“I still hate Thatcher” displayed in large print on a white t-shirt at an otherwise happy music festival last week publicly demonstrated how the pain from the 80s and the early 90s UK Tory economic meltdown still lingers on for some.
The economic crashes of the 90s had lost me everything that I’d saved and worked for over the previous 20 years so I well understood the anger of the middle aged man who wore that t-shirt.
“If it aint hurting it aint working” was the proud slogan of the Tory Prime Minister who replaced Thatcher. His policies certainly hurt ordinary decent and hard working people in those desperate times.
For years, to control my anger, when Margaret Thatcher or John Major’s face were displayed on television, I had to turn away and leave the room or risk smashing the television so strong were my feelings.
I remembered the lady in tears who had taken her child away from my business, which had provided after school activities for local children. She had lost her job under the Tory Government’s economic squeeze and her husband was desperately afraid he would soon lose his. Other parents soon had to withdraw their children and my previously popular and successful business was eventually forced to close, never to open again.
Many friend’s small businesses suffered the same fate.
I remembered the large sign that was displayed on a main road in front of a house with windows boarded up and clearly repossessed at the edge of a large town in the South of England.
“Will the last person leaving this town please turn out the lights”.
I remembered, as a last painful resort, sitting in the Government’s Welfare Benefits Office. My qualifications, experience and work ethic completely unable to earn me or my family a living. The kindly lady reassured me that there were many more like me hitting rock bottom and I shouldn’t feel it was the end of the world.
In the 90s, there was no soft landing. The Captain of the ship, seemingly, had deliberately driven into the iceberg. He had seen the hurricane and set a course straight through it irrespective of the deckhands left clinging on and battling to avoid being swept overboard.
In the years that followed, as I struggled to recover my life from nothing, each of the many set backs was further evidence of the injustice caused to me. I had played by the rules. I had worked hard, been careful and done no wrong. I felt betrayed.
It took me many years to realize that the consuming anger and hatred I regularly felt for the Governmental architects of those grievous economic days served no logical purpose.
My feelings of anger didn’t hurt them. They just hurt me. I doubted ‘they’ would ‘give a damn’. My feelings of anger would put nothing ‘right’.
Slowly, I learned to control my self destructive feelings and eventually became a happier and more productive person as a result. The bad memories remained but they didn’t rule my life any more.
I talked at some length to the man wearing the t-shirt saying ‘I still hate Thatcher’ and told him about my journey from anger. In return, he told me the causes of his. His story bore many similarities to mine.
The next day, I spotted him again. He was still wearing a white t shirt saying: ‘I still hate Thatcher’.
Perhaps, later, he will think more about what I said and, perhaps soon, will start his journey away from anger too.
I hope so, for his sake.
Bye for now
Rob
