It Was 30 Years Ago Today...

[Phil D. Rolls]

Since Thatcher became Prime Minister. Some say she changed society forever, I say she was kicking at an open door. From the end of the second war on, there was an attitude growing in the UK that it was "every man for himself", all Thatcher did was convert that into votes.

Not saying that every man for himself is right, far from it, but I wish people would take some responsibility for the way they aided and abetted that woman. The dewy eyed concept that we lived in tight communities and everyone helped each other isn't totally true.

Thoughts?

[hibiedude]

Off course we now live in better times, where everyone has a job/ own there own house/ we live in better times with no crime and everyone is respectful off there neighbours and the government take special care off there citizens.

I think it's time to up my medication :dizzy:

[CropleyWasGod]

Since Thatcher became Prime Minister. Some say she changed society forever, I say she was kicking at an open door. From the end of the second war on, there was an attitude growing in the UK that it was "every man for himself", all Thatcher did was convert that into votes.

Not saying that every man for himself is right, far from it, but I wish people would take some responsibility for the way they aided and abetted that woman. The dewy eyed concept that we lived in tight communities and everyone helped each other isn't totally true.

Thoughts?

I can understand that FR. When MT came to power, I was starting to build my family etc., and was fairly secure in my job. I had the underlying certainty that, no matter how I voted (and, FTR, I never voted Tory), the Tories would get in and I would be better off financially. Thus I could salve my conscience by shouting for her removal, as well as (and more importantly IMO) providing for my family.

[Dashing Bob S]

Since Thatcher became Prime Minister. Some say she changed society forever, I say she was kicking at an open door. From the end of the second war on, there was an attitude growing in the UK that it was "every man for himself", all Thatcher did was convert that into votes.

Not saying that every man for himself is right, far from it, but I wish people would take some responsibility for the way they aided and abetted that woman. The dewy eyed concept that we lived in tight communities and everyone helped each other isn't totally true.

Thoughts?

Yes, I can go along with that. The sort of social and economic changes we had been and continue to experience since the second world war, made it inevitable that somebody her and Blair would come to ascendancy.

The monetarist direction was started by the Callaghan government in 1976, when Denis Healy went to the IMF.

As you said, there was a selfishness and sense of entitlement that had predominantly been the presevere of the rich, but the unions had tried to apporopriate for the working classes.

What Thatcher did was to smash organised labour, to ensure that only the very rich or the ruthlessly acquisitive could benefit by our increasing movement away from community and towards personal greed.

It's easy to demonise somebody as hateful, compassionless and class-conscious as Thatcher, but basically, she was giving us what most of us wanted.

[--------]

Yes, I can go along with that. The sort of social and economic changes we had been and continue to experience since the second world war, made it inevitable that somebody her and Blair would come to ascendancy.

The monetarist direction was started by the Callaghan government in 1976, when Denis Healy went to the IMF.

As you said, there was a selfishness and sense of entitlement that had predominantly been the presevere of the rich, but the unions had tried to apporopriate for the working classes.

What Thatcher did was to smash organised labour, to ensure that only the very rich or the ruthlessly acquisitive could benefit by our increasing movement away from community and towards personal greed.

It's easy to demonise somebody as hateful, compassionless and class-conscious as Thatcher, but basically, she was giving us what most of us wanted.


I never thought I'd say this, but it's been downhill all the way since her removal.

Jings! Just how bad does that make Brown? :shocked:

[Phil D. Rolls]

I never thought I'd say this, but it's been downhill all the way since her removal.

Jings! Just how bad does that make Brown? :shocked:

I have to disagree. Granted it hasn't panned out the way we had hoped, but Labour have attempted (badly) to try and create a fairer society. Everywhere I go, I see new schools getting built, and the same applies to hospitals. I accept that PFI is farcical, but at least these things are getting done - Thatcher just abandoned society.

[--------]

I have to disagree. Granted it hasn't panned out the way we had hoped, but Labour have attempted (badly) to try and create a fairer society. Everywhere I go, I see new schools getting built, and the same applies to hospitals. I accept that PFI is farcical, but at least these things are getting done - Thatcher just abandoned society.


I was thinking personally - Grey Man, Bliar, Creepy Gordo.....

But I take your point. :devil:

[Phil D. Rolls]

I was thinking personally - Grey Man, Bliar, Creepy Gordo.....

But I take your point. :devil:

Brown, is an inept bungler, who has been so sheltered from reality that he hasn't got a clue how people percieve him. Take his YouTube (never more appropriate) videos, either someone has set him up, or he truly believes that grinning like that is going to win him votes.

[Betty Boop]

Brown, is an inept bungler, who has been so sheltered from reality that he hasn't got a clue how people percieve him. Take his YouTube (never more appropriate) videos, either someone has set him up, or he truly believes that grinning like that is going to win him votes.

His youtube video was an embarassment, he reminded me of Max Headroom. :greengrin

[hibsbollah]

I have to disagree. Granted it hasn't panned out the way we had hoped, but Labour have attempted (badly) to try and create a fairer society. Everywhere I go, I see new schools getting built, and the same applies to hospitals. I accept that PFI is farcical, but at least these things are getting done - Thatcher just abandoned society.

Agree with that when it comes to domestic policy, Labour has done some good; minimum wage, tax credits, free nursery places. Free entry to museums and art galleries is also something that is often forgotten about and the Tories would never have done. Its the Labour govts foreign policy that has disappointed me more:boo hoo:I wont be voting for them, regretfully.

[Phil D. Rolls]

Agree with that when it comes to domestic policy, Labour has done some good; minimum wage, tax credits, free nursery places. Free entry to museums and art galleries is also something that is often forgotten about and the Tories would never have done. Its the Labour govts foreign policy that has disappointed me more:boo hoo:I wont be voting for them, regretfully.

Won't be voting for them either, as I see UK issues having less and relevance to me. As a potential NHS Employee, devolved issues are more important to me.

I think it is the abject failure of the numpties they put forward for the Scottish Parliament that has brought home to me how useless they are.

[GhostofBolivar]

I have to disagree. Granted it hasn't panned out the way we had hoped, but Labour have attempted (badly) to try and create a fairer society. Everywhere I go, I see new schools getting built, and the same applies to hospitals. I accept that PFI is farcical, but at least these things are getting done - Thatcher just abandoned society.

The scions of New Labour prostituted their party and it's roots, not out of some ideological shift or because they genuinely believed it was a better way, but because the old way hadn't delivered power. They willingly got into bed with greed, avarice and the worst aspects of capitalist culture. They've given us one of the most authoritarian governments in memory and, on top of that, one which has no respect for the rule of law and democracy. And when it all went wrong they stuck their collective head in the sand and hoped it'd all go away.

They've led us into two colonialist wars, killing, torturing and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of innocent people. They've gone out to destroy everything that they proclaimed they stood for in 1997 - justice, human rights, "an ethical dimension." They've shown themselves to be as immoral and despicable; and held themselves to be as above the law and the will of the people as any tyrant or dictator. They prostrated themselves before the credo that might is right and the belief that they can do to you anything you can't stop them from doing. They're as hollow and soulless as any government this country has known.

And through it all, after all the lies and deceit, their response has been that history will prove them right if we just trust them. That our children's future, the one they've made inestimably more unstable, will thank them for their hard decisions and the brave new world they've created.

Well **** them. If there was justice, they'd find themselves in Camp X-Ray tomorrow.

[bawheid]

The scions of New Labour prostituted their party and it's roots, not out of some ideological shift or because they genuinely believed it was a better way, but because the old way hadn't delivered power. They willingly got into bed with greed, avarice and the worst aspects of capitalist culture. They've given us one of the most authoritarian governments in memory and, on top of that, one which has no respect for the rule of law and democracy. And when it all went wrong they stuck their collective head in the sand and hoped it'd all go away.

They've led us into two colonialist wars, killing, torturing and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of innocent people. They've gone out to destroy everything that they proclaimed they stood for in 1997 - justice, human rights, "an ethical dimension." They've shown themselves to be as immoral and despicable; and held themselves to be as above the law and the will of the people as any tyrant or dictator. They prostrated themselves before the credo that might is right and the belief that they can do to you anything you can't stop them from doing. They're as hollow and soulless as any government this country has known.

And through it all, after all the lies and deceit, their response has been that history will prove them right if we just trust them. That our children's future, the one they've made inestimably more unstable, will thank them for their hard decisions and the brave new world they've created.

Well **** them. If there was justice, they'd find themselves in Camp X-Ray tomorrow.

You're correct of course, but I'd still vote for them over the Tories, if there were only two parties.

[hibsbollah]

Good article here about the Thatcher legacy and some of the myths of the 1970s
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/06/margaret-thatcher-election-new-labour

For the shrinking band of true believers, the ­anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's 1979 election couldn't have come at a worse time. After years in which the political and media establishment could be relied on to parrot the tale that the former Tory leader did what had to be done – however painful – to put Britain back on track, her reputation is now in ruins. It's barely 18 months since Gordon Brown felt it necessary to have his picture taken with the one-time scourge of Labour Britain and praise her as someone who "saw the need for change".

Not a mistake, even in his most self-destructive moments, the prime minister would make today. In the wake of the implosion of the financial free-for-all and corporate engorgement she unleashed, the Thatcherite diehards are struggling to rescue her name from a legacy of greed, entrenched inequality and economic failure. Her "principles of capitalism are under question (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/89c0ff6e-380c-11de-9211-00144feabdc0.html)," wails Maurice Saatchi, the man who gave us the "Labour isn't working" slogan in 1979 – before his heroine tripled unemployment. A Billy Elliot version of history has made Thatcher a "boo-word in British politics (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/margaret-thatcher/5268850/Blond-on-blonde-Mrs-Ts-unassailable-legacy.html)", London's mayor Boris Johnson bleats.

If only young people knew, insist the irreconcilables, what a basket-case Britain was in the 1970s – an "offshore banana republic", a land of perpetual power cuts, strikes and unburied bodies – they would understand why ­millions had to lose their jobs, industries and communities had to be destroyed and billions had to be handed over to the wealthy.

Britain in the 70s, the high Tory Simon Heffer wrote last week (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/simonheffer/5237817/You-had-to-be-there-to-grasp-the-scale-of-Margaret-Thatchers-revolution.html), felt like the Soviet bloc, where men with "bad teeth and ill-fitting suits" (union leaders) called the shots in public life.

You'd never guess from all this fevered snobbery and retrospective catastrophism that average economic growth in Britain in the dismal 1970s, at 2.4% a year, was almost exactly the same as in the sunny Thatcherite 1980s – though a good deal more fairly distributed – and significantly higher than in the free-market boom years of the last two decades.

Nor would you imagine that there was far greater equality and social mobility than after Thatcher got to work. Or that, while industrial conflict was often sharp in the 1970s, there was nothing to match the violence of the riots and industrial confrontations of Thatcher's Britain.

What is true, of course, is that the ­seventies saw a crisis of economic power, in which the labour movement was strong enough to block attacks on workers' interests but not politicised enough to push through an alternative to the failing corporatist model of the postwar years. That's why the assault on trade unionism was much harsher and the lurch to neoliberalism came earlier in Britain than elsewhere in the advanced capitalist world.

Labour paved the way for Thatcherism with the then prime minister Jim Callaghan's public conversion to ­monetarism in 1976 and the most savage public spending and real wage cuts since the war. That in turn triggered the much mythologised Winter of Discontent – an entirely avoidable revolt of low-paid public service workers against a self-defeating determination to beat an ­inflationary crisis at their expense.

Bolstered by the consequent schism in the Labour party and a timely war in the south Atlantic, Thatcher proceeded to crush the resistance of the unions and solve the "who rules" question that had done for her Tory predecessor, Ted Heath. The result was dramatic, not only in the huge boost to inequality and the income of the well-off, but also in the US-style decline in the share of GDP going to wages and salaries – which fell from a peak of 65% in 1975 to 53% last year – as corporate profits swelled.

That helps explain why Thatcher's cheerleaders and the country's wider elite are convinced her years in power and her legacy of deregulation and privatisation have been a feast of general prosperity, even when that's not remotely borne out by the facts. For while the issue of social power was settled for at least a generation and industry restructured in the corporate interest, the great leap forward promised for the economy never materialised.

It's not just that conventional growth has been sluggish over the last two decades. So have investment, ­productivity and manufacturing, while the quintessentially Thatcherite ­housing and finance boom fostered by her New Labour successors has driven the ­economy into a slump, discrediting the ideology that underpinned it in the process.

Who now believes it "had to happen" like this? Certainly not the British people, to judge by recent opinion polls. But despite the crash, the Tory-New Labour neoliberal consensus that has been Thatcher's greatest political legacy staggers on. As the former chancellor Geoffrey Howe said on her 80th birthday: "The real triumph was to have transformed not just one party, but two."

In his first couple of years as Tory leader, David Cameron distanced himself from Thatcherism, and the shadow chancellor George Osborne continues to nod in the direction of "compassionate Conservatism" with his announcement in the Guardian today that he is linking up with the once left-leaning "progressive thinktank" Demos (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/07/george-osborne-demos-conservatives-spending).

But the traffic has increasingly been in the opposite direction since the crisis went critical, as the Tory leadership has demanded ever deeper cuts in public spending and championed far greater market-driven privatisation of schools – while surveys of Conservative candidates show Cameron's new Commons army will be unreconstructedly Thatcherite if the Tories win the election. Meanwhile, even as the slump has driven the Brown government towards more social democratic policies, from state intervention to progressive taxation, it remains hobbled by its Thatcher inheritance, most strikingly in its obsessive bid to part-privatise Royal Mail.

The fact is the historical era that began in 1979 followed a prolonged period of crisis and the gradual emergence of a powerful intellectual current around the New Right. The current crisis, by contrast, erupted into a comparative political vacuum – which is why Thatcher's former private secretary Charles Powell still feels able to insist (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6206835.ece?openComment=true) that the "Thatcher settlement remains largely intact". But that settlement has demonstrably failed. A "sea-change in politics", of the kind that Callaghan ­privately identified in the last days of the 1979 general election campaign, is once again taking place. Whoever grasps that must eventually shape the politics of the years to come.

[LiverpoolHibs]

Good article here about the Thatcher legacy and some of the myths of the 1970s
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/06/margaret-thatcher-election-new-labour

For the shrinking band of true believers, the *anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's 1979 election couldn't have come at a worse time. After years in which the political and media establishment could be relied on to parrot the tale that the former Tory leader did what had to be done – however painful – to put Britain back on track, her reputation is now in ruins. It's barely 18 months since Gordon Brown felt it necessary to have his picture taken with the one-time scourge of Labour Britain and praise her as someone who "saw the need for change".

Not a mistake, even in his most self-destructive moments, the prime minister would make today. In the wake of the implosion of the financial free-for-all and corporate engorgement she unleashed, the Thatcherite diehards are struggling to rescue her name from a legacy of greed, entrenched inequality and economic failure. Her "principles of capitalism are under question (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/89c0ff6e-380c-11de-9211-00144feabdc0.html)," wails Maurice Saatchi, the man who gave us the "Labour isn't working" slogan in 1979 – before his heroine tripled unemployment. A Billy Elliot version of history has made Thatcher a "boo-word in British politics (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/margaret-thatcher/5268850/Blond-on-blonde-Mrs-Ts-unassailable-legacy.html)", London's mayor Boris Johnson bleats.

If only young people knew, insist the irreconcilables, what a basket-case Britain was in the 1970s – an "offshore banana republic", a land of perpetual power cuts, strikes and unburied bodies – they would understand why *millions had to lose their jobs, industries and communities had to be destroyed and billions had to be handed over to the wealthy.

Britain in the 70s, the high Tory Simon Heffer wrote last week (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/simonheffer/5237817/You-had-to-be-there-to-grasp-the-scale-of-Margaret-Thatchers-revolution.html), felt like the Soviet bloc, where men with "bad teeth and ill-fitting suits" (union leaders) called the shots in public life.

You'd never guess from all this fevered snobbery and retrospective catastrophism that average economic growth in Britain in the dismal 1970s, at 2.4% a year, was almost exactly the same as in the sunny Thatcherite 1980s – though a good deal more fairly distributed – and significantly higher than in the free-market boom years of the last two decades.

Nor would you imagine that there was far greater equality and social mobility than after Thatcher got to work. Or that, while industrial conflict was often sharp in the 1970s, there was nothing to match the violence of the riots and industrial confrontations of Thatcher's Britain.

What is true, of course, is that the *seventies saw a crisis of economic power, in which the labour movement was strong enough to block attacks on workers' interests but not politicised enough to push through an alternative to the failing corporatist model of the postwar years. That's why the assault on trade unionism was much harsher and the lurch to neoliberalism came earlier in Britain than elsewhere in the advanced capitalist world.

Labour paved the way for Thatcherism with the then prime minister Jim Callaghan's public conversion to *monetarism in 1976 and the most savage public spending and real wage cuts since the war. That in turn triggered the much mythologised Winter of Discontent – an entirely avoidable revolt of low-paid public service workers against a self-defeating determination to beat an *inflationary crisis at their expense.

Bolstered by the consequent schism in the Labour party and a timely war in the south Atlantic, Thatcher proceeded to crush the resistance of the unions and solve the "who rules" question that had done for her Tory predecessor, Ted Heath. The result was dramatic, not only in the huge boost to inequality and the income of the well-off, but also in the US-style decline in the share of GDP going to wages and salaries – which fell from a peak of 65% in 1975 to 53% last year – as corporate profits swelled.

That helps explain why Thatcher's cheerleaders and the country's wider elite are convinced her years in power and her legacy of deregulation and privatisation have been a feast of general prosperity, even when that's not remotely borne out by the facts. For while the issue of social power was settled for at least a generation and industry restructured in the corporate interest, the great leap forward promised for the economy never materialised.

It's not just that conventional growth has been sluggish over the last two decades. So have investment, *productivity and manufacturing, while the quintessentially Thatcherite *housing and finance boom fostered by her New Labour successors has driven the *economy into a slump, discrediting the ideology that underpinned it in the process.

Who now believes it "had to happen" like this? Certainly not the British people, to judge by recent opinion polls. But despite the crash, the Tory-New Labour neoliberal consensus that has been Thatcher's greatest political legacy staggers on. As the former chancellor Geoffrey Howe said on her 80th birthday: "The real triumph was to have transformed not just one party, but two."

In his first couple of years as Tory leader, David Cameron distanced himself from Thatcherism, and the shadow chancellor George Osborne continues to nod in the direction of "compassionate Conservatism" with his announcement in the Guardian today that he is linking up with the once left-leaning "progressive thinktank" Demos (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/07/george-osborne-demos-conservatives-spending).

But the traffic has increasingly been in the opposite direction since the crisis went critical, as the Tory leadership has demanded ever deeper cuts in public spending and championed far greater market-driven privatisation of schools – while surveys of Conservative candidates show Cameron's new Commons army will be unreconstructedly Thatcherite if the Tories win the election. Meanwhile, even as the slump has driven the Brown government towards more social democratic policies, from state intervention to progressive taxation, it remains hobbled by its Thatcher inheritance, most strikingly in its obsessive bid to part-privatise Royal Mail.

The fact is the historical era that began in 1979 followed a prolonged period of crisis and the gradual emergence of a powerful intellectual current around the New Right. The current crisis, by contrast, erupted into a comparative political vacuum – which is why Thatcher's former private secretary Charles Powell still feels able to insist (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6206835.ece?openComment=true) that the "Thatcher settlement remains largely intact". But that settlement has demonstrably failed. A "sea-change in politics", of the kind that Callaghan *privately identified in the last days of the 1979 general election campaign, is once again taking place. Whoever grasps that must eventually shape the politics of the years to come.

Seamus Milne really is top notch. Great article.

[hibsbollah]

Seamus Milne really is top notch. Great article.

Yep. I had no idea growth rates in the 1970s were the same as in the 80s. You'd never guess by the way the decades are portrayed by the media establishment:agree: