[Rejoice! Rejoice! By way of marking the news of Thatcher's passing in a slightly more political manner, I have decided to re-post extracts from a short piece by Paul Foot from Socialist Worker in 1985 entitled 'Margaret Thatcher: Class Warrior'....and then go and celebrate...]
Thatcher-worship, which goes on all the time in a continuous Mass in T,
will rise to a crescendo in the next few weeks ... Grateful and
sycophantic press barons will be eager to impress on their readers that
Mrs Thatcher is a wonder woman, her political intelligence and grasp far
greater than anything else seen in Britain (or any other country) in
the postwar period. Above all, she will be heralded for her
convictions and her
passions, which, it will be argued, contrast magnificently with the dull pragmatism of her two predecessors, Heath and Macmillan...
Mrs
Thatcher's real skill comes from her deep sensitivity to the ebbs and
flows in the fortunes of her class. She is a class general, who knows
no sentiment in the struggle.
The old aristocratic leaders of the
Tory Party believed they were superior to the lower orders chiefly
through divine intervention or God's will. They were therefore inclined
to dilute their class passions with occasional bouts of compassion,
doubt or hesitation.
Margaret Thatcher and her
arrivistes, people whose parents had to hang on by their fingertips to stay in the ruling class at all, believe that they are superior
because they are superior.
There is, therefore, in their class war strategy not a hint of doubt
or guilt. They have a better sense of the state of the battle, and a
stronger will to win it.
Unlike Macmillan, Thatcher was deeply
suspicious of the Keynesian economics and full employment of the postwar
years. She sensed that although these things could not be reversed at
the height of the boom, they were fundamentally corrosive of her class.
Long before most Tory leaders she sensed an ebb in that confidence, and
she seized the time.
She knew that mass unemployment breeds
despair in workers, and that that despair would breed its own confidence
among her people. She knew that trade union leaders were only powerful
as long as they were allowed to seem so. She sensed the union leaders'
special weakness, their suspension between the two classes, and their
unwillingness to side with either. She reckoned that if the union
leaders were expelled from the corridors of power, they would be reduced
to pleading to be allowed in again.
Mrs Thatcher is not an
intellectual giant, nor has she risen to such heights through her beauty
or her oratorical skills. She is a new-fashioned two-nation Tory who
understands the simple truth, which evades far too many of us: that
class confidence comes out of class strength, and that her class can win
only if the other class loses.
Edited to add:
Alex Callinicos: A brutal ruling-class warrior is dead
John Molyneux: The Meaning of Margaret Thatcher
Tom Mills for New Left Project
Edited to also add:
SWP
Public Meeting in central London on the evening of Thatcher's
funeral:
THATCHER’S TOXIC LEGACY AND FIGHTING THE TORIES TODAY
.
Wednesday 17 April, 7pm, Upper Hall, University
of London
Union
(ULU), Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY
Also: Get your special edition celebratory T-shirt from
Philosophy Football - delivery in time for the funeral if you order quickly!
Labels: Margaret Thatcher
