Thatcher: now her politics must die

Submitted by Matthew on 10 April, 2013 - 9:22

If we believed in a hell, we would have no doubt Margaret Thatcher would now be in it.

Now we must send to hell, too, the politics which she represented.

Labour leader Ed Miliband declared that: “We greatly respect her political achievements and her personal strength”.

With a low-key comment that he “disagreed” a bit with Thatcher, he said that she had “moved the centre ground of British politics”. That, from a Labour leadership always keen to claim that it is occupying that same “centre ground”.

In 2002 the Labour government — Labour, not Tory — repealed old rules banning monuments for living politicians from the House of Commons in order to erect a statue of Thatcher. The act symbolised Blair’s and Brown’s acceptance of a Tory-crafted “centre ground”.

The shift in popular attitudes attributed to Thatcher — towards mean-spirited individualism, and hostility to and fear of the worse-off — actually came much more under Blair and Brown, after they disappointed and crushed the hopes which many still had in 1997 for a return to a more generous society.

Thatcher’s death after years of incapacitating old age brings no relief to the working class. There would have been better cause for celebration if she had died 29 years ago, strung up by miners victorious in their 1984 strike. Or, better, 33 years ago, if the steel workers’ strike of 1980, the first big workers’ struggle against her government, had been conducted militantly and driven her from power.

Before Thatcher’s years in office, 1979 to 1990, Britain was an unequal and exploitative capitalist society, but much less unequal than now. The Gini measure of inequality rose from 26% in 1979 to 37% in 1990. Inequality had decreased a lot between the 1930s and the late 1940s, but now a steady upward trend seems normal.

Before Thatcher, beggars and homeless people were rare on the streets of London. After a few years of her government, they were common.

Before Thatcher, most people thought the welfare state was as established a fixture as the abolition of slavery or serfdom. She started the axing-back which the current government continues.

Trade union rights were also considered a fixture. The Labour government of 1964-70 and the Tory government of 1970-4 had tried what, compared to Thatcher’s measures, were marginal adjustments. By 1997-2010 we had a Labour government which regarded the Tories’ huge curbs on workers’ basic rights to withdraw our labour and show solidarity as a law of nature, not to be disturbed.

Over decades up to the 1970s, mineworkers, dockers, car workers, and other groups once industrial helots had gradually acquired some civilised conditions. Thatcher’s government smashed their unions, their industries and their communities.

Alan Budd, chief economic adviser to the Tory government in 1991-7, commented later: “What was engineered there, in Marxist terms, was a crisis of capitalism which recreated a reserve army of labour and has allowed the capitalist to make high profits ever since”.

The “reserve army of labour” meant whole generations of young working-class people condemned to lives of unemployment or patchy, insecure, dead-end jobs.

The pre-Thatcher “settlement” had been built up over long decades, from the legalisation of trade unions in 1825 onwards. Some of the way people thought is conveyed by the jibe (by Michael Foot, I think) that a Conservative was someone who accepted every reform except the next one. Today “reform” means the opposite of what it meant before Thatcher — a measure to increase inequality, to cut back social provision, to make society meaner and more vicious.

Thatcher was not, however, a brave if misguided militant who courageously defied the odds. She was ruthless — but from the comfortable position of being well surrounded and supported by the rich and mighty.

From 1945 to around 1970, the rich and mighty felt that welfare and trade union rights were an inevitable and acceptable price for the smooth advance of capitalism. That changed after the breakdown in 1971 of the international economic architecture created in 1944-5, the sharpening of global capitalist competition, and the start of an era of sharper capitalist ups and downs.

By the time Thatcher became Tory leader in 1975, she was well integrated into a solid body of ruling-class opinion determined to cancel the concessions which had been made to the working class after 1945 for fear of revolutionary upheavals such as followed World War One.

The Tories formulated a first scheme at Selsdon in 1970. Tory prime minister Edward Heath soon decided the scheme was unworkable. Nicholas Ridley, who later formulated the Tories’ plans for the 1984-5 miners’ strike, formed a “Selsdon group” to oppose the retreat.

Its manifesto of September 1973 demanded “drastic cuts in public spending”, “dismantling the nationalised industries”, repeal of tenants’ rights and reduction of council housing to “only those in true need”, “help to people in most need without the high costs and lost liberties of the Welfare State”, and “a free market in education facilities”.

Thatcher’s Tories came to office on a headline promise of curbing price inflation (high in the 1970s), but with the Selsdon subtext. They were emboldened by the ignominy of the previous Labour government, which, facing economic crisis, had adopted an early version of “monetarism”, declared “the party was over” for social provision, and made sharper cuts to the National Health Service than Thatcher herself would.

The Tories got bolder as the labour movement stumbled and retreated. They pushed through nine major rounds of anti-union laws.

The claim that Thatcher’s measures ended economic sclerosis is nonsense. Between 1955 and 1973, economic output per person increased by an average of 2.8% a year. Between mid-1979 and mid-2012 it has increased by an average of 1.8% a year. The rich have done relatively well, but the worse-off much worse than before 1979.

In the crises of the 1970s and 80s another way out was possible from the collapse of the class compromise of mid-century. The working class, which in 1979 reached its highest-ever level of trade union organisation, could have taken the initiative for socialism. We failed to do so because the labour movement lacked leadership and political awareness, and for no other reason.

In the new and more drastic capitalist crisis we can get another chance. Not easy and quick, but a chance. Let’s bury Thatcher’s politics as well as Thatcher herself.

Comments

Submitted by Clive on Thu, 18/04/2013 - 09:32

Obviously you can get different data from different sources. But according to this set of data - http://www.inflation.eu/inflation-rates/cpi-inflation-1979.aspx - your figures for inflation are wrong. Inflation in the UK was on average about 13%, as against 11% in the US. Both this figure for the US and, for instance, 33% for Chile, suggest that in any case inflation can't be explained by the government being 'a soft touch for the unions', most militant trade unionists in Chile being either in jail, in exile, or dead.

Submitted by AWL on Thu, 18/04/2013 - 10:10

The years cited should have been 1955-73 - now corrected.

In the late 70s-early 80s there was something odd going on - unions may have been unpopular on one level, and yet more and more people joined them. By the end of the 70s union density rose to 57 per cent, the highest level in British history so far and an incredible figure for a relatively large economy like Britain. And of course more and more people took action too (in other words, lots of people who said they disliked strikes must have taken part in one themselves).

Moreover, at several points in the early 80s, Thatcher was very unpopular and with appropriate political initiative could have been driven from office. Perhaps even just by an election - she got lucky with the Falklands war. Certainly if the miners had defeated her government in all-out battle then things would have gone very differently.

Lastly, union density and the labour movement more generally have risen and fallen in Britain many times over many decades - going back almost two hundred years. Why do you think the recent fall is lasting and decisive? Actually the labour movement is still much bigger than for almost all of those two hundred years.

Sacha Ismail

Submitted by Clive on Fri, 19/04/2013 - 09:12

My point about Chile is that inflation can't be explained by trade unions fighting for wage increases. (Throughout the Wilson/Callaghan government, btw, there was a so-called Social Contract incomes policy, and even if you want to argue that it failed - the TUC eventually voted for a return to collective bargaining, as I recall, its failure would be insufficient to explain inflation. The whole world economy experienced 'stagflation' in the 1970s. The other thing usually blamed for inflation is the oil price increases of 1974).

I don't think anyone is suggesting the Wilson/Callaghan government was popular, simply that the picture of an electorate fed up with strikes and union bully boys, and what have you, and yearning for a bit of neo-liberalism, is false.

Submitted by AWL on Fri, 19/04/2013 - 16:33

What Clive said. My point is that people's ideas are complex. Lots of people were unhappy with the level of strikes, but in addition to the fact that lots of people weren't, even those who were thought other (partly contradictory) things too.

I'm saying the British labour movement has risen and fallen repeatedly over a long period. Eg it rose almost to the height of revolution in the late 1840s, with Chartism, and then fell back a lot in the 1850s (including most trade unions pretty much disappearing). And you could tell that without officially collected TU membership figures.

As for the trend reversing, I'm not saying it has been. I'm saying, why do you think it's permanent when previous retreats haven't been?

Sacha

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