Category Archives: Britain

Margaret Thatcher – the woman who changed Britain

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The passing of Margaret Thatcher

The passing of Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher made history. She was Britain’s first woman prime minister – a landmark that will live in history books long after the controversies of her premiership have faded. She defeated an Argentinian dictator and British union barons. She sold off most nationalised industries. And she helped end the Cold War.

When she became prime minister in May 1979, Britain was in a sorry state. The winter of discontent in 1978/79 made her victory inevitable. While many felt sympathy for low paid workers fighting for higher pay, millions decided enough was enough – ‘we can’t go on like this’ was a common feeling. People were sickened by unions that intimidated members into going on strike and used mobs to enforce their will. Two governments had been destroyed by the unions, in 1974 and 1979. Thatcher was determined it wouldn’t happen again.

Yet Thatcher was often more cautious in her early days than her legend suggests. She gave in to the miners’ demands in 1981 rather than risk defeat. The early union reforms were modest. And privatisation wasn’t even mentioned in the 1979 election manifesto.

She was lucky in her enemies. Winning the Falklands War against the Argentinian junta – a brutal dictatorship that murdered thousands of its own people – ended her vulnerable early days when the SDP/Liberal Alliance was threatening the Tories and Labour alike. Arthur Scargill stupidly bullied the miners into the 1984/85 strike when winter was ending and coal stocks were high.

In time, she became more reckless, more strident, most famously in the disastrous poll tax. John Campbell showed graphically in volume two of his biography of Margaret Thatcher, Iron Lady, how disfunctional her government became in its last years because of her behaviour. Her fall in November 1990 was no surprise.

She also began the long decline of local pride and enterprise, thanks to the emasculation of local government. For the daughter of an alderman, she was indifferent to local initiative  and hostile to the idea of an alternative power base, leading to the abolition of Ken Livingstone’s Greater London Council and the English metropolitan counties. Under her rule, Britain saw the rise of private wealth and public squalor, and a sense that selfishness was acceptable.

Labour isn't Working - most bitterly ironic Thatcher poster

Labour isn’t Working – Thatcher’s most cynical campaign poster, 1978

She was also callous in her indifference to the fate of communities devastated by the mass unemployment her government unleashed. The 1981 budget was one of the most brutal of the post war era, leading many to accuse her of using mass unemployment as a weapon to achieve her aims. (And in the doomed attempt to test the economic theory called monetarism.) Similarly, she deliberately shifted the tax burden from the wealthy to the less well off in the move to indirect taxation. Her choice of St Francis’s prayer – “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony” – was cynical, as was the 1978 election poster condemning Labour for high unemployment, above. Under her rule, the jobless total reached three million for the first time since the 1930s.

Finally, Margaret Thatcher suffered the fate of someone who lived only for work. She had no hinterland, as Denis Healey put it. This made her a very bad member of the former prime ministers’ club, as her successor John Major found out to his cost.

On the day Margaret Thatcher died, it’s hard to imagine a time before her time in Downing Street. But my first Thatcher memory was her appearance as education secretary 40 years  on the BBC children’s programme Val Meets the VIPs. (Val was the Blue Peter presenter Valerie Singleton.) In October 1978, our family friends in Germany asked us what we thought of Mrs Thatcher. We explained we weren’t impressed by her stridency…

Tonight, Britain and the world is remembering Britain’s most remarkable postwar prime minister. Our country is the nation she created – for good and ill. None of her successors has matched her ability to explain their mission. And no man since 1979 has dared to suggest that a woman couldn’t be prime minister. That might be as great a legacy as any.

Richard III, Leicester and me

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Richard III in Leicester. The king’s skeleton has been found under a Leicester car park 

I took this photo of Richard III’s statue shortly before graduating from the University of Leicester in 1985. It was extraordinary to learn that the university this week played a key role in establishing ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that Richard III’s skeleton had been found in the city.

As I blogged nostalgically last September, Leicester was a good place to be a student, despite its reputation as an unexciting place. I was fascinated by its rich history, including its links with Richard III. The city is already planning to exploit this week’s dramatic news – and who can blame it.

Today’s Guardian included intriguing interviews with actors who have played Shakespeare’s Richard III over the years, including Antony Sher. Sher famously played the role for the RSC during my time at Leicester. He published a wonderful account of his Year of the King, which I read almost in a single sitting in 1992 when I spent a lot of time in Stratford. As Sher recounts in the Guardian:

I became very interested in the fact that Richard is a severely disabled man. Some actors underplay this – but if you read Richard’s opening speech about himself, he is clearly disabled, and has experienced a lot of prejudice, a lot of hatred. This, in turn, has filled him with self-hatred. It’s this that enables him to do such evil to other people. He was used to hatred as a disabled man in an un-PC society. There were no Paralympics then.

We’ll hear a lot about Richard III – the king and the legend – in the coming weeks. 

 

Britain’s winter’s tale

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Milton’s Cottage, Chalfont St Giles

I was seven before I remember playing in the snow. Christmas 1970 was a winter wonderland – but it was another six years before I experienced the excitement of a world transformed by a white blanket.

By contrast, our four year old son Owen has had a snowy childhood so far. Every winter of his life has seen significant snowfall, especially the winter of 2009/10. He’s had two white Christmases (by my definition of snow on the ground on Christmas Day, rather than the Met Office’s stricter criterion.) I have blogged every winter about these snow days, most recently during February 2012′s snowy snap.

Some may argue this is evidence of climate change. Perhaps. But anyone born in 1976 would have had a similar snowy introduction to winter.

Whatever the reason, Owen and I are making the most of it!

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The snowman, 2012 edition

New pennies, old memories

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We’ve started giving Owen (aged 4) coins as pocket money every day. Our aim is to get him used to handing money and counting.

The other day, I noticed that one of the pennies we gave him was marked ‘New Penny’. That got me thinking. Since 1982, pennies have been marked ‘One Penny’. Owen’s coin was dated 1974.

So far, so unremarkable. Same coin (in essence), same monarch.

Yet it got me thinking of my own childhood. Growing up with ‘old money’, I was used to the old shillings, florins and sixpences – and my favourite, the thruppeny bit. (I was too young to see a farthing, worth a quarter of an old penny, which disappeared in 1960.) You’d find coins bearing the image of long-dead kings: George VI, George V. (And presumably Queen Victoria if you were lucky?)

Even after we went decimal in 1971, the old shillings and florins survived until the 1990s, as they were the same size and weight as the replacement 5p and 10p coins. (Even the sixpence endured until 1980, and was a favourite Christmas pudding surprise.)

Back to Owen’s coin. That 39 year old coin. When I was his age, the equivalent would have been a 1928 King George V coin, from the year my mother was born.

A few pieces of trivia. In 2013, it is:

  • 30 years since the pound coin was introduced.
  • 25 years since the end of the pound note.
  • 20 years since our last pre-decimal coin, the 2/- piece or florin, was withdrawn.

The most recently produced pre-decimal coins were dated 1967. But if you find a 1967 coin, don’t assume it dates from that year. Apparently the Wilson government decided not to date ‘old money’ coins after 1967 in case people hoarded the coins as a souvenir. So any produced between 1967 and decimalisation in 1971 were dated 1967.

A short history of time in Britain

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It’s hard to imagine Britain having different time zones. Yet it’s well under 200 years since Britain had the same time across the nation.

The railways created the need for the whole of Britain to be on the same time. When life moved at a horse’s pace, it didn’t matter that Cardiff time was some 15 minutes behind London’s. Time was local – determined by a sundial. But when the steam engine took people hundreds of miles within hours, the idea of a common time became urgent. Railway time or London time was the result.

Brunel’s Great Western Railway provided the impetus, along with the electric telegraph. In November 1840, the GWR adopted Greenwich Mean Time for its timetable, followed by almost all our railways by 1848. It meant that Bristol was no longer 10 minutes behind London. By 1855, almost all towns in Britain had adopted the unified time, although this only had legal force in 1880. Within 50 years of the GWR’s move, most major countries followed suit, although larger countries did so with multiple time zones.

Bristol time. Photo: Rod Ward, via Wikipedia.

Yet to this day, Bristol’s Exchange clock shows two minute hands: one for London time, the other for Bristol time. It’s a timely reminder of the days when time was a moveable concept in these islands.

Rex Hunt: hero of the Falklands and Britain

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“You have landed unlawfully on British territory and I order you to remove yourself and your troops forthwith.”

With these stirring words, Sir Rex Hunt, who has died aged 86, expressed his contempt for the Argentinian troops who had invaded the Falkland Islands, and made his reputation as the islands’ most famous governor.

Falklands report

Hunt’s death recalls one of the most extraordinary episodes in post-war British history. As I recounted in my blogpost marking the 25th anniversary of the Falklands war, it was a huge shock in 1982 to find Britain at war. Especially against a country with which we shared very close links. As an 18 year old who had a typically boyish interest in the second world war (put that down to Thames Television’s magnificent The World at War and endless Airfix kits), I was fascinated by that Falklands spring.

There were many links between the 1982 conflict and the second world war. Argentina’s cruiser, General Belgrano, was an American warship that survived Pearl Harbor as USS Phoenix. (It wasn’t so luck in May 1982.) Argentina’s aircraft carrier Veinticinco de Mayo was launched in 1943 as HMS Venerable. The flagship of Britain’s naval task force, HMS Hermes, was also laid down during the war. And the RAF’s extraordinary feat in bombing Port Stanley airport was assisted by the Vulcan V-bombers’ H2S radar – first used in the RAF’s deadly firestorm raid on Hamburg in 1943.

The sight of Harrier jump jets taking off into the South Atlantic mist sealed the nation’s love affair with this amazing aircraft, echoing the previous generation’s affection for the Spitfire and Hurricane. I delayed my walk to school one morning as the BBC promised the first film from the South Atlantic – naturally featuring the Harrier. (“At last! BBC Brian Hanrahan film from Hermes, shown at 8.50am. Go in to school slightly later,” I recorded in my diary.)

Rex Hunt’s defiance in the face of impossible odds burnished the legend of ignominious defeat turned into honourable retreat. Britain’s victory in the ensuing war led to his return in triumph later in 1982 – and his happy place in history.

Poppy day pride and prejudice

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Brothers in arms: My Great War grandfather and great uncle

I wear my poppy with pride. It’s my way of honouring the millions of men and women who lost their lives for freedom.

Yet I share the concern of some that the annual poppy appeal has become a badge not of honour but intolerance. (I should add that the Royal British Legion could never be accused of intolerance.) As I blogged a year ago:

“The poppy appeal is a simple call to commemorate the dead of the great and small wars alike, while helping today’s veterans. Yet my father, Bob Skinner, who served in the army during the second world war, is uneasy at the way this quiet tradition is becoming a compulsory exercise in sentimentality. He asks whether BBC newsreaders would be allowed to go on screen without a poppy. Political correctness has taken over. Bob hasn’t worn a poppy for several years.

“I’m also uneasy. I was appalled by the undignified argument between England’s Football Association and FIFA over whether players could wear a poppy on their shirts during a game. FIFA’s view that it was a political symbol was as crass as the FA’s totally inappropriate aggressive stance. It’s significant that these arguments are raging now, over 70 years after the end of the second world war, and not in the immediate aftermath of those great wars. This is the era of Daily Mail intolerance of alternative opinions – especially ones that are critical of the military. Back in 1921, when the first poppy appeal took place, no one would think to glorify war. The object was to mourn, to commemorate and to help survivors. Almost a century later, Britain is much less likely to criticise its warriors, their leaders or the decision to send them to war. As a result, we’ve been involved in wars that have nothing to do with us for well over a decade.”

Brothers in arms, Second World War: Dad and Uncle Bert

Wind farms: eyesore or beauty?

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Wind farms were in the news this week. UK government ministers clashed over policy towards renewable energy. A Tory energy minister, John Hayes, said we had enough onshore wind farms. His boss, Liberal Democrat Ed Davey, and prime minister David Cameron disagreed and slapped him down. The argument reflected Britain’s uncertain view of the merits of using wind to generate electricity.

Simon Jenkins in The Guardian expressed one view: that wind turbines ruin our most beautiful landscapes. His article brought an impassioned response from people who thought wind turbines enhance, rather than ruin, the countryside. I tend to agree. My heart warms to the sight of a graceful turbine turning in the wind. (We always enjoy seeing the one on the M4 at Reading on the site of the old Courage brewery.) And we were in awe at the sight of the huge collection of turbines in the desert near Palm Springs in California in 2004.

Perhaps I wouldn’t be so keen if it was on my doorstep. But wind turbines strike me as more in keeping with the landscape than mobile phone masts, let alone electricity pylons. They’re also natural descendants of the windmills and watermills that still grace many of our villages. Today’s eyesore is tomorrow’s historic gem.

The better question is whether wind farms make a useful contribution to power generation. That should be the real influence on government policy.

The Richmond Green Jaguar

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The Richmond Green Jaguar

This Jaguar – the car not the cat – is a permanent feature of Richmond Green. It’s always in the same place. I always look out for it when I’m on the final leg of my journey to work. It’s such a fixture that I wasn’t surprised to see it immortalised in a painting of Richmond Green in a local gallery.

But then it went missing for a week or so. I was discombobulated. Had it gone for good? Had the owner sold it? Had it had an accident? No – it’s back.

This trivial episode made me realised the impact of the familiar in our lives – and how we’re unsettled when familiar sights and names disappear. I wrote nostalgically earlier this week about Cardiff’s Empire Pool and Guildford Crescent baths - both lost. And last April, I explained how I’d recreated with Karen and Owen a 1960s childhood photo of me with Mum on Richmond’s riverside. That kind of continuity is precious.

We even feel the same way about (certain) businesses: people all over Britain were saddened when Woolworths closed its doors in late 2008, even if they’d not spent a penny there for years. The memory of buying Beatles, T-Rex, Dire Straits and Bucks Fizz (delete as applicable) singles there was enough to trigger nostalgia.

Travesty: Prince Charles letters cover up

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As Scotland’s independence referendum campaign begins, we had a reminder of the strength of reactionary power in Britain. The UK attorney general blocked disclosure of letters Prince Charles sent to government ministers.

The reason? Publication ‘could damage prince’s ability to perform duties as king’.

How ridiculous. If the letters are so incendiary, he shouldn’t have sent them in the first place. In any case, Charles is notorious for lobbying government ministers over his personal hobby horses. It seems very unlikely that the Prince of Wales was asking ministers’ advice over his future kingly duties.

Lord Rogers, the architect, commented: “It is either a democracy or it is not. I don’t think anybody, be it a king, prince or poor man, has a right to undermine decisions by private interventions which have a public impact. The only way for Charles to be a public figure is for him to act publicly. It is not democratic to cover up his interventions.”

Amen to that.