Embracing Thatcher?
JVL Introduction
So “Margaret Thatcher sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism.” So the man in the suit, Keir Starmer, assures us.
Phil Burton-Cartledge is not having it, reminding us that Thatcher’s counterrevolution destroyed communities, funnelled billions in state aid (and oil money) into the pockets of the wealthiest, and wrecked countless small businesses that helped tie our communities together. (And, not to foget, Thatcher launched a massive attack on the power of the trade-union movement, with her assault on the miners in particular and trade-union rights in general.)
Burton-Cartledge also dismantles Starmer’s claim to be “listening to the voters”– on nationalisation? on Palestine? on public spending? on austerity?
In all fundamentals Starmer’s Britain at the start of the 2030s will be little different to the Britain of the early 2020s.
He is going to find it very lonely in office with so much of his core support taken-for-granted in the belief it can’t go anywhere else.
Perhaps that’s not so certain as it has been in the past.
And what a shattered wasteland Starmer seems to wish to preside over.
RK
This article was originally published by A Very Public Sociologist blogspot on Sun 3 Dec 2023. Read the original here.
Embracing Thatcher?
Loading article text…
Also, worth recalling the environmental damage for which Thatcher was responsible. To break the miners’ strike she burnt fossil fuels bringing coal from Poland and even Australia.
And while her husband had business dealings with Apartheid South Africa, she supported the racist colonial project smearing Nelson Mandela as a terrorist. Starmer has gone even further supporting Apartheid Israel, enabling the extermination of Palestinians by blocking calls for a ceasefire.
Thatcher destroyed the post war consensus that no matter who won the election you governed in the interests of the whole country
Gave us the Casino economy dominated by spivs and thieves
Destroyed entire Industries and the communities that served them, leaving a vacuum that was filled by drugs and crime
Finally it was Harold Macmillan who told her you cannot sell the family silver, problem is what do you do when there is nothing left to sell
It is critical that Sir Kid Starver does not get a working majority and the country moves to PR
This comes on the same day that I listen to experts on the BBC documentary Analysis “What do we need to grow the economy?” I hear that what we need are exactly the same policies that the Corbyn government was proposing and were utterly condemned by the media, politicians and uncle tom cobbly and all
Glenda Jackson summed up Margaret Tatcher succinctly in the Commons when she described Thatcher as knowing “the price of everything and the value of NOTHING”
I can’t ever forgive Thatcher for her well-known privatisation of utilities and ending the effectiveness of the “Council house” safety net, but also for the contaminated blood scandal. She has not been given enough credit for setting in motion the inevitable, resultant introduction of HIV/Aids to this country. She allowed the major supplier to the NHS of blood and blood products including Factor 8, to be taken over by a US company. From then on the NHS was obliged to import these vital blood products and blood from the US, where instead of blood being donated it was purchased, overwhelmingly from US prisoners (prisons then as now awash with needle injected drugs), and drug addicts seeking their next supply. Both categories were known to include those who had the then killer HIV/Aids, with disastrous results for thousands of NHS patients needing blood transfusions during operations and Haemophilia sufferers needing Factor 8. The clear results in the UK were ignored by government and to an extent by the NHS, driven by having little choice, but still not ethical to continue without much resistance. So well done Keir Starmer for giving any praise whatsoever to this harridan of a PM. But although Keir has five times as many as Mrs T, she was certainly in possession of one cruel mission.
Thatcher started the sell off (give away) of our Services, which included the Privatisation of Our NHS.
I post this whenever the subject comes up.
We owned, the Gas, Electricity, Water, The Railways, the Buses, the PO, BT, Council Houses and more, now we are being ripped off by the people that now own them and it was predicted by the experts that were against Privatisation of our Services. Another bonus for Public Ownership was, whenever there was a Recession, the prices could be held, that way you could protect the poorest in society.