I Blame Maggie
I’ve lost a few followers and subscribers over the last month. Maybe I’ll lose a few more. I guess people don’t want to read about Gaza, Gay rights, protests or politics in general. I get it. However, I believe it’s impossible to be apolitical in the current climate. Party politics aside, now is a time for raised voices, protest and action. I may not have faith in our political system or the politicians it produces, but I believe in community and people power. I’m not here for the numbers. I’m here for the connection, so thank you if you’re still here, still reading. I will write about other things. This publication does what it says on the tin, but currently all the injustices of the world are on my mind.
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Margaret Thatcher, the longest serving Prime Minster of the 20th Century, might be remembered for the Falklands War, which secured her second term in office, or equally, the 84-85 miners strike, which reduced union power, but Thatcherism was responsible for a lot more than that.
For starters, she is directly to blame for asset stripping the UK’s social housing and the resultant housing crisis. Privatisation and sell-off of the council housing stock, combined with so called ‘free market’ economics and subsequent deregulation of financial services, especially mortgage lending, were the essential ingredients. Add to that the constraints placed on councils on house building, then you have the perfect storm we’re witnessing today. It could also be argued that this has impacted the number of homeless people, not only people living on the streets, but those in temporary accommodation and unsuitable - damp, mouldy, poorly repaired - housing. There is now massive housing inequality in the UK and outsourcing contracts to private builders, where building is contingent on profit margins and land speculation is an inherent part of the process. It also spawned the burgeoning private rented sector, where people pay large rents for poor quality buildings and are potentially trapped in a downward spiral, unable to break out. More demand for homes than the supply affords has pushed prices of residential land up to untenable levels, increasing rents - and making some speculative builders and landowners very wealthy.
Mrs Thatcher may have been a strong leader, but in my opinion she was a total failure and her policies have had lasting adverse effects on UK society. She single-handedly dismantled state socialism and sowed the seeds for the lack of infrastructure, support and funding we see now, which even Labour policies would be hard pushed to repair. Her policies were insular, selfish and confrontational. The Iron Lady may have been a nickname she approved of, but she was largely fighting against her own people ‘the enemy within’ rather than without: trade unions, socialism, the homeless, the unemployed, women. She thought feminism was ‘poison’ * and had no time for the poor, despite harping on about her ‘humble’ beginnings as a grocer’s daughter.
Bronze Statue of the Pictish Queen Tarbert Discovery Centre. A True Iron Lady.
Privatisation, disempowering the unions and the free market economy are the tools and the legacy of her reign, all of which lead to economic instability, a fervour for wealth accumulation and a disregard for our common humanity. I also think the roots of the distrust we feel towards politicians can be seen in the backlash to Thatcherism. The ‘Poll Tax’ has been the single most unpopular policy in recent history. The Tories never polled more than 43% of the popular vote, yet our ‘first past the post’ electoral system meant that she managed to secure three straight terms.
She believed that self-interest would create engaged, hard working citizens, but it created a monster instead: greedy, selfish, wealth obsessed ‘yuppies’ and the ordinary people who aspired to be like them, with their Dockland flats, fast cars and six figure salaries.
Not only did we lose trust in politicians, we started to lose trust in each other too. Self-interest encourages us to not only ignore our neighbour, but to be suspicious of them. Wealth inequality leads to other inequalities, including health. The trickle- down effect so often promised, did not happen. The rich got richer and the poor looked on with envy.
I recently re-watched some of the Simon Reeve’s travel documentaries on i-Player and the programmes on Greece are very interesting to look back on. Broadcast in 2016, they show a Greece in economic meltdown. The gap between the average Greek working person and the rich Greeks was astounding. Widespread corruption and poor Government decision making, especially around borrowing for infrastructure projects, bred a generation of super-rich, with huge houses and large swimming pools. A tax was introduced on pools, to raise badly needed revenue, but instead of paying it many people covered their pools over so they didn’t have to pay. When the economy crashed they siphoned their money out into offshore accounts, so the impact on their wealth was far less. No nationalism or solidarity with fellow Greeks suffering through the austerity for them! Trust had broken down and there were a lot of very angry people. Our situation today is not dissimilar.
Simon’s programmes on Scandinavia highlight a key tenet of Scandinavian society - trust: trust in politicians and trust in eachother. As they are some of the happiest countries in the world, perhaps it is something we should be taking note of, especially as we poll at 25th place out of 147 counties, on that particular metric. We could learn a lot from their policies too. Nothing is perfect, as the programme’s no holds barred approach clearly shows, but I feel we would do a lot better aligning ourselves to our northern neighbours, rather than our transatlantic ones.
I live in a wee village in the northern part of the Scottish Highlands. There’s a strong sense of community here and crime rates are low. People still leave their doors open, natter in the streets, children still walk to school and go out and about without adult supervision. There’s a basic level of belief in the goodness of people’s neighbours. We largely trust eachother. Margaret Thatcher was, I believe, more responsible for dismantling community than any politician before her, or since. I’m sure many people may disagree and that’s OK. I’m neither an economist or a political commentator and these are simply my thoughts on possible impacts and connections. As a young adult who lived through the period, I know what a big impression Thatcherism had on those decades.
We may be suffering from political decisions that people decades ago made, as a society and as a country - we can’t change that, but we can change our communities. We can chose to care. We can be radical and trust our neighbours, even strangers. The trickle-down effect may not work, but the ripple effect can. We can be agents of change locally, regardless of the promises that Keir Starmer has reneged on, the wars that crazy old men are creating and the evident inequalities within our society. We can do something and there will be people and groups you can align yourself with who want to do something too.
So, two fingers up to Thatcherism I say!
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References
Debbie, I subscribed a while ago by email, and I read your posts every week as they come into my inbox. I think you’ve gone in a worthwhile, important direction with your Substack, so keep doing the good work. Don’t worry about followers (I know, easy for me to say when I don’t have any yet, but the same thing happens whenever I post anything political on Bluesky. The right audience will eventually find you). You’ve also inspired me to get my own Substack going this weekend. When I get home later tonight, I’m going to upload a short political poem that I recorded and posted this time last year on another platform. Once again, it is the 4th of July, things in the US are even more bleak than they were a year ago, and the time is right. Thank you for motivating me to get started.