"The myth of Thatcherism
The idea that Britain’s problems are all the fault of the evil ‘Mrs T’ distorts history—and lets the left and Labour off the hook.
If Thatcher was all about deregulating the market and promoting an ‘enterprise culture’ – an ideology which, according to one observer writing last week, gave rise to an ‘inner emptiness’ amongst the British public, a ‘constant hunger for more’ – then the current bailout strategies mark ‘the passing of Thatcher’s ideology’ . Many liberal and left-wing commentators have been dancing on its grave. Writer Hanif Kureishi is delighted that we’ve emerged from the ‘Thatcherite spell of deregulation’. There is a Facebook group called ‘Thatcherism has now been formally discredited. Let’s throw a party!’ – though with only 54 members, it is trailing badly behind ‘No state funeral for Thatcher’ (which has 11,147 signatories).
The idea that Britain has, until these past few weeks, been under the ‘spell’ of Thatcherism, even that her so-called ideology unleashed a wave of ‘mental illness’ amongst a consumption-obsessed public, shows the powerful grip that the bogeyman of Thatcherism still has on public debate. But that is all Thatcherism is today: a bogeyman, a dirty word uttered by liberal commentators to describe everything bad that has happened in British politics since 1979. I am implacably opposed to everything Thatcher stood for, but the transformation of this woman into a uniquely powerful, ideologically driven maker of crises, who single-handedly turned Britain from a fair country into a place of ‘unbridled capitalism’ , is built on historical ignorance, political cowardice, and a desperate desire to avoid at any cost a serious debate about capitalism itself.
It would be inaccurate to say that ‘reports of Thatcherism’s death are greatly exaggerated’; it is truer to say that reports of the existence of Thatcherism in the first place – as a clear or coherent ideology – are greatly exaggerated. In order that we might have a proper debate about politics over the past 30 years, and where society should be heading in the next 30, it is time to shoot down some of the myths of the Thatcherite era."
http://spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5841
