The passing of Margaret Thatcher, who died on Monday aged 87, isn’t a time for rejoicing – even for those of us on the left, writes Tim Austin. It’s a time for reflection and action.
While there can be an understandable feeling of jubilation in the communities that suffered horrendous poverty, persecution and unemployment as the result of the policies enacted by Maggie, I feel that celebrating her passing would do far more harm than good.
Quite beyond the crass tastelessness of finding joy the death of a frail old lady with Alzheimer’s (and I honestly believe that we should show compassion, even to our enemies), there is a danger of handing a moral “high ground” to those people who still see her as a saint. It’d be a Thatcherite tabloid field day: open season on the “loony left” and the “wet liberal mob”.
As someone who honestly detests the failed ideology of those currently holding the reins, it is not a backlash that I’d welcome – especially if we’re to get this country back on its feet.
So what should our response be? Should we remain silent, contrite and “well behaved”?
Not quite.
For the right wing media are already playing a game that I find equally distasteful: the attempted deification of the “Iron Lady” and a shameless astro-turfing the social damage she did. And I don’t think that this should stand.
David Cameron has already come out swinging, harping on about how Thatcher “Saved Britain”, a cry that has been welcomed as some kind of biblical truth by writers at the Daily Mail.
Now, while the country was certainly in a fairly poor state in 1979 and many of her policies (the privatisation of heavy industry and the winding down of the coal pits) were, with hindsight, inevitable, it was her callous disregard of the social consequences that will always stick in my mind.
A little careful planning, an injection of cash into areas set to be decimated, and a longer-term approach to the winding down of those industries, giving time for communities to adjust and survive, would’ve made all the difference. But her ideology – the ruthless, black and white, survival of the fittest ideal – wouldn’t allow it. The resultant devastation and social upheaval is still being felt today: the underclass of benefits dependency, the ghettoised communities, one of Europe’s worst levels of social mobility and a general feeling of desperation in areas that were once hard-working and proud.
The people who live with Thatcher’s ruthless and callous legacy wouldn’t agree that she “Saved Britain” – she certainly didn’t save it for them.
And let’s not forget the further ideology that she introduced: Thatcherism – the creed of greed.
With the wholesale deregulation of the financial sector and the selling off of social housing stock, she created a credit bubble that taught the nation that it was their inalienable right to have whatever they wanted, without consequence. And rather than recognising that this was unsustainable, as we’ve now painfully discovered, she spurred it on, lauding the rich and promoting an ideal that money, in of itself, was the new measure of wealth. No longer would wealth be measured by happiness or community or self respect or the care you show to your fellow man – it’d be measured in greed.
After all “There’s no such thing as society”, right?
And even now, after being hit by 3 harsh recessions when boom crashed down into the inevitable bust, it is still this ideal that politicians continue to follow – growth comes from consumption, growth will make you happy, it is your duty to make yourself richer and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably a commie. I see these sentiments daily in political sound-bites and the right wing media opinion-pieces. Thatcherism is still very much alive and kicking.
And has it worked? No. We’ve now got some of the worst working wages in the developed world, as the more selfish among us follow through on the Thatcherite ideal – profit first, people second, make me rich and that’s all that matters. We’ve seen the financial services gamble with pension funds and crush entire currencies, throwing tens of millions of honest working people into poverty. And worse, we’ve seen the victimisation of the poor in society as “scroungers” and “cheats”, because clearly they’re just not trying hard enough, are they?
We’ve become a far more cynical, more selfish, more divided and less compassionate nation than we were before the Thatcherite social experiment began. If our society is “broken”, as the Tories delight in reminding us, it’s because Thatcherism broke it – and more Thatcherism sure ain’t going to fix it!
So maybe now isn’t the time to celebrate in Thatcher’s death but we cannot let her mistakes pass history by.
If you agree with me, make your voices heard. Take this time to argue the case for a progressive alternative. Remind everyone who holds Margaret Thatcher up as an icon, that her policies, rhetoric and ideology, while making them and their rich friends vast fortunes, have, ultimately, left this nation a much, much poorer place to live.
Just show a little class while you’re at it, eh?
