There was a telling line in a Dominion Post article this week about Victoria University English professor
and poet Harry Ricketts. He told reporter Diana Dekker that he had left England
for New Zealand in 1981 when Margaret Thatcher was in power. He didn’t want his
children growing up there.
It’s funny how this obsession with Thatcher is still
fashionable in certain circles 30 years down the track. It’s regularly trotted
out by Brits of a certain age as proof of their socialist credentials.
I’m no admirer of Thatcher, but the inconvenient truth is
that Britain was on its knees when she came to power after years of weak,
ineffectual Labour government. Its economy was moribund, its people were
demoralised and its industries were in the grip of thuggish trade unions.
Thatcher rescued the country from irrelevancy and gave the British a reason to
be confident again.
Nonetheless, an enduring hate industry – films, books,
television dramas, journalism – sprang up, based on the premise that she was a
ruthless oppressor of the working class and an agent of greedy, heartless capitalists.
If you ask me, by far the worst consequence of Thatcherism is
that it encouraged droves of sad-arsed, disaffected lefties to flee Britain and
take refuge in countries like New Zealand. Many ended up in academia, where
they were of course welcomed with open arms. And decades later, they’re still
bleeding (or bleating - take your pick).
The Dom Post
article included a poem from Ricketts’ latest collection which includes the
couplet: “Wellington is a city that’s
dying,” says the man with cold snapper eyes – an obvious reference to John
Key. We can assume from this that he’s probably no more a fan of Key than he
was of Thatcher.
Ricketts of course is entitled to think Thatcherism destroyed
Britain – even if it means remaining in denial of all the evidence to the
contrary – and that Key is as cold-blooded as a fish. But it’s all so drearily
predictable. The needle has been stuck in
the same groove for the past 30 years, just as it is with New Zealand lefties
who still rail impotently about Rogernomics.
The encouraging thing is that no one is listening, beyond
the narrow, incestuous circle of inner-suburban lefties who attend poetry
readings and buy Landfall and Sport. They’re talking to themselves while
the world moves on around them.
I think W H Auden had it about right:
For poetry makes
nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper …
5 comments:
When Auden wrote, "Poetry makes nothing happen," I think he was attributing "nothing" with a value.
What an unpleasant article.
What an unpleasant article.
"Britain was on its knees when she came to power after years of weak, ineffectual Labour government. Its economy was moribund, its people were demoralised and its industries were in the grip of thuggish trade unions. Thatcher rescued the country from irrelevancy and gave the British a reason to be confident again."
Agreed.
I will also say that the Lange-Douglas so-called-Labour government of the 80s was the best "National" government prior to this one.
It made long-overdue reforms that the Aussies are just beginning to make (with the closure of their union-crippled, inefficient car plants).
Socialism doesn't work. Socialists like to use lolly-scramble politics to run a country but (as any good parent will tell you) you can neither raise children or run an economy on just lollies.
You've got to have the "economic vegies" too - they may not taste good by they are good for the economy.
Well said Karl! My brother who lived in the UK for some 50 years still refers to her as 'that bloody woman' and since returning to NZ seems to have lapped up the myths about Rogernomics that still get thrown around in spite of the people that say that hating Muldoon and all that he stood for. They seem to not make the connection between his poor policies and what had to be done to correct them. Socialists seem to build on myths.
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