Thatcher: Don’t let them rewrite history!
Ed Miliband MP, Leader of the Opposition, said: “I send my deep condolences to Lady Thatcher’s family, in particular Mark and Carol Thatcher.
“She will be remembered as a unique figure. She reshaped the politics of a whole generation. She was Britain’s first woman Prime Minister. She moved the centre ground of British politics and was a huge figure on the world stage.
“The Labour Party disagreed with much of what she did and she will always remain a controversial figure. But we can disagree and also greatly respect her political achievements and her personal strength.
“She also defined the politics of the 1980s. David Cameron, Nick Clegg and I all grew up in a politics shaped by Lady Thatcher. We took different paths but with her as the crucial figure of that era.
[In contrast] Ken Loach, promoter of new Left Unity movement stated: Margaret Thatcher was the most divisive and destructive Prime Minister of modern times. Mass Unemployment, factory closures, communities destroyed – this is her legacy. She was a fighter and her enemy was the British working class. Her victories were aided by the politically corrupt leaders of the Labour Party and of many Trades Unions. It is because of policies begun by her that we are in this mess today.Other prime ministers have followed her path, notably Tony Blair. She was the organ grinder, he was the monkey. Remember she called Mandela a terrorist and took tea with the torturer and murderer Pinochet. How should we honour her? Let’s privatise her funeral. Put it out to competitive tender and accept the cheapest bid. It’s what she would have wanted.
Here we have one leader who is participating with minor, unvoiced criticisms, in the mystification of history that contributes to preventing working people knowing the truth about the past and how it has created the present. Then there is another who in a few straightforward sentences explains the role Thatcher played as a leader of her class and how the Labour leadership, particularly Tony Blair, collaborated in embedding Thatcherite neo-liberalism as the ‘common sense’ of British political life.
It is strangely appropriate that the successful impact of Ken’s film, the Spirit of ’45, has taken place at the very time of Thatcher’s demise. The importance of the social gains of the workers’ movement is re-asserted while everyone is talking about the person most responsible for leading the ruling class offensive to reverse those gains now deemed too costly for the profit-making of the capitalist system. Furthermore the current welfare debate, with the obscene manipulation of the Philpott domestic violence case to justify further cuts, fits entirely within the continuity of that offensive. It is no surprise that Cameron, abetted by most of the press and TV, will milk the whole event to repeatedly present a version of history that identifies even social democratic gains, embodied in state social welfare or collective provision, as a barrier to economic growth, individual opportunity and freedom.
Unsurprisingly the Daily Mail is collating all the ‘hateful’ comments against Thatcher including news of people publicly partying. Tory MPs are denouncing anyone ‘celebrating’ as drunken louts and even Tom Watson, the Labour MP and hammer of Murdoch, has warned off the left from criticising. If Cameron and the political class had for one moment dealt with the passing of Thatcher as a private matter and gave simple condolences there might be some sort of justification for a temporary political truce. However from the start Cameron referred to Thatcher dealing with the trade union barons and being a great defender of freedom.
Every so-called documentary history of her life, endlessly repeated on TV, assumes a narrative that is intensely ideological. For example, we are always told about the chaos of the winter of discontent (1978/9) caused by the unions who supposedly ruled the land and the lack of competitiveness of British industry. No trade unionists from the time are ever interviewed to explain why they were in struggle you just get images of undug graves and blokes huddled around braziers. No links are ever systematically made between the current recession where the weight of the financial sector in the British economy, as Will Hutton in the Observer is always pointing out, actually further exacerbates it.
Thatcher was the first to deregulate the financial sector and let any temporary loss-making industry go to the wall. What the media does not explain is that Thatcher was extremely useful for the ruling class because she understood better than some of its more patrician representatives such as Ted Heath, what the class struggle was all about.
Imbibing the theories of Hayek and others she knew that while union barons were clearly not running the country the basic level of working class resistance on a day to day basis had become an obstacle to re-establishing a higher rate of profit. She knew that capital had to re-organise itself by destroying some of its industries which had too low a rate of profit. Above all she knew that all this was not a technical operation but required political will and an iron fist. Hence she organised the police in a new way to effectively fight the miners. She knew something about the relationship of class forces that was missing from the mindset of the whole reformist labour or trade union leadership (apart from the honourable exception of Scargill who perhaps had other failings). The latter certainly was correct when he said that the working class needed the sort of vigorous leadership that Thatcher gave to her class.
If working people’s reaction includes a bit of tasteless “celebration,” which can be a bit unpolitical, then so be it. Don’t ever think she was a tasteful, caring human being who gave a toss about what political enemies thought of her. If only some of our so-called leaders had had some of the same steel during key events like the miners’ strike.
Remember, Kinnock used Scargill’s tactics as an excuse and cover to refuse any real official support from Labour for the miners. Not a small matter since the whole Thatcher legacy hangs much more on the defeat of the miners than anything else such as the Falklands war or privatisations. Blairism was solidly based on those defeats and his selling of a plausible ‘modernising’ ideology—ditching clause IV which on paper still committed Labour to nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy.
Despite her condemnation of feminism as “poison” and her refusal to support any demands furthering women’s liberation or equality the objective fact that she was the first woman prime minister undeniably objectively shifted ideology about the role women could play in politics or public life. Just as Obama, despite his murderous drone policies internationally, his failure to really reform health provision and the relatively unchanged position of African Americans, has changed the way Black people see themselves and white people see Black people in politics. History and politics develop in a messy, paradoxical way sometimes.
During the time running up to the £8 million quasi-state funeral, the left should continue to participate in all the discussions on the Thatcher legacy and most important focus on Thatcherism rather than the person alone. There are breaches in the hagiography—there is a rumour that the Telegraph or Mail had to close down the comments on one of their articles because of the abuse it had received.
The Twittersphere and the web have thousands of people refusing to share the official view. The legacy is still active and is seen in the continued rule of the banks and the further dismantling of the post-war settlement. Opposition to Thatcher can be linked to campaigning against the Bedroom tax or building support for re-appropriating the best of the Spirit of 45 in initiatives like the June 22nd Peoples Assembly. Building Left Unity (leftunity.org), alongside Ken Loach and 7000 others as a new non-sectarian focus for the radical class struggle left, is another useful way forward.
Those of us who lived through Thatcher’s premiership have a responsibility to counter the travesty of the historical record being presented by the pundits and politicians on the TV, Press and Radio. Personally, I will never forget how long the miners struggled and the strength of the support groups up and down the country. It is the human connection and its memory that can resist the vicissitudes of history and keep the flame burning for new generations.