True, but Thatcher's evil genius was to smash the backbone of Labour's support by empowering the ordinary people, the working classes, mostly through giving them the right to buy council houses. She encouraged them to be home owners, with vested interests in the status quo and the economy in order to keep them sweet and defuse their appetite for a political fight.
Unfortunately, it wasn't just the self-destruction of Labour during the Foot years that allowed Thatcher to run riot, it was the fact that millions of previously Labour people jumped ship for the Tories, because they suddenly believed themselves to be upwardly mobile, and as homeowners etc, they were now more 'middle-class' - and should therefore vote Tory.
I've got mates I grew up with – people whose parents – as kids – were bombed out of London during the war, real Labour families – who bought into that shit, and who today are 'forced' to take out private healthcare and send their kids to public schools in London cos the state schools are, surprise surprise, a bit rundown. They think the hospitals aren't good enough for them.
Thatcher made a generation of people consumers – and in the increase in violence, personal debt, the growing disparity between rich and poor and the sense of a society breaking down, the rest of us are picking up the bill.
There's still no one on earth I detest more.
You are correct in a lot of what you say but play too much emphasis on the accomplished facts of Thatcherism, and so give out a pessimistic message about individualism. After all she accomplished the capitalist system is still as insecure and volatile as before, in fact nobody is hiding the fact this crisis is far greater than the one in the 70s and is heading to one that will eclipse that of the 1930s
A major part of Thatcher’s Monetarism was based on the drive for the individual to aspire to be better than the next person, and yes there were people who would claim to have a workers background who fell for it. That is something that has gone on through the ages that is the basis of the middle class. Many of those who were able to bought their council house, the price they paid reflected the desperation of the state to get shut of this basic right. The fact that central governments had slashed their subsidies making it impossible to repair and maintain council property was never made an issue outside the council workers themselves who were facing job cuts by the week.
Again it comes down to the question of leadership, was there a decisive campaign against this by the unions or the Labour Party who ran the majority of the major councils? They bemoaned the fact they were not getting enough money from central government to make repairs but with the exception of Liverpool who mounted a very selective fight, nothing was done to mobilise the working class to defend good cheap housing for all.
I also agree that during this period the “desires of the individual” became the priority of the middle class and those within the working class who were sheltered from the effects of Thatcherism joined the bandwagon and became a section of the middle class themselves.
The lack of leadership wasn’t down to not having the right people in the right places, it was about the leaderships roll in society. For them the question of organising the working class to fight and defend their conditions was more horrific than letting Thatcher’s version of Capital run riot against them. This abdication of leadership went right through the political spectrum within the working class movement.
The prime example was the miners strike. The roll of the trade union leadership was to split the workers, create confusion. The only support to the miners was to allow their members to raise funds for the miner’s families, without expanding one ounce of energy to support the miners through the only weapon they have, industrial action.
The miners above all where that section of the Trade Union movement that could have brought Thatcher down as they did with Ted Heath before her, but Thatcher wasn’t Heath and she had brought together all the arms of the state to defeat not only the miners but by doing so crush any resistance from the rest of the working class.
These cowards within the labour movement who allowed industrial relation laws to come into force with nothing but a minimum of protest, used these same laws as an excuse for not standing with the miners. It didn’t take a genius to work out that to fight and defeat Thatcher would have meant smashing the anti- union laws. The reluctance to stand with the miners against the class biased law shows that for them it was not about defending workers against the state it was defending the state from the workers
Arthur Scargill for his part accepted this situation, he made plenty of fiery speeches and was given the reputation of being a firebrand Marxist but he never once called for a general strike in support of his members until the battle was lost and the miners had given up any confidence in their leadership. In fact he distanced himself from Marxist political parties and groups that made it their policy to work towards such a general strike He became like the Grand Old Duke of York marching his men here there and everywhere without getting anywhere, except heading to defeat and extinction of the mining industry.
Again the question of the “self” played an enormous part in the states preparations against the miners. Thatcher played on the individualism and confusion within the miners ranks. Aided ably by the media and the Labour Party she was able to first split their unity then destroy them. The state had had an earlier practice run in the steel industry, and used those lessons against the miners.
But Thatcher’s and Reagan’s adherence to Milton Freidman’s economics only gave capitalism a certain breathing space, as did the Bretton Woods agreement after the end of WW2. The cobbled together formula for putting off the inevitable brought about the crisis in the 70s.
Today on the surface it would appear that workers go into this crisis in capitalism weaker than before, but that is not so, in fact it is its dialectical opposite, they are not fooled by any member of the Labour Party and know full well the treachery of their trade union leaders. Many have since the 70s been able to gain a certain standard of living that is based on debt, there is no way out of this one for capital but to fight, they have no margin in which they can buy time, for the working class it is the same, there is no way out but to fight to defend their conditions. I keep making the point that the decisive question is one of leadership.
