Her policies split the country largely-though not entirely- along geographic lines. It became known as the "north-south divide". She is as unpopular in the northern 2/3rds of the country as Ronald Reagan would have been in Allentown PA, or Bethlehem PA.
The majority of my friends went out last night and celebrated. -Apparently the cities of Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds and several others tied a HUGE on on last night as a staggering number went out on a bender.
For my part, I don't share their delight. I take no pleasure in her death; it helps nobody. -What I wish for never happened. -I wished that the country could have
survived her better.
This evening -as last evening- I will be going to rehearsal with 'my' British brass band. I've been associated with them for over a decade now, playing, recording and competing with them at the US national and US open brass band championships. -They've won the US open 4 times; and I love the spirit and cameraderie... not to mention the enjoyment of several craft beers afterwards. -I mention this because there's an enormous connection between brass bands and Northern British industry... Coal mining being one excellent example.
Thatcher closed many profitable mines, in part as a step in her unwavering determination to break the power of the unions. The social destruction which accompanied it, she seemed to regard merely as 'collateral damage'. -A necessary and ordinary part of the task she'd set herself.
This is from a British film from the 1990's about a coal-pit brass band at championship.-It's fiction in this instance, but based very solidly in fact. And Pete Postlethwaite (US viewers may also recognize Ewan McGregor before he became
Obi-Wan) in this speech sums up the utter despair which gripped vast parts of the Northern population as few others ever have. -It's a short clip.
(click image to view)
By way of non-fiction reference, please also watch a section of this documentary of her years in Downing Street (the UK equivalent of a US leader's years at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.) This is from a documentary produced with her approval and cooperation, and is from hour #2 of a 4-hour total running length documentary.
(click image to view: it
should take you directly to 24m,54sec, but if not, that's the time to view from.)
In this section beginning here, you see the coal mines, the trucks ('ERF' -E.R. Foden- and 'Foden'; Fodens is also a company with a great brass band) are turned away from a mine by pickets. -The mine appears to be 'Cory', which also boasted a championship brass band, and a community which began to struggle mightily. the MUSIC you hear is -naturally- a brass band.
Grimethorpe Colliery -another mine with a storied championship band- was also closed, with the familiar enormous damage to the community.
Part 1 of three, a documentary covering the closure of another mine, the loss of another community. Profitability was NOT a factor:
You could watch as much or as little as you wish... it's probably overkill by now, but there's more than enough to show what effect the policies of the Thatcher years had on the North of the country, and how she was viewed...
So now for some ways in which I personally benefited directly both from the Conservative's policies the animus and hostility which she engendered:
To begin with, I got my first studio job as a "YOP" employee. A method of cheaply sponsoring the unemployed to place them in work at no cost to the employer for a 6-month period, to keep the unemployment numbers down. -I was hired directly at the end of the 6-month spell, and have worked ever since. -In my case, that turned out to be a successful Job creation policy.
By the mid-1980's, I was chief engineer at the ONLY studio in the north of Britain which had an SSL console. -We had Total Recall too, and we were doing alright. -By then, there were a raft of British artists who were enjoying success in the USA, but almost all of the record companies to which they were signed were down south... in London. -Most of the Northern bands were so absolutely dead-set against going down to London and spending their advance down in the 'hated' South, that they would record
anywhere in the north, even if that meant putting up with less-capable facilities.
As a result, I ended up engineering for bands like The Smiths (assistant engineer in 'Meat is Murder') very definitely because they were scornful of having to go down to record in the heart of Thatcherism. -I mention that artist specifically because the singer was back in the news again for his comments on her passing (
"...without an atom of humanity"). -There were others; OMD, the Factory Records bands of course; New Order et al, no point in naming them all, but not just England. -The Scots artists were generally -if anything- even
less keen on her.
But the studio thrived and I doubtless personally got several jobs which would have happily gone to London, were it not for the visceral
hatred that so many acts felt towards her personally, and her policies almost secondarily.
But -for my own home town- there's one MORE reason that she's so utterly reviled. Nothing to do with economic policy, and -while I'm reluctant to use the same words as Stephen Morrisey- everything to do with
humanity.
One week from today marks the 24th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster. Resulting from a combination of circumstantial events, 96 people were crushed to death. -The EVENTUAL determination was that the lack of a valid safety certificate at the football grounds, along with poor communication between the police forces (the radios apparently hardly worked on ite, for whatever reason) and several other factors led to football fans swarming into the ground, propelled forwards by Police on horseback, who also took the decision to open a second gate to allow more people in, alleviating the buildup outside. -It was a televised game, and the scenes were horrific.
Last year, it was eventually determined (this is 23 years after the disaster by the way) that Police officers who gave evidence had been forced to change their accounts, documents had been modified, witnesses pressured and other offenses all of which added to a reapportionment of the blame AWAY from the Police and onto the football fans.
Last year, the current Prime Minister stood before Parliament, and apologized publicly and unreservedly on behalf of the government for the now-apparent misdirection of 'justice'. -Mrs Thatcher continued in her refusal to acknowledge that there had been ANY injustice or impropriety. Beyond that, she recommended Norman Bettison and Bernard Ingham for Knighthoods for services rendered, blah blah, etc.
MARGARET Thatcher’s former chief press secretary Sir Bernard Ingham today refused to apologise for blaming Liverpool FC fans for the Hillsborough disaster.
Sir Bernard refused to say whether he still blamed fans and said: “What have I to apologise for?”
He spoke after a letter written by Sir Bernard to Liverpool fan Graham Skinner in 1996 was this week handed to the Hillsborough Family Support Group (HFSG).
In it he said Liverpool should “shut up about Hillsborough”.
There's quite a bit more I could add, but for now, I'll just say that I don't share Elvis Costello's declared goal of making sure she stays buried..
'Celebrating' doesn't make anything better. I have no mood to celebrate. -As I said, I wish she hadn't taken a path which ensured so may people's livelihoods were destroyed by her laser-minded uncompromising and 'principled' intransigence...
I just wished that the country would have
survived her better.
