Documents Thatcherism 30 results

"Contemporary scholarship has shifted focus from a ‘labour history' focused on industrial movements to a more comprehensive ‘working-class history', encompassing the broader social parameters of protest with community and industrial struggles unified in material interest and consciousness. This article locates the poll tax non-payment campaign of 1988–1990 on Clydeside, a major expression of working-class mobilisation which contributed to the demise of Margaret Thatcher's premiership, within this international historiography. The analysis is based on oral history interviews with twelve activists who represented all the major political trends from the non-payment campaign. The anti-poll tax movement was embedded in traditions of community mobilisation shaped by a moral economy of housing and amenities, which had roots in the First World War era ‘Red Clydeside' struggles, and developed through the post-Second World War predominance of public sector housing. The analysis demonstrates how activists constructed narratives of their own resistance in the anti-poll tax movement within a powerful cultural circuit, where the collective memory of past mobilisations and the consciousness associated with the moral economy of housing and amenities informed contemporary perspectives and political activity. The campaign was not politically monocultural. Differences between political groups involved in the non-payment campaign are analysed showing that the need of composure (of memories) led to contrasting interpretations of Red Clydeside. These were influenced by geographical distinctions between traditional working-class areas with strong tenants' organisations and the peripheral estates where such organisation was weaker. The impact of deindustrialisation and the welfare policies of the Thatcher government created a popular resentment in these areas. This strengthened moral economy opposition to the poll tax, whilst the traditions of community mobilisation provided effective means of harnessing this through non-payment and direct action against sheriff officers."

"L'ESPRIT DE 45: La victoire de la gauche britannique en 1945, souvenirs et réflexions.
L'année 1945 a marqué un tournant dans l'histoire de la Grande-Bretagne. L'unité du peuple pendant la guerre et le souvenir douloureux de la crise des années 30 ont favorisé l'émergence d'un nouvel idéal social. La fraternité devient le mot d'ordre de l'époque et cet élan porte au pouvoir le travailliste Clement Attlee, contre l'immense favori conservateur Winston Churchill.

LES DOCKERS DE LIVERPOOL Un récit de morale contemporaine.
En 1997 à Liverpool, 500 dockers, par solidarité, refusent de franchir un piquet de grève. Très vite, la Mersey Docks and Harbour Company profite de l'aubaine et installe un retour au travail précaire, comme au temps où les dockers étaient recrutés au jour le jour, à la tête du client. Plus d'un an sans salaire, vivant de leurs économies et de la solidarité internationale, le combat des dockers est une course de fond, menée autant par les femmes que par leurs maris, loin de l'imagerie ouvrière classique."

"Margaret Thatcher branded the leaders of the 1984-85 miners strike “the enemy within.” With the publication of this book, the full irony of that accusation became clear. Seumas Milne revealed for the first time the astonishing lengths to which the government and its intelligence machine were prepared to go to destroy the power of Britain's miners' union. There was an enemy within. It was the secret services of the British state, operating inside the NUM itself.

Milne revealed for the first time the astonishing lengths to which the government and its intelligence machine were prepared to go to destroy the power of Britain's miners' union. Using phoney bank deposits, staged cash drops, forged documents, agents provocateurs and unrelenting surveillance, M15 and police Special Branch set out to discredit Scargill and other miners' leaders. Planted tales of corruption were seized on by the media and both Tory and Labour politicians in what became an unprecedentedly savage smear campaign.

In this new edition, published for the twentieth anniversary of Britain's most important postwar social confrontation, new material brings the story up to date – and, in the wake of the Iraq war intelligence scandals, highlights the continuing threat posed by the security services to democracy today."

"A study of contemporary Britain as a capitalism poised between American and European models, this innovative book begins with a bold re-interpretation of the economic contexts and bequests of Thatcherism that takes up the 'shock' hypothesis of Naomi Klein and roots it in an alternative economic history, and finishes with a critical assessment of the New Labour project. Pursuing the state in its various policy guises – including its attitudes towards transnational corporations, the public-private interface and gendered employment structures and equalities – it explores themes of legitimation, denial and opportunism via a series of original studies of comparative policy importance capped by a commentary on the early impact of the first great crisis of the 21st century. Building upon a range of recent contributions to both the 'varieties of capitalism' and 'third way' debates, the case is made for a globally and historically aware approach that treats the state as a key actor."