How I Killed Margaret Thatcher- Anthony Cartwright

I'll admit it, the title alone sold me.

How I Killed Margaret Thatcher is the history of Neoliberalism in Britain seen through the eyes of a working class child. Set mostly during the 80's in Dudley in the West Midlands, its a grim story of how economic restructuring can lead to the drawn out collapse of communities and the breakdown of previously happy families.

Its also eerily close to my own childhood in a northern town on the East Coast in the 90's. The policies brought in after 1979 took a long time to complete, the pain was staggered and drawn out so even ten years on much of what it depicts was still doing its work. I can remember my parents arguing in the kitchen over money and where the next jobs coming from, the town centre crumbled before my eyes, closed down shops boarded up houses etc. The only real difference is the slang used in Dudley. I don't think I've ever heard anyone pronounce soft with an r before.

Sean Bull also grew up in this and the effects on his family are heartbreaking. Neoliberal policies destroyed their community strained their relationships and even managed to get a few people killed trying to make ends meet. Unsurprisingly Sean finds comfort in the stories of assassins who kill or tried to kill political tyrants. In particular the attempted assassins of Queen Victoria (quite a long list). Its not hard to see why, an ordinary person sometimes just a boy filled with righteousness and a gun slays the source of the rot.

But of course killing old Queen Vic wouldn't have slowed down the Empire or any of its atrocities and killing Thatcher wouldn't have stopped the Neoliberal project. Assassination only works when there's a movement ready to take advantage of the disruption caused by the hit. Of course Sean doesn't know that he's only a schoolboy, and its a dream that keeps him sane. Yeah, life under in "Thatcher's Britain" could be so bleak and cold that even a fantasy about shooting someone in the head could be aspirational and uplifting. They don't like to bring that up much when discussing "her legacy" in documentaries.

Usually the official telling of this period never goes beyond a few comments on divisiveness and snickering at the Tories pledging to end unemployment in their 79 election manifesto. Indeed the book covers a lot of really important things left out or barely namechecked in the narratives. There is some handwringing about the increased use of police violence, but the increase in homelessness and collapse of communities in the industrial and manufacturing sectors don't get much of a mention. On the contrary housing is the one area where Thatcher is universally praised for breaking the back of council housing.

I've never understood this, my family bought a house in 1990, and the mortgage repayments nearly made us homeless, because the council housing in the area had shrunk to less than 10% of what it once was, so if we lost the house we would of been completely screwed. We survived, but curiously enough many houses in my area are now owned by a social housing company. So basically we went from a society with a large housing sector under municipal control and limited homelessness, to a society with a large housing sector under corporate control and very high and increasing homelessness. And this is the policy that everyone applauds the government of 1979-1990 on.

The book does a good job of exposing the hollow rhetoric of the period by contrasting it with how it occurred on the ground. Economic reorganisation to increase British competiveness, leads to mass lay offs with no replacement industry to take in even some of the now jobless. Law and Order, crime rates are increasing and the only noticeable difference is an increase in police power and violence.

Character wise they all come across as real people with flaws and quirks. The Granddad is well meaning with his heart in the right place, but he has some outdated views, the uncle a lefty activist whose extremely shy and awkward, is very familiar, I've encountered him several times in my life. The dad whose a work horse and willing to bend the rules to provide for his family and thinks it'll all come out good in the end if he can keep grafting* is also very familiar to me. The mum who tries her best to care for everyone but occasionally oversteps the mark into overbearing and projects her fears onto others also rings true.

Also refreshingly the author resisted the temptation to have a central baddie. Thatcher dominates the story, but she does so from a television and through speeches, all of which is taken from transcripts. Its all cold, systemic and impersonal. And thankfully there's no local stand in for her. The pain and dangers are all systematic and imposed from without and part of the threat is the lose of personality these policies force on people. Its also the main act of resistance, trying to keep grounded and authentic and true to yourself in the face of unrelenting market forces.




*I'm told grafting is a euphemism for corruption in the USA. In the UK it means hard working, my step dad used to joke that `grafter` was a bad word in the States because they must all be lazy.