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My 2 pennoth
Apr. 9th, 2013 12:59 pmYesterday a Russian friend asked me how Thatcher was viewed in Britain and how she affected me personally.
Well a short answer to the first would be 'it depends who you ask!' and the second 'I loath Thatcherism' but longer answers need to be had.
There is no escaping the fact that, for better or for worse, I am a child of Thatcher. I was born 2 years after she got into power and throughout my childhood she was somehow there in the background, a hairdo like my granny's and her face wallpapered onto the 6 o'clock news every night. My parents were both Thatcher voters unsurprisingly, they were upper middle middle class (my mother's family is Tory to its constituent atoms. Dad's family were traditionally liberal, being of mercantile stock. More on that later), alarmed at the mess the country had got into during the 70s. Patriots, they applauded the Falklands endeavour and I absorbed their feelings, although these grew increasingly qualified during the course of her reign until they were glad to see her depart. Naturally when I reached the age of reason I became a radical socialist and while I am not that strident now I am still considerably to the left of my mother (though I think less so of my father).
But as I say, I am a child of Thatcher. My formative years seeing the first female PM would have given me an idea that women and men were equal. I am basically a meritocrat (one of the reasons why I so loath the present government is that it is dominated by an old Etonian elite based on their old boys network – hardly run according to the principals of their heroine!), believe in hard work, saving and not taking anything from anyone if I can help it. I don't know how far these are my own values or the values of Thatcher's Britain but I hold them nonetheless. However, I also believe that I was lucky, being born into a family which could provide and helped me as far as it could to a good start in life. Others born in 1981 were not so lucky.
And here we come to the biggest problem with Thatcherism, its lack of mercy. She proclaimed loudly that 'there is no such thing as society' when in fact there is. Thatcherism was a deeply uncaring philosophy.
'Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless.' (Samual Smiles). There is something in that, and I am no fan of the nanny state. But similarly, people do need help. Lassaiz faire economics did nothing to help the poor in the Victorian England Mrs T so admired, poverty did not begin to be solved without actual legislation and the eventual creation of the welfare state. People do need a leg up and to be taught to fish, as was done when people were permitted to buy their own council houses. But getting people on the property ladder merely drove up house prices (I doubt I'll ever be a house owner in the UK) and for those who for whatever reason didn't jump on the bandwagon? She abandoned the north and let it rot, preferring to let the market deal with everything which for much of the time it couldn't and can't as we see today. Meanwhile, although people are selfish inherently, I don't believe that encouraging this is a good thing. Independence is attractive, that's why I believe Thatcherism resonates with our national psyche, but I strongly feel it has created conditions whereby money is seen as a measure of personal worth rather than as a means of exchange.
Let us go back to the north. While undoubtedly the nationalised industries needed something doing to them I can't help but feel it was foolish to close them down altogether, Britain lost its manufacturing base, becoming a financial giant instead. But money is a chimerical thing. I am no economist but it seems bizarre to me to expect perpetual growth when fundamentally the markets depend on confidence and confidence is elusive. I cannot help but feel that money has to come from something concrete and Britain's being a net importer cannot be a good thing. Similarly, in the north there are now generations of people who have been on the dole and the negative psychological effect must be pretty strong. But as they are not middle class the educators and those in power can happily ignore them.
When she declared 'There is no such thing as society', she meant that people should use their own inner resources to help themselves. But she did not bank on the cultural and psychological barriers to that. Poverty is isolating and deadening. It cannot be cured by personal initiative alone, help must be given. Especially in the north in the 80s when there was literally no work around. People survived (I've survived on 25-30 quid a week after paying rent before now. It wasn't much fun but I did it) but is it really living? Can one think and dream and aspire while merely surviving? No. Job creation schemes for the young might have helped but one good friend of mine is a veteran of these things and according to him the standard practice was to work the young person to death while they had them and then give them the boot just before the end of the training period and have to provide them with certification and/or work.
She was quick enough to aid the Falklands, it fitted in with her jingoistic parochialism which totally failed to empathise the Chileans (her chum Pinochet helped her after all), the people of South Africa and probably did extreme damage to the Northern Irish peace process. She knew she was right and while in some cases a leader shouldn't listen, in most others she should. Her total lack of imagination and flexibility alienated vast swathes of the UK and divided the country between her supporters and her foes.
At the end of the day she wasn't a conservative. Conservatism is after all concerned with preserving the status quo, she was an old fashioned free market liberal (though very socially conservative – but that's another tale for another time!) but she changed the norms. Every subsequent Prime Minister has had to be her disciple, whether willingly (Blair) or unwillingly (Major, Brown and I believe Cameron strangely enough). They have all follwed the intellectual programme she began and I don't think that it has ultimately been to the benefit of the nation. Privatisation made logical sense for somethings but it really has been taken to absurd extremes and I fear education and the health service are going that way slowly.
I don't like the feeling of rejoicing when someone has died (honest!) but the Britain she set the conditions for is a place with no mercy for the weak an unfortunate and Disraeli would be turning in his grave to see the 2 nations.
Well a short answer to the first would be 'it depends who you ask!' and the second 'I loath Thatcherism' but longer answers need to be had.
There is no escaping the fact that, for better or for worse, I am a child of Thatcher. I was born 2 years after she got into power and throughout my childhood she was somehow there in the background, a hairdo like my granny's and her face wallpapered onto the 6 o'clock news every night. My parents were both Thatcher voters unsurprisingly, they were upper middle middle class (my mother's family is Tory to its constituent atoms. Dad's family were traditionally liberal, being of mercantile stock. More on that later), alarmed at the mess the country had got into during the 70s. Patriots, they applauded the Falklands endeavour and I absorbed their feelings, although these grew increasingly qualified during the course of her reign until they were glad to see her depart. Naturally when I reached the age of reason I became a radical socialist and while I am not that strident now I am still considerably to the left of my mother (though I think less so of my father).
But as I say, I am a child of Thatcher. My formative years seeing the first female PM would have given me an idea that women and men were equal. I am basically a meritocrat (one of the reasons why I so loath the present government is that it is dominated by an old Etonian elite based on their old boys network – hardly run according to the principals of their heroine!), believe in hard work, saving and not taking anything from anyone if I can help it. I don't know how far these are my own values or the values of Thatcher's Britain but I hold them nonetheless. However, I also believe that I was lucky, being born into a family which could provide and helped me as far as it could to a good start in life. Others born in 1981 were not so lucky.
And here we come to the biggest problem with Thatcherism, its lack of mercy. She proclaimed loudly that 'there is no such thing as society' when in fact there is. Thatcherism was a deeply uncaring philosophy.
'Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless.' (Samual Smiles). There is something in that, and I am no fan of the nanny state. But similarly, people do need help. Lassaiz faire economics did nothing to help the poor in the Victorian England Mrs T so admired, poverty did not begin to be solved without actual legislation and the eventual creation of the welfare state. People do need a leg up and to be taught to fish, as was done when people were permitted to buy their own council houses. But getting people on the property ladder merely drove up house prices (I doubt I'll ever be a house owner in the UK) and for those who for whatever reason didn't jump on the bandwagon? She abandoned the north and let it rot, preferring to let the market deal with everything which for much of the time it couldn't and can't as we see today. Meanwhile, although people are selfish inherently, I don't believe that encouraging this is a good thing. Independence is attractive, that's why I believe Thatcherism resonates with our national psyche, but I strongly feel it has created conditions whereby money is seen as a measure of personal worth rather than as a means of exchange.
Let us go back to the north. While undoubtedly the nationalised industries needed something doing to them I can't help but feel it was foolish to close them down altogether, Britain lost its manufacturing base, becoming a financial giant instead. But money is a chimerical thing. I am no economist but it seems bizarre to me to expect perpetual growth when fundamentally the markets depend on confidence and confidence is elusive. I cannot help but feel that money has to come from something concrete and Britain's being a net importer cannot be a good thing. Similarly, in the north there are now generations of people who have been on the dole and the negative psychological effect must be pretty strong. But as they are not middle class the educators and those in power can happily ignore them.
When she declared 'There is no such thing as society', she meant that people should use their own inner resources to help themselves. But she did not bank on the cultural and psychological barriers to that. Poverty is isolating and deadening. It cannot be cured by personal initiative alone, help must be given. Especially in the north in the 80s when there was literally no work around. People survived (I've survived on 25-30 quid a week after paying rent before now. It wasn't much fun but I did it) but is it really living? Can one think and dream and aspire while merely surviving? No. Job creation schemes for the young might have helped but one good friend of mine is a veteran of these things and according to him the standard practice was to work the young person to death while they had them and then give them the boot just before the end of the training period and have to provide them with certification and/or work.
She was quick enough to aid the Falklands, it fitted in with her jingoistic parochialism which totally failed to empathise the Chileans (her chum Pinochet helped her after all), the people of South Africa and probably did extreme damage to the Northern Irish peace process. She knew she was right and while in some cases a leader shouldn't listen, in most others she should. Her total lack of imagination and flexibility alienated vast swathes of the UK and divided the country between her supporters and her foes.
At the end of the day she wasn't a conservative. Conservatism is after all concerned with preserving the status quo, she was an old fashioned free market liberal (though very socially conservative – but that's another tale for another time!) but she changed the norms. Every subsequent Prime Minister has had to be her disciple, whether willingly (Blair) or unwillingly (Major, Brown and I believe Cameron strangely enough). They have all follwed the intellectual programme she began and I don't think that it has ultimately been to the benefit of the nation. Privatisation made logical sense for somethings but it really has been taken to absurd extremes and I fear education and the health service are going that way slowly.
I don't like the feeling of rejoicing when someone has died (honest!) but the Britain she set the conditions for is a place with no mercy for the weak an unfortunate and Disraeli would be turning in his grave to see the 2 nations.
