The great Thatcher divide

Follow @JohnPlatinumG It is hard not to want to join in the chorus on one side or another of the great Margaret Thatcher divide. In fact it is nigh impossible. Perhaps the adjective most bandied about since her death, and the one that best describes her, is divisive. She divided a nation. The capitalist system she supported, that most thinking people today believe is on its last legs, pursued a motto: "Divide and rule". The trades' union movement pursued a motto: "United we stand, divided we fall". These two mottoes faced one another across the great Thatcher  divide. A class-battle was waged whereby the trade union movement had a wedge driven between its legs until today it is still crying out from the punishment. Thatcher was responsible for this battle against the working-class which led to the society we have today of greedy go-getters and usurers.

The housing divide

Who knows, perhaps she naively and seriously thought that everybody, by following the capitalist dream, could be rich. Anybody can see, die-hard bankers especially , that such a society under a capitalist system could never exist. There need to be factors of production to make the capitalist system work. Robert Tressell clearly shows how this system works in The Ragged-trousered Philanthropists in a chapter called 'The Great Money Trick'. It is why there is a 1% super-rich sector and the other 99% are destined to make their way through life as best they can. Many working-class people bought into the dream, buying their council-houses below market value and quite probably thought this is great when they came to sell them at a more realistic market value. This conjurer's trick can only be worked once. It left in its wake a vast shortage of social-housing and a populace of young people unable to afford a house together with councils in debt because they had been robbed of their assets.

The financial divide

Likewise a dream of Thatcher's, nightmare might be a better word, was to privatise pensions. People were bribed with £200 (paid from the state pension scheme) to contract out and invest in private pensions, because capitalists know better how to make your money grow. Most of these private schemes failed. So those without a proper pension came back into the state pension scheme. They did not pay £200 plus interest to get back in. The state pension scheme however had remained solvent. It was not run by shady capitalists whose main motivation was how much profit they could screw you for and contributions paid into private pension schemes lined the pockets of the capitalists. The state pension scheme saw none of this. However pensions paid to those returning, who would otherwise have been without a pension, are today paid out of the state pension scheme. Similarly when banks go bust taxpayers, who all economists know, provide most of the liquidity that enables banks to operate, are forced to bail them out. That is, unless there is a chance they might recover and provide profit to the rich. Even when banks continue to fail, at taxpayers expense, bankers are paid disgusting bonuses.

The military divide

Thatcher was the first post second world-war prime minister to take us into war. It was an unnecessary war. A peace deal was on the table but she chose to have Argentinian and British troops killed to bolster her flagging popularity. Because collectively the electorate is stupid, there can be no other word for it, she sailed back into power on the tidal wave created by the loss of these young lives. Every single prime-minister since, of both main parties. and the coalitionist Clegg, have taken us into unnecessary wars. Thatcher showed them the way. None of them has been big enough to say "No". The electorate continues to support these wars. The world is in debt. The wars, which can make capitalists rich, have caused this debt, which the rest of us will have to pay.

A fitting epitaph

Margaret Thatcher is dead. I shall not be dancing on the day of her funeral, another pompous affair aimed at brainwashing those sheep who have never read "Animal Farm". I shall not be having a street party in remembrance of her divisive policies. Instead I have combined the two mottoes given in the introductory paragraph to provide a fitting epitaph to the old lady who did so much harm to my country.

She divided the united and they fell.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

Follow @JohnPlatinumG  I have started a petition.

Yesterday Michael Gove agreed not to take Mary Seacole off the national curriculum. I signed this petition because I believe that black English history, and those who figure in it, is as important as all other history. I am so pleased with the result but it started me thinking. There is a figure in the history of the working-class movement who left behind a priceless gem of literature. "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" was rejected by three publishers and its author was buried in a pauper's grave without seeing it in print.

Robert Tressell was a highly-skilled painter and decorator. His real name was Noonan and he took his pen-name from the painters' tressel (more commonly spelled trestle). He was a working-man concerned with working conditions and the way workers were exploited just after the turn of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. During a period of industrial decline he was sacked from his job because he would not rush the detailed work. He was influenced by the emerging Socialist movement and without a job he sat down and wrote a piece of literature that is sure to stand the test of time.

Noonan's wife had been unfaithful in South Africa where Robert had found work as a painter, and after his divorce the author was granted custody of his daughter, Kathleen. They came back to England, and latterly suffered much in not being able to find work, eventually ending in Liverpool where Noonan died of consumption. Without Kathleen Noonan this classic would never have come to light. She hawked it round until in 1914 Grant Richards published it three years after the author's death.

The novel itself, probably because of its political content, has never appeared on any syllabus at secondary level as far as I have been able to discover. Despite that it has been widely read and when the BBC ran its "Big Read" poll looking for the "nation's best-loved novel" it came a creditable 72nd.That's not bad for a book that has not been taught in secondary colleges, and finished above novels like "Bleak House", "Cold Comfort Farm" and "A Woman in White".

Please sign the petition to include it on the 'A' level syllabus.