Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, has died. If I could give my condolences to the Thatcher family, I would -- It's sad for any family when a loved one passes away.
And if I thought the Thatcher family were regular Daily Kos readers, I'd hold my tongue regarding my thoughts on Margaret Thatcher's legacy to Britain and the world.
It was my good political fortune, as a young American my first time abroad, to be in Britain during the Miners' Strike of 1984-1985, while Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. Though it ended in defeat for the miners, this strike was a challenge like no other to Thatcher's war on the British working class -- and a war it was, which Thatcher eventually won. As the child of American liberal Democrats who had drifted a bit to the left of my parents owing to the influence of post-1960s sex, drugs, and rock & roll, my experience in Britain during the Miners' Strike was my first real experience of class politics. That experience has influenced my political view of the world to the present day.
Given my age and the times and places in which I grew up, I think it's fair to say that my intellectual and political life has in large part been defined by opposition to the conservatism of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. As a teenager in the South in the late 1970s - and as the child of liberal Democrats - I watched the rise of the new conservative movement led by the likes of Jerry Falwell, which swept Reagan to power in 1980, with great dismay. Upon finishing high school I left the conservative South and moved to liberal San Francisco, where I would be pulled even further to the left. Then, I traveled on student loan money to Europe, a trip that included a stay in the UK during the Miner's Strike. This, I'm afraid, sealed my fate as a life-long leftist.
Those were the conservative glory days of the Reagan-Thatcher transatlantic political romance. Ronnie and Maggie seemed to be in love with each other, at least on a political level. Reagan visited London while I was there in 1984, and during his visit I was pleased to take part in an anti-Reagan-Thatcher demonstration that attracted about a quarter of a million people. A favorite chant of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in those days was: "Ronnie Reagan, he's no good -- Send him back to Hollywood!" This among other choice verses was chanted at the demonstration, as we marched on both 10 Downing Street and the US Embassy. I felt proud then, at so young and tender an age, to be marching against both the president of my home country and the prime minister of my host country at the same time.
It was the Miners' Strike, however, that hammered home the message of what unrestrained, Reaganite-Thatcherite capitalism does to ordinary people. Reagan and Thatcher set in motion a process of working-class disempowerment and impoverishment that has continued unabated until today. In 1984, Thatcher sought to break the back of the most powerful and militant trade union in Britain, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), by closing coal pits and privatizing the national coal industry. This was a fight that Thatcher ultimately won, greatly advancing the Iron Lady's destruction of the organized British working class.
The miners fought valiantly, however, under the leadership of NUM president Arthur Scargill, and with the help of left-wing groups such as those with which I associated while in Britain. I also gained a priceless education in class politics during my time with other activists on the picket lines, at political meetings, and at demonstrations in support of the miners around Britain. Those experiences in Thatcher's Britain have informed my views on class and politics to the present day.
So now a part of my youth has died. Rest in peace, Maggie, and thanks for the memories.