hide to another part of that related to that i think we we definitely still live
with them before i do that were playing clip of billy bragg as the great uh...
uh... british ah uh... protest uh... songwriter
activist users
kidding i think you have no idea he dissects a basically look
margaret thatcher
is known for at there's no question
that when she came to power britain
because she was stagnating
uh... the economy was sluggish
uh... there was a lot of uh... kind of
cozy relationships between certain aspects of the business community waiver
uh... government
uh... britain wasn't sort of
uh... moving in the economy was was deeply stagnant
now or answer to this
was the answer it we've seen was reagan's answered america and the answer
were still living the consequences that we have that so
immediately got
sort of uh...
uh... collective responsibility go into position
and
assisting someone krunal reasonable given woody guthrie and and the clash
it seemed to me that mom places to be you know the on the picket line car
songs and whose interest is in the administration may turn into a cylinder
of college so they know huge around about socialism
so as a very steep learning curve to know what it's pop singer from london
and come up to to nicole films
shouldn't well you know in advance for a few people drinking cup situational
issuers talking about politics
and uh... so yall can tell you that my amigo inspiration in my politics was
margaret thatcher
were no phone
on forty one misogynist
oh
so i i i i pray that clip because i think he actually is giving a great
historical overview because thatcher came in at a time when you had
a consensus in the u_k_ and really arguably consensus across a lot of
industrialized countries which
was frame
it was running into some trouble but nonetheless there was a consensus that
you've got to have
universal services you gotta have anti poverty programs you're going to have a
role for labor are you going to have in some respects a collaborative decision
making process between the government the private sector
and the public sector
she came into ruthlessly break all that uh... and the narrative that we hear
mostly in america and that is kind of rain through the eighties and nineties
and i think particularly
uh...
weighing credit was easily available and we were living through the tech bubble
of the financial bubble
that this is sort of been in narrative i think arguably really up and threw the
mott you know that the two thousand seven two thousand a financial crash
which was that
what thatcher and reagan did
was
destroy these uh... monopolies
and the public sector unleash the power of the market to raise living standards
for everybody now that's the kind of comfortable part of the narrative now
they're still really big problems with that obviously one is what i love his
about that clip of billy bragg is talking about is that
it wasn't like this was anywhere remotely a consensus process what was
happening
and in order for her to unleash the power of the market this organic
freedom-loving saying she needed to unleash
police power
on pros test
she needed to unleash the state to literally destroyed the domestic coal
industry in wales
just so she could destroy that union
that was the purpose
uh... of of unleashing that and this is actually really where uh...
and i know a lot of people write in her reference uh... nile declined shock
doctrine
and i think that arguably in some ways even more radically in the united states
margaret thatcher
really implemented a shock doctrine on the u_k_ was a very
violent a controversial process which led up to her actually proposing a poll
tax which is what eventually
kind of let even her own party dumping her at the end because she proved so
controversial cost so much violence it so much agitation
first part of that narrative was that
this teasing out is that all the unions were corrupt in the whole process was
corroded and then look that's not entirely untrue
the way she did it
uh... and what she grew out of that was incredibly brutal incredibly one-sided
and and showed it complete disregard for people's livelihoods now
the second thing and i think the other legacy that we still play out with steel
was that
premise though that for
uh... what she came up against being like outdated and outmoded and corroded
rests on the assumption that what she put in its place is sustainable and
robust resilience
and we all know
that dot
nonsense
as well as she put in his place she hollowed out
the industrial sector of britain
okay so
just like in the united states either through large swath of america and other
peg and you see places that essentially are bombed out there totally dea dust
realize
you know people don't have work there is an opportunity for people to live
middle-class lives without uh...
you know extra higher levels of education even obviously that's
getting called question today's world
when she replaced it with
deregulated financial sector
uh...
and annexed bullish enough consumption
genuinely on the top and because they were making way more money
and i in the mid in the in the middle class because credit was more readily
available
so that's the world we live in and i think the most
art disturbing thing
uh... is that you know if ever where there was a time for a bit and then i
think the other kind of historical steps that guys like clinton blair came in
and their whole policy was this is basically the favor framework will
govern under but we're going to soften the edges
will provide more training for people
will protect asocial social programs
uh... and that was kind of the
the arrangement and arguably even though there was a lot of horrible things that
came with that
there wasn't that much of an appetite for a different politics
now president obama with doing things that he has genuinely accomplished like
health care reform and things like that
he is kind of a great
third way we'd her which is the name of that brand of politics the only problem
is
that totally doesn't work in today's aged if it ever work to begin with
because if ever there time for a serious counter reformation
it was when all of this stuff to look at our faces in two thousand eight the
cheap credit
and everything else to that they set into motion which was the never-ending
reliance notion that we can have
continuing cheap oil supplies cheap energy supplies uh... and all the rest
of this regrets on really faulty assumptions i think we'll billy bragg
shows though what's inspiring about that is that
this is never been taken passively
there's always been activism
there's always been a fight back
and as these policies work for less and less people
and as uh...
we become more thoughtful
in some respects hopefully
i think that there is all kidding
to start to lay the groundwork in the long term
for what
we really need and that goes way beyond together and i i think this is one of
the reasons that i
i don't
you know go strongly in either way with president obama because i've never
thought president obama was going to say that ass from this
to begin with
and i don't think he's to blame
for a lot of these structures that are in place
uh... that dad he inherited now i wish she was responding to the differently
and i find things like
the budget proposal atrocious but i think that he's operating in a context
that was set long before him in that needs to be fundamentally changed a big
part of the fundamental change is gonna come through activism
it's gonna come through different types of businesses gonna come through
different types of organizing it's gonna come through
reclaiming the commons
uh... and a lot of other things that are maybe kind of left for different day but
i i think the best part of margaret thatcher's legacies if we can actually
sit down and really talked about talk about
what she actually did on leash an all the ways in which it's proven
unsustainable
and the state
kit