By Dave Kellaway
April 9, 2013 -- Socialist Resistance -- If we need yet another argument about why we must put our political
energies into building a fighting alternative to [the Labour Party] then
compare and contrast these statements on the death of Margaret Thatcher:
Ed Miliband MP, Labour leader of the opposition, said:
I send my deep condolences to Lady Thatcher’s family, in particular Mark and Carol Thatcher. She will be remembered as a unique figure. She reshaped the politics of
a whole generation. She was Britain’s first woman prime minister. She
moved the centre ground of British politics and was a huge figure on the
world stage.
The Labour Party disagreed with much of what she did and she will
always remain a controversial figure. But we can disagree and also
greatly respect her political achievements and her personal strength.
She also defined the politics of the 1980s. David Cameron, Nick Clegg
and I all grew up in a politics shaped by Lady Thatcher. We took
different paths but with her as the crucial figure of that era.
She coped with her final, difficult years with dignity and courage. Critics and supporters will remember her in her prime.
Ken Loach, promoter of new Left Unity movement stated:
Margaret Thatcher was the most divisive and destructive Prime
Minister of modern times. Mass unemployment, factory closures,
communities destroyed – this is her legacy.
She was a fighter and her
enemy was the British working class. Her victories were aided by the
politically corrupt leaders of the Labour Party and of many trades unions. It is because of policies begun by her that we are in this mess
today.
Other prime ministers have followed her path, notably [Labour's] Tony
Blair. She was the organ grinder, he was the monkey.
Remember she
called Mandela a terrorist and took tea with the torturer and murderer
Pinochet. How should we honour her? Let’s privatise her funeral. Put it
out to competitive tender and accept the cheapest bid. It’s what she
would have wanted.
'Common sense'
Here we have one leader who is participating with minor, unvoiced
criticisms, in the mystification of history that contributes to
preventing working people knowing the truth about the past and how it
has created the present. Then there is another who in a few
straightforward sentences explains the role Thatcher played as a leader
of her class and how the Labour leadership, particularly Tony Blair,
collaborated in embedding Thatcherite neoliberalism as the "common
sense" of British political life.
It is strangely appropriate that the successful impact of Ken’s film,
the Spirit of ’45, has taken place at the very time of Thatcher’s
demise. The importance of the social gains of the workers’ movement is
re-asserted while everyone is talking about the person most responsible
for leading the ruling-class offensive to reverse those gains now deemed
too costly for the profit making of the capitalist system. Furthermore
the current welfare debate, with the obscene manipulation of the
Philpott domestic violence case to justify further cuts, fits entirely
within the continuity of that offensive. It is no surprise that British Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron,
abetted by most of the press and TV, will milk the whole event to
repeatedly present a version of history that identifies even social-democratic gains, embodied in state social welfare or collective
provision, as a barrier to economic growth, individual opportunity and
freedom.
Unsurprisingly the Daily Mail is collating all the "hateful" comments
against Thatcher including news of people publicly partying. Tory MPs
are denouncing anyone "celebrating" as drunken louts and even Tom
Watson, the Labour MP and hammer of Murdoch, has warned off the left
from criticising.
If Cameron and the political class had for one moment
dealt with the passing of Thatcher as a private matter and gave simple
condolences there might be some sort of justification for a temporary
political truce. However from the start Cameron referred to Thatcher
dealing with the trade union barons and being a great defender of
freedom.
Every so-called documentary history of her life, endlessly repeated
on TV, assumes a narrative that is intensely ideological. For example we
are always told about the chaos of the "winter of discontent" (1978-1979)
caused by the trade unions who supposedly ruled the land and the lack of
competitiveness of British industry. No trade unionists from the time
are ever interviewed to explain why they were in struggle you just get
images of undug graves and blokes huddled around braziers.
No links are
ever systematically made between the current recession where the weight
of the financial sector in the British economy, as Will Hutton in the
Observer is always pointing out, actually further exacerbates it.
Thatcher was the first to deregulate the financial sector and let any
temporary lossmaking industry go to the wall.
Class warrior
What the media does not
explain is that Thatcher was extremely useful for the ruling class
because she understood better than some of its more patrician
representatives, such as Ted Heath, what the class struggle was all
about. Imbibing the theories of Friedrich Hayek and others, she knew that while
union barons were clearly not running the country the basic level of
working-class resistance on a day to day basis had become an obstacle to
re-establishing a higher rate of profit. She knew that capital had to
re-organise itself by destroying some of its industries which had too
low a rate of profit.
Above all she knew that all this was not a
technical operation but required political will and an iron fist. Hence
she organised the police in a new way to effectively fight the miners.
She knew something about the relationship of class forces that was
missing from the mindset of the whole reformist labour and trade union
leadership (apart from the honourable exception of miners' union leader Arthur Scargill who perhaps
had other failings). The latter certainly was correct when he said that
the working class needed the sort of vigorous leadership that Thatcher
gave to her class.
Thankfully the degree of her attacks, the changed economic context
and the continuity of a radical left tradition does mean that the
TV/Tory/Labourist picture is not going unchallenged. Interviews with
miners like Pete Mansell from the Rotheram mining area cut through the
Miliband niceties with crystal-clear analysis:
It was class war, the people above us didn’t want us to win. The
people with money didn’t want us to win. If we had won, they wouldn’t
be able to get away with what they are doing now, cutting benefits for
disabled people and things like that. The unions would have stopped
them. But we lost.
If working people’s reaction includes a bit of tasteless "celebration", which can be a bit unpolitical, then so be it. Don’t ever
think she was a tasteful, caring human being who gave a toss about what
political enemies thought of her. If only some of our so-called leaders
had had some of the same steel during key events like the miners’
strike. Remember Labour leader Neil Kinnock used Scargill’s tactics as an excuse and cover
to refuse any real official support from the Labour Party for the miners. Not a
small matter since the whole Thatcher legacy hangs much more on the
defeat of the miners than anything else, such as the Falklands [Malvinas] war or
privatisations. Blairism was solidly based on those defeats and his
selling of a plausible "modernising" ideology – ditching the Labour Party's constitution clause IV, which
on paper still committed Labour to nationalisation of the commanding
heights of the economy.
Despite her condemnation of feminism as "poison" and her refusal to
support any demands furthering women’s liberation or equality, the
objective fact that she was the first woman prime minister undeniably
objectively shifted ideology about the role women could play in politics
or public life. Just as Obama, despite his murderous drone policies
internationally, his failure to really reform health provision and the
relatively unchanged position of African Americans, has changed the way
black people see themselves and white people see black people in
politics. History and politics develop in a messy, paradoxical way
sometimes.
Thatcherism
During the time running up to the £8 million quasi-state funeral the
left should continue to participate in all the discussions on the
Thatcher legacy and most important focus on Thatcherism rather than the
person alone. There are breaches in the hagiography – there is a rumour
that the Telegraph or Mail had to close down the comments on one of
their articles because of the abuse it was received. The Twittersphere
and the web has thousands of people refusing to share the official view.
The legacy is still active and is seen in the continued rule of the
banks and the further dismantling of the post-war settlement.
Opposition to Thatcher can be linked to campaigning against the bedroom
tax or building support for re-appropriating the best of the Spirit of
'45 in initiatives like the June 22 Peoples Assembly. Building Left
Unity, alongside Ken Loach and 7000 others as a new
non-sectarian focus for the radical class struggle left, is another
useful way forward.
Those of us who lived through Thatcher’s premiership have a
responsibility to counter the travesty of the historical record being
presented by the pundits and politicians on the TV, pess and radio.
Personally I will never forget how long the miners struggled and the
strength of the support groups up and down the country. It is the human
connection and its memory that can resist the vicissitudes of history
and keep the flame burning for new generations.
Miner David Douglas' speech at Trafalgar Square on why miners are celebrating Thatcher's demise
Dispelling the Thatcher myths
April 9, 2013 --
Red Pepper --
Alex Nunns offers an antidote to the media fawning over
Thatcher – and argues her biggest victory was getting her opponents to
buy into her mythology.
When a political leader dies it becomes compulsory to lie about
their record. While much of Britain openly rejoiced at the death of
Margaret Thatcher, the media snapped into reverential mode, giving over
hours of airtime and several thousand miles of column inches to
representatives of the ruling class to solemnly recite myths about her
achievements.
This wouldn’t matter so much if, like Thatcher, these myths were
dead, and weren’t still shaping our politics. But they are. So here are
some of them, debunked.
No ‘economic miracle’
It’s said that Thatcher ‘didn't just lead our country, she saved
our country’. She didn’t. David Cameron’s melodramatic claim was a
reference to Thatcher’s supposed reversal of Britain’s economic decline,
when her policies are said to have brought about an economic miracle.
But the performance of Britain’s economy in the 1980s was not miraculous
– in fact it was below par, even if the deep recession of 1980-1 is
ignored. Economic growth was higher and lasted longer in the 1950s and
1960s. And when the economy did pick up speed in the late 1980s, it was
because of a credit bubble that promptly burst and threw Britain back
into recession.
It’s said that Thatcher was a tax-cutter. She wasn’t. The
overall tax burden (all taxes as a percentage of GDP) rose from 39
per cent in 1979 to 43 per cent in 1989. It’s true that Thatcher cut taxes
massively for the rich – the top rate of tax was 83 per cent when
Thatcher came to power, and it was 40 per cent when she left. But VAT,
which hits the poor harder than the rich, was just 8 per cent before
Thatcher, and was put up to 15 percent as soon as she gained power.
It’s said that Thatcher made the British people richer. She
didn’t. In 1979 the poorest fifth of the population accounted for around
10 percent of after-tax income. By 1989 their share had fallen to 7
percent. Over the same period, the amount of income taken by the richest
fifth rose from 37 percent to 43 percent. The rich got richer; the poor
got poorer.
It’s said that Thatcher restructured the economy and made
British capitalism competitive. She didn’t restructure anything.
Restructuring would have required a plan, which was anathema to her.
Instead, she simply destroyed. Between 1980 and 1983, capacity in
British industry fell by 24 per cent. Unemployment shot up, eventually
topping 3 million. Thatcher effectively shut down British manufacturing,
much of it forever. In its place, she turned to the banks and the City,
making their wildest dreams come true with the financial Big Bang. We
know how that ended.
What conviction?
It’s said that Thatcher was a conviction politician, a "monetarist" who stuck to her economic beliefs through tough times and
was vindicated. She didn’t, and she wasn’t. Monetarism, the theory
Thatcher adopted from US economist Milton Friedman, says the
government should keep inflation low by restricting the money supply,
and shouldn’t care about anything else, especially unemployment.
Thatcher used monetarism as an intellectual cloak, but she never
actually implemented pure Friedmanite monetarism. She quickly abandoned
her looser British version when it crashed the economy in the early 1980s.
She was, however, radically successful at not caring about
unemployment.
It’s said that Thatcher’s greatest free market legacy is
privatisation. It isn’t. Thatcher’s privatisations did not create
competitive free markets. Instead, the government went for as much money
as it could get by selling off public assets in big, monopolistic
lumps. The cash came in handy for the chancellor, Nigel Lawson, who used
it to claim he had balanced the budget in 1988. But the legacy is one
of parasitic cartels, like in the energy sector, where a few big
companies are free to bleed customers dry.
It’s said Thatcher won the Cold War. She didn’t. The idea that
the Soviet system collapsed because Thatcher and Reagan said mean things
about communism deserves no more than one sentence.
It’s said Thatcher stood up for freedom and democracy in the
world. She didn’t in South Africa, where she opposed sanctions against
apartheid and called Nelson Mandela a "terrorist". She didn’t in Chile,
where she supported the murderer and torturer Augusto Pinochet. She
didn’t in Cambodia, where she gave support to the Khmer Rouge, of all
people. As for democracy, she espoused an ideology that valued market
choices more highly than votes.
Rolling back the state?
It’s said that Thatcher "rolled back the state". But, with the
exception of the economy, where the state did retreat, Thatcher’s
government intervened in areas of British society like none before it.
It imposed draconian laws on one particular type of voluntary
organisation – trade unions. It attacked local government, cut its
funding and restricted its powers. It intervened directly in schools,
setting a national curriculum for the first time.
It’s said that Thatcher restored law and order. She didn’t.
Crime increased by a staggering 79 per cent under Thatcher. There were
riots in Brixton and Toxteth at the start of her reign, and riots and
civil disobedience against the poll tax at the end of it.
It’s said that Thatcher created a "property-owning democracy" through the sale of council houses. But this led to a chronic shortage
of social housing which has pushed up house prices. Today, home
ownership is falling and the private rental market is booming. The
taxpayer is still subsidising housing to the tune of billions through
housing benefit, but now the money goes to rich private landlords.
It’s said that Thatcher changed the class and gender profile of
the Tory party. She didn’t. She made a big deal of being an outsider: a
middle-class woman in a party of aristocrats. But she was an individual,
an exception to the rule. She made no attempt to change party
structures to help others like her.
Today, the Tory leadership is
dominated by Etonians and there are only four women in the cabinet.
Thatcher always forgot to mention that her political career was financed
by her millionaire husband. She expressed disdain for feminism and
embraced patriarchal, male values.
It’s said that Thatcher was an electoral phenomenon. She wasn’t.
She won three elections, each with a lower percentage of the vote than
all previous post-war Tory victories. She never gained the support of
more than a third of eligible voters. She won her second and third
elections because a section of the Labour Party split off to form the
SDP and the two squabbled over second place.
One claim that’s true
It’s claimed that Thatcher defeated the left. She did. This is
the cliché that holds true. The big set-piece battle with the miners’
union was economically irrational – it cost the country £2.5 billion.
But she was fighting more than the miners; she was fighting a class.
She told the truth later in life when she said that her legacy
was New Labour. In so many of her other goals, she failed. Thatcherism
has no institutional legacy because she put none in place. She left no
cut and paste economic model because she didn’t apply the monetarism she
espoused. All she left was her example, which had its most powerful
effect on her erstwhile opponents.
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did more to institutionalise
Thatcherism than the woman herself. Before New Labour, in the early
1990s, in the midst of a recession, it was a truism that Thatcherism had
been an economic failure. The fact that many of the myths discussed
here have been revived is in large part due to New Labour. When even
Thatcher’s opponents accept Thatcherism’s success, why should the media
challenge the record?
Blair responded to her death by admitting (although
understating) what everyone already knew, that "some of the changes she
made in Britain were, in certain respects at least, retained by the 1997
Labour government". It is often said that Blair’s only legacy will be
Iraq, but he will also feature in the epilogue of every biography of
Margaret Thatcher.
Thatcher tore at the social fabric of Britain, destroyed swathes
of its economy and inflicted vindictive harm on large sections of its
population. But she built nothing. Her main success was in the minds of
her opponents.
[Alex Nunns is Red Pepper's political correspondent.]
Thatcher and feminism: a socialist feminist view
By Felicity Dowling
April 13, 2013 -- Facts for Working People -- Some women will
indeed consider a woman, any woman, gaining the position of prime minister is a
victory for all women. The experience of Margaret Thatcher in office was,
though, profoundly negative for all but the richest of women. I suggest that
the experience of Angela Merkel in Germany is little different. Merkel presides over the most
savage attack on the living standards of women in Europe for 70 years.
One sliver of benefit to a young woman of Thatcher’s premiership might have
been that they realised that a woman (and therefore, by inference, herself) as
capable of achieving the highest office. The young woman’s personal aspirations
and confidence may well have been enhanced by this. The fact that Thatcher was
overtly strong and powerful also may have helped might help break gender stereo
types.
There is a model of feminism which has regard to a "race" or competition
between men and women where men have historic, material and cultural
advantages. While this model has some validity, it has been developed and
distorted by the hegemonic ideas of neoliberal economics and by the
media. Debates about how women can progress individually or as a group can
continue, can sometimes be discussed with vigour and academic effort
but without regard to the suffering and damage being done to women in
their own countries and in different parts of the world.
Some women are exploring real issues, though not, to my mind, the crucial
ones. This model is of limited effect in a struggle for a better world
for all women; it overlooks the role of community, class and of social and
economic history.
Some, though not all, women who follow this line of debate and consequent action
are pro-capitalist and part of the neoliberal project.
Thatcher proclaimed there was no community and was an enemy of those who sought
to defend it. As well as proclaiming there is no community, she attempted
publically to deny class antagonisms but she fought the class war ruthlessly.
Socialist feminists in contrast recognise and proclaim community and class
interest. We want to protect, develop and improve our communities (and by
extension the planet) and the interest of our class. This struggle must
consciously oppose violence against women and stand against patriarchy. Thatcher
had real significance. She was a pioneer of neoliberal capitalism. Across the
globe (except possibly China) the period since the 1970s has been one where
gains of the post-war period were either robbed outright or eroded away. Even
the boom of the early 21st century saw re-structuring in many parts of the
globe and globalisation which saw worsening of conditions of employment and
life in the US and Europe.
The primitive accumulation of capital is intensified by the crisis in
capitalist economy. The process of primitive accumulation includes robbing the commons. The commons are, at its simplest, the assets and customs
of the inhabitants of this planet that are owned/held in common by everyone
and no one. The robbing of the commons particularly affects women as
individuals and in their role as carers in families and the wider community.
Women traditionally hold community history and knowledge but are also
vulnerable in many ways.
Crucially the crisis of capitalism has meant that this process is sharpened and
hastened and in this women suffer terrible violence. Women in their role as the
reproducers of labour, in their role of nurturing the community, the role
guardians of historic knowledge are especially at risk. Others have written
about this much more than I can here; but typified by the use of the witch hunt
in Africa, in Papua New Guinea as Wendy circulated in http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/its-2013-and-theyre-burning-witches/558/ and
as Federici has so ably recorded (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Caliban-Witch-Women-Primitive-Accumulation/dp/157027059).
Austerity in Europe is critically damaging the lives of women; we are in the very
early stages of struggle to defend ourselves. We call on all women who value
the lives and struggles of other women to stand with us in the fight. We have no
antagonism to those women whose focus is on the roles and successes of the
individual woman in a capitalist world. We believe though, that any future for
all women and our communities depends on us organising for the end of
capitalism.
Since the early 19th and early 20th century in the UK women’s rights have been
seen and fought for through a class prism. Emmaline Pankhurst wanted votes for
women but not for servants; her daughter Sylvia in contrast chose the side of
working women, standing against xenophobia of World War I and with the newly
organised working class of the era immediately after.The
experience of women under Thatcher was no better than under a male prime
minister; the list of conflicts between Thatcher and different groups of women
is long.
We would invite all women wishing for a better future for themselves and their
sisters to join us in the fight against austerity and against capitalism.
[Felicity Dowling
is a socialist, feminist and former Liverpool (UK) municipal councillor who fought
against Thatcher's war on workers and Liverpool in the 1980s.]
COMMUNIST PARTY OF IRELAND
Margaret Thatcher’s death is no loss to the greater part of humanity
Margaret Thatcher has left a deep legacy not only for the people of the neighbouring island but also for the Irish people and for the oppressed and suffering peoples of the world.
Thatcher epitomised the arrogance of the long imperialist traditions of the British ruling class. Her policy in regard to the H-block hunger strikes exposed her deep contempt and hatred for those who opposed British imperialist interests. Under her rule the British army gained greater freedom to develop and perpetrate its dirty war in the North of Ireland, when selective assassinations and the management of loyalist paramilitaries became more central to the British war machine.
Thatcher was one in a long line of British rulers who had a deep hatred of working people, such as her great hero, Churchill, another person who carried as a badge of honour his hatred of Ireland and the Irish people’s struggle for independence as well as for the British working class. Thatcher saw workers as mere cannon-fodder in imperialist wars, whether in Ireland or the Malvinas, or simply strategic pawns in her anti-communist crusades, as with “Solidarity” in Poland.
Her name has become a byword for aggression, selfishness, and rampant individualism. She has left a legacy of destroyed lives, shattered communities, rampant militarism and chauvinism and the destruction of what was left of British manufacturing and raised the adoration of the “market” beyond all previous levels.
Her policies have been continued by all subsequent British Governments, whether Conservative or Labour, Tony Blair being her most enthusiatic and most effective disciple.
No tears will be shed for her among the families of the hunger-strikers or of those assassinated by the British army and loyalist paramilitaries, nor in the mining villages of Wales and many other mining communities in Britain. She had no ears for the cries of suffering from the families of dead coalminers as she shackled and trampled on workers’ rights.
Margaret Thatcher was a product of the material conditions in which that monopoly capitalism created. She represented the most aggressive interests of monopoly capitalism, the political forces that had defeated the exponents of the post-war economic and social compromise. In this she also exposed the shallow and duplicitous nature of British labourism.
Unfortunately, as history shows, the very nature of this economic system throws up and requires such arrogant and ruthless individuals.