Who will tell the story?

There are four quotes that I think expose the real position of the political and economic Right over the past half century.  The first two were made by English Conservative politicians and are in this post.  Two more quotes are contained in the next blog.

The object here is:  a) To remind ourselves of what these people said;   b) To see what lay behind the comments; and c) To use them as a tool to counter the narrative put forward by the political right and maintained by the mainstream media.

 In historically chronological order:

"Indeed let us be frank about it - most of our people have never had it so good.”  Often paraphrased as ‘you’ve never had it so good’ said by the British Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1957. 

The ‘our people’ he was referring to was the ordinary working class, who should be grateful not to be living in squalor, going hungry or generally having a hard life.  The other ‘our people’ – Macmillan’s people – always had it pretty good.  He was a good old fashioned toff.  The class of person destined to lead.  The best the rest of us could hope for is a paternal pat on the back for working hard.  It was a mindset that permeated his class – the old money.  It is however an attitude adopted by his successors on the right – those that run with neo-liberal economics.  This new money also believed they were the natural leaders.  The working class were to be patted on the back for working hard, but this time they were encouraged to aspire to the middle class, away from the clutches of Trades Unions and uppity politics, but where they could work equally hard.

Conservatives and neo-liberals have dominated politics on these two islands for 30 years.  A whole generation have only known this type of political and economic system.  We would be very mistaken if we believed that this wasn’t not a clearly thought out idelogical project designed to smash the social democratic/democratic socialist post war consensus.  That which achieved for us what little we have.

The arrogance slips through however.  As conservatism and neo-liberalism took firmer hold in the 1980’s, emboldened political leaders felt they could say more:

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society.”

Margaret Thatcher’s telling remarks in an interview with a Women’s magazine in 1987 are an explicitly ideological statement.  We hadn’t evolved into complex societal structures at all.  We were, and remain a collection of individuals.  We must look after ourselves.  As we all leave the working class behind and embrace our new found home among the middle classes, we must abandon the collective and focus on the individual.  We should compete with each other for better jobs, to own houses -not rent them from councils – not just keep up with the Jones’s, but overtake them.  If the Jones’s fall on hard times, its their failure not ours. 

Of course, that means we spend more on all of the trappings along the way.  We may or may not be earning higher wages, but we are sure spending it at a greatly accelerated level, making millionaires out of business owners and billionaires out of millionaires – those at the very top of this engineered hierarchy.