Thatcher is dead

[Lord Camomile]

Has anyone asked Cameron where "no such things as society" fits into his "Big Society"? Or whether he agrees with Thatcher's assessment of Mandela as a terrorist?

I mean, seriously, two simple bloody questions I'd quite like to know the answers to.

 

[Pickman's model]

ha ha the weekend should be fun - awaits numerous sob stories

I look forward to hearing yours

 

[Lord Camomile]

'Ding-Dong! the Witch Is Dead' is now at #11 on the iTunes chart

People are very naughty

But I do like them

 

[frogwoman]

"It's a beautiful day" is also quite appropriate

 

[Lord Camomile]

"It's a beautiful day" is also quite appropriate

I hope you don't mean the U2 version. That is never appropriate

 

[marty21]

wish I hadn't bought a paper today - full of Thatcher stuff

 

[audiotech]

Just been listening again to Dave Douglas on the 1984/85 miners strike and the strategic importance it had for the ruling class, who had learned lessons from 1972 and 1974. Who were well prepared to take on the miners, who they knew were the most militant section of the industrial working class in this country and who they had to beat, so they could shift industrial production elsewhere and turn the UK into a service economy, with atomised, alienated individuals. In so doing they would also break the working class political, social and cultural base.

The lefts preparedness was pitiful, with the sects throwing out all sorts of nonsense. The RCP's Next Step, with their "Hit the Pits" edition just showed that they didn't have a clue about the first step. The SWP, as opportunist as ever, spent the first six months denouncing the support committees and then when they came on board denounced attempts to realistically politicise the struggle and looked instead to tactics from the 1970's, that the state had put all its efforts into ensuring were not going to work. You would have thought that they might have already thought that one through, but apparently not. He goes further and states that the SWP were not that interested because they believed the miners were going to lose anyway. The "downturn" you see. Workers Power, according to Douglas were a "joke" and the least said about them the better.

Douglas does make an interesting point and one you won't here often in that Thatcher didn't break the miners in '85, that came in 1992/3 and the same people who didn't support the miners in the 1984/85 strike, didn't support them then either.

More of the talk here.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I celebrated then as well

Yep. Same here.

 

[marty21]

I lived in Swansea during the Miner's strike - pretty solid support from students - we collected money for the miners at the shopping mall - and there regular trips to the picket lines in support (although to my shame I never went to a picket line - although I did rattle the bucket)

years later during the fuel blockade (2000?) I was in Swansea again and talked to a few people about the blockade - they hated the lorry drivers - as they felt they had scabbed and weakened the strike - feeling was still high then - still high now

 

[ViolentPanda]

"One important development in the 20th century was the introduction of soft ice cream. A chemical research team in Britain (of which a young Margaret Thatcher was a member)[21][22] discovered a method of doubling the amount of air in ice cream, which allowed manufacturers to use less ingredients, thereby reducing costs. It made possible the soft ice cream machine in which a cone is filled beneath a spigot on order. In the United States, Dairy Queen, Carvel, and Tastee-Freez pioneered in establishing chains of soft-serve ice cream outlets."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream

How apt, she helped invent a method to sell people less icecream for the same or greater amount of money.

She had a very obvious prejudice against dairy fats, as the ice cream she helped invent also incorporated vegetable fats to replace some of the dairy fat, to give a more creamy texture. She then went and stole nutritionally-required dairy fats from schoolchildren in the 1970s.
She was also responsible for the closure of the Milk Marketing Board.

Coincidence? I think not!

 

[Delroy Booth]

Douglas does make an interesting point and one you won't here often in that Thatcher didn't break the miners in '85, that came in 1992/3 and the same people who didn't support the miners in the 1984/85 strike, didn't support them then either.

More of the talk here.

This is crucially important. The mines where I live werent closed until the early 90's. People forget that they didn't finish off the miners until the 90's.

Anyway, can I just confirm something here, that I think is correct - Not since the assassination of Spencer Percival in 1812 has the death of a prime minister been greeted by spontaneous street demonstrations.

http://ludditebicentenary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/14th-may-1812-town-clerk-of-nottingham.html

I am sorry to be compelled to Detail to you the effects produced by this Intelligence at Nottingham which was received with the greatest Joy by the Populace here & before the Magistrates were aware of their Intention attempted to be celebrated by many noisy testimonies of their exultation such as shouting making Bonfires & in one Instance carrying a Flag & a Drum.

 

[likesfish]

Blunkett, the man who described sick and disabled people as "sitting on the sofa watching daytime tv all day''


Btw, a guy was on Radio Sheffield who was from down South earlier who was sympathetic to the Miners, he categorically says he witnessed coaches leaving Sandhurst with military in police uniform...

thats bullshit unless maggie had every soldier dressed up as a copper disposed of afterwards nobodys ever come forward from the military to claim they were
hitting miners.
Plus sandhurst is the rupert school about the least useful unit for public order.
As a distinct lack of dead miners from baton rounds or live rounds we can safely assume all the brutality came from the coppers.
I dont know why this myth keeps appearing maybe the fact the people want to belive it took the military to stop the miners.
rather than the UK goverment learnt lessons from 1974 and the miners didnt.

 

[butchersapron]

As a distinct lack of dead miners from baton rounds or live rounds we can safely assume all the brutality came from the coppers.

What a daft thing to say - as if squaddies dressed up as coppers would have all the equipment that they would have in the army and the go-ahead to deploy them. Would sort of defeat the objective wouldn't it? Have a think about it.

 

[audiotech]

Perhaps likesfish the reason that it keeps coming forward is the real possibility that it isn't a myth?

 

[agricola]

out of interest, what makes you think she wouldn't have been happpy with what all of her successors did re; the economy, privatisations, social authoritarianism, demonising the poor, the great Outsourcing bonanza etc.? It strikes me that it would have been a neoliberal paradise for her; her policies carried on to their logical conclusion.

TBH I dont think that many of those were the logical conclusion of her policies, though of course she has been cited as an influence by many of those who did go on to implement the policies mentioned - certainly I think that the colossal waste involved in (for example) rail privatization, or PFI, or the outsourcing deals such as FIREControl or many of those in the NHS, would have horrified her.

 

[Delroy Booth]

thats bullshit unless maggie had every soldier dressed up as a copper disposed of afterwards nobodys ever come forward from the military to claim they were hitting miners.

That's not even true there's a guy in the Benn diaries who's an ex-soldier who came forward and said he participated in policing the miners strike. I'll have a look for the exact quote if you don't believe me but you might have to give me a few hours.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

TBH I dont think that many of those were the logical conclusion of her policies, though of course she has been cited as an influence by many of those who did go on to implement the policies mentioned - certainly I think that the colossal waste involved in (for example) rail privatization, or PFI, or the outsourcing deals such as FIREControl or many of those in the NHS, would have horrified her.

I don't agree at all. All the privatisations involved massive waste. She wasn't against waste - look at the waste involved in her disastrous economic policies. She was against collective ownership and collective provision of essential services. She was against society as a concept. And she was prepared to ruin pretty much whatever needed to be ruined in order to destroy collective provision.

 

[ViolentPanda]

They really are asking for trouble:

Depends. I fully expect them to have airborne surveillance, and every spare copper from the MPS and CoL rosters blocking the side streets.
Won't it be a terrible shame if something kicks off as a result of police violence? Wouldn't that be a perfect memorial to the cunt that was most responsible for the "politiciasation" of the police forces in the latter part of the 20th century?

 

[audiotech]

Others too Delroy, but I can't give chapter and verse right now.

 

[likesfish]

Perhaps the reason that it keeps coming forward is the real possibility that it isn't a myth?

so how come not a single squaddie has come forward to admit to being at the miners strike?
for the policy to work you'd need large numbers of soldiers and they talk especailly about something like this

 

[audiotech]

The Official Secrets Act.

 

[Sprocket.]

I always recall the tale of one miner from Manvers who came face to face with his son who though in the Army serving in West Germany was stood in front of his dad toe to toe,dressed as a copper.
They haven't spoke since. Allegedly.

 

[sihhi]

What a daft thing to say - as if squaddies dressed up as coppers would have all the equipment that they would have in the army and the go-ahead to deploy them. Would sort of defeat the objective wouldn't it? Have a think about it.

It might have been officers given as they were coming from Sandhurst.

 

[Delroy Booth]

The Official Secrets Act.

Yup this was mentioned in the Benn diaries also - the soldier claimed that they were all made to sign the official secrets act before being sent off to dress up as police and beat the shit out of the miners.

 

[Streathamite]

TBH I dont think that many of those were the logical conclusion of her policies, though of course she has been cited as an influence by many of those who did go on to implement the policies mentioned - certainly I think that the colossal waste involved in (for example) rail privatization, or PFI, or the outsourcing deals such as FIREControl or many of those in the NHS, would have horrified her.

Just one problem with that; Thatcher was 100% in favour of transferring as much as possible of the public sector into the private one, regardlesss of whether it looked the most fiscally stringent anbd prudent course. Her overriding concern was 'roll back the state' and to Deliver Unto Capital, and destroy public provision (like lbj said) - many of her other privatisations (notably utilities) were wasteful enough to scar the soul of a methodist Lincolnshire grocer.
What she'd see from G4s was a massive Win for Big Business (espesh a FTSE-250, and its' shareholders).

 

[agricola]

I don't agree at all. All the privatisations involved massive waste. She wasn't against waste - look at the waste involved in her disastrous economic policies.

Maybe, but the waste involved in the privatizations of the utilities and British Steel is of a markedly smaller and much less deliberate level than some of the later deals under Major and Blair.

Though of course saying that one does have to think that firms like (for example) BREL or British Steel might have gone on to have massive success if they had been run better as nationalized entities rather than just sold off, combined with some of the union reforms, and protected from direct government interference.

 

[likesfish]

http://www.arrse.co.uk/intelligence-cell/66213-miners-strike-soldiers-police-uniform-4.html rather intresting discussion on this point inculding coppers and people who were serving at the time.

tends to be the fact that a large number of coppers were based at Proteus camp, so obviously police would be seen coming out of an Army camp and someone would jump to the wrong conclusion. Plus lots of ex squaddies join the police and they would be to the front in any sort of public order situation.
plus a lot of Keeping the Army in the Public Eye stuff going on so more green things around in the north east than usual.

there were discussions about invovling the Army but nothing came of them

 

[Streathamite]

That's not even true there's a guy in the Benn diaries who's an ex-soldier who came forward and said he participated in policing the miners strike. I'll have a look for the exact quote if you don't believe me but you might have to give me a few hours.

please do come back to this thread with that, if you've the time

 

[frogwoman]

I think the thing was with thatcher that she was quite clever because she never attacked her core support base directly, or if she did she made it appear like she was helping people. For example a lot of people supported her because of right to buy in the 80s, to a lot of people it seemed as though it was going to help them by allowing them to own their own property. Obviously to the people that she openly screwed she didn't give a fuck about it but there were loads of demographics (the police etc) which she never touched, mainly because she needed them to enforce her policies.

 

[Delroy Booth]

please do come back tot his thread with that, if you've the time

I don't know where my Benn diaries are, they're in a box with loads of other books and it'll take me ages to root through to find 'em. But I'll give it a go before the night is over.