12 Apr 2013
10:48
There were empty seats in parliament as many MPs chose to stay
away
When Labour
MPs boycotted the Commons debate on Margaret Thatcher's death,
there were howls of outrage from Tories and the right-wing press
who branded them disrespectful.
But the stayaway MPs, from across the UK, and from different
parties, were motivated by deeply held principles.
Many felt it would have been hypocritical to honour a woman
their constituents blame for problems still blighting their lives
today .
Here, some of the defiant MPs explain why they were absent from the
green benches.
Grahame Morris - Easington, Co Durham, Labour
Factories, shipyards and coal mines were closed throughout
Easington and County Durham during Thatcher's 11 years.
Haverton Hill Shipyard closed in 1979, taking 900 jobs. Consett
Steel Works closed a year later, leaving 4,000 men jobless - and
unemployment hit 35%.
Dozens of collieries were forced to shut in Durham - including
Eccles, Eden and South Medomsley, Blackhall, Houghton and
Boldon.
The nearby Shildon Wagon Works shut in 1984, leaving the town with
the highest unemployment in the country.
Mr Morris said: "The True Blue celebration of Thatcher's
legacy is at odds with the hardship many individuals and
communities in East Durham suffered and are still suffering as a
result of her policies.
"Many of her policies were viewed as vindictive and lacking in
compassion. They have had long-term consequences for areas like
mine.
"Easington is still struggling to get over the Thatcher era. It had
the most people on sickness benefits in the country, the worst
obesity rate and poorest pensioners.
"She broke the backs of communities and families for at
least a generation. That is simply unforgiveable."
Steve McCabe - Selly Oak, Birmingham, Labour
Mr McCabe said he mourned the loss of major factories and mass
employers throughout the West Midlands in the 1980s.
Once the workshop of the world, the region has been left with the
second highest unemployment rate in the country. A quarter of
under-fives live in child poverty.
Mr McCabe said: "My constituency is still suffering from her
attacks on manufacturing."
Dawn Primarolo - Bristol South, Labour
Bristol's inner city exploded into riots in 1980 as brutal
austerity piled misery on an area of high unemployment. Even today,
a quarter of all children in the city still live in poverty.
Ms Primarolo said: "The
agenda pursued by the Thatcher government led to
destruction of many communities across the country, the effect of
which is still felt today.
"Margaret Thatcher could not have been more wrong to say there was
no such thing as society, only individuals. The
challenges we face today have their roots in the
consequences of her policies.
"Many reflect on how she was viewed internationally, for me the
misery and humiliation of the Bristol South communities is writ
large and saying she did it with conviction will not take make it
any more acceptable to those who remember it vividly."
Huw Irranca-Davies - Ogmore, South Wales,
Labour
Mr Irranca-Davies joined the party in 1979, the year Margaret
Thatcher came to power.
He said: "A dire Thatcherite legacy stands out in former
coal-mining communities . The enduring memories here are
bitter.
"She broke the back of these communities and families for
at least a generation, and that is simply unforgiveable."
In South Wales, 150 collieries closed and 70,000 miners lost their
jobs.
Suicide rates, unemployment, crime, drug use and alcoholism all
soared and not just miners were affected.
Steelwork privatisations led to closures with 14,500 unemployed
when Ebbw Vale shut. Parts of once-prosperous South Wales are now
poorer than Bulgaria and Romania.
Caroline Lucas - Brighton Pavilion, Green
Ms Lucas said the city's large gay community still remembered Lady
Thatcher's hostility.
"I opted to spend my time working on constituency issues rather
than join in the seven-hour display of Tory hero worship in the
House of Commons for someone who caused the British people so much
misery," said Caroline.
"In my constituency, people remember all too well Thatcher's
opposition to gay rights, her reckless housing policies and cruel
indifference to inequality.
"She may have been Britain's
first female Prime Minister, but Thatcher did little for women
either inside or outside the House of Commons.
"And she
pursued a destructive agenda that marginalised the poor,
divided communities and undermined the principles of the welfare
state."
Bill Esterson - Sefton Central, Merseyside,
Labour
The people of Liverpool suffered as much as anyone in the 1980s.
Unemployment rates in the city were amongst the highest in the UK
and an estimated 15% of the city was vacant or derelict.
In 1981 the Toxteth Riots kicked off - with tear gas used by police
against the public. In the same year, the Tate & Lyle sugar
works closed down.
Unemployment among Liverpool men then was 25%. Youth unemployment
was up to 90% in some parts of the city, which still contains five
of the UK's 10 poorest areas.
Mr Esterson said: "People here on Merseyside remember the Thatcher
years and how they caused real poverty. A lot of people here were
employed on the docks and thousands lost their jobs.
"People remember how that was done without a thought for their
families and how industry in the North West was destroyed.
He added: "The riots in Liverpool
Tom Watson - West Bromwich East, Labour
Party deputy chair Mr Watson said Thatcher's legacy in the West
Midlands was "catastrophic".
When she came to power in 1979, unemployment was 4% in the area. By
1987 it had hit 17%.
Unemployment across the West Midlands, at around 9% today, has yet
to recover, and the area's industrial base has been destroyed. Mr
Watson said: "Industry was devastated and communities broken."
David Hamilton - Midlothian, Scotland, Labour
Former miner Mr Hamilton, who lost his job under Thatcher, said:
"I'm an old-fashioned lad - you don't go to a funeral and start
criticising the individual.
"It took me two and a half years to get a job and that was as a
part-time landscape gardener. I only saw her cry when she left
office. She shed no tears for the miners in my area."
By 1990 there were no pits left in Midlothian. Bilston Glen
Colliery once produced 1,000,000 tons of coal a year, and employed
2,300 men. The site is now used as an industrial estate, with food
processing plants, but the area has an unemployment rate of
25%.
Mark Durkan - Foyle, Northern Ireland SDLP
Mr Durkan represents Northern Ireland's second city Derry, where
Thatcher was a particularly divisive figure. Republicans blame her
for the deaths of 10 hunger strikers - three from the city - in
1981.
He said: "She had a controversial impact here. But I don't think
anyone's death is
a matter for celebration
and rejoicing ." One in three Derry children still lives
in poverty.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/boycotted-margaret-thatcher-tribute-debate-1826741
Readers share their stories of life under Thatcher and the
effect her legacy has had on them, from being able to buy their own
council house to having their communities torn apart. Add your own
story in a comment
• See
the interactive version
Readers
share their personal experiences of Margaret
Thatcher's policies and the effect they feel her legacy has had
on them.
Explore our
interactive version to read more readers' stories on how Thatcher
shaped their life.
Her
ideology that everyone can have it all affected poor families and
single parents. My parents split in the late 80s due to financial
pressures. We're from south Wales. It was hard. No money, no jobs.
My mum, as a single parent of 3 under 10, relied on DSS payments.
Once everything was paid she was left with £6 a week to feed and
clothe us all on. We had to walk a mile and a half round trip to
pick up a government issue food parcel which we would have to walk
home though the estate in a buggy. Mum started work when I was 11.
I did chores, got my sisters up for school, babysat, and didn't
lead the life of a kid. Mum had three jobs and still we struggled.
At 12 I started going out to work to help support myself. I worked
20 hours every weekend for 50p an hour. By the time I was 14 I was
skipping a day at school each week, earning £30 a week for 35 hours
while also still being the second parent. Thatcher stole my
childhood and my future. I never realised my full potential, just
scraping GCSEs and a lame uni degree. At 12 I vowed that my kids
would never go through this and that I would do what I could for
others. I'm now a ward councillor in the area that I was brought up
in and am doing just that.
My
parents bought their council house, a solid cared for building.
This gave my parents new wealth they never had due to ill health,
in spite of working hard. My mother longed to live in a private
house – she felt stigmatised in council. She was motivated by
Thatcher because of the female lead. My father voted labour and was
a union rep. He lost his job at BAC (Concorde) and used the
redundancy money to pay off the mortgage. His next job was as a law
court receptionist, poorly paid at less than my mother (a nurse)
earned. I am openly gay and I heard tales of police entrapment and
Section 28. Thatcher divided the family. Fortunately Section 28 was
repealed but a decade was lost to me and to younger others growing
up at that time.
If I
were to sum up one memory of Thatcher, it's that she took away our
milk. Our free milk at school that we so desperately needed. As
impoverished kids coming from a very working class background (so
working class that nobody actually had a job) our milk each day was
essential for nutrition. For many, it really was the only meal of
the day. The closure of the local mine in a small Scottish town was
hell for the community. Not just the loss of jobs, but the loss of
aspiration and I remember the poverty of hope. The shackling of the
human spirit. I remember blaming it all on Thatcher. Looking in
retrospect as an adult, perhaps people ought to have borne some
individual responsibility and found a way out of the poverty. But I
never saw this happen. I associated Thatcher's policies as a child
as being the best that the UK govt would ever give Scotland. I
became a Scottish nationalist. I still loathe the Tories - probably
because of Thatcher and what she did to our local town.
I was
two months old in May 1979. I grew up in the mining communities of
the North East and witnessed first hand the devastation that her
dogmatic and aggressive approach to politics and policy wreaked on
the traditional industries and the people who supported and relied
on them. I had extended family who were directly involved in the
miners strike but what will never leave me is seeing fellow
classmates at age five and six who lived without lifes basics and
essentials including food and shoes because that hideous women
picked a fight to get her own back for the strikes of the 1970's
under Heath. There may have been ideology around her general
approach, but the treatment of the mining communities in Britiain
was a personal vendetta that is truly unforgiveable. Her
politicisation of the police in that period led directly to the
disgraceful attitudes and actions in the police and politics that
we have finally seen laid bare in the Hillsbrough Independent Panel
Report. The women was a disgrace. I always ensure I vote, but I
will never ever vote Tory. Where necessary will always vote
tactically to avoid a Tory win.
I grew
up in Haringey and her policies had a massive impact at the time.
Most people hated her. All the kids I grew up with in Wood Green
were political, because of the way in which she governed.
Financially my family probably were better off, but the community
in which my dad's family grew up in north London has disappeared.
The main thing I want to say is that Thatcher defined me as a
person. I hated her, even though I was so young. But that taught me
to fight and shout and be heard. I'm not going to let someone get
away with it if they are that obsessed with private profit over
public good. Also, the urban environmental movement developed
during her period and it is this cause that I work in today. It may
not have happened without the hatred of her.
I lived
on a terrible council estate in northern England. Thatchers
policies in finance deregulation, windfalls from banks/building
societies, share ownership in utilities/BT and so forth were
unheard of opportunities… all opportunities my single mum took. We
had little money but we participated and it was enough. She got a
mortgage due to this money and deregulation policies (she had been
refused as a single woman two years before!), we moved to a better
area. We moved out of poverty into middle class life. I went from
nearly getting expelled from primary school with poor
grades/behaviour through to a top five university and a profitable
professional life. Thatcher's legacy is most keenly felt in
attitude, one I carry to this day. I am one of Thatchers children,
an unlikely one from a Northern council estate… but I made good on
her ideology of entrepreneurship, free market, choice for the
individual pushing for themselves... I saw the winter of
discontent, the unelected undemocratic union leaders that switched
the power off at 7pm on a week night! Equally I saw Thatcher fight
that ransoming, become globally important… the lesson being that
the progress my family made was through Thatcherism not socialism.
It was amazing.
In the
early part of Thatcher's reign I worked in the engineering industry
on Merseyside, the jobs disappeared, I left engineering but was a
fish out of water for 20 years. One evening in Liverpool I
witnessed a sight that will be with me to my dying day. Miners came
knocking on the doors of the people of Huyton, a place in the
outskirts of the City of Liverpool. Proud working men, gaunt with
hunger and with their families and communities being starved out in
Thatcher's "Great Britain" were forced to knock on the doors of
strangers for food. At that moment I knew I'd never even consider
voting for a party that inflicted such misery on human beings and
almost 30 years later their faces remain indelibly etched on the
minds of those that helped. Thatcher left the North of England and
Scotland to managed decline, her policies were divisive and she
created conflict at home and in Ireland with bombing after bombing.
Her own kind couldn't wait to get rid of her yet they now fall over
themselves in fake admiration; we all know what she was.
My
parents were teachers during Thatcher's reign. They were dedicated,
passionate, hard-working and talented. They did not deserve what
happened to them. Our family gradually saw our standard of living
decline because their salary was so low. They went out on strike
because they saw it as the last resort. Thatcher refused to
negotiate with them. Their profession was demonised and abused by
the Thatcher government and the likes of the Daily Mail. As a kid I
saw the personal effect it had on my parents. They are the least
militant people I know, but just got tired of being kicked around.
I was and remain proud of them, for the way they strove to make a
difference in children's lives, while receiving very little reward.
I hated all that Thatcher stood for. Her government demoralised
teachers and I can never forgive her for what she did to my
parents.
I was a
single parent-to-be when I got the opportunity to buy a council
house. That got me on the ladder and I never looked back. Years
later I started my own business, though I almost went under when
interest rates reached 18%. I didn't vote Tory as I felt they
trampled on the weak. She may not have been a feminist but having a
woman leader who was a strong role model was positive for women in
business. For me Margaret Thatcher was a contradiction in terms but
I am extremely financially secure because she believed in people
bettering themselves and afforded ordinary people the chance to do
so.
I lived
near Edinburgh during the Thatcher period and witnessed first hand
the plight of mining communities around the city. The piketing
outside Bilston Glen remains impacted. Driving past the mine there
were a few men standing outside the gates, warming their hands over
a fire. No police, no violence just the same scene that you could
have witnessed for days. Approximately 20 minutes later I drove
back again and this time the area was mobbed by police attacking
protesting miners. A line of police next to the road to allow what
little traffic there was to pass, and those police behind the
protestors. The police at the front wore shoes, those at the back
wore boots, and no insignia. Do you remember the discussions as to
whether the army were being used as there were insufficient police
to man the picket lines and control or instigate the violence?
How were
you affected by Margaret Thatcher's policies? Do you feel her
legacy affects your life today? Share your experiences in the
comment thread below...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/12/margaret-thatcher-impact-policies
