Tag Archives: margaret thatcher

The Miners’ Strike forty years on

Embed from Getty Images

The fortieth anniversary of the start of the Miners’ Strike that began on 5th March 1984 is almost upon us but Channel 4 and BBC2 have already offered their acts of remembrance. I remember the start and had the television permanently on during the Battle of Orgreave, but some of my sharpest personal memories are about the ending and the aftermath.

Throughout the strike I was living and working opposite the Yorkshire National Union of Mineworkers(NUM) Headquarters in Barnsley. Arthur Scargill and his colleagues regularly appeared on the other side of Victoria Road. Our Communist next door neighbour was high up in the Engineering union. Roy Mason, the right wing Labour MP and former member of a Labour cabinet, lived round the corner. I had been the Liberal Alliance candidate for Barnsley Central in the 1983 General Election (where alas my 19.2% still holds the record vote share). So it could be seen as a highly politicised corner of the town centre!

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 13 Comments

A longer read for the lockdown: Why I left the Tories and became a Lib Dem


Embed from Getty Images

It wasn’t Brexit that made me leave, but a stark realisation that there was something deeply wrong with the Tory party.

I owe my life in Britain to a Tory MP. In 1957, newly elected Keith Joseph was instrumental in persuading the government to grant sanctuary to Jews fleeing Egypt following the Suez crisis, which included my father aged 8.

My grandfather, a 32-year-old dentist at the time, was asked by Egyptian authorities why he was leaving the country. Predicting a surge in hostility towards non-Arabs inspired by President Nasser’s populist speeches, he responded “because you’re allowing me to”.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 35 Comments

The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson

My nearest and dearest booked seats for us at “The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson” at the Nuffield theatre in Southampton this week.

It seems to be your type of thing

– said her nibs.

Well, as usual she was right. It very much was my type of thing.

Posted in The Arts | Also tagged , , and | 5 Comments

In case you missed it… How the Welsh did for Margaret Thatcher

Embed from Getty Images

Posted in Wales | Also tagged and | 1 Comment

From the Vault: The Thatcher years: My shame

It’s 40 years today since Margaret Thatcher walked into Downing Street as Prime Minister.

There was an 11 year old girl in Inverness who was really excited by this – especially by the notion that a woman could become Prime Minister was a very powerful one.

Ten years ago, for the 30th anniversary, I wrote this post describing my shame. I suppose, in my defence, I have spent most of my time since fighting the forces of small state, selfish conservatism.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but thirty years ago tonight, I, a fairly innocent 11 year old, went to bed and prayed for Mrs Thatcher to win the 1979 election.

I really didn’t understand much about politics then – the geekery and obsession didn’t take hold until about a year and a half later, when I had had enough time to rue my earlier enthusiasm. I did know that I wasn’t keen on Labour – there seemed to be nothing but strikes, and my dad hadn’t had a properly stable job for a good couple of years. My parents and Grandma were all enthusiastic Tories and it seemed that life would get better with a new Government.

I quite liked the Liberal Party. The MP for Inverness, Russell Johnston, seemed to me to be a good man and the fact that a primary school child like me knew who he was was quite positive. He was also in favour of home rule for Scotland, which I always thought was a good thing. However, my staunch Catholic grandfather had told me time and time again, from the moment David Steel became Liberal leader, that he didn’t want babies to be born, so he had the same appeal for me as the Daleks. I literally would watch him on tv from behind a cushion. When I grew up and understood the issues involved, he became a lot less scary, but I actually thought he would pass a law forbidding people to have babies. Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous, but in my defence, I had heard that in China you were only allowed to have one child, and I was only 11.

Posted in News | Also tagged | 7 Comments

Jo Swinson is right on Thatcher statue – women’s achievements must be remembered

I was incensed to read this article in the Independent about our 30th anniversary. It’s based on interviews with 2 former leaders, Tim Farron and Paddy Ashdown and with one other person, Nick Clegg’s former staffer, James McGrory.

In the whole article, there isn’t even the merest hint of a mention of the women who helped build this party. Nothing about Shirley Williams. Nothing about Diana Maddock’s amazing victory in the 1993 Christchurch by-election. Nothing about Sandra Gidley’s unexpected victory in Romsey in 2000. Nothing about Sarah Teather’s ground-breaking by-election victory in Brent in the wake of the Iraq war. Nothing about Sarah Olney’s by-election victory showing we were back in the game. Nothing about Jo Swinson building up a seat and winning it at 25 and subsequently becoming the first Lib Dem woman to attend Cabinet. Nothing about our Presidents Shirley, Diana, Ros Scott and Sal Brinton. Nothing about how Lynne Featherstone built up her Hornsey and Wood Green seat. Nothing about the present day Lib Dem campaigners like Elaine Bagshaw.

I’m also updating this to add Kirsty Williams as per the first comment. She served the party so well as Welsh leader and is currently our only Lib Dem member of a Government. Her pioneering More Nurses law made Welsh hospitals safer.

Women have been at the forefront of some of the party’s most pivotal moments. Why not talk to some of them? I have come up with ten of them off the top of my head in about half a minute.

And if we think that’s bad, the article about our history on our own party website doesn’t mention a woman until its penultimate paragraph.

It was ever thus. A bloke does something and there’s statues everywhere. A woman takes a major step forward and does not get the same recognition. I loathe and detest virtually everything Margaret Thatcher stood for, but she was the first woman Prime Minister of this country.  Thatcher got me into politics because I so passionately opposed what she was doing to the country. That’s why I agree with Jo Swinson, who argues in today’s Mail on Sunday that Thatcher should have a statue in Parliament Square:

Maybe they think one out of twelve is enough, that they’ve ticked the woman box with the addition of Millicent Fawcett?

Apparently one of the reasons given for refusal was the state robes Thatcher would have been wearing.

Even in death, it seems there are no limits to how society judges women by how they look and what they wear.

She went on to say what Thatcher being PM told her:

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 44 Comments

Memorials?

 

We may not have a monument to Margaret Thatcher but we do have a monument to “Thatcherism”. It is the Grenfell Tower.

The foundation of Thatcherism is the minimisation of the state. It plans and proceeds to reduce government regulation and suppress its spending. It does this without the guidance of long term consequence and human cost.

Tower blocks, like Grenfell, lack sprinkler systems, alarms and secondary exit routes which, before the “bonfire of red-tape”, were the norm. They have been mandatory in New York since 1967. Grenfell proves that they are necessary and yet HMG has not yet withdrawn a press release of 03/04/2016, entitled “Government going to further cut red tape by £10 billion”. It has not reviewed or withdrawn its doctrinaire and dangerously unspecific “One-in, Three-out policy” under which three regulations must be removed every time a new one is introduced.

As well as its economic and social consequences, Thatcherism has affected attitudes, behaviours, relationships and language.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 12 Comments

A good quote from Margaret Thatcher

BBC 2 are repeating some of Terry Wogan’s programmes at lunch time. They’ve been showing “Terry and Mason’s great food trip”, where our Tel went round Britain with a cabbie. I think it’s the best thing he did. There is no greater spectacle than the great Irishman bantering away and tucking into good old fashioned grub.

Posted in The Arts | Also tagged | 11 Comments

Lib Dems Telegraph splash: EU bashing “weak, opportunistic and fundamentally un-British” say Ashdown, Ludford, Brinton, Farron and 90 Lib Dems

Even Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t have taken the isolationist path that David Cameron’s Conservative party is romping its way down, according to 90 Liberal Democrats in a letter to the Telegraph today. The letter states:

David Cameron’s recent speech on European immigration is the latest in a series of desperate moves from a Conservative Party in full-scale panic.

We’ve had: “Go home or face arrest” vans. We’ve had: if you are from the EU and want to move to Britain, go and register at a police station. We’ve had: if you’re out of work, even for a few months, go back to where you came from.

In her Bruges speech in 1988, Margaret Thatcher said: “Britain does not dream of some cosy, isolated existence on the fringes of the European Community. Our destiny is in Europe, as part of the Community.”

What happened to that Conservative destiny? The dual menace of the Tory headbangers and the rise of Ukip.

There is nothing patriotic about bashing immigration from Europe. It is opportunistic, weak and fundamentally un-British. Migrants from the EU claim less in benefits than people born in this country. They are a massive net positive to the British economy. The Tories are scared to admit this. They have lost all sense of political courage – and that is why people have lost confidence in them.

We, the undersigned Liberal Democrats, konw that the real patriotic case is for Britain to remain in Europe; our jobs and our economic future depend on it.

Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , and | 26 Comments

35 years since Thatcher: A trip down Memory Lane

THE IRON LADY, MARGARET THATCHEROn 4 May 1979, Margaret Thatcher entered Downing Street for the first time. The sun that shone down on her on the steps cast a decade long shadow. The culture of selfishness, instilling a belief that there was something wrong with paying taxes for good public services, pervades today. In recent years, only the Liberal Democrats of the major parties have gone into an election advocating a rise in Income Tax, albeit a tiny one, to invest in education.

We seem to be embroiled in this cycle of underfunding our services, complaining about them and then underfunding them some more.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 18 Comments

Paddy Ashdown warned Thatcher about CIA’s activities

Paddy AshdownEach New Year brings the unveiling of Government files from 30 years ago. This year’s revelations include some highly topical references to CIA approaches to British citizens.

In 1984 Margaret Thatcher ruled. Paddy Ashdown was one of 23  SDP/Liberal Alliance MPs – he did not become Leader of the Liberal Democrats until the merger of the Social Democrat and the Liberal parties in 1988. Before he entered Parliament he had been an MI6 officer, so he was well placed to observe the CIA’s activities.

According to today’s Guardian, this is what …

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 5 Comments

Careful, Boris. Remember what happened to the last top Tory to liken the Lib Dems to a bird?

“The sooner we are shot of the great yellow albatross, in my view, the better.” So said Boris Johnson yesterday, taking a pop at both Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems.

But, as a classics scholar, Boris should beware a little thing called hubris. At the 1990 Tory Party conference, Mrs Thatcher poked fun at the Lib Dems’ new logo, the bird of freedom, by performing the Monty Python “Dead Parrot” sketch:

Posted in YouTube | Also tagged and | 31 Comments

John Major: Class warrior

Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major is back in the news today condemning the stranglehold on power and influence enjoyed by the elite:

In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class. To me from my background, I find that truly shocking.

This follows his unexpected intervention in the energy debate calling for a windfall tax on energy companies. In both cases Major seems to be taking on the role of Cameron’s One Nation conscience, speaking up for people in modest …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 50 Comments

Margaret: Myth of a Revolutionary

I never thought I would recommend a film from Martin Durkin, famous for climate change denialist hysteria on Channel 4. But in Margaret: Death of a Revolutionary (until 13th May) he pays tribute to the woman who did possibly more than anyone else to make climate change a globally recognised issue, leading to the formation of the IPCC. But no tribute for doing that in particular, obviously.

There is much that is wrong, and more that is missing (the poll tax!) and in the telling of Thatchers victory over and then defeat at the hands of the upper class …

Posted in Op-eds | 9 Comments

How Thatcherite are you?

margaret-thatcher“We are all Thatcherites now,” declared David Cameron on the morning of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral. Not so, said Nick Clegg:

“He’s the leader of the Conservative Party he’s perfectly entitled to say that. I certainly wouldn’t call myself a Thatcherite. I’m a Liberal, she wasn’t a Liberal. I’ve always called myself a Liberal, I always will.”

Do you think you’re a Thatcherite? Well, the Daily Telegraph has devised a test to help you find out: you’re 10 questions away from finding out on how much you and The Lady (dis)agreed.

Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 27 Comments

Thatcher museum to be housed in former Liberal Democrat HQ?

Way back in 1981, when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, the SDP was formed and took up residence at 4 Cowley Street, just round the corner from the Houses of Parliament. That building became the home of the Liberal Democrats after the 1988 merger between the Liberals and Social Democrats.

Today’s Times carries a report which suggests that our former headquarters could house the proposed museum to Margaret Thatcher. However, if you read the article in full, it amounts to little more than a bit of gentle stirring by Conor Burns, the Conservative MP who is a strong proponent of the …

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 10 Comments

Ding Dong & Mrs T. It’s simple: don’t buy it and don’t ban it

ding dong ozAs journalists look to extend the reason to continue writing about Margaret Thatcher’s death, three quick points from me on the entirely bogus furore over whether the BBC should play Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead on Radio One…

1) Don’t buy the record
At least not in protest against Margaret Thatcher (if you just like ‘The Wizard of Oz’ please ignore). It doesn’t matter to me that it boosts Sony’s profits — though the anti-corporatist left might — but, seriously, is calling the first female prime minister a …

Posted in News | 47 Comments

Thatcher, Blair and the Road to Serfdom

Among yesterday’s many predictable tributes to Margaret Thatcher on both sides of the house, one from Labour MP Gisela Stuart caught my ear. (Hansard)

Whole generations have forgotten what 1979 was like. I came here from Germany in the 1970s. I know that Margaret Thatcher would not want us not to learn any lessons from the battles that she had fought—some lost, some won, and some which continue. I am thinking in particular of the role of the market. It is interesting that Margaret Thatcher considered that Hayek’s book “The Road to Serfdom” should be compulsory reading. Many Government

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 20 Comments

4 graphs on Thatcher’s legacy: a richer but more unequal nation.

A generation on, the Thatcher legacy continues to provoke and divide. One of the questions it poses for liberals is one this government is still wrestling with: does inequality matter if everyone’s getting richer?

Margaret Thatcher’s answer was that it did not — as she famously illustrated in one of her last Commons performances in response to a question from Simon Hughes:

Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , and | 6 Comments

Paddy Ashdown pays tribute to Margaret Thatcher (and shows Nick how it’s done)

MPs in the Commons and peers in the Lords have been queuing up this afternoon to record their tributes to Margaret Thatcher, including both Nick Clegg and Paddy Ashdown.

To read both their tributes, please scroll down the page.

Nick’s come in for some stick on Twitter, mostly from right-wing MPs/journalists, for instance Mark Reckless and Sarah Wollaston; even the usually fair-minded Isabel Hardman of The Spectator called it “sour”. I’ve both read and watched Nick’s remarks and don’t buy that criticism at all.

But two things do strike me. First, it’s a very perfunctory speech. The only two personal comments he makes are a nod to his Sheffield constituency (“where the mere mention of her name even now elicits strong reactions”) and a rather glib aside about her infamous “there’s no such thing as society” quote (I say glib because there’s a lot more to the quote than that: disagree with it by all means, but recognise there was a context to it).

Secondly, and more disappointingly, it tells us nothing about Nick and his views on Margaret Thatcher. Yes, of course the tribute is about her, not him; but surely everyone who grew up in the 1980s has a view on what she got right and what she got wrong? What’s Nick’s? Instead, he squirms round it equivocally: she “elicits” strong views… “whether people liked or disliked her”“remember her with all the nuance, unresolved complexity and paradox that she possessed.” There is a studied, deliberate vagueness here. I want to know what Nick thought then; and what he really thinks now. I think the closest we probably get to that is his observation that “much of her politics was subtle and pragmatic”: that’s the aspect I suspect Nick admires.

That’s why those Clegg-critics who sniped at Nick’s tribute surprise me: there’s far too little of him in his speech, not too much.

Posted in Parliament | Also tagged , and | 87 Comments

Mrs Thatcher’s impact: how the public sees it now, how LDV readers saw it in 2008

The Guardian is the first off the blocks with an ICM poll asking the public’s retrospective verdict on Margaret Thatcher’s record in office. Here’s the topline figure of whether her 11-year premiership had been good or bad for Britain:

guardian icm thatcher

The paper also asked about specific policies, finding:

The sale of council homes and tackling of trade union power remain popular today, but people are less supportive of the fights she picked with Europe and tax cuts for the rich. Privatisation of the utilities and the poll tax remain deeply unpopular.

You can …

Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 13 Comments

Opinion: Dr Strangelove: or how I got utterly fed up with the Left

Yesterday Margaret Thatcher died.

Predictably social media exploded with chatter about the passing of an epoch-defining politician. Perhaps it says something about the kind of people I associate with, that I found myself reading one comment after  another proclaiming “Ding dong the witch is dead”. Some of my Facebook ‘friends’ have even posted grinning photographs of themselves celebrating the happy event.

Whatever it says about my social circle, it says plenty about the Left.

I grew up in a left-wing household. My parents were of the CND generation, Labour party members who supported the miners’ strikes. I had only just started school when …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 153 Comments

Margaret Thatcher’s death – what Lib Dems bloggers have been saying

However expected it might have been, the reality of Margaret Thatcher’s death triggered many of us to reflect yesterday. She shaped the country and, by doing so, she shaped all of us. That’s reflected in the number of Lib Dem bloggers who responded to her passing yesterday…

RIP Margaret Thatcher… and now for the pointless vitriol… (Mark Valladares)

… it’s been many years since she was Prime Minister, and a lot of the actions taken by her Government have stood the test of time. You might not like them much, especially if you were on the wrong end of them, but

Posted in News | Also tagged | 4 Comments

Liberal Democrats pay tribute to Lady Thatcher

Several senior Liberal Democrats have already shared their thoughts on the passing of Lady Thatcher. We’ll collate further comments on this page as they come in.

Nick Clegg, currently on a visit to Cornwall, had this to say:

Margaret Thatcher was one of the defining figures in modern British politics. Whatever side of the political debate you stand on, no one can deny that as prime minister she left a unique and lasting imprint on the country she served. She may have divided opinion during her time in politics but everyone will be united today in

Posted in News | 31 Comments

RIP Margaret Thatcher

margaret-thatcherThe BBC and other outlets are reporting that Margaret Thatcher has died following a stroke. She was Britain’s first and only female Prime Minister and one who changed the political landscape. While we in the Liberal Democrats often have disagreed with her, there is much to reflect on in her lasting legacy.

Our thoughts are with Lady Thatcher’s friends and family at this time. Comments are open below for tributes only, please.

Posted in News | Also tagged | 42 Comments

Margaret Thatcher, the 1983 election and the ‘bedroom tax’

margaret-thatcherLike Caron, I spent more than a healthy amount of my Bank Holiday Monday watching BBC Parliament’s re-run of the 1983 general election.

It’s not an election I remember (I was 6). But the symmetry of yesterday’s hyperbolic Guardian (‘The day Britain changed’) front page and the televised reminder of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide seemed calculated to confirm the left’s view that 1st April 2013 marked the ultimate victory of those on the right who wanted (and still want) to destruct the welfare state.

What Mrs T, Geoffrey Howe …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 29 Comments

Half a defence of John O’Farrell’s comments on Margaret Thatcher

OFarrell-things betterI wonder if Labour HQ wish they’d read John O’Farrell’s 1998 book, Things Can Only Get Better, a little more carefully before he was selected to fight the Eastleigh by-election?

First there was his call for Labour voters to vote tactically for the Lib Dems to beat the Tories, as uncovered by Mark Pack here: Should Labour supporters vote tactically to beat the Tories? “Go for it” said John O’Farrell. (Incidentally, the Telegraph then ran the story here without any credit.)

And then yesterday, the Mail ran with …

Posted in Parliamentary by-elections | Also tagged , , and | 68 Comments

Proof that not *all* Tories are bonkers on Europe (and nor was Mrs Thatcher)

margaret thatcher europeAmidst all the Tory Euro-hysteria (‘Eurotic’, I’ve heard it described as: and I seriously hope I didn’t mis-hear) it’s easy to forget there are a few Tories, a diminishing if stoic band, who have kept tight hold of their senses.

And though it was David Cameron’s desperate last-ditch pitch for the job of Tory leader — his 2005 promise to his party’s Europhobes to withdraw the Tories from the mainstream centre-right EPP alliance, a policy even David Davis wouldn’t touch — which has, slowly but inevitably, dragged the party ever more fringewards, a few of his backbenchers remain hopeful they can persuade him, even now, to do the sensible thing.

Here’s some of what they’ve written to him:

We acknowledge the EU’s shortcomings and understand the desire and, under the Lisbon Treaty the possibility, to repatriate powers. However, we do our nation, as well as Europe, a disservice by not confidently exerting the same level of engagement and leadership as we demonstrate in organisations such as NATO, the G8, the UN Security Council or the Commonwealth.

Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and | 7 Comments

Opinion: Liberals must learn the lessons of Thatcher

It is a truth often acknowledged that Tony Blair and David Cameron, in moving their respective parties to the centre ground, left a gruelling obstacle on the road to a truly Liberal Britain.
But it’s not from those leaders that the next generation of Liberal Democrat’s must learn, rather it is from a leader who would regard liberalism as a dirty word, and many Liberal outcomes as inimical to her view of society, Margaret Thatcher.

The lesson for Lib Dems is that Thatcher understood that the less well off are just as aspirational as those born to wealth. The Tory method …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 64 Comments

David Cameron’s ‘a little and often’ leadership doesn’t suit him and isn’t Prime Ministerial

The Telegraph’s James Kirkup, one of that paper’s few fair-minded political commentators, has written a thought-provoking article, A devil’s advocate defence of David Cameron and No 10. His case for the defence is first, that we (public, media) shouldn’t assume the role of Prime Minister has always to follow the command/control style of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair:

Implicit – and sometimes explicit – in the various critiques of the Cameron style and No 10 outfit is the idea that a Prime

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 1 Comment
Advert



Recent Comments

  • Joseph Bourke
    Whatever the outcome of the US election, it is clear that US foreign policy will be increaaingly focused on protecting US interests in Asia and the middle-east...
  • Martin Gray
    @Cath...SMP - Businesses claim most of it back . Taking off one taxpayer to give to another .. And yes you're correct in regards to the last paragraph - I'm sur...
  • Catherine Crosland
    Martin Gray, "Women's issues"? Kemi Bradenoch recently implied that she thought rights to maternity pay and maternity leave had gone too far, although many mot...
  • Martin Gray
    A first rate speaker, & parliamentary performer.. What she says on Immigration & women's issues - does resonate with a considerable number of voters ......
  • Katharine Pindar
    No, Chris Moore, you are mistaken. (And will you please stop misspelling my name!) It is not certain that the social liberal wing of the party is dominant, tho...