Comments on: Labour’s Wilderness Years: Setting the Record Straight

By: Why Didn’t the SDP Become The Centre-Left Force In British Politics?

Why Didn’t the SDP Become The Centre-Left Force In British Politics? — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:49:03 +0000

[...] dogma of enthusiasts. Instead it is a that rare breed of political blog, leaning free thought. The latest post challenges the New Labour view that before the ‘New’, the Party were unelectable, challenging the [...]

By: frolix22

frolix22 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:17:42 +0000

I’ve never bought into the “leftward lurch” meme. As far as I am concerned it is a construction of the propaganda system. I wasn’t even a teenager in 1983 election but I knew even at that time that it was the Falklands War which had won the election for Thatcher. Once a particular narrative is established in the media that is it, there is simply no changing it and it will inform all coverage for years or even decades after. The narrative established in 1983 (which, not coincidentally, favoured capital), shapes mainstream political discourse in this country to this very day.

By: Salman Shaheen

Salman Shaheen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:51:39 +0000

Again, though, I don’t think motives alone are enough. Many former left-wingers, such as Christopher Hitchens and Nick Cohen, have justified Iraq as being the right war for the wrong reasons. Equally many wars fought ostensibly for morally just reasons have had disastrous consequences. And probably the most justifiable war in recent history, WW2, was not waged to liberate Europe’s Jews. That, you might say, was the right war for the wrong reasons. It’s far too simplistic to judge the rightness or wrongness of a conflict on the motivations of the belligerents.

By: Owen

Owen — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:56:13 +0000

Salman and David: I don’t think the rightness or wrongness of a war is determined by the total amount of good or bad done by the political leaders of either side. Yes, Thatcher did more harm to the world (and certainly the UK) than Galtieri; ditto Dubya and Saddam Hussein. But for me, the main issues in determining the justness of a war are the motives and objectives of the belligerents (i.e. whether or not one party going to war for a morally acceptable reason, such as stopping mass murder or defending itself against attack) and, if that is met, whether or not all other options have been exhausted. Gulf War 2 clearly fails at the first hurdle; Bush didn’t have humanitarian motives. The Falklands isn’t so cut and dried, in my opinion. I’m prepared to believe that for all her many and varied deficiencies as a politician and member of the human race, Thatcher did genuinely want to help the Falklanders. (It probably also crossed her mind that doing so wouldn’t harm her electoral chances, of course). What’s less clear to me is whether or not there were other options that could have been tried before rushing to war; I simply don’t know enough about it to have an opinion.

By: jonathan colwill

jonathan colwill — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:17:39 +0000

well the falklands has always had a soft spot in my heart, and I see it in britains vital national interests to keep the falklands british .
the falklands is one of the few places that could support a higher population its close to Antarctica and I think in the future you will see many more british people going to live there.

Id be tempted to go there myself the place just needs more trees to cut down the wind so you could grow field crops and better drainage to clear the bogs and more people .

on thatcher and the nf if she hadn’t courted the anti immigration vote I think the national front would have done far better

By: Salman Shaheen

Salman Shaheen — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:38:19 +0000

That’s very true David and I think the comparisons with Blair’s wars are very apt. When examing the Falklands war in the localised, short-term context, it would be fair to say, as Reuben points out, that Thatcher was not quite as nasty as Galtieri. But when has the left ever been able to use odiousness alone to justify war? It would be equally fair to say that George Bush was not quite as nasty as Saddam Hussein. But in the wider context, Thatcher’s war-bolstered regime has done far more harm to the world than one Latin American dictator. Plenty of whom Britain has supported when it has suited us. Equally, unchecked neo-conservative American imperialism, in the long-term and on a global scale, is far more dangerous than one crackpot Iraqi despot. It can never be enough to pick the lesser of two evils in a war to justify a conflict.

By: DavidR

DavidR — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:01:05 +0000

Well Mrs Thatch has had a few makeovers in her time but I think this may be the first time she has been made over as an “anti-fascist”.

Indeed one of her strategies for getting in in the first place,in ’79,was by deliberately courting the racist and fascist vote, through her infamous “swamping” speech, and reassuring NF supporters, who had nothing electable to vote for, that they could get several of their anti-immigrant and law and order demands met by the Tories. This was the period when Young Tories used to sport “Hang Nelson Mandela” t-shirts, and many very right wing Tory MPs had somewhat close connections with the non-Tory far right (captured in a Panorama programme of the period called “maggie’s militant tendency).

The regime in Argentina was actually fairly typical of the arch-reactionary regime that the Tories closely bound up with Ronald Reagan, typically supported. So the escalation of the conflict with Argentina was clearly about another agenda.

The war in the Falklands was cynically used for electioneering as surely as son of Thatch, Tony Blair, used frequent wars in his time of office.

By: jonathan colwill

jonathan colwill — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:23:15 +0000

I voted for thatcher and it was basically because I thought the unions had gone mad, you had the winter of discontent where you just seemed to have strikes all the time ,you had dustmen on strike people not being buried and I think lots of people who would normally have voted labour didn’t because the unions had riled them .
its a long time ago but thats how it seemed at the time.

I’m not anti union but at the time I think they seemed to have over done things this was all through the 1970s , for whatever reason people thought they were to keen on industrial action and labour couldn’t seem to control them so people voted for thatcher .

this may well annoy people who hated thatcher at the time but thats how a lot of people who voted for her thought .

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:33:34 +0000

While it’s not wholly reflective of the period, the general election results in Liverpool (the home of Militant) between 1974 and 1987 are revealing:

1974 (Oct): Labour 54.6% Tory 32.5%
1979: Labour 49% Tory 35.8%
1983: Labour 47.3% 29.3%
1987: Labour 56.7% 17.4%

In a city not “traditionally” Labour (in 1951 Tories got 51% of the vote), the mid 1980s (Militant members were expellled in 1985) saw a huge swing to Labour, and if the 10.% swing between 1983 ad 1987 had been repeated nationally, Labour would have won in 1987 with 325 seats.

Militant had many faults, but electoral popularity was not one of them.

Still the best contemperaneous review of the Labour left in the 1980s is Hilary Wainwrights ‘Labour; A tale of two parties’ and this evidences the popularity of the Labour left in many cities where they took power. The question of the appeal to middle England is a different matter, but the Labour left would, if left to its devices, have almost certainly regained control of national government long before New Labour.

By: Owen

Owen — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:27:03 +0000

Well, I already said something similar in passing in my poppies post and haven’t been barbecued so far. They’re probably biding their time…