What can the left learn from the Thatcher years?

On the forty-fifth anniversary of the election of Margaret Thatcher, the Labour Left Podcast interviews Jeremy Gilbert.

The Guardian front page on Friday 4th May 1979 announces the election of Margaret Thatcher.

Forty-five years ago, on 3rd May 1979 Margaret Thatcher was elected.  To mark the anniversary of the birth of Thatcherism, Bryn Griffiths, the presenter of the Labour Left Podcast, sat down with Jeremy Gilbert to consider Thatcher’s legacy.

You can watch the Thatcherism Podcast on You Tube here  or go to your favourite Podcast provider and search for Labour Left Podcast.  

Jeremy Gilbert is a Professor of Cultural and Political Theory at the University of East London and a prolific podcaster currently hosting Culture Power and Politics. Many of you will know him because of  his work with Momentum, Novara and The World Transformed, so you’ll realise that he was the ideal guest to help us consider why Thatcherism was important, still casts a dark shadow over British politics today and needs to be understood so we can learn from history to be stronger as a Labour left.

Recently the anniversary of the Great Miners’ Strike has got us all talking about Thatcher again.  Starmer and Reeves have also got on the bandwagon as well, with Sir Keir controversially suggesting she brought about “meaningful change” and was responsible for “setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism.”

In the podcast we consider what happened at the end of the seventies that triggered such an aggressive assault on the post-war consensus of full employment, a mixed economy including a role for nationalisation, the creation of the National Health Service, universal welfare provision and education reform.

To equip us with the tools to understand and learn from the Thatcherite period, we delve deep into the ideas of Stuart Hall and his seminal essay The Great Moving Right Show which introduced Antonio Gramsci to a British audience. We don’t just dwell on what Thatcher did: we look at the Labour left’s efforts throughout the 1980s to build a broad enough coalition to defeat her.  Why were the Benn for Deputy Campaign, the Miners’ Strike and the municipal left all defeated? 

Francis Fukuyama declared that the end of the Cold War signalled the “end of history.” We were told there is no alternative and Thatcher, when asked what she considered to be her greatest achievement answered “Tony Blair and New Labour.” The podcast considers the question: was Thatcher right and did the neo-liberals win forever?

The whole point of reconsidering Thatcherism is to ask what we can learn from it for today.  Moving right up to the present, we consider the possibility of the reconstitution of the Conservatives as a Thatcherite or even a Powellite populist right wing around the forces of Popular and National Conservativism.  Will Liz Truss turn out to be a mere dress rehearsal for something much worse when Starmer inevitably stumbles? Could Starmer’s legacy turn out to be a new ‘great moving right show’ like we have never seen before in Britain?

Finally, with the left in Britain in a period of enforced retreat, Jeremy considers what we can learn from our battle with Thatcher to help us rebuild mass engagement in left politics? 

We think the Jeremy Gilbert interview  is an important contribution to the Labour left’s thinking, going forward.  If you enjoy the podcast, please give it a like and a follow.  Please, please share it with your friends as it really helps promote the podcast to a wider audience. Hit subscribe to make sure you never miss an episode.

You can watch the podcast on YouTube here , Apple podcasts here, Audible here  and listen to it on Spotify here  If your favourite podcast site isn’t listed, just search for the Labour Left Podcast. 

Bryn Griffiths is the host of Labour Hub’s spin off the Labour Left Podcast.  He is an activist in the labour movement, Momentum and The World Transformed in North Essex. You can find all the episodes of the Labour left Podcast here  or if you prefer audio platforms (for example, Amazon, Audible Spotify, Apple, etc.,) just search for Labour Left Podcast.

Bryn Griffiths is standing for the National Policy Forum CLP Representatives,  Eastern Region Division 1.  He is standing as part of the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance team and you can find all your left candidates across the country here.