Glenda Jackson criticizing the legacy of Margaret Thatcher and Thatcherism in the UK House of Commons this week, during a debate on tributes to Thatcher. For those who don’t think now is the time for this statement, I would refer you to this Guardian article on death and etiquette.
The irony is that this YouTube channel is a right-wing, Conservative party vehicle which seems to have posted this video with a view to ridiculing Jackson, but the response to this video and to Jackson (the astrotufing commenters on this video notwithstanding) has been predominantly pro-Jackson. Fast approaching a million views; 890K on this video alone and well over a million if you include all the other copies of this video on YouTube.
The speech is a tour de force. I’m surprised that despite the meme of “Ding Dong The Witch is Dead!” going around, that no one has named her ‘Glinda’ Jackson yet.
Why am I combining these two videos? Because they both deal, in different ways, with the hijacking of policits and society by finance and business. The Hour, though set in the 1950s, appears now by no accident. Both point, in different ways, to the effect of Margaret Thatcher’s policies, beginning in 1979, was the vast deregulation of banking and business that has led us to our current pass: financial collapse, vast gaps between rich and poor, and then there was the $32 trillion in offshore tax havens, a story that was broken by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) last week yet barely received notice in the international press. CBC journalists were involved in the leak of the tax haven bank account information – an amazing feat of investigative journalism.
Society, politics and our economic systems: these are design too. Who is designing your life?
If you haven’t seen the BBC series “The Hour,” about investigative BBC journalism during the Suez Crisis, I would recommend it. This is Ben Whishaw in the final episode, being beaten up by organized crime with the backing of police and corrupt government officials. Quote is by Abraham Lincoln in 1864:
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and cause me to tremble for safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic destroyed.
Abraham Lincoln, letter to Col. William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864
Yes. I’m heartened that so many people are refusing to canonize Thatcher. Rest in peace and all, but let’s not forget the deregulation, union-busting, and anti-human policies she and Reagan put into place together. The two of them were the start of the pro-corporation, money-glorifying, anti-human society that is now consider the norm in the western world. I hope the tide is turning.