Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ Margaret Thatcher came to governmental power in 1979 on the back of the so-called “Winter of Discontent” which was largely blamed for bringing down the Labour administration led by James Callaghan. 

The “Winter of Discontent” covered the winter of 1978/79 and was the trade unions' response to the governments five-percent cap on pay increases. This was an attempt by Callaghan to get to grips with inflation and proved, yet again, just like the Conservatives, Labour blamed greedy workers and their unions for demanding high pay increases as the cause of inflation. Never did either party blame greedy ever more profit hungry employers for pushing up prices to increase their profits as the cause of inflated prices - no it was always the unions. 

It never entered the Labour administration's heads, despite having Clause IV inserted into their constitution (a commitment by Labour to the common ownership of the means of production) that huge pay demands were a response to the cost of living, high prices imposed by the employers, their right under the private ownership of the means of production. Private sector workers at Ford demanded and achieved, after a strike, a seventeen per-cent pay rise while Callaghan insisted public sector workers would remain within his guide lines of five per-cent. This caused massive industrial action, hence, the “Winter of Discontent”. It was against this background Thatcher was elected and what was to follow was the biggest alteration in British (not the UK) politics since Clement Atlee won a landslide for Labour in 1945.

Margaret Thatcher was determined to end once and for all the post-war consensus politics which had served Britain so well since 1945. The consensus was, as the name suggests, a consensus of opinions between the two major parties, Conservative and Labour, not to undo too much of their predecessor’s work. For example, when in 1951 Churchill and the Conservatives were returned to power, they did nothing to undo or undermine the nationalisation of some major industries which Labour had carried out. Neither did they interfere with the Welfare State which Atlee had introduced, including the National Health Service (NHS). All this was to change! Under the consensus arrangement (unspoken) industrial relations were carried out on a pluralist platform known as “Pluralism”. This accepted that strikes and conflict were inevitable but not insurmountable through negotiation between employers and trade unions and differed from the pre-war unitarist system of IR where trade unions were barely recognised. 

It was Thatcher’s intention to turn the clock back to pre-war years in many aspects of everyday life for the working-class. Though there never was a legal right to strike, employers were reluctant to take any form of action against workers who had exercised their civil right to withdraw labour as this may fuel unnecessary agitation with the unions and be more trouble than it was worth. Thatcher was determined to take the unions down and, if she could have got away with it, I’m convinced she would have made them illegal organisations. She went partially down this road when, in 1983, she banned trade unions at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at Cheltenham under the guise of national security. This installation had been unionised for many years with no problems until Thatcher created one. Thankfully within the British parliamentary political system stands certain checks and balances preventing such moves as Thatcher may have liked. It is my belief Margaret Thatcher, privately, held strong fascist views though her party, the conservatives, did not. It was, in all probability, these checks and balances which prevented her going all the way down the fascist road. She tried to have Neil Kinnock, Labour Party leader, kicked off the Queens Privy Council for being too left wing. This was a man who could not, or would not, back the Coal Miners during their year long fight with Thatcher.

When Thatcher entered 10 Downing Street she had already decided to cut back on the frontiers of the state, the so-called “Nanny State,” meaning cutting back on the welfare state which many poorer people relied upon. She called this giving people their freedom from the state interference. While she was cutting back on the charitable side of the British state, she was strengthening the aggressive parts, army, police and judiciary. So, while people naively believed in Thatcher’s cutting back on state interference on one hand, they foolishly did not see the bolstering of the forces of law and order, the rich man’s law and the rich man’s order. This bolstering had nothing to do with stopping working-class people being robbed and mugged, but moreover to protect the wealthy from the masses. She was also determined to privatise as much of the NHS as she could get away with, while telling people, lying, “the NHS is safe in our hands”. That was like telling a Turkey it was safe in the custody of Bernard Mathews in late December!!

Another aspect of the post-war consensus she had both eyes on was Industrial Relations. She introduced anti-trade union legislation – or her henchman Norman Tebbit did – to empower the employers and embolden them to take the unions on and win. If the employers lost, she would introduce another law to ensure such a defeat would not reoccur. If she could have got away with it, she may well have done, as did Hitler in Nazi Germany: ban the unions, steal their assets and have their leaders rounded up and sent to camps. Who knows? It never came to pass thanks again to the checks and balances. 

Margaret Thatcher had never forgiven the trade unions for bringing down her former boss, Edward heath, in 1974. The union she chiefly blamed for this humiliation of a Prime Minister was, of course, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). It was the NUM who were the most instrumental in bringing down Heath and his government which included Thatcher. She saw this as a personal affront to herself and the entire British ruling-class whose interests she represented. Of all the people in the NUM etched on Thatcher’s mind, the most prominent was Arthur Scargill. Scargill, at the time was the Yorkshire Area President and the national position was occupied by Joe Gormley. It was Arthur Scargill who organised the flying pickets fanning out from Yorkshire and the North-East which ensured scab labour did not try to go into work as the ballot had overwhelmingly voted for strike action. Thatcher accused the NUM of holding the country to ransom in 1974 over the oil crisis.

She appointed Peter Walker as her Energy Secretary in her first cabinet in 1979. “She reportedly called him into her office and informed Walker; we are going to have a miners strike” (Striking Similarities Kevin Morley: P.162). The defeat of 1974 was etched on this woman’s mind and had been festering ever since. Before she could take on the NUM, the backbone traditionally of working-class militancy in Britain, she had to knock out the other unions one by one. One of the first engagements was against the train driver’s union, the Association of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF), in 1982.

The union refused to operate British Railways Board’s plans for more flexible working hours or rosters, on which there have been extensive consultations, including a tribunal award, and which have already been accepted by railway guards and their union and implemented by four-fifths of them: (Speech by the Secretary of State for Transport, David Howell to Parliament).

ASLEF refused to cooperate in any shape or form, seeing these flexible rosters for what they were, a means of cutting jobs. This was one of the first attempts by a nationalised industry to use their new empowerment given by Tebbit’s anti-union legislation. What these chicken brained bosses at British Railways could not see, or refused to think about, was that these moves by Thatcher were in the direction of privatising the industry, under which their own jobs would have gone! This was again part of the policy to destroy the post-war consensus.

The first private industry owner to use the Thatcher anti-union legislation was Eddie Shah, a Manchester businessman who owned six local newspapers. He confronted the trade unions at his Warrington print works and the Manchester news offices in 1983. He sacked six workers in a declared anti-union move, purposely looking for confrontation knowing he had the backing of Thatcher. In response the National Graphical Association (NGA) began mass picketing of Shah’s works. Police brought in riot-trained Police Support Units from five surrounding areas and the confrontation, as Shah had wanted, became physical. Once again, the police showing whose side in any trade dispute they are on, the employers. The police are not, as we are constantly lied to, neutral in such confrontations, they defend the rich against the workers! The police, legalised thugs in uniform, attacked and overturned the NGA speakers van while squads in full riot gear attacked pickets. This was all done with the Prime Ministers blessing, a fascist police force in waiting? Most definitely! For the first time in post-war Britain, para-military policing had been used to attack strikers in an industrial dispute. Yes, beyond doubt this woman was a fascist at heart!

By 1984 Thatcher felt confident enough, having seen the Trade Union Congress’s (TUCs) weak support for other workers, to take on the miners. She instructed Ian Macgregor, Chairman of the National Coal Board (NCB) to initiate a pit closure programme outside the accepted norms of coal exhaustion. George Hayes was the North East Area Manager for the NCB and he was instructed to bypass the monthly colliery reviews, involving the mining unions, NUM and NACODS, and announce pit closures. Again, this was a nationalised industries management using anti-union legislation against their own unions. Perhaps Hayes could not see, or was partially blind, that if the area pits were closed, he would not be needed. This same rule applied to NACODS, the Pit Deputies union, later in the looming pit strike (further reading about NACODS in Striking Similarities P.183). Hayes announced, without negotiation or even consultation, at one of the last monthly meetings the intention to close Cortonwood Pit, a mine with at least five years coal reserves. Thatcher knew, as did MacGregor and Hayes, this move would force the NUM to fight which was why the announcement was made in the springtime, a time of year no miner would wish to strike with summer just around the corner. The battle to save jobs, pits and communities was on and would last for one year. The NUMs funds were sequestrated meaning strike pay could not be given, and Thatcher had legislated to deny any strikers welfare benefits! During the dispute, which resulted in several deaths, Thatcher legislated to impose curfews on mining areas, declared NCB property out of bounds for miner’s pickets. This property apparently extended to the country’s motorway network as miners were arrested at intersections by the ever-neutral police! The yearlong strike was brutal and, just as they had done at Warrington, the police showed their fascist core, backed up by a Prime Minister who had more in common with Benito Mussolini than British Liberal Democracy. These strikes showed up the failings within liberal democracy as well as its strengths, the latter being the checks and balances preventing Thatcher going all the way, the former showing just how far away, or how close, the capitalist system is away from fascism!

By 1990 the British Conservative Party had enough of Margaret Thatcher, they were seeing her for what she really was. She was unceremoniously ejected from the leadership of the party - she was kicked out. Despite this, and losing the subsequent election for the leadership ultimately to John Major, Thatcher still insisted she remain as Prime Minister according to a TV documentary/film. She maintained she was elected as PM, which was and is not true of British parliamentary politics. The electorate do not vote for a Prime Minister, they vote for an MP candidate for a party. The party which has the most MPs then forms an executive with the leader of that party becoming Prime Minister. Thatcher conveniently overlooked this age-old fact and tried to remain in office despite not being leader of the Conservative Party! Does this not have an air of, at least arrogance and at worst fascism about it?

Margaret Thatcher left behind her Thatcherism, in much the same way as Hitler left Nazism and Stalin left Stalinism - the difference being Thatcherism stuck. She was the least popular PM since Churchill after World War Two in 1983 and won the election on the back of an avoidable conflict with Argentina over the Falkland/Malvinas islands. This was a bloodbath with, had Thatcher listened to reports coming back from the patrol boat in the area, the ice cutting vessel HMS Endurance she would have reinforced the garrison on the islands thus deterring an Argentine invasion. The conflict could have been avoided. This would not have served her purpose as she was in political trouble and needed a diversion! What better than a war with an inferior military power? The Argentine leader, neo fascist General Galtieri, was also in turmoil in Argentina, a factor, no doubt, which influenced his decision to invade the Malvinas. Between the pair of them these two far right-wing dictators caused much suffering for the families of the dead Argentine and British troops to further their own ends!

After 1990 Thatcher may have gone but her legacy was alive and well. John Major succeeded her as leader of the party and won the 1992 General Election, against expectations, to become the Prime Minister. Neil Kinnock resigned as leader of the Labour Party to be replaced by John Smith. Smith was determined not to carry on aping Thatcherism but unfortunately died of a heart attack in 1994. He was replaced by the young dynamic and Thatcherite in disguise, Tony (Tory) Blair. Blair and his side kick, Gordon Brown, set about changing the Labour Party moving it to the right. They abolished Clause IV of the constitution, which had been there since 1918 and called for the common ownership of industry. Blair in 1995 got rid of this commitment to public ownership as part of his “modernisation” programme. Him and Brown set about changing the party in name as well as deed, calling it new Labour. The reason for the small casement in “new” was to avoid the word officially being incorporated into the title of the party. When in 1997 new Labour won the General Election, the party was unrecognisable and many of Thatcher’s policies were adopted and much legislation retained, the relationship between Thatcherism and new Labour can be summed up in Thatcher’s own words; new Labour were her “greatest achievement”. For example, none of the Thatcherite anti-union legislation was repealed despite calls from the unions for Blair to do so. The only exception here was the repealing of the ban at GCHQ on trade unions. Thatcherism was alive and well inside new Labour and, arguably many of its core values still are with the modern Labour party. Only Jeremy Corbyn, who stood down after losing the 2019 General Election, would have turned Labour's clock back to being a proper Labour party. Corbyn almost won the 2017 election, much to the fear of most Labour MPs, all Blairites and de facto, Thatcherites perhaps with a small t, who were terrified of having to upset British capitalism under a Corbyn Government. Many would rather have resigned than serve it has been argued! Instead of putting their energies into winning the next election, these MPs spent their time trying to oust their leader. Little wonder they lost the 2019 General Election!!

Since Thatcher came to power back in 1979, she left behind a legacy. She had destroyed the, albeit creaking, post war consensus which with a little effort and negotiating could have been maintained. Part of this consensus, as we have seen was a pluralist system of Industrial Relations which has now gone. Also, under the consensus an economic system known as Keynesianism (based on the theories of the economist John Maynard Keynes) had served very well and was an integral part of the consensus, including pluralism. It was a mixed economy, so much state management and so much private capital with no state involvement, and Thatcher replaced this, at the stroke of a pen with ”Monetarism”. This economic ideology was/is free market and private capitalist based, a kind of modern laissez faire meaning no government interference in the economy. This, of course suits the capitalist class perfectly and when the party of opposition show no opposition to this at all, then all the better. The nationalised industries have been sold off to private companies, as she said she would do, and worker’s rights have been eroded to say the least. The once safety net for workers, the Industrial Tribunal, has gone in its recognised form under Thatcherism and, again, no Labour government has revoked these anti-worker-legislations. 

During the 1980s we saw for the first time since 1945 a paramilitary police force, attacking with vengeance workers pickets as they do in police and fascist states. The NHS has been largely privatised which various government’s, including those of Blair and Brown, have tried to deny. The welfare-state has come under severe attacks both under and post Thatcher governments and, if she could have got away with it, that safety net for the poor, the welfare-state, she would have made history. Unemployment, a victim of Thatcher’s economic policies has rocketed which again weakens the bargaining power of the trade unions along with forcing down the membership numbers. Thatcher had neighbour spying on neighbour, just as in Nazi Germany, turning people into informers. If a neighbour suspected somebody, previously in employment now unemployed, doing a little work on the side and claiming benefits, they were to report that person immediately. Of course, not everybody did this but some did, a sinister move in a very frightening direction. A direction which has lost none of its momentum to this day alas. I have described Margaret Thatcher as a fascist based on her policies, not all of which she could enact due at times to opposition in her own party, and her relationship with right-wing dictators like Augusto Pinochet of Chile. The Conservative Party is not, and never has been, a fascist party. The party is right-wing but not fascist right. I it is important to know the difference - my opinions are in reference to Thatcher herself.

The above critique of Thatcher and Thatcherism applies to Britain and not the United Kingdom, which unfortunately includes the six counties. Here Thatcherism took on an even more sinister role, especially in the year 1981. Perhaps another subject for another day.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent 
Socialist Republican and Marxist

Thatcher – Trade Unions – And Thatcherism

Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ Margaret Thatcher came to governmental power in 1979 on the back of the so-called “Winter of Discontent” which was largely blamed for bringing down the Labour administration led by James Callaghan. 

The “Winter of Discontent” covered the winter of 1978/79 and was the trade unions' response to the governments five-percent cap on pay increases. This was an attempt by Callaghan to get to grips with inflation and proved, yet again, just like the Conservatives, Labour blamed greedy workers and their unions for demanding high pay increases as the cause of inflation. Never did either party blame greedy ever more profit hungry employers for pushing up prices to increase their profits as the cause of inflated prices - no it was always the unions. 

It never entered the Labour administration's heads, despite having Clause IV inserted into their constitution (a commitment by Labour to the common ownership of the means of production) that huge pay demands were a response to the cost of living, high prices imposed by the employers, their right under the private ownership of the means of production. Private sector workers at Ford demanded and achieved, after a strike, a seventeen per-cent pay rise while Callaghan insisted public sector workers would remain within his guide lines of five per-cent. This caused massive industrial action, hence, the “Winter of Discontent”. It was against this background Thatcher was elected and what was to follow was the biggest alteration in British (not the UK) politics since Clement Atlee won a landslide for Labour in 1945.

Margaret Thatcher was determined to end once and for all the post-war consensus politics which had served Britain so well since 1945. The consensus was, as the name suggests, a consensus of opinions between the two major parties, Conservative and Labour, not to undo too much of their predecessor’s work. For example, when in 1951 Churchill and the Conservatives were returned to power, they did nothing to undo or undermine the nationalisation of some major industries which Labour had carried out. Neither did they interfere with the Welfare State which Atlee had introduced, including the National Health Service (NHS). All this was to change! Under the consensus arrangement (unspoken) industrial relations were carried out on a pluralist platform known as “Pluralism”. This accepted that strikes and conflict were inevitable but not insurmountable through negotiation between employers and trade unions and differed from the pre-war unitarist system of IR where trade unions were barely recognised. 

It was Thatcher’s intention to turn the clock back to pre-war years in many aspects of everyday life for the working-class. Though there never was a legal right to strike, employers were reluctant to take any form of action against workers who had exercised their civil right to withdraw labour as this may fuel unnecessary agitation with the unions and be more trouble than it was worth. Thatcher was determined to take the unions down and, if she could have got away with it, I’m convinced she would have made them illegal organisations. She went partially down this road when, in 1983, she banned trade unions at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at Cheltenham under the guise of national security. This installation had been unionised for many years with no problems until Thatcher created one. Thankfully within the British parliamentary political system stands certain checks and balances preventing such moves as Thatcher may have liked. It is my belief Margaret Thatcher, privately, held strong fascist views though her party, the conservatives, did not. It was, in all probability, these checks and balances which prevented her going all the way down the fascist road. She tried to have Neil Kinnock, Labour Party leader, kicked off the Queens Privy Council for being too left wing. This was a man who could not, or would not, back the Coal Miners during their year long fight with Thatcher.

When Thatcher entered 10 Downing Street she had already decided to cut back on the frontiers of the state, the so-called “Nanny State,” meaning cutting back on the welfare state which many poorer people relied upon. She called this giving people their freedom from the state interference. While she was cutting back on the charitable side of the British state, she was strengthening the aggressive parts, army, police and judiciary. So, while people naively believed in Thatcher’s cutting back on state interference on one hand, they foolishly did not see the bolstering of the forces of law and order, the rich man’s law and the rich man’s order. This bolstering had nothing to do with stopping working-class people being robbed and mugged, but moreover to protect the wealthy from the masses. She was also determined to privatise as much of the NHS as she could get away with, while telling people, lying, “the NHS is safe in our hands”. That was like telling a Turkey it was safe in the custody of Bernard Mathews in late December!!

Another aspect of the post-war consensus she had both eyes on was Industrial Relations. She introduced anti-trade union legislation – or her henchman Norman Tebbit did – to empower the employers and embolden them to take the unions on and win. If the employers lost, she would introduce another law to ensure such a defeat would not reoccur. If she could have got away with it, she may well have done, as did Hitler in Nazi Germany: ban the unions, steal their assets and have their leaders rounded up and sent to camps. Who knows? It never came to pass thanks again to the checks and balances. 

Margaret Thatcher had never forgiven the trade unions for bringing down her former boss, Edward heath, in 1974. The union she chiefly blamed for this humiliation of a Prime Minister was, of course, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). It was the NUM who were the most instrumental in bringing down Heath and his government which included Thatcher. She saw this as a personal affront to herself and the entire British ruling-class whose interests she represented. Of all the people in the NUM etched on Thatcher’s mind, the most prominent was Arthur Scargill. Scargill, at the time was the Yorkshire Area President and the national position was occupied by Joe Gormley. It was Arthur Scargill who organised the flying pickets fanning out from Yorkshire and the North-East which ensured scab labour did not try to go into work as the ballot had overwhelmingly voted for strike action. Thatcher accused the NUM of holding the country to ransom in 1974 over the oil crisis.

She appointed Peter Walker as her Energy Secretary in her first cabinet in 1979. “She reportedly called him into her office and informed Walker; we are going to have a miners strike” (Striking Similarities Kevin Morley: P.162). The defeat of 1974 was etched on this woman’s mind and had been festering ever since. Before she could take on the NUM, the backbone traditionally of working-class militancy in Britain, she had to knock out the other unions one by one. One of the first engagements was against the train driver’s union, the Association of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF), in 1982.

The union refused to operate British Railways Board’s plans for more flexible working hours or rosters, on which there have been extensive consultations, including a tribunal award, and which have already been accepted by railway guards and their union and implemented by four-fifths of them: (Speech by the Secretary of State for Transport, David Howell to Parliament).

ASLEF refused to cooperate in any shape or form, seeing these flexible rosters for what they were, a means of cutting jobs. This was one of the first attempts by a nationalised industry to use their new empowerment given by Tebbit’s anti-union legislation. What these chicken brained bosses at British Railways could not see, or refused to think about, was that these moves by Thatcher were in the direction of privatising the industry, under which their own jobs would have gone! This was again part of the policy to destroy the post-war consensus.

The first private industry owner to use the Thatcher anti-union legislation was Eddie Shah, a Manchester businessman who owned six local newspapers. He confronted the trade unions at his Warrington print works and the Manchester news offices in 1983. He sacked six workers in a declared anti-union move, purposely looking for confrontation knowing he had the backing of Thatcher. In response the National Graphical Association (NGA) began mass picketing of Shah’s works. Police brought in riot-trained Police Support Units from five surrounding areas and the confrontation, as Shah had wanted, became physical. Once again, the police showing whose side in any trade dispute they are on, the employers. The police are not, as we are constantly lied to, neutral in such confrontations, they defend the rich against the workers! The police, legalised thugs in uniform, attacked and overturned the NGA speakers van while squads in full riot gear attacked pickets. This was all done with the Prime Ministers blessing, a fascist police force in waiting? Most definitely! For the first time in post-war Britain, para-military policing had been used to attack strikers in an industrial dispute. Yes, beyond doubt this woman was a fascist at heart!

By 1984 Thatcher felt confident enough, having seen the Trade Union Congress’s (TUCs) weak support for other workers, to take on the miners. She instructed Ian Macgregor, Chairman of the National Coal Board (NCB) to initiate a pit closure programme outside the accepted norms of coal exhaustion. George Hayes was the North East Area Manager for the NCB and he was instructed to bypass the monthly colliery reviews, involving the mining unions, NUM and NACODS, and announce pit closures. Again, this was a nationalised industries management using anti-union legislation against their own unions. Perhaps Hayes could not see, or was partially blind, that if the area pits were closed, he would not be needed. This same rule applied to NACODS, the Pit Deputies union, later in the looming pit strike (further reading about NACODS in Striking Similarities P.183). Hayes announced, without negotiation or even consultation, at one of the last monthly meetings the intention to close Cortonwood Pit, a mine with at least five years coal reserves. Thatcher knew, as did MacGregor and Hayes, this move would force the NUM to fight which was why the announcement was made in the springtime, a time of year no miner would wish to strike with summer just around the corner. The battle to save jobs, pits and communities was on and would last for one year. The NUMs funds were sequestrated meaning strike pay could not be given, and Thatcher had legislated to deny any strikers welfare benefits! During the dispute, which resulted in several deaths, Thatcher legislated to impose curfews on mining areas, declared NCB property out of bounds for miner’s pickets. This property apparently extended to the country’s motorway network as miners were arrested at intersections by the ever-neutral police! The yearlong strike was brutal and, just as they had done at Warrington, the police showed their fascist core, backed up by a Prime Minister who had more in common with Benito Mussolini than British Liberal Democracy. These strikes showed up the failings within liberal democracy as well as its strengths, the latter being the checks and balances preventing Thatcher going all the way, the former showing just how far away, or how close, the capitalist system is away from fascism!

By 1990 the British Conservative Party had enough of Margaret Thatcher, they were seeing her for what she really was. She was unceremoniously ejected from the leadership of the party - she was kicked out. Despite this, and losing the subsequent election for the leadership ultimately to John Major, Thatcher still insisted she remain as Prime Minister according to a TV documentary/film. She maintained she was elected as PM, which was and is not true of British parliamentary politics. The electorate do not vote for a Prime Minister, they vote for an MP candidate for a party. The party which has the most MPs then forms an executive with the leader of that party becoming Prime Minister. Thatcher conveniently overlooked this age-old fact and tried to remain in office despite not being leader of the Conservative Party! Does this not have an air of, at least arrogance and at worst fascism about it?

Margaret Thatcher left behind her Thatcherism, in much the same way as Hitler left Nazism and Stalin left Stalinism - the difference being Thatcherism stuck. She was the least popular PM since Churchill after World War Two in 1983 and won the election on the back of an avoidable conflict with Argentina over the Falkland/Malvinas islands. This was a bloodbath with, had Thatcher listened to reports coming back from the patrol boat in the area, the ice cutting vessel HMS Endurance she would have reinforced the garrison on the islands thus deterring an Argentine invasion. The conflict could have been avoided. This would not have served her purpose as she was in political trouble and needed a diversion! What better than a war with an inferior military power? The Argentine leader, neo fascist General Galtieri, was also in turmoil in Argentina, a factor, no doubt, which influenced his decision to invade the Malvinas. Between the pair of them these two far right-wing dictators caused much suffering for the families of the dead Argentine and British troops to further their own ends!

After 1990 Thatcher may have gone but her legacy was alive and well. John Major succeeded her as leader of the party and won the 1992 General Election, against expectations, to become the Prime Minister. Neil Kinnock resigned as leader of the Labour Party to be replaced by John Smith. Smith was determined not to carry on aping Thatcherism but unfortunately died of a heart attack in 1994. He was replaced by the young dynamic and Thatcherite in disguise, Tony (Tory) Blair. Blair and his side kick, Gordon Brown, set about changing the Labour Party moving it to the right. They abolished Clause IV of the constitution, which had been there since 1918 and called for the common ownership of industry. Blair in 1995 got rid of this commitment to public ownership as part of his “modernisation” programme. Him and Brown set about changing the party in name as well as deed, calling it new Labour. The reason for the small casement in “new” was to avoid the word officially being incorporated into the title of the party. When in 1997 new Labour won the General Election, the party was unrecognisable and many of Thatcher’s policies were adopted and much legislation retained, the relationship between Thatcherism and new Labour can be summed up in Thatcher’s own words; new Labour were her “greatest achievement”. For example, none of the Thatcherite anti-union legislation was repealed despite calls from the unions for Blair to do so. The only exception here was the repealing of the ban at GCHQ on trade unions. Thatcherism was alive and well inside new Labour and, arguably many of its core values still are with the modern Labour party. Only Jeremy Corbyn, who stood down after losing the 2019 General Election, would have turned Labour's clock back to being a proper Labour party. Corbyn almost won the 2017 election, much to the fear of most Labour MPs, all Blairites and de facto, Thatcherites perhaps with a small t, who were terrified of having to upset British capitalism under a Corbyn Government. Many would rather have resigned than serve it has been argued! Instead of putting their energies into winning the next election, these MPs spent their time trying to oust their leader. Little wonder they lost the 2019 General Election!!

Since Thatcher came to power back in 1979, she left behind a legacy. She had destroyed the, albeit creaking, post war consensus which with a little effort and negotiating could have been maintained. Part of this consensus, as we have seen was a pluralist system of Industrial Relations which has now gone. Also, under the consensus an economic system known as Keynesianism (based on the theories of the economist John Maynard Keynes) had served very well and was an integral part of the consensus, including pluralism. It was a mixed economy, so much state management and so much private capital with no state involvement, and Thatcher replaced this, at the stroke of a pen with ”Monetarism”. This economic ideology was/is free market and private capitalist based, a kind of modern laissez faire meaning no government interference in the economy. This, of course suits the capitalist class perfectly and when the party of opposition show no opposition to this at all, then all the better. The nationalised industries have been sold off to private companies, as she said she would do, and worker’s rights have been eroded to say the least. The once safety net for workers, the Industrial Tribunal, has gone in its recognised form under Thatcherism and, again, no Labour government has revoked these anti-worker-legislations. 

During the 1980s we saw for the first time since 1945 a paramilitary police force, attacking with vengeance workers pickets as they do in police and fascist states. The NHS has been largely privatised which various government’s, including those of Blair and Brown, have tried to deny. The welfare-state has come under severe attacks both under and post Thatcher governments and, if she could have got away with it, that safety net for the poor, the welfare-state, she would have made history. Unemployment, a victim of Thatcher’s economic policies has rocketed which again weakens the bargaining power of the trade unions along with forcing down the membership numbers. Thatcher had neighbour spying on neighbour, just as in Nazi Germany, turning people into informers. If a neighbour suspected somebody, previously in employment now unemployed, doing a little work on the side and claiming benefits, they were to report that person immediately. Of course, not everybody did this but some did, a sinister move in a very frightening direction. A direction which has lost none of its momentum to this day alas. I have described Margaret Thatcher as a fascist based on her policies, not all of which she could enact due at times to opposition in her own party, and her relationship with right-wing dictators like Augusto Pinochet of Chile. The Conservative Party is not, and never has been, a fascist party. The party is right-wing but not fascist right. I it is important to know the difference - my opinions are in reference to Thatcher herself.

The above critique of Thatcher and Thatcherism applies to Britain and not the United Kingdom, which unfortunately includes the six counties. Here Thatcherism took on an even more sinister role, especially in the year 1981. Perhaps another subject for another day.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent 
Socialist Republican and Marxist

2 comments:

  1. A great piece very well written & straight to the point. Cheers enjoyed the read

    ReplyDelete