Seumas Milne
BY Seumas Milne
They have themselves to blame. Protests were always likely at any official send-off for the most socially destructive prime minister in modern British history. But by turning Margaret Thatcher’s funeral into a state-funded Tory jamboree, puffed up with pomp and bombast, David Cameron and his acolytes have made them a certainty — and fuelled a political backlash into the bargain.
As the bishop of Grantham, Thatcher’s home town, put it, spending £10m of public money to “glorify” her legacy in the month benefits are slashed and tax cuts handed to the rich is “asking for trouble”. What was planned wasn’t a national commemoration, but a military-backed party spectacle.
It was a state funeral in all but name, laid on for none of the last seven prime ministers. Nothing of the kind has been seen since the death of Winston Churchill, who united the country against the mortal threat from Nazi Germany. Thatcher did the opposite, though every effort will be made to milk her short but bloody colonial conflict in the south Atlantic for its jingoistic worth. There’s been talk about a need for dignity and respect. But the prospect of the leader of a class war government being treated like a respected head of state is an insult to the half of Britain that recoils from her memory and the millions whose communities were devastated by her policies.
From the moment she died there has been a determined drive by the Tories and their media allies to rewrite history and rehabilitate a damaged brand. For a few days of fawning wall-to-wall coverage it seemed like that might be working, as happened in the US after Ronald Reagan’s death in 2004.
But a week on, it’s clear revisionists have overplayed their hand. Anger and revulsion keep bursting into the open. Raising her record reminds people of the price paid for unrelenting deregulation, privatisation and tax handouts to the rich; why she was so unpopular when in power; and the striking similarity with what’s being done by Tory-led coalition.
So there’s been no polling bounce for Cameron, even as he claimed that Thatcher “saved our country”. While people recognise her strength, polls show opposition to many of her flagship policies, including privatisation. Only a quarter think it’s delivered a better service. Most don’t believe she “put the ‘Great’ back into Great Britain”, her economic policies are seen to have done “more harm than good”, and her legacy is regarded as one of division and inequality.
Far from saving Britain, Thatcher’s government delivered inequality, social breakdown, disastrous financial deregulation, pulverising deindustrialisation and mass unemployment. A North Sea oil bonanza was frittered away on tax cuts for the wealthy and a swollen benefits bill as public services were run down, child poverty escalated and social mobility ground to a halt.
Her apologists insist she did what was necessary to turn the economy round. But she didn’t. Growth during the 1980s, at 2.4 percent, was the same as during the 1970s and lower in the post-Thatcher 1990s, at 2.2 percent, while in the corporatist 1960s it averaged over 3 percent. Despite claims of a Thatcher “productivity miracle”, productivity growth was higher in the 60s (and has gone into reverse under Cameron). What her government did was redistribute growth from the poor to the rich, driving up profits and slashing employees’ share of national income through her assault on trade unions. It felt like a boom in better-off Britain, as the top rate of tax was more than halved, while real incomes fell by 40 percent for the poorest in her first decade in power.
You only have to rehearse what Thatcher’s government unleashed a generation ago to recognise the continuity with what’s been happening since: First under John Major, then under New Labour, and now under Cameron: privatisation, liberalisation, low taxes for the wealthy and rising inequality. Thatcher was Britain’s first woman premier, but her policies hit women hardest, as Cameron’s are doing, while Tony Blair says he saw his job as “to build on some of the things she had done rather than reverse them”.
But Thatcherism was an early variant (following her friend General Pinochet, the Chilean dictator) of what became the neoliberal capitalism adopted or imposed across the world. The model imploded in the crash of 2008. Her reforms could be said to have “sowed the seeds” of the current crisis.
More than 20 years after Thatcher was forced out of office, the evidence is that most British people remain resistant to her individualistic small-state philosophy, believing, for example, that it’s the government’s job to redistribute income across the spectrum and guarantee a decent minimum income for all.
The economic model that underpinned the policies of Thatcher and her successors is broken. As the Labour frontbencher Jon Trickett argued this week, we need a “rupture” with the “existing economic settlement” — the Thatcher settlement. That’s the challenge of the politics of our time, not only in Britain. As we remember blighted lives and communities, it’s time to bury Thatcherism. THE GUARDIAN
BY Seumas Milne
They have themselves to blame. Protests were always likely at any official send-off for the most socially destructive prime minister in modern British history. But by turning Margaret Thatcher’s funeral into a state-funded Tory jamboree, puffed up with pomp and bombast, David Cameron and his acolytes have made them a certainty — and fuelled a political backlash into the bargain.
As the bishop of Grantham, Thatcher’s home town, put it, spending £10m of public money to “glorify” her legacy in the month benefits are slashed and tax cuts handed to the rich is “asking for trouble”. What was planned wasn’t a national commemoration, but a military-backed party spectacle.
It was a state funeral in all but name, laid on for none of the last seven prime ministers. Nothing of the kind has been seen since the death of Winston Churchill, who united the country against the mortal threat from Nazi Germany. Thatcher did the opposite, though every effort will be made to milk her short but bloody colonial conflict in the south Atlantic for its jingoistic worth. There’s been talk about a need for dignity and respect. But the prospect of the leader of a class war government being treated like a respected head of state is an insult to the half of Britain that recoils from her memory and the millions whose communities were devastated by her policies.
From the moment she died there has been a determined drive by the Tories and their media allies to rewrite history and rehabilitate a damaged brand. For a few days of fawning wall-to-wall coverage it seemed like that might be working, as happened in the US after Ronald Reagan’s death in 2004.
But a week on, it’s clear revisionists have overplayed their hand. Anger and revulsion keep bursting into the open. Raising her record reminds people of the price paid for unrelenting deregulation, privatisation and tax handouts to the rich; why she was so unpopular when in power; and the striking similarity with what’s being done by Tory-led coalition.
So there’s been no polling bounce for Cameron, even as he claimed that Thatcher “saved our country”. While people recognise her strength, polls show opposition to many of her flagship policies, including privatisation. Only a quarter think it’s delivered a better service. Most don’t believe she “put the ‘Great’ back into Great Britain”, her economic policies are seen to have done “more harm than good”, and her legacy is regarded as one of division and inequality.
Far from saving Britain, Thatcher’s government delivered inequality, social breakdown, disastrous financial deregulation, pulverising deindustrialisation and mass unemployment. A North Sea oil bonanza was frittered away on tax cuts for the wealthy and a swollen benefits bill as public services were run down, child poverty escalated and social mobility ground to a halt.
Her apologists insist she did what was necessary to turn the economy round. But she didn’t. Growth during the 1980s, at 2.4 percent, was the same as during the 1970s and lower in the post-Thatcher 1990s, at 2.2 percent, while in the corporatist 1960s it averaged over 3 percent. Despite claims of a Thatcher “productivity miracle”, productivity growth was higher in the 60s (and has gone into reverse under Cameron). What her government did was redistribute growth from the poor to the rich, driving up profits and slashing employees’ share of national income through her assault on trade unions. It felt like a boom in better-off Britain, as the top rate of tax was more than halved, while real incomes fell by 40 percent for the poorest in her first decade in power.
You only have to rehearse what Thatcher’s government unleashed a generation ago to recognise the continuity with what’s been happening since: First under John Major, then under New Labour, and now under Cameron: privatisation, liberalisation, low taxes for the wealthy and rising inequality. Thatcher was Britain’s first woman premier, but her policies hit women hardest, as Cameron’s are doing, while Tony Blair says he saw his job as “to build on some of the things she had done rather than reverse them”.
But Thatcherism was an early variant (following her friend General Pinochet, the Chilean dictator) of what became the neoliberal capitalism adopted or imposed across the world. The model imploded in the crash of 2008. Her reforms could be said to have “sowed the seeds” of the current crisis.
More than 20 years after Thatcher was forced out of office, the evidence is that most British people remain resistant to her individualistic small-state philosophy, believing, for example, that it’s the government’s job to redistribute income across the spectrum and guarantee a decent minimum income for all.
The economic model that underpinned the policies of Thatcher and her successors is broken. As the Labour frontbencher Jon Trickett argued this week, we need a “rupture” with the “existing economic settlement” — the Thatcher settlement. That’s the challenge of the politics of our time, not only in Britain. As we remember blighted lives and communities, it’s time to bury Thatcherism. THE GUARDIAN
