Thatcher’s Brutal Legacy in Scotland
Cheers erupted from the pubs in the former mining towns and villages in Scotland when the news broke. Decades of economic decline, mass unemployment, poverty and deprivation would allow at least that when the news reported that Margaret Thatcher was dead. The legacy of brutal Thatcherism; shattered communities, generations thrown onto the scrapheap, meant there was no chance that her death would, or should, be received in any other way.
The same feelings were evident in working class communities across Scotland, as it was in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. “You reap what you sew”. The whirlwind of closures in the mining, steel, car, engineering and shipbuilding industries, a result of the mass deindustrialisation policy pursued by Thatcher in the 1980’s, left deep scars. The Proclaimers sang it best “Bathgate no more, Linwood, no more, Methil, No more, Irvine no more.”
Elected in 1979 after the failure of the right-wing Labour government, 20% of the industrial base of British capitalism had been wiped wiped-out by 1983. Unemployment rose to almost 15%, with whole areas of Scotland devastated as they were in the north east of England, Liverpool and the West Midlands. Skilled and semi-skilled jobs disappeared, many of them never replaced. If they were it was on lower wages and worse conditions, often in the service sector.
Mass demonstrations against unemployment were called, many of them organised by the Labour Party – ironic considering the character of the party today whose recent leaders invited Thatcher to Downing Street. In 1980 the party had been pushed to the left following the defeat of 1979. Hundreds of thousands marched in Glasgow, Liverpool and London for the right to work. A struggle for jobs that the growing forces of the Militant and the Labour Party Young Socialists played a key role in.
Thatcherism was not about an individual though. It was the distilled essence of a policy conducted by capitalist elite that was intent on dismantling the gains made by the working class in the post-1945 era. The post-war model had broken down, laid low by the inability of capitalism to sustain economic growth, as the Militant, the forerunner to the Socialist Party had anticipated. In particular, incapable of sustaining the reforms won through struggle by the labour movement. (see more on this here)
Privatisation, monetarism, neo-liberalism, globalisation, the free market, all words used to describe the counter revolution against the rights, income and conditions of the working class by Thatcher and her co-thinkers internationally. This dominant ideology was used as a battering ram to attack the working class, alongside the use of anti-union laws – accepted in practice by the majority of trade union leaders. Eventually embraced by the Labour leadership and made their own.
The election of Thatcher brought in its wake naked class war. A determination to break the strength of the trade union movement that had inflicted defeat after defeat on the Tory government and capitalist interests in the 1970’s. The preparation for the miners’ strike in 1984/85 was planned carefully, but only succeeded because of the spineless and cowardly role of the leadership of the TUC who left the NUM to fight alone. Even then the Tories were almost brought down by the miners.1% of the entire trade union movement fought the government and the state machine to a standstill for a year. Had a 24-hour general strike been called by the trade union leaders Thatcher would have fallen.
For those of my generation, 15 when Thatcher was elected and 20 when the miners’ strike began, the scales had fallen from clouded eyes. A mass politicisation by the brutality of the class conflict all around us, the regular visits to the picket lines at the Polkemmet pit in West Lothian three miles down the road, the pictures on TV of the Orgreave thuggery by the police. All this brought a first-hand education of capitalism and its state machine. There was no other option but to choose a side. From that day in 1984 it was necessary to be a socialist and a Marxist. To work to put an end to this rotten system and all it represents.
Yet the working class would inflict defeats on the so-called “iron lady.” Elected in 1983 and until 1987 when they were undemocratically removed from office, Liverpool City Council took on and defeated the Tory government. Led by the ideas of Militant the immortal 47 Labour councillors mobilised a mass movement in a city ravaged by Thatcherism. Liverpool refused to make the cuts and won £60 million to build decent council houses, create thousands of jobs and build new sports centres and nurseries. 30 years on and the example of Liverpool is as relevant now as then as a template for councils to fight the cuts.
Under Kinnock’s leadership, the Labour Party, moving rapidly to the right, expelled the Militant in a purge of its left wing, urged on the capitalists and their media. New Labour and the abolition of Clause 4 followed. Today Labour is an out-and-out party of capitalism, indistinguishable from the Tories on fundamental economic and social policy. How appropriate that Thatcher could boast; “the creation of New Labour was my greatest achievement.”
The poll tax was her downfall. But again, like in Liverpool, the key ingredient, alongside the determination of the poor and the working class to fight, was leadership. Militant initiated and played the leading role in the anti-poll tax federations that were the backbone of the campaign. First in Scotland from 1988 and then a year later in England and Wales, mass non-payment of the tax ensured its defeat, and that of its figurehead, Margaret Thatcher.
The memorable reception at the Scottish cup-final in May 1988 when 50,000 Celtic and Dundee United supporters sang in unison as she took her seat at Hampden park; “you can stick your poll tax up your arse”, was a warning of the mass rebellion to come.
Since her death many commentators have attempted to play down the role of the mass anti-poll tax struggle in her demise. Yet Thatcher’s ex chancellor, Nigel Lawson, admitted after her death that the poll tax was “the biggest mistake she made in her time as prime minister” which was a major contribution to her political end. One of Thatcher’s key legacies was the death of the Tory party in Scotland. The refusal to countenance even limited devolution in Scotland, the poll tax and economic destruction all contributed to the demise of the Tories.
Already in decline, the Scottish Tories won 22 MP’s in the1979 general election in Scotland from a possible 71 seats. From then on, combined with their vicious anti-working class agenda, they were seen as an illegitimate force in Scotland. By 1987 they had fallen even further to 10 MPs. After the poll tax debacle and Thatcher’s resignation by 1997 not one Tory MP was left. Today, with a single MP, the two Giant Panda’s in Edinburgh zoo outnumber the once dominant party of British capitalism.
The experience of Thatcherism saw the national question erupt as a result and in 1997 70% voted for the creation of the Scottish parliament, a democratic right denied for years by Thatcher. The electoral success of the SNP and the independence referendum in 2014 can also be seen as a consequence of the long-term impact of Thatcherism. Alongside the degeneration of Labour into a Tory party Mk 2.
Today, the Tory-led government, like New Labour before, is determined to make the working class pay for the failures of capitalism. Blair, Brown and Cameron and Ed Miliband, are the real children of Thatcher, carrying on policies to enrich the elite and pauperising the poor. Mass opposition to austerity policies like the bedroom tax and the assault on welfare is growing, a mass rejection of capitalism by the working class is being prepared.
The Socialist Party in Scotland, England and Wales, formerly Militant, played a key role in Thatcher’s downfall. Today, alongside the millions of trade unionists and working class people who are moving into opposition to the ConDem’s, we will strive to end the political life of this government.
A 24-hour general strike, which is inherent in the political situation today, is a vital stage in confronting the agenda of the super-rich – which is to drive the working class into the ground in order to save their system. Mobilising the power of the working class linked to the building of a new mass working class party with a socialist programme is an urgent task. One that will put an end Thatcherism and capitalism once and for all.
