I don’t have a huge amount to say about the late Margaret
Thatcher. I won’t be dancing in the streets, as some people are now that she’s
dead - although I understand why they feel moved to do so. But I do wish she had never happened to us. I am convinced that her
policies have had a malign effect on our country and that they are largely
responsible for the thing that grieves me most today, namely, the great chasm
that has opened up between the resources of and prospects for the poor and
those of the rich. I think we will pay quite a price for that in the fullness
of time. The last time we were so unbalanced it took two world wars to shake
things up.
However…. Whenever the subject of Thatcher’s policies comes
up in conversation I remember where we were when she came to office in May
1979. I was at the time a freight train guard and a member of the National
Union of Railwaymen. I worked alongside drivers, who belonged to ASLEF, the Associated
Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. I well recall the time, in the
winter of 1978-79, when the drivers were going out on strike on Tuesdays and
Thursdays, a scheme designed to inflict maximum damage on the scheduling of the
network. I was walking to the depot for a Monday night shift when I bumped into
one of them. ‘Are you out on strike again this week?’ I asked. ‘Dunno,’
he said. ‘I forgot to put the news on before I left home.’ It struck me as
significant that, in a supposedly democratic union, the members were required
to watch the main TV news at ten o’clock
to find out whether or not their leaders had called them out. Maybe it wasn’t
so very odd. Maybe that was the best way to do things with a large membership
who worked a bizarre and complicated shift pattern. But I had had my own
problems with union representatives in my factory days. The shop stewards at
Rowntrees seemed to be doing little more than getting together with the
management to make sure that people like me didn’t rock the (very cosy) boat.
What I also remember from those days was the number of
people I worked with who admitted that, yes, they were going to vote for the
Tories for the first time in their lives, who agreed that, yes, their parents
would turn in their graves... but in their eyes Labour – and our own unions – were destroying
the country. I also remember the trouble I had in reconciling my sympathies
with the legitimate demands of the coal-miners and the vainglorious posturing
of their leader Arthur Scargill, who seemed to have studied and adopted the
body language of such demagogues as Adolf Hitler.
One more memory, of election night: May 3rd 1979 . I was working a freight
train to Newcastle York
We long ago recognised that Thatcher had won the war. Her
policies have taken root, her ethos prevails. Labour has changed everything
except its name. Her death is of little real consequence. Her legacy is what
counts.
It's a good article but a few things get over-looked when people say Thatcher should be thanked for breaking the unions hold.
ReplyDeleteFirst you need to apreciate the job of a union is to protect their members interests. Yes a hell of a lot used their position to promote their own views and that was as wrong then as it is now. But no person goes on strike for the fun of it, yes those who have had no responsibilites at the time used strikes as an excuse but that was because they had little or no say or interest in the facts of a dispute.
Second. You really do need to go back in history to apreciate the real reason why unions strike, far too many people assume and are lead to the assumption that it's because workers want more pay. That often not true.
Agreements were broke by managment at the time simply because Thatcher wouldn't invest in industry. This was the reason for the car & coal strikes. Unions had agreements in place for their workers and at the time the managment was happy to sign off on their because it meant they got their way. She forced managment to go back on those signed agreements so what else could workers do but go on strike.
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For example, if you boss wanted you to change your lunch break from 60mins to 30mins you would expect something in return. Say you agree an extra few pound in wages ? you would be annoyed if they then turned arounand said rather then more money you will get less. This is exactly what happened to some.
At fifty, I'm slightly too young to have voted in 1979 but, if I had, I would have voted for her, such was the power of that great Saachi advertising campaign.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, looking at those youngsters who are currently celebrating her death, I can see a generation that will be paying for some of Thatcher's appallingly damaging policies for the rest of their lives.