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How grassroots struggle helped defeat Thatcherism

Having seen the intensity of the struggles of the 1980s, SOLOMON HUGHES doesn’t believe there won’t be fierce resistance from those that cheered on Thatcherism the first time

PEOPLE ask me: “Hey, grey-haired old 1980s guy. What happened in the ’80s?”

“Was it,” they persist, “all ra-ra skirts and synthesisers? Or long faces and long coats and Joy Division. Or loadsamoney and massive brick mobile phones?”

And I say: “Yes, of course it was.” Although to be honest I never saw an actual mobile phone in the ’80s. It was more about using phone boxes because not everyone had a phone in their house, let alone in their hand.

So it was about all those things, and every other bit of pop history tat that you can use to fill a cheap TV “it was different in the ’80s” show, from Spud-U-Like to Frankie Says Relax.

But it was also about the victory, then defeat, of Thatcherism. The outlines of those two battles are still with us.
Thatcher bracketed the decade. Elected to cheers in 1979. Chased out of office in tears in 1990. She led profound political and social change.

Thatcher’s election victory lead to a well-planned, conscious effort to break “socialist” influence in society.

Thatcher used mass unemployment to weaken and drive back the unions. The threat of joblessness and new anti-union laws shifted the balance in the workplace.

Privatisation was used to “roll back” the state.

It was a well-planned strategy. The Tories had worked on the “Ridley Plan” — devised by MP Nicholas Ridley — to divide and beat the unions since 1977. They followed the Ridley Plan carefully.
They also thought hard about making privatisation attractive: selling off council houses cheaply and selling shares in public utilities to the general public built some popular support for privatisation — as did the unresponsive, rigid approach of some nationalised industries.

Ultimately most of the sold-off council houses ended up with private landlords, and the shares with big investors. But this “popular capitalism” helped smooth privatisation through.

Thatcherism also met fierce resistance throughout. Mass unemployment, cuts to services and aggressive policing sparked urban riots, with street disorder on a scale not seen for 50 years.

Trade unionists tried to resist with some huge strikes. The 1984-5 miners’ strike is the most obvious example, but it was far from the only major strike. There were also a whole series of political campaigns made up of street marches, meetings and new organisations.

Thatcherism fought this resistance with a set of mutually supporting political elements. The police were strengthened, with higher pay, more powers and better kit. A “law and order” politics was promoted raising spectres of “muggers” and “disorder.”

This was just one example of the concerted efforts to create a broad popular conservatism, with all kinds of “backlash” elements, involving a degree of racism, militarism and “family values” that made up Thatcherism.

Thatcher was forced to resign in 1990 because the Anti Poll Tax campaign broke her flagship policy

 

So Thatcher helped win the 1979 election by making a bid for racist votes of those drawn to the National Front. She spoke of fears of being “swamped by people of a different culture.”

Then in 1981 London Police tried controlling the streets of Brixton with a wave of officers in an operation codenamed “Swamp 81,” sparking a riot.

Thatcher also used her military victory over Argentina in the Falklands to bolster her fight with trade unionists, linking the “enemy without” (the Argentines) and the “enemy within” (trade unionists).

Thatcherism was far from pure “backlash” politics — there was always an attempt to show this was a future-facing modernity, not just a nostalgic politics of the past. There were “Victorian values” but also consumer values.

If you want a picture of these influences coming together, consider the 1986 Wapping Strike — Rupert Murdoch took on the print unions, locking them out of his newly built East London fortress.

Thatcher’s newly tooled-up police and new anti-strike laws were all used to ultimately win the strike for Murdoch. One key moment was Samantha Fox, the popular “topless” model for the Sun’s “sexy” Page Three being escorted by police while driving across the picket line in a tank.

That’s the mix of the state and reactionary culture mobilised against the workers, with a strong dose of ’80s perviness on top.

Thatcherism was very successful as politics, economics, law and ideology. But it was also ultimately stopped by resistance. Thatcher was forced to resign in 1990 because the anti-poll tax campaign broke her flagship policy.

The campaign was unofficial, grassroots, militant and massive. This was not the only defeat.

In her last years in government, Thatcher was stopped by a set of grassroots strikes. Insurgent industrial action by nurses in 1988 and ambulance drivers in 1989-90 and wildcat strikes by London Underground workers in 1989 all won, even after the miners’ strike supposedly “proved” strikes didn’t work.

The final defeats of Thatcherism in the late 1980s drew a new border. Thatcherism was able to go very far in the 1980s, but these grassroots disputes stopped it going further — the anti-poll tax campaign stopped the international right-wing dream of more “flat taxes.” The health strikes broke Thatcher’s own chosen successor, as  health minister and “golden boy” John Moore disappeared without trace. This stopped his and her wider plan for replacing the NHS with an insurance scheme.

The strikes showed transport workers remain a significant part of the union movement, which remained a significant, if limited, part of British life.

Labour was not able to electorally capitalise on Thatcher’s defeat, but the grassroots limited the political damage by acting on the streets.

Both John Major and Tony Blair’s governments did take forward some  elements of Thatcherism — especially in the “contracting out” privatisation of public services. But the big breakthroughs of Thatcherism were blunted by the resistance outside Westminster.

While grassroots struggle limited Thatcherism, what we see now, for the first time in three decades, is a Labour Party which is actually talking about reversing major elements of Thatcherism, which is very exciting. But having seen the intensity of the struggles of the 1980s, I don’t believe there won’t be fierce resistance from  those that cheered on Thatcherism the first time.

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