My memories of 30 years ago
I was eleven by the morning of 4th May 1979. I was waiting for a lift to school with some friends when the father who's turn on the lift rota it was turned up very excited. He turned round to us all in the car and said "don't you feel freer today ?".
My memories of growing up were of power cuts (Miners etc), bread shortages ( because of bakers strikes ), TV strikes, Car strikes (always), shortages of sugar (can't remember why ), and enteranl wait for a telephone.
At the time my Father was in the RAF and it was clear that the forces had been very badly treated. Private soldiers pay was below poverty levels. We know know that the RAF didn't have the stores to fight the Soviets for more than a day or two. Aircraft were old and moral was very low. The assumption was that any attack by the Warsaw pact would go nuclear in a few days and the West's totally inadequate military was pushed aside by the hordes of Soviet armies, aircraft and ships.
The last 6 months had been the winter of discontent. Strikes were everywhere. The dead weren't buried and rubbish piled up in the street. ( Some insane lefties try to paint the 70's as some sort of paradise - well for selfish and self obsessed politico's perhaps it was, but the rest of us hated it )
I can remember listening to this week in Parliament on radio 4 and moving closer to the radio as Mrs Thatcher spoke - she used the common sense that many people had been longing to hear from the politicians, but had till now instead got the patronising mantra of managed decline and retreat to the destruction of our country.
The 4th of May 1979 was the day that Britain gained hope for the future.
Many one the left and those programmed by the Guardian and BBC will never forgive her for saving our country form the socialist purgatory they had so desperately hoped to imprison this country in.
She saved our country, and maybe with Ronald Reagan the World.
She defeated the IRA.
She defeated the communists and closed shop fascists in the Union movement.
She gave us back our future.
She gave us sound money.
Now many will go on about the restructuring that happened, but like today's debt crisis that had been building for at least a decade. The blame belongs to those weak and deceitful men who shirked their responsibilities in the hope of a few more years of managed decline and some votes. ( Much as Labour are doing today ).
I am deeply grateful to her for her courage and determination.
And on that morning on that lift to school I dared to hope again...
My memories of growing up were of power cuts (Miners etc), bread shortages ( because of bakers strikes ), TV strikes, Car strikes (always), shortages of sugar (can't remember why ), and enteranl wait for a telephone.
At the time my Father was in the RAF and it was clear that the forces had been very badly treated. Private soldiers pay was below poverty levels. We know know that the RAF didn't have the stores to fight the Soviets for more than a day or two. Aircraft were old and moral was very low. The assumption was that any attack by the Warsaw pact would go nuclear in a few days and the West's totally inadequate military was pushed aside by the hordes of Soviet armies, aircraft and ships.
The last 6 months had been the winter of discontent. Strikes were everywhere. The dead weren't buried and rubbish piled up in the street. ( Some insane lefties try to paint the 70's as some sort of paradise - well for selfish and self obsessed politico's perhaps it was, but the rest of us hated it )
I can remember listening to this week in Parliament on radio 4 and moving closer to the radio as Mrs Thatcher spoke - she used the common sense that many people had been longing to hear from the politicians, but had till now instead got the patronising mantra of managed decline and retreat to the destruction of our country.
The 4th of May 1979 was the day that Britain gained hope for the future.
Many one the left and those programmed by the Guardian and BBC will never forgive her for saving our country form the socialist purgatory they had so desperately hoped to imprison this country in.
She saved our country, and maybe with Ronald Reagan the World.
She defeated the IRA.
She defeated the communists and closed shop fascists in the Union movement.
She gave us back our future.
She gave us sound money.
Now many will go on about the restructuring that happened, but like today's debt crisis that had been building for at least a decade. The blame belongs to those weak and deceitful men who shirked their responsibilities in the hope of a few more years of managed decline and some votes. ( Much as Labour are doing today ).
I am deeply grateful to her for her courage and determination.
And on that morning on that lift to school I dared to hope again...
5 comments:
Mmmm... I did not like Thatcher, but you're quite right - the '70s were awful. There's loads of "'70s hype" these days, inventions and pop culture from the '60s/'80s are transported to the '70s by '70s hypists - and these people, who basically LIE to make the '70s look good, are often journalists!
People nowadays live in La La Land, with the '80s scapegoated as pure evil. Not true.
Now all we needed was Reagan (elected late 1980, inaugurated early 1981) and the '80s could really begin...
For better or worse... but certainly not ALL for the worst!
A great example of left wing journalistic fantasy history is provided by the Guardian's Neil Clark here.
This hints at the underlying problem with left wing politics, essentially is disconnection with reality.
I remember somebody saying on Radio Sheffield that after flour and sugar there would be salt shortages next.
It sparked panic buying of salt in local shops.
I sometimes wonder why more people our age and above don't have similarly clear memories of what the 1970s were really like.
During the "I Love The 1970s" series, the BBC wilfully misrepresented the decade. They imported pop culture from the 1960s and 1980s to make their version of the 1970s glow.
Ah, but that series was about pop culture, you say, not politics. But the underlying theme was "70s good, 80s bad". By reporting several much-loved '80s fads as "70s", this gave Auntie the opportunity to present the 80s as greed unlimited, with nothing good to recall in the present, no happy memories, in its following "I Love 1980s" series.
I studied this trend at the time. It's all about brainwashing - rewriting history to a version the BBC and some of the political Left would like you to believe. '70s = warm, innovative, happy, better than the 60s; 80s = cold, heartless, stagnant, Thatcher.
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!
Except that I was 18 - not as young as yo but not old - and the French Revolution was trash and Wordsworth came to hate it and became a pretty good conservative in good time.
And I helped her to win.
Three times.
Yey, old Young Conservatives.
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