(en) Britain, Disrespectful party people - Anarchist Federation Organise! 80 editorial excerpt

The following forms part of the editorial in the forthcoming issue of Organise! magazine 
#80, Summer 2013 which will be in print very soon. ---- Margaret Thatcher politely died 
just in time for us to commemorate her life appropriately, in the 80th issue of Organise! 
We will speak ill of the dead, and go to press in the hope that the celebrations that 
began on Monday 8th carry on, showing the extent of contempt for Thatcher throughout the 
British working class. ---- The world we now live in is more dangerous, corrupt, unequal, 
oppressive and impoverished because of her particular legacy. From the start of her 
leadership in 1979, she turned up the heat internationally to put Britain ?back on the 
map?. She built up its military capability in the 1980s and established Britain?s place in 
the Cold War, so that a generation grew up in fear of a nuclear conflict with the USSR.

In 1982, by ?defending? the Falklands with immense firepower (which included the 
notorious sinking of the Belgrano), she heralded in an era in which Britain has gone to 
war at the drop of a hat. She supported the Apartheid regime in South Africa, was best 
pals with the Chilean dictator general Pinochet and was hated not least in Northern 
Ireland, where working class people were brutalised and murdered under the
divide-and-conquer approach to domestic dissent. Her racist policies supported the rise of 
the far-right in Britain, and black and white youth were forced to fight the police in the 
riots of 1980 onwards (especially 1981): an explosion of anger at what inner-city life had 
become. She passed the first anti-gay legislation for 100 years, known as ?Clause 28?. In 
economic and industrial terms, key focal points of working class militancy were attacked 
in ways that were openly divisive and smashed much confidence in our class. The Miners, 
who struck in 1984-5, were tragically defeated, as were the Wapping print-workers in 1986 
(Murdoch, please die soon as well).

These battles were not, of course, lost without a fight and hugely important acts of 
bravery and inspiring solidarity. But the only major working class victory in the Thatcher 
period was the struggle against the Poll Tax. This ideological class-based attack took 
place in the context of the dismantling and destroying things traditionally understood as 
social property: the major industries, public services, jobs and welfare. The abolition of 
the Poll Tax was announced in 1991. The power of opposition to the tax in Scotland since 
1987 had quickly spread to England and Wales by amazing feats of working class solidarity, 
organisation and a willingness to take to the streets and fight. The Poll Tax riot of 1990 
and smaller, but very serious, local disturbances were not organised by anarchists, as the 
state, the press and some left parties claimed (as though we could pull that off!), but 
neither did they come out of nowhere. In fact, for a time, it seemed that the working 
class could win.

This is not to suggest that things were great before Thatcher; ?old? Labour was an example 
of how not to share out common resources. And afterwards, ?New? Labour set about 
completing her legacy with their Thatcherite-Labourism, paving the way for the current 
cabinet?s unrelenting attacks on our class. As anarchists we clearly understand, and all 
this demonstrates, there is no hope except in a class-based revolutionary solution. But 
whilst all politicians are the enemy of the working class, some do more damage to us than 
others, and rightly we rejoice in the demise of those we have most to despise.

If it seems strange to some people that others would happily dance on the grave of a 
long-senile old lady, it?s because we are still her victims, after all this time. And 
though her death doesn?t alter the challenges we face, even small boosts in our confidence 
at this point in the class struggle are vital. If there is some sense of closure about the 
past as a result of giving her a raucous and disrespectful send off, we have to shake off 
the hangover and use these couple of weeks as an opportunity to talk to our workmates, 
friends, family, everybody about new beginnings and new possibilities. But first, let?s Party!