Thatcherism

By Chris Kitchen, NUM National & Yorkshire Area Secretary

DEDICATED FOLLOWERS OF THATCHER!

A "systemic" collapse of world markets is how the capitalist crisis has been described and across the world disciples and adherents to the free market philosophy have had to abandon their ideological monetary madness.

Margaret Thatcher was a rabid adherent to this ideology. It was her belief that governments should never interfere in the economy, an ideological position known as liaises faire or unfettered free market economics.

It is this crazy ideology, that still persists, that led to the 1984/85 Miners' Strike, the rundown of Britain's deep-mined coal industry, the destruction of our industrial base and an orgy of privatisation which caused even former Tory Prime Minister, Harold McMillan to warn against selling off "the family silver".

It has also led to an unequal society worshiping the idea that "greed is good" causing misery and poverty on the one hand and obscene "fat cat" wealth on the other.

The right wing neo-cons in America follow the principles of the unfettered free market with what amounts to a fundamental, almost religious, belief and it has to be said that New Labour, first under Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown bought into the dogma.

The privatisation of the railways, coal mines, telecommunications, water, gas, electricity generation, great swathes of the National Health Service along with the threat to Royal Mail and the general move away from public ownership are all symptoms of the extreme adherence to the free market.

In a free market economy the government does not govern it withdraws to the sidelines in the belief that the market is the answer to all problems. To follow its latter-day high priestess Margaret Thatcher - the state, it is said, has no role to play in the economy.

It is only two years ago that Gordon Brown. speaking at the TUC Conference, was singing the praises of global capitalism and free markets now he doesn't hesitate to blame the global economy for all our economic ills.

The rich fat cats have been, and still are. allowed massive wage increases, bonuses and pension pots while the government insists on pay restraint for the rest of us.

Suddenly everything has changed. Taxpayers have to sink trillions into banks all across the globe. In Britain HBOS, Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley, Lloyds TSB along with banks in Europe and America are being bailed out by taxpayers' money in a desperate attempt to save a system that has only ever worked to benefit the few and against the interests of ordinary hard working people.

Banks have gone bust, stock markets are in turmoil, gas, electricity and petrol prices have hit the stratosphere, people's hard earned savings are in jeopardy and with the stock markets disappearing into a black hole everyone's pensions will be hard hit. People who only a year ago were preparing for retirement after a lifetime of hard work have seen their pension pots more than halved by the unrestricted casino economy in which we live.

To make this madness more difficult to stomach these compulsive gamblers, who gamble with other people's money - yours and mine - will walk away with millions of pounds in salaries, bonuses, share options and massive pension pots. They have been on a one-way-bet. When their gambling pays off they are referred to as "experts" receiving fat cat pay but when the gamble goes wrong the rest of us pick up the gambling bills.

Now we are witnessing a mad scramble to save this lunatic system and start the cycle of gambling at our expense all over again, and while those who run the system are paid millions of pounds the rest of us live in a low-wage economy as ordinary hard working people are forced to supplement their pay by borrowing on credit cards and running up debt and that is where the so called "credit crunch" will hit the hardest, but the people who got us into this mess and who have supported and benefited from the system are the very people being appointed to sort it out.

Peter Mandelson has been appointed by Gordon Brown as some kind of economic guru, but Mandelson is a Tory, yes, he masquerades as "New Labour", he invented the name to distance Labour from any hint of being a socialist party, he is, and has been, part of the problem, a Thatcher worshiper who wines and dines with the super-rich and his Tory friends on their luxury yachts where he has no difficulty forgetting the Labour heartlands and ordinary working class people who propelled him to power, he just wants to mend the broken system on the backs of working people everywhere so that he and his rich friends can continue as normal and do it all again. One such friend of Mandelson's is Tony Blair former Prime Minister and consultant to the banking group J P Morgan.

Unless and until we discard the rotten Victorian system which Thatcher returned us to in the 1980s and create a new kind of society based on the socialist principles espoused by our union throughout its history we are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past all over again.

By Chris Kitchen
NUM National & Yorkshire Area Secretary