
Before the socialists attack me, my father was a miner, who was thrown out of the old NALGO for being too socialist, when he worked in social services and my mother a nurse, thankfully they saw the light and changed politically and myself I remember the three day week under Heath and the ‘Winter of Discontent’, when the only place with power was our hospital and the dead being unburied and the rise and fall of Hatton and branch 5 of the GMB in Liverpool under Militant.
Is it possible to agree with both Ian and Fred’s first comments, well I do, bob makes sense too, but as for the article I’ll go fishing and ignore the world tomorrow
bob
I applaud you and find myself in full agreement!
Well written 🙂
Hi Bob,
what I find most amusing is that so many of the misfits you see protesting on the TV are just like Ian. No real understanding of what happened: just the same thing you see all over the left – hate. The are programmed to do it and it blights their lives, they are too busy hating to actually do anything positive.
Robin I thank you for your helpful post. IMHO We have a cultural issues to overcome. Namely:
* I cannot innovate
* Other people start companies
* Hating people who are successful
* Class war
* Mutual success (German model) is foreign to most British workers
* The Poles come here and work, how many miles is that? When Tebbit said get on your bike and get a job he was vilified
The British disease is alive and well, just read Ian and Dans blog entries. The only chance Labour have is to divorce the left fully; that means a real split from the Unions.
Clr Ralph Baldwin, you may agree with his points, but his post was anything but “well-written”. Maybe you should both go back to school, you might benefit from a healthy dose of Michael Gove’s “rigour”! I wouldn’t normally be so pedantic, but if you are going to label an entire group of people “stupid”, you need to do it with text that would be worthy of more than an E grade at GCSE English.
The break-up of the strength of Unions has ensured that wages of low-income workers has failed to rise with the rest of the workforce. Only last year the average salary of CEOs rose 15%. That would never have happened had the union movement not been imasculated by Thatcher and her anti-poor, pro-rich policies. She would have brought back feudalism had she thought she could get away with it.
And I find it amusing that the Union funding of the Labour Party is so frequently criticised by Conservatives. Whatever your opinion of them, millions of low to middle income workers are willingly paid up members of Unions and it is from those honest workers where the money comes from. What’s the alternative, funding from a small group of millionaires who in return for their donations will demand to be allowed to dictate policy to suit a very wealthy minority? No, that cannot be fair, not in a democracy. What was that? That happens? And it is called the Conservative Party? How can that be fair?
But as Thatcher proved unequivocally, fairness is not in her or her successors vocabulary. And she destroyed the lives of millions to prove that.
Danny, there is nothing to stop people being educated, I went to a grammar school in the 70s, all of us that attended were working glass children, none with privilege. When in work I was more than prepared to move around the country which I did on numerous occasions.
Her policies were not anti poor versus pro rich, they were that everyone should be able to achieve the best in life by hard work and pushing on. She had the City broken up, stopped an elite trading and had anyone capable be able to do it.
The low and middle paid are usually working in the public sector, unwilling to take risk outside. The NHS typifies this, people have never worked outside and don’t see the commercial pressures of the private sector, this is why PFI/PPP under Blair and Brown were such a rip off, no experience by those who negotiated in such a world.
Danny,
I think Ralph was refeering to the content rather than the grammar. No need to attack the man when you lose the argument.
IMHO The left are completely stupid because they choose to ignore the lessons of History and choose to ignore that nobody can offer example of where their ideology works.
The break-up of the strength of Unions has ensured that Honda nad Nissan came to the UK. British Industry has modernised so that companies like ARM flourish.
CEO salaries need to be dealt with but that doesn’t mean that strong Unions screwing the UK is what we need. Your remark on feudalism is childish…. how very lefty.
You onlly have to listen to the rhetoric of Mark Serwotka, Bob Crow et al to understand why Union membership is in consistent decline. If they were so good people would be clamouring to join. At the prresent rate of decline, In 10 years they will be gone.
But the real reality is that Unions wont accept they brought the country to its knees, we needed a Thatcher and the Unions destroyed the lives of millions to prove it.
P.S. My English is crap but that does not in any away reduce the value of my points.
Well Danny, if something is well said, relevant and based upon experience and matches the experiences of many then it is well written, sadly this is blog not an english grammer contest for people with too much time on their hands. It would be a simple matter of employing Microsoft Word and pasting comments in to match your vain criteria. But you and I both know your comments are the oldest cheap political trick in the book, if you cannot attack the content, attack the message itself.
That is because you are politically illiterate and unable to address the points. I do not think the Union Leaders who have happily negotiated away the wages of their own members are doing too badly out of it, of course they have to beat their drums occasionally to show they still exist on the boundary but they are more concerned with getting richer, helping cronies over ordinary members of the public and any notion of equality and fairness. I see it every day, every day I am reminded of the blatent stupidity and hypocracy of an empty dying cause. For many years I was an idealist being used by the Corrupt Leaders of the Labour Party until I saw first hand what they actually do and who they look after in reality and of course what they really think of the people of the United Kingdom.
Anyway I believe the Labour Leader is happily and proudly joining the Thatcher Funeral showing his genuine respect for her and her One Nation beliefs, Disreali talked, Thatcher did and Milliband as man who got where he is through privilege would be a fool of a Millionaire not to identify and bond with his real friends, and they are not the common folk of Britain lol.
You should all join him 🙂
“The left are completely stupid because they choose to ignore the lessons of History and choose to ignore that nobody can offer example of where their ideology works.”
Britain. 1945 to 1970.
The US, following the Great Depression.
For all the bluster of the Tories writing here it is rightwing economic policy that is standing on the brink of collapse.
Yesterday a key plank of current rightwing economic thinking was ripped apart. A study claiming to show GDP regressed when debt was greater than 90pc of GDP was demolished by someone who simply re-visited the calculations.
It seems the Right cannot add up.
The big social advances of the 20th century were laid down by Left leaning governments, usually in the teeth of rightwing opposition. The NHS, the welfare state.
And whenever the Right tries to dismantle these achievements, all hell breaks loose, as it did under the vastly overrated (by the Right) Margaret Thatcher.
Thatcher, who lowere the UKs long run GDP growth rate, who oversaw two massive recessions and unemployment of well over three million. Thatcher who saw child poverty triple and inequality spiral out of control. Thatcher who raised numbers of welfare claimants from 2 million to 6 million. Thatcher who oversaw a doubling of crime.
Having seen the effects of militant socialism red in tooth and claw, I will fight it to my dying breath. The effects of the Labour party in Liverpool under Hamilton and Hatton has only just been relieved on the rate payers. There are still people who believe that socialism is the only creed to be followed. The same happened in Lambeth under Knight, who thankfully was thrown out of office.
We still hear of people advocating setting an illegal local council tax, please do as it would get the individuals removed from office. The local councils are in the north invariably Labour controlled by the votes of their client state, local council staff, those who will not attempt to find work or the criminal classes. Remember Labour voted for benefit cuts. Why should anybody not work who can work, where jobs are available. Blatant cronyism is endemic when we see Police and Crime Commissioners
employing their allies as yet another means of control by the entryist left.
As I stated in a previous post, that certain members of the trades unions and now we suspect that some senior Labour politicians were ‘agents of influence’ of the Soviet era intelligence services, are there any undertaking that route today, we should be told. Mr Putin is rebuilding the Soviet Union.
In the words of Margret Thatcher ‘socialism only works until it runs out of other peoples money’ which happened under Brown and Balls, at least Darling tried to do something about the deficit but had the forces of darkness unleashed against him.
As I also stated previously, I will rejoice and party when the labour party is laid to rest in the deepest ocean, on that day the people will have discovered the evils of socialism, its inefficiency, cronyism and corruption of the body and soul of the people.
Several questions arise out of the character of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral, out of the taxpayer’s bearing of its cost, out of the cancellation of Prime Minister’s Questions in order to accommodate it, and out of the silencing of Big Ben.
First, where, when, how, why, and by whom was it decided that neoliberal capitalism and its neoconservative foreign policy were now the official ideology of this State, and beyond question even on the floor of the House of Commons, the business of which has been suspended in order to glorify that ideology? Extremely prominent seats were allocated to Dick Cheney and Binyamin Netanyahu, as he calls himself. They were closer to the bier than the Queen was, or even than Lady Thatcher’s children were. Departing mourners were air-kissed at the back of the Cathedral by Tony and Cherie Blair. Obeisance was made not only by Parliament, but also by the monarchy, by the churches, by the print and broadcast media, by the Corporation of the City of London, and most especially by the Police and by the Armed Forces.
Secondly, where, when, how, why, and by whom was it decided that political office and military rank were now interchangeable, even identical? No other reasonable inference can be drawn from the burial with full military honours of a politician who was never a member of any of the Armed Forces.
Thirdly, where, when, how, why, and by whom was it decided to draw a line from the Bristol Channel to the Wash, beyond which, in relation to London, all territory has literally been alienated, and declared occupied rather than integral? In view of the first two questions, we in the Occupied Territories are well and truly bracing ourselves.
Fourthly, what would the 800 and more military personnel have been doing if this funeral had not been taking place, how could those duties have been cancelled or postponed at such short notice if at all, and how many of those personnel are expected still to be in their jobs this time next year?
Fifthly, on what would the £10 million that this funeral has cost the taxpayer otherwise have been spent, how can that spending be foregone, and what plans are in place to deal with the consequences of that foregoing?
And sixthly, when is legislation going to be brought before the House of Commons to recover those costs by levying a charge of £770 on each of the 13,000 beneficiaries of the reduction in the top rate of tax on incomes above £100,000 by Blubbing George Osborne, who is himself one of those beneficiaries?
Did anyone attend to represent the late Augusto Pinochet?
I haven’t got enough time on my hands to address all your comments, but can spare a moment to congratulate you, Cllr Ralph, on at last typing privilege correctly. I’m proud of you.
DL,
Now normally I won’t address anyone who uses the phrase “neoliberal capitalism and its neoconservative foreign policy” as I think they are probably so far up their own hole that reason is an anathema, but I’ll give it a go.
So you said nothing of any importance; my my rebuttal is…… Blah. There, stick that up your pipe and smoke it.
Danny,
there you go attacking the personality again.
BenM said stuff that means nothing.
Good article. Totally agree. Even from the grave she causes division and misery. She would be pleased. I despised this woman and everything she represented. I am with Bette Davies, “just because someone is dead, does not make them a better person”. I hope this country can now move on from this vile woman.