Whose loss do we mourn?
The Hunger Strikers
Andrew Burgin remembers those lives tragically lost as a result of Thatcher’s policies.
Ed Miliband MP, the Labour leader said today ‘I send my deep condolences to Lady Thatcher’s family, in particular Mark and Carol Thatcher…’ Well my thoughts today are with the families of those not mentioned by Ed; the families of Joe Green, Davey Jones and the others killed in the miners’ strike of 1984-5, with the families of the teenage conscripts killed on the Belgrano as it sailed away from the Falklands and with the families of Bobby Sands and the other Irish hunger strikers starved to death by Thatcher.
14 comments
14 responses to “Whose loss do we mourn?”
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I dont find this useful at all, the last thing a new political movement wants to start doing is sympathising with terrorists, as a kid living in London i grew with the shadow of IRA bombs going off around me….you wanna lose my support…keep it up
I don’t find it helpful either. We need to build support and reenergise left politics. That means reaching out. Not everyone who might sympathise with left ideals understands the urge to celebrate Thatchers demise. I worry it makes us look insular and cultish, off putting to those we need to convince that there is an alternative.
This is not a celebratory post. Evaluating the consequences of her policies is a reasonable and necessary thing to do. After all, we are living with the consequences and our current government is following in her policy footsteps.
I am with Kate and Andrew on this. I agree that there may be a danger in appearing ‘cultish’—as Drayfusard puts it — or even ghoulish over Thatcher’s death, but I do not think Andrew’s post does this. Actually it is quite restrained at the start of a period of INTENSE political indoctrination that we are about to endure for the next seven days…and longer. So well done!
Thank you very much, Alan.
It’s probably a bit “UnBritish” to slag off people just after they’ve died. Even Robert Maxwell got extraordinary praise when he died, until the smoke of sentiment cleared and it became clear just what a monstrous crook he was. And for Jimmy Saville .. gold coffined lying in state , and now even his gravestone has been dug up ! And so I’m afraid we will just have to seethe quietly and let the capitalist class have their Thatcher Week of praise and misrepresentation of history. History will make its own judgement in due course !
What history tells us already though is that the defeats inflicted on the UK working class by the neoliberal, deregulatory, trades union suppressing, capitalist offensive of the Thatcher government (and likewise Ronald Reagan’s regime in the USA) directly laid the foundations for the rise of the unregulated financial/banking bubble which collapsed the world economy in 2008, and which we will be paying for for generations. As part of this Reagan/Thatcher political/economic offensive , unions were marginalised and crushed, and the rich experienced a relative increase in their share of national income only comparable to the Victorian era.
The “saying ” of Margaret Thatcher which encapsulates precisely her classes’ sociopathic lack of basic social ideals is of course her “There is no such thing as society”. We know different, and our socialist belief in a shared social reponsibility for each other must be what constantly differentiates us from “Thatcherism” in all its forms – including its bastard child, “New Labour Blairite/Thatcherism”, in the hard years of struggle which lie ahead.
Andrew and Kate are right. The TV coverage, the Conservative Party eulogies are not just simple condolences to a family grieving for the loss of their mother but very clearly political interventions. Read Cameron’s statement, he talks about dealing union barons. The one nation leadership by refusing to engage in this political debate are merely repeating the disastrous line of new labour and Blair which is to broadly accept most of the anti-working class policies implemented by Thatcher and continuing today. There is a direct link with the current debate on Welfare. Thatcher’s record will be paraded as part of this ideological and material offensive – ridiculous tributes to her love of freedom and giving people choice and freeing them form dependency chimes with the same narrative that the tories are semi-successfully achieving over their welfare cuts policy. Thankfully the degree of her attacks, the changed economic context and the continuity of a radical left tradition does mean that the TV/Tory/Labourist picture is not going unchallenged. If this includes a bit of tasteless ‘celebration’ which can be a bit unpolitical then so be it. Don’t ever think she was a tasteful, caring human being who gave a toss about how here political enemies thought of her. If only some of our so-called leaders had had some of the same steel during key events like the miners strike – remember Kinnock who used Scargill’s tactics as an excuse and cover to refuse any real official support from Labour for the miners. Not a small matter since the whole Thatcher legacy hangs much more on the defeat of the miners than any thing else such as the Falklands war or privatisations. If the TV, Press and Tories just limited themselves to condolences to a bereaved family then maybe you could justify being quiet for a few days but from the start we are seeing what generally happens all the time – the construction of a certain version of our history that helps reproduces capitalist hegemony. We have a right and a duty to actively oppose. If for nothing else, as Andrew says, in memory of those flesh and blood victims of Thatcher and Thatcherism.
Dear Dave:
I agree overall with the content.
One small point on the style: could people please write in shorter paragraphs and double-space between them…which will allow for more white space when reading.
Most of us will be reading LU posts online, the type used is not the blackest around, and inter-line spacing is a bit on the tight side.
I am very used to reading and my eyesight is ok, but if someone does not tick both boxes, I think it will be a real struggle to read such a mass of unbroken grey type. I know it was not easy for me.
And online, as opposed to in printed text, the space used does not cost anymore.
Now back to the debate about Thatcher.
Alan Story in Nottingham
Yes point taken about readability. I will ensure any more comments are more spaced out. If you are interested there is a longer article on Thatcher and her legacy that I have written at the socialist resistance website.
As a new organistation we need to be looking forward and not back. Fighting Thatcher’s legacy and out of control heirs.
The people we should be mourning are the more than 1,700 disabled people who died last year within weeks of being found “fit for work”.
Thatcher was long gone before yesterday, get over it. Thatcherism is still here in all its perniciousness.
As a working class northerner, hatred of Thatcher is genetic, my grandad hated her, my parents hated her, I hated her, my kids will hate her and their kids will hate her. It’s not often that working class folks get a chance to celebrate and this has been awaited by the working class community for a long time. Yes it’s not going to change anything but it’s symbolic, the architect of this shit we find ourselves in is gone. I agree that Left Unity needs to concentrate on breaking away from the witch’s legacy but now’s the time to party and celebrate, not middle class moralist finger wagging. Our object shouldn’t be restraint and worrying how the Daily Mail will portray what we say, that’s partly what happened to Labour, we should be about setting our own agenda and being the alternative.
Having just heard cabinet minister Francis Maude, who is heading up Operation True Blue for Thatcher’s funeral, say it will not be ‘political’ — and almost choking on my sandwich — I think that we(LU) might think of ways to make a positive political intervention in what will obviously be a political occasion.
One idea: post an open letter on the main LU website and set up a mechanism
(much like an online petition) that people can sign if they agree. ( Saves the cost of a full page ad in the Guardian or whatever.) And then spread the word….
Of course, such a letter should look backward to the miners’ strike, the Malvinas, et al. but should also have a contemporary and forward focus.
We can fully sympathise with the impromptu street parties over her death and
the campaign re: Judy Garland’s ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead’ ( which is moving up the charts), but I think we could jump in and do better.
Someone might do a DRAFT (and marked as such), circulate it for 24 hours for collective comment in a blog, and then it could be edited for the top of the page on our website.
Reaction?
Good idea.
Well, I came to this site interested to see if there was a decent political response I could make to Thatchers death. After reading this article you instantly lost my support. Like many other left wing reflections on the death of Thatcher the author tries to push a favourite left wing trope that has lost the left support over the last 30 years. The hunger strikers starved themselves to death, their choice. I cannot and will never support an organisation that pushes the IRA propaganda line that Thatcher starved them. The paramilitary gangs in NI were, and still are, organised criminal gangs with little to do with ideology and politics except as an astroturfing front for them.