Thatcher!
She is 80 this week. The woman who put a generation on the dole. It was a necessary evil apparently, which wouldn’t be so bad, if she hadn’t proceeded to blame the unemployed for their plight. It’s a startling fact that no one leaving school in the 80s got a job. In fact, they didn’t find employment until Tony Blair came to power in 1997. They don’t tell you that in the Daily Mail.
Putting half the working class of Britain on the dole had the perverse effect of making her more popular with the other half. Especially as she gave council tenants the right to buy their own homes. Anyone with a job became a tory. Then they cursed the unemployed, calling them scroungers. There’s nothing like giving one person another to look down upon to create a feeling of superiority. Very divisive, Mrs T, that was her great strength. Next time some lefty tells you that the Labour Party deserted the working class, point out that the working class deserted Labour first.
Yes, all socialists in Britain are middle-class. Blighty had firsthand experience of this in the 80s when, spurred on by hatred for this week’s birthday girl, he became a Labour Party activist. All the activists who weren’t school teachers or office workers were disabled in some way that you couldn’t quite pin down. None of them were semi-skilled engineers or bus drivers. And they got a rude awakening going around estates and facing rants about not wanting ‘a family of ten pakis living next door to me thank you very much’.
The current Labour Party get a lot of stick from celebrity socialists like Rory Bremner and Will Self. But how would they know anything about the working-class? Will Self, public schoolboy, educated in the classics, became a heroin addict and dropped out, before becoming an enfant terrible on the Observer and writing wordy books that no working-class person would ever read. His audience is strictly bourgeois. He wouldn’t stand two minutes in a working mens club. Blighty has news for him: working-class aren’t socialist, they vote for Maggie Thatcher or the BNP.
Thankfully Labour learnt from their experience during the Thatcher years. It dawned upon the pragmatists among them that socialism would never get them elected. They also realised that some of the policies of Thatcherism might have been necessary. It’s a shame she didn’t show more compassion for all those victims she created, however, instead of demonising them. She owes a debt of gratitude to the five million unemployed. Where would she be without them?
Posted: October 14th, 2005 under Commentary.
Comments: 18
Comments
Comment from Dan
Time: October 14, 2005, 1:49 pm
Thatcher, what a scumbag!
However, in her defence at least she was always upfront about her politics and ideology ie privatisation, Social inequality etc.
Blair and New Labour try to hide behind spin and dodgy ‘Social Democrat’ facade whilst soft peddling many of the same conservative policies and invading countries for their oil.
Who’d have thought in the 1980s that a Labour Govt would introduce tutition fees and so quickly?
Comment from Blighty
Time: October 14, 2005, 2:29 pm
Hi Dan. Don’t forget that new Labour were ‘new’ before they were elected to office. That’s why they were elected. Old Labour were unelectable. As for tuition fees, somebody has to pay for it, why shouldn’t the people who benefit?
Comment from miltbogs
Time: October 14, 2005, 2:58 pm
You’ve got some great posts here. 
Comment from Blighty
Time: October 14, 2005, 5:56 pm
Hi Milt, glad you enjoyed them!
Comment from Gerald
Time: October 15, 2005, 10:51 am
She will burn in the eternal fires of hades, and she deserves worse.
Comment from Blighty
Time: October 15, 2005, 10:59 am
Not a fan then Gerald? 
Comment from JustSue
Time: October 15, 2005, 3:13 pm
Speaking as one of Maggie’s Millions…yes, I was on one of her school leavers offered a place on one of her YTS schemes in 1983. I have to admit I was somewhat shocked in later years to see her rise in popularity and the “Baroness” title…egads. Maybe I missed out on the mass brainwashing when I left England for good in 1987. I certainly don’t have any great affection or admiration for the woman. The main reason we left? No jobs back home.
Comment from Blighty
Time: October 15, 2005, 4:23 pm
Hi Sue, sorry you had to leave for work. You’d get a job nowadays. Unemployment is relatively low here, especially compared with many other European countries.
Comment from Dan
Time: October 15, 2005, 6:18 pm
How could I forget the difference between New Labour and Old Labour. I remember the ‘good old days’ of Michael Foot!
‘New Labour’ was more electable but did anybody outside the seasoned politcal observers expect the direction Blair would take the party and country ?! Thatcher and her cronies were always upfront about where they wanted to go…
Comment from frobisher
Time: October 17, 2005, 10:49 am
I absolutely detested the woman when in power. But the patronising spin style of Government we have now raises my hackles. I feel ashamed that I voted Labour, but are there any alternatives?
Comment from Blighty
Time: October 17, 2005, 11:19 am
Hi Frobisher, I think Labour get a bad press. This country has improved during the last decade, especially in the north. The 80s were terrible.
Comment from weenie
Time: October 18, 2005, 1:53 pm
There’s good things and bad things about the Thatcher years and people usually only remember the bad.
As a child, I recall lots of industrial strikes during Labour rule in the late 70s before Thatcher took over - the smell in the summer during the bin men’s strike is still quite memorable. I was scared of the rats that were attracted to all the spilled rubbish bags piling up in the streets. It was grim.
And as for Thatcher’s terrible ideology, well New Labour/Blair obviously couldn’t think of anything different or else they wouldn’t have carried them forward with a new spin on it. Don’t we still have privatisation and social inequality?
With out-of-control immigration, spin hiding truth, sky-high petrol prices, getting involved in other people’s wars, criminals getting away with it, a whole generation of ASBO-ridden individuals unable and unwilling to work, will people remember the Blair years with fond memories during his 80th birthday??
Or will they too be drawing Hitler tashes on his photo? LOL!
Comment from Blighty
Time: October 18, 2005, 3:21 pm
If the Labour Party are carrying on Thatcher’s ideology you’ll be happy about it presumably. As for those individuals unwilling to work nowadays, perhaps they were brought up to believe in living off welfare by parents who were all chucked on the dole by Maggie. She’s to blame for the ASBO generation as much as Blair. There’s no such thing as society, remember.
Give me 2005 before 1985 any time.
Comment from Bloom
Time: October 23, 2005, 4:02 pm
I’m awaiting Thatcher’s death as I’m planning a street party. Good blog by the way.
Comment from Blighty
Time: October 23, 2005, 8:12 pm
Hi Bloom, glad you like it. Will there be plentiful wine at your Thatcher party? If so I might drop by.
Comment from Andrew Milner
Time: October 30, 2005, 12:29 pm
I loved the ’70’s and ’80’s. Was in Japan making my fortune in the colonies. Sold up in early ‘93 and back to recession, repossession UK. Became disenchanted with UK (who didn’t) so back to Japan at the end of ‘04. When I leave in a country the economy goes down, when I arrive it improves. Remember, there are no bad investments, only bad timing. Thinking of moving to Laos, so if any of you RP boys and girls fancy opening a language school in downtown Vientiane …
Comment from Alex
Time: November 22, 2005, 5:32 pm
Thatcher was the greatest Primeminister of all time. It is sickening that some Communists still like to attack a 80 year old woman, get over it. She did good things too
Comment from Jono Hackett
Time: December 12, 2005, 2:39 pm
Thatcher? the best pm ever? Are you joking?
Clement Atlee was responsible for the biggest social welfare change ever to hit this country, it was then the uk that strided forward and showed the rest of the world how to build their society, and guess what, everyone still copys the model that Atlee laid out.
He is by far the greatest PM we have ever had.
No one had better say Churchill, he was an awefull PM he couldnt run the country hyence his track record after the war, and during the war, though he took the credit Samms ran the war effort.
ATLEE!!!!
haha
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