Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead

By Steve Weissman | Reader Supported News

13 April 13

f younger Americans ever think of Winston Churchill, they likely see him as the cigar-chomping British bulldog who stood up against Hitler in the Second World War. Few realize that the great man lost re-election as prime minister in 1945, at least in part because he opposed creation of the National Health Service (NHS), until recently the highly prized crown jewel of the British welfare state.

Similarly warped vision now surrounds Margaret Thatcher, whose funeral on Wednesday climaxes a media-led celebration of the Iron Lady who brought Britain back to greatness. An imposing figure with the personal strength and intelligence to become her country's first woman prime minister, Mrs. Thatcher did remake Britain, both directly and through the impact of her "free market" ideology on Tony Blair's New Labour and today's Tories under Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne.

Long a manufacturing powerhouse, her Britain became the cutting edge of a new global capitalism dominated by Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, other financial powerhouses, both European and American, and a handful of multinational corporations that have turned tax dodging into a profit center. This was the house that Maggie built, most famously with her October 1986 "Big Bang," the radical deregulation of the City of London, the British Wall Street. Coming a decade or so before the American deregulation of Bill Clinton's second term, which many analysts blame for the financial crash of 2008, Maggie's "freeing" of finance in London set the stage for the world's current economic woes.

Not so strangely, the media has never really understood "the Big Bang." Most British coverage has focused on the destruction of the City's "cozy gentlemen's club," the end of "the late start, long lunch, and early finish" to its working day, and the influx of foreign - especially American - banks and law firms with their more cut-throat business culture. But this was the trigger for what New Labour later called "light-handed regulation," which explains why the City of London has been the primary scene of the Libor Scandal and the worst sins of the nominally American banks, whether J.P. Morgan's "London Whale" or Goldman's flogging of toxic sub-prime mortgages in a parcel they called "Abacus."

The other side of "freeing" the financiers was letting much of Britain's manufacturing base go to the wall, which Thatcher did with a vengeance. She claimed to see it as letting the free market decide the fate of non-competitive industries, from nationalized coal mines to specialist engineering companies. But her government - not the market - did the destructive work, decimating entire communities and the skills built up over generations.

The survivors - and those who remember them - are now dancing on Maggie's grave and pushing Judy Garland's hit song from The Wizard of Oz to the top of the pop charts - "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead." Having lived and worked as a journalist in London during the early years of her government, I can understand the bitterness, though I doubt it will do much good.

Why did Maggie destroy so much? Simply to break the power of the mine workers and other trade unionists whom she saw standing in the way of the free-market, financially-dominated utopia she wanted to create. Less well known, some of her more rabid advisors and financial supporters actually believed they were saving Britain from a working class revolution led by peace activists, the unions, and various Marxist-Leninist groups. The "revolutionaries," many of whom I counted as friends, would be astounded to know how seriously Maggie Thatcher and her antiquated anti-communists took the threat of change from below. The real threat came from above, and it is still wreaking havoc.

A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How To Break Their Hold."

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