Legacies

There’s been two items of news that have really got me cross recently. One was the Pope’s resignation, or abdication, or whatever you should call it, and then the election of the new Pope.  Luckily, the election was pretty quick, because I was losing all patience with having the white smoke / black smoke palaver explained to me, as though I was stupid. Mind you, Chuka Umunna doesn’t seem to have listened. He thought the black smoke thing was some sort of racist comment, God help us. It’s hard, as you get older, not to get cross with having obvious stuff explained in words of one syllable, and I have to try to remember that once, I needed it explaining. Mind you, I should think I was about ten, not thirty five years old.

The other thing that annoyed me about the election was that it seems utterly irrelevant. Catholics, in England anyway, just seem to ignore the Pope’s teaching on contraception etc. Quite right too, but it does make the whole shebang pointless if members of the church ignore their leader’s pronouncements.  And another thing that makes the whole thing pointless is the way the church has dealt with the numerous child abuse scandals. 

Someone I know tried to defend the Catholic Church, on the grounds that all organisations close ranks and cover up when there is a scandal. But what on earth is the point of the Catholic Church, if it can’t deal with a sex abuse scandal better than, say, British Airways, could?

Also, I must admit to being prejudiced. When I visited the Vatican Museums, the thing that went through my mind over and over, was "I'm sure this isn't what Jesus had in mind!"

Then I’ve got really cross with the press coverage of the Thatcher’s death celebrations. If you notice, all those out on the street “celebrating” are far too young to know anything about it. You had to live through the years before Thatcher to have any idea why she did as she did, and why she is still a heroine to many people.

I remember the three day weeks, the endless power cuts, the bread shortage, the toilet paper shortage, the incredibly poor quality of practically anything manufactured in Britain. There was a “joke”, which was that if you had a reasonably reliable car, it must have been manufactured on a Wednesday. On Mondays, the joke went, workers were overhung and couldn’t be bothered, and on Friday all they cared about was leaving work early, so only cars made on a Wednesday had any chance of being O.K.

I remember the British Steel workers clocking on and then clearing off home for a sleep. They threatened to strike when management tried to get them to wear safety gear. Years after they all lost their jobs, I met a chap who used to work in the steel plant. It turned out that he had been out of work for years. When I said I was sorry, he answered “Oh, don’t be. We asked for it.” 

If you don’t believe me, watch old TV – Not the Nine O’ Clock News, and the dead printer, fastened to the radiator so he still couldn’t be sacked. Or even The Good Life, where the gardener refuses to read a note because he’s a manual worker. They’re exaggerated, of course, but they were only funny because the situation was recognisable.

I worked for the Inner London Education Authority briefly, and I impressed it upon my husband that no child of ours could possibly attend any of its schools. That’s why we moved out of London, and why I can’t really respect Ken Livingston, although I do think he did well as Mayor of London, eventually.

Now none of this is to say that I support Thatcher’s policies in general. For example, I really wish she’d put the money from the North Sea and the sell offs into more modern infrastructure, and I wish she’d thought of planning ahead and improving education. There are practically no jobs for the thick but strong that allow you to support a family, in the way that labouring in the ship yards or mines did, so a better educated work force is vital. But don’t blame Thatcher for the decline of manufacturing. That’s globalisation, and the fact that most of what we had was rubbish. 

It’s much too early to come to any balanced conclusion about Mrs Thatcher’s premiership, or her legacy. But we should try to keep a more open mind than so many commentators.