Thatcher

Why is Thatcher all over our TV screens tonight? Documentaries, dramas, and interviews. The woman was the devil. As the Guardian said of her legacy; “Greed seemed to replace compassion as a core value.”

Me and my dad just had a huge debate.

During the 1980s we ran a small shop. We relied on factory workers coming in at lunch time, for food. Slowly, after Thatcher got in, the factories closed down and our expenditure exceeded our income (£500 rent under Callaghan……. £1500 under Thatcher). Lawson insisted that we should buy the property (my dad had met Lawson and chatted with him many times) and that we’d benefit. And then interest rates shot up and in came the poll tax. We were literally fucked. We couldn’t afford to live. The Tories fucked us over. It was just us either. It was pretty much the entire North of England. Parts of the North still haven’t fully recovered.

She destroyed British manufacturing. For every 200 jobs at McDonalds created, another 300 car manufacturing jobs were lost. And when your country doesn’t make anything to sell, there really isn’t long that gravy train of easy money can last. And so, twenty five years later, we’re all in deep puddle of rancid recession…. which can be traced right the way back to Thatcherism. Back to my story….

That small shop was our livelihood, in a horribly rough area of Leicester. My mum went downstairs in the middle of the night one night, to find my dad crying… i’ve never seen my dad cry…. saying just how fucked we were. We had to give up the business, and we were homeless for a while, until my dads friend very kindly rented us one of his houses, very cheap, which we’re still in now.
There were thousands like us. Miners, industry workers, small family business owners making just enough to get by. Our problem was, we didn’t wear suits and work in offices. And so Thatcher punished us. She offered no retraining. She offered no support. She tore a Nation apart and made it richer in the superficial short term. She is responsible for where we are now. Inequality doubled under her, homelessness shot up, and human suffering became a largely ignored concept.
To then hear her say “The poor only have themselves to blame”, makes me, to this day, want to piss on her grave the moment she dies.

She made it ok for John Major, as Prime Minister in 1993 to say that the “Recession is over”. How short sighted and despicable. The recession wasn’t over for the three million unemployed under Thatcher, or the miners and industry workers who aren’t being retrained. The recession isn’t over now, when we still get letters demanding payment for items that we couldn’t sell, twenty years ago.

Every time a Republican over in America speaks, they echo the same sentiments Thatcher was ramming down our throats twenty five years ago. It failed. It was a mess of an ideology. It was a disaster. Come up with something new.

Now, we all voted Labour in 2005. In their manifesto they said they would not introduce University top up fees. They then introduced University top up fees. They then said we’d have a referendum on the EU constitution. They then didn’t bother. I also don’t remember them telling us we’d live under constant CCTV watch, but we have. My dad despises what Labour have become, but he insists he’d vote Labour to keep the Tories out. If we lived in a marginal seat between Tory and Liberal, he’d vote Liberal to keep the Tories out. Even though he’s a Labour supporter overall.

My point, was that I wouldn’t tactical vote. I’m Liberal Democrat, and so even if I know voting Liberal will some how let the Tories in, i’m still voting Liberal, because it’s principle. If I vote Labour instead, knowing it’ll keep the Tories out, but Labour get in, I have no right to complain when Labour lie even more, i’m giving them the mandate to lie and cheat. My Dad claims tactical voting is principled. I think otherwise. A principle is not interchangable.

Now maybe it depends whether your principle is with a particular party, or whether your principle is against a particular party. But in my opinion, you cannot be a Labour man, and then vote Liberal. However, the flaw in my thinking is in a scenario my dad put to me.
If your vote will decide the election. The Tories need one more seat to win the election, otherwise Labour have won, and you’re in a constituency that is either going Liberal Democrat or Tory, but you support Labour, who do you vote for? If you vote Labour, knowing they can’t win the seat, then the Tories will get power. So is tactical voting suddenly principled?
But then is voting Labour not principled? Because you know you now wont have power?
But then is voting Liberal also not principled, because you don’t support them in the first place?
Is there even a principled vote in that scenario?

It’s a difficult question for my weak, tired mind to comprehend the philosophy behind. Either way, as long as another selfish, community spirit killing, social destroying, education obliterating, Health Service murdering Thatcher doesn’t come along too soon, i’m happy.