butchersapron
Bring back hanging
They're in govt
Portillo - 'Thatcher cared about the working man'
- Thread starter purenarcotic
- Start date
_angel_
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Tories are notorious for coming out with clangers. Labour are usually more disciplined in this respect, which is why when Gordon Brown put his foot in his mouth it was so spectacular.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
I'd suggest that this desbribes Labour politicians better than Tories tbh.
elbows
Well-Known Member
He didn't really put his foot in his mouth though did he, all that happened was that a private comment became public. If that happened a lot more we could probably destroy most of the politicians pretty quickly.
Athos
Well-Known Member
Which probably says more about working class people's belief in an alternative than it does in the current Conservative Party's connection with and offering too the working class, to be fair (not to mention the role the Lib Dem scum play in propping them up).
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Yes it does, now what?
I think that the issue was more that many working class people felt let down by Labour for all sorts of reasons, not least because the Conservatives under Lady T seemed to understand the aspirations of a large segment of the working class more than Labour. And I would argue that in many ways that is still true today.
I know that both my parents, who came from staunch Trade Union Labour backgrounds, both started voting Tory in 1979.
I know that both my parents, who came from staunch Trade Union Labour backgrounds, both started voting Tory in 1979.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
They probably "started" (as did many) because they were daft enough to believe the smearing (sometimes state-sponsored) of Labour throughout the 1970s, and then found that it benefitted them to continue voting Tory. It could be argued that Thatcher's governments put the final nail in the coffin of altruistic voting, leading to it becoming an entirely instrumental practice, with people voting on the basis of the individual benefit to themselves, not what's bes for their community or class.
Puddy_Tat
naturally fluffy
can i add "perceived" in front of "individual benefit"?
in quite a lot of cases, the turkeys were persuaded to vote for christmas, and they got screwed along with the rest of their community and class...
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
By all means!!
Absolutely. I had mates who joined BT as apprentices who were all for the BT privatisation, because they didn't realise that a privatised BT would seek to trim the workforce down to a "competitive" size. Result: A glut of telecoms engineers on the employment market, 2 of my mates among them. :facepalm
I am very sorry to confess that my vote helped get Thatcher in to power at the very start. I had this idea that a woman at the helm of politics in this country, notwithstanding the grocer's daughter background, would change the whole ethos. I was wrong. 'Thatcher, Thatcher, the milk-snatcher' jibes should have alerted me, but I was stupid. A totally terrible thing to vote for someone just because it's a woman, I know that now. But then, a lot of us were becoming feminists and thought that we were just as good as men but had never had any power to prove that we were just as good, and even, perhaps, slightly more humane. Voting for her seemed to give us the chance to exploit this grand idea. Alas, as has been demonstrated, politicians have proved to be a complete race apart. Women, men, working class, Etonians, you name it....So few politicians of whatever stripe seem to be real human beings. That is frightening.
stethoscope
Well-Known Member
"We want women's rights, not women on the right".
I would argue that it put the nail in the coffin that the working class could be relied on to just follow what their political betters in the Labour Party told them to believe in.
The major issue the Labour Party faced in the 70's was that it forget that the British Labour movement had always owed more to Methodism than Marxism and that essentially all that left wing ideological bollocks was never going to wash with a large segment of the working classes.And it never truly learnt that lesson until the early 90's.
IMHO the Labour Party took the working classes for granted and got their arses spanked accordingly in 1979 and so on.
elbows
Well-Known Member
What frightens and saddens me more is how easily human beings can be corrupted by a system, and the way women have used their vote is just as depressing as what individual women have done as politicians.
Athos
Well-Known Member
Are you asking what I would like to see? I'd like to see us (the working class) build an alternative: a system of direct democracy based on the human needs of all of us, and maintained by mutual aid (rather than one based on priofit for a greedy few, and maintained by coercion).
Sounds grand, I know, but, in practical terms, we can all do our bit - starting as individuals, families, our immediate communities and so on - building networks and systems which minimise the role of the state and capital in our own lives, through doing our best to undermine their influence wherever we can.
What do you think should come next?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I'm not asking that - put your trousers back on.
Athos
Well-Known Member
Sorry, I thought you were asking that. If not, what were you asking?
Sometimes, I find your pseudo-cryptic style a little impenetrable. For instance, I don't know what you mean about my trousers?
Silent Majority
Banned
This is a true and fair statement, Mrs Thatcher was by far the best Prime Minister of the 20th Century. She, along with the great Norman Tebbit curbed the power of the over-zealous trade unions, privatised flagging nationalised industries, made it possible for hundreds of thousands to buy their own homes and helped make it possible for business to thrive.
As Simon Heffer says: What a debt we owe Mrs Thatcher
As Simon Heffer says: What a debt we owe Mrs Thatcher
Nylock
I hate 'these days'...
stethoscope
Well-Known Member
"Silent Majority" lol.
Is that you Hustings?
Is that you Hustings?
Meltingpot
Living in our pools we soon forget about the sea
The thing I find remarkable about Thatch is that for all she said about her father, she practically never mentioned her mother. As the psychologist Dorothy Rowe said, it was like she sprang from her father's head like Zeus.
elbows
Well-Known Member
As I can now remember having a little rant about women and politics and dasehd hopes at least 3 times on this forum, I thought I should try a little harder to get to grips with my feelings on the matter. Its something of a struggle as it seems more than a little absurd to lump women all together as a block in the first place. And some of the hopes that it would have been possible to have a long time ago when imagining women with the vote and as politicians etc, that I bemoan the loss of, were likely naive, caricatured or sexist in the first place. And I can hardly judge the potential of the female vote when its mostly only been available in the context of a flawed system, ugly and limited choices, and an era where the media and especially televisions influence has had a complex effect on people. And thats without even getting into the economic and international stuff that has bound us to certain paths. Well, if the news of recent years is anything to go by then humans of all genders are going to have to make some tricky choices in the years ahead, and I have no doubt that women struggle, cope and overcome with at least as great a frequency as men.
There was very little left wing ideological bollocks from Labour in reality. Labour always prided itself on being a pragmatic, non-ideological party.
The statement from Portillo is uncontroversial though. Thatcher, or those who did her thinking for her, was closer to that part of the working class that was aspirational and, to one degree or another, unconcerned about the method through which those aspirations could be fulfilled, or the social effect of it. She appealed to those instincts.
purenarcotic
Conveniently Pocket Sized
Heh, that's so true. She seemed really very ambivalent towards women in general; the lack of women in the cabinet at her say so, her desire to block the Equal Opportunities Act in 1976 believing that girls shouldn't be allowed to do science despite being a chemistry graduate herself.
In short, she was nuts. Evil and nuts.
Stop mythologising her. Thatcher was just another PM, no worse than any we've had since and no worse than many we had before.
It's about time the left got over Thatcher. it's been twenty fucking years.
purenarcotic
Conveniently Pocket Sized
elbows
Well-Known Member
Even if we remove her personality and her personal politics from the equation, she was around during the dramatic and far-reaching phase of the end to the post-war consensus, so she'll always occupy a special place because of that. And she was an especially divisive PM.
20 Years and the Bitch still hasnt died.
When that happens, we'll piss on her grave and then move on.
Bet you don't.
And even if you'd did, she won't be thinking 'Oh no, look at them pissing on my grave.' She'll be dead.
It doesn't matter that an individual is dead when the damage is already done.
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