Well, not really … but sort-of.
I’ve always appreciated Billy Bragg’s close-to-the-bone activism. He seems to be a common-sense, practical fellow who cares about other people and who is paying attention to how the world around him functions.
Here in today’s Guardian he offers us an op-ed article suggesting that Margaret Thatcher’s economic moves of yesteryear have played a direct role in the growing catastrophe facing us today.
Those who read my posts from time to time will not find it surprising that I appreciate his point of view and that I agree with him. I think that the privatisation mania, greed is good, here’s some more debt policies and practices of the past 25 – 30 years is directly responsible for today’s problems, and I think hat Thatcher and Reagan and the teams they gathered around them understood, cynically, that gorging people on debt and then reforming bankruptcy laws and so on, would turn out to be a very good mechanism to create and sustain olifarchy in both countries.
And do here we are, having spent 20 years spending like crazy, no happier and none the wiser for it .. and starting what feels like doom directly in the face.
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How we all lost when Thatcher won
With 25 years’ hindsight, Maggie’s bitter victory over the striking miners unleashed forces that led directly to this economic crisis
[ Snip … ]
There is a bitter irony in the fact that the Bank of England chose the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the miners’ strike to fire off its weapon of last resort in an attempt to damp down the conflagration currently sweeping through global capitalism.
[ Snip … ]
The housing bubble that has been source of so many of our recent difficulties, was kickstarted by Thatcher. Selling off council houses to their owners was a popular idea at the time, but by refusing to allow councils to build more stock, it ultimately forced up prices as demand rose. When the Tories slashed the state pension and people started looking around for a way of ensuring financial security in their old age, bricks and mortar seemed like a sound investment.
Without powerful unions to protect them, the wages of ordinary workers were held in check while the cost of housing began to spiral upwards. As it became increasingly difficult for first-time buyers to get on the propertyladder, a newly deregulated banking sector began offering ever more “attractive” loans. And we all know where that led.
Would any of this have been different if Thatcher had lost that titanic struggle in 1984?
She would have still been in power for another three years, but she would not have tasted blood. A chastened Conservative party might have realised sooner, rather than later, that the ultimate price of Thatcherism would be the brutalisation of society.
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UPDATE: A fair number of the more than 300 comments cry “Bollocks !“, and remind readers of the extremism and obstinacy of Arthur Scargill or that today’s problems stemn from the rise of unregulated financial dealings post-2001 or so. My sense is that Bragg’s point is / was that a new and widespread attitude was unleashed and over the years reinforced on a widespread basis.
Nevertheless, in the interest of demonstrating my awareness that there’s more than one side of the issue, here’s a comment from one of the Guardian readers:
“My instinct is always to side with the ordinary people and against saviour-leaders. Scargill and Thatcher were two cheeks of the same arse. The moment you rely on leaders like those to sort problems out, you’re already f***ed.
Having said that, somebody ought to have done to the City what Thatcher did to the Unions: make it impossible to make large scale decisions without comprehensive and individual consent of all stakeholders.”
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