by Jonathan Roberts
The past couple of days have been absurd. As a centrist, I have looked on with quiet respect, but also with head in hands as ideologue after ideologue lined up to offer their views on Lady Thatcher’s legacy.
I say at the outset that, for those so inclined, the time to celebrate was not this week, it was in 1990 or 1997. Ed Miliband, Neil Kinnock and others have rightly offered generous and respectful words on Mrs Thatcher’s passing, and it is my view that anyone who has expressed joy at the death of this frail old lady cannot realistically claim moral superiority, nor can they claim to be a particularly nice person – regardless of the anger they may still feel.
Like many other commentators, I was merely a child when Thatcher left Number Ten for the last time. Being the son of two council workers I was not one of those who directly benefited from the Thatcher years, nor was I one of those who directly suffered. So it is with that relative impartiality that I offer these thoughts.
The fundamental position of the left is that Thatcher destroyed the concept of society and abandoned countless decent, hardworking people to the scrapheap. The position of the right is that she rescued the country from militant trade unionism and gave people the opportunity to be free from state reliance.
Both of these positions are true.
The blame for the political excesses of the 70s and 80s lie squarely with the stubborn proponents of hard right and hard left ideology. And the failure to learn the lessons of those years is the fault of present day politicos who refuse to accept the notion that their ideology may, at least in part, be responsible for the mistakes of the past.
With clouded minds, hard ideologues fail to realise the need for counterbalance. They fail to see that for every positive outcome of their actions, there is likely to be a negative one too.
Thatcher’s belief that everyone should be allowed to buy their council home was not counterbalanced with the understanding that a reduction in housing stock would hit those who were unable to take advantage – and that more would have to be built to replace them. Her belief that publicly-owned industries were no longer financially sustainable was not counterbalanced by the understanding that closing them would decimate local communities – and that alternative skills and jobs would be necessary to give people a fighting shot at a future.
Likewise in the 70s, Labour’s belief in socialised industry was not counterbalanced by a hard-headed business-like approach to running them efficiently and professionally – and as a result, many industries were heavily overmanned and incurred huge losses. It gave Thatcher all the excuse she needed to privatise them.
Indeed, Neil Kinnock said of Arthur Scargill this week, that his failure to compromise and negotiate lengthened the miners’ strike substantially. In the short term, the miners suffered. But in the long term, the reputation of trade unionism as a concept was so badly damaged by him and other leaders that, to this day, it has not truly recovered.
The harm done to trade unionism may be a substantial part of Thatcher’s legacy, but she was not solely the one to blame.
‘Never again’, I’ve heard some say this week. Well if we do not learn from our past we are doomed to repeat its mistakes. Socialism and Thatcherism only become popular when people are forced to choose between them. Both have had some success, but both have had catastrophic failures too.
When hardline ideologues of both the left and right have their way, somewhere down the line people always get hurt.
In these difficult times, new proponents of old ideologies are finding their voice, and they are never off the television. Armed with degrees, laptops and deliberately forgetful minds, we are lectured on job creation by those who have never created a job, preached to on economics by those wholly unqualified to do so. We suffer relentless media appearances from prominent campaigners telling us they have all the answers, when their CVs suggest they’ve never done anything other than politics. The high level of their confidence masks the low level of their expertise.
When experience of, and respect for the nuances of the real world are absent, hardline, blinkered ideology reigns supreme. The only remedy is to question yourself as much as you question your opponents.
We may never find the perfect political theory. But to avoid making the mistakes of the past, both sides must learn from each other. If Labour does not like Conservative cuts, it must learn to stop running out of other people’s money. And if Conservatives do not like Labour’s high spending, they must prove that it is possible to shrink the State without hurting the most vulnerable. I hold my breath for neither.
This is a week for nostalgia – be it for good or for bad. Noone wants us to go back to the 1970s and 1980s, but if we are to avoid a return to the bad old days, we must accept that both Conservatives and Labour were simultaneously to blame for their worst excesses, and vow never to let it happen again.
Only then can we move on.
Jonathan Roberts was Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Thirsk and Malton at the last election