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My blog on Lady Thatcher and the devastating effects of Thatcherism

Posted by Kate Green, MP for Stretford and Urmston, at 09:32, Fri 12 April 2013:

The political news this week has of course been dominated by the death of Lady Thatcher.

It is quite right to recognise her hard work, strength of will and her passion for her country, and to acknowledge her achievement in becoming the first – and still our only – woman prime minister.

But so many of the people and communities I care about were deeply damaged by her policies. The legacy of that harm continues to this day.

The very first general election I voted in was in 1979, when she came to power. She was prime minister for most of the first decade of my adult life.

And her policies and her actions were hugely responsible for my politicisation. There were so many things that made me anxious, concerned and angry. So many things I knew were wrong.

Of course, I was lucky. I’d had a good education. When I graduated from university at the beginning of the 1980s, I left Scotland, where I’d grown up, and moved to London where I’d been offered my first job.

But I saw many of my contemporaries facing unemployment. They were in despair, frightened they would never work.

I watched the industries that had employed people around me in Scotland when I’d been growing up – car manufacture, steelmaking, mining – destroyed by her policies.

I watched my parents’ generation thrown out of jobs.

I was very shocked at what I saw when I moved to London. I had never seen such wealth – or such poverty.

I couldn’t believe how many people were forced to live on the streets. I was disgusted to hear of families raising their children in grotty bed and breakfasts. I was angry and distressed.

I knew I wanted to live in a different kind of society. I knew I’d only been able to get on as I had because of the protection and the start in life the welfare state had given me and my family. I wanted to fight for everyone to have that same chance.

So I wasn’t in parliament on Wednesday when MPs spoke about her legacy. I think it’s a dark legacy. It may not have been what she intended to happen, but I believe it created a greed-is-good, get-rich-quick, devil-take-the-hindmost culture that I abhor.

Decades later, that legacy continues to haunt us.

It contributed to the housing bubble, and to the banking crash.

It led to excessively high rates of personal debt.

Child poverty doubled between 1979 and 1997, inequality rose – and it has proven much harder since then to reverse the trend than it was to let it to go the wrong way in the first place.

Britain needed a change of direction by the end of the 1970s.

But the direction was wrong and the price paid by too many people was far too high.

As a young woman, I saw for myself how the effects of Thatcherism caused hardship, division, misery and fear.

I won’t celebrate any of that.

Kate

Kate Green

Labour Member of Parliament for Stretford and Urmston Shadow Spokesperson for Equalities tel: 0161 749 9120 (constituency); 020 7219 7162 (Westminster)

www.kategreen.org