Labour Party and the Unions

[Jim heartfield]

In message <518B8516EDC0D011BE3F00C04FD4EE5A158332 at smtp.fair.org>, Seth
Ackerman <SAckerman at FAIR.org> writes

>       That does sound pretty awful.
>
>       But if the British were sick of the welfare state and
>nationalization, doesn't that mean they wanted welfare cuts and
>privatization? Isn't that what Thatcher was offering? How is this
>anti-welfarist feeling (which you seem to share) to be distinguished from
>Thatcherism?  

Well, tragically, it wasn't sufficiently differentiated in the minds of
the public, and a considerable part of the working class voted for cuts
and privatisation. People in work felt little identification with
welfare claimants, and even fewer felt any identification with
nationalised industries. Most pointedly the Steel-workers just took the
redundancy payments and went.

Whether it could have been differentiated depended on the ability of the
left to break from its identification with the Labour Party and with
state socialism. Some of us tried, but we were a minority of a minority.
-- 
Jim heartfield