I wonder if there is a contradiction between the positions I advance. In the former case, I argue for an individualistic freedom, saying that people should be able to wear what they want. In the latter case, I argue, effectively, against it, saying that people shouldn’t be able to discriminate in employment on the basis of sexuality.

On the homosexuality issue, I dislike the argument that it is natural because I really couldn’t care less if it’s natural or not. I’m typing on a computer that I am fairly sure does not normally occur in nature. Similarly, I see how religion spreads and replicates but I don’t think that removes or reduces people’s agency.

Is there, then, a contradiction between not thinking the state should ban the burka but saying that the state should regulate employment? Admittedly, part of my argument on the former question is fairly utilitarian as I think the negative consequences of a crude ban outweigh the benefits of any positive effects.

I’d like to know what you think?

xD.

I don’t really remember the Thatcher days for two good reasons. One, I was born in the early eighties and was far too young to have any cognisance of politics and, two, I spent the first few years of my life in Brazil. Nevertheless, it seems she has had something of an impact on my life and not just because she was PM.

However, the charge of Thatcherism – either a high accolade or grave insult, depending on point of view – is one that I hear banded about fairly often; it is always an emotionally loaded term. Certainly, it was usually meant at LSE as an insult; strange, given that most of my contemporaries weren’t politically aware during her tenure.

Funnily enough, I once beat her in an election. Sort of. The LSE Students’ Union elects an Honorary President each year and, one year, the only candidate was Margaret Thatcher (I think her ballot description was ‘Champion of Freedom’). Fortunately, RON (‘Re-open nominations’) is always a candidate, and so I ended up running the opposing campaign. The posters and leaflets I did were simple; all they consisted of was a picture of Thatcher with the slogan ‘Vote for RON or Maggie wins’. RON won. The assorted leftists (as Donal Blaney would doubtless have called us) all had great fun in chanting ‘Maggie-Maggie-Maggie Out-Out-Out’.

Why?

Other than reading history books and looking at dry statistics, my parents have probably given me the summary of Thatcherism that most influences me. They are, perhaps, well-placed to comment, as they were out of the country, watching from afar, and saw one, sharp change from the late seventies and very early eighties to the very late eighties and early nineties rather than a longer, slower change. There is a temptation to think that, pre-Thatcher, we had, in Arend Ljiphart’s words, ‘a kindler, gentler democracy’¹. That is, of course, a load of rubbish. The trenchant trades unions undermined that notion and I am, in any case, deeply sceptical of the so-called postwar consensus. What is certain, though, is that the eighties were a period of strife; political, economic and social.

When I ran the RON campaign, Mrs T was promoted as a ‘champion of freedom’; indeed, I think that was her ballot description. Freedom is considered by a lot of people to be the summum bonum; it has achieved totemic status. The problem is that we cannot agree on what freedom is.

While Mrs Thatcher and her advocates purported to conceive of liberty in negative terms, there seems to me to have been an emphasis on the coercive arms of the state – the armed forces and the police – and an awful lot of moralising. Rather negative liberties, it rather seems that Thatcherism was about promoting a particular conception of ‘the good life’, using the state to create it and allowing inaction on the part of the state where existing processes gave acceptable results. It makes the mistake of confusing no action with null action; choosing not to act is not necessarily a return to some default position and, even if it could be shown to be more ‘natural’ (for want of a better word) it would not mean that it was ‘better’.

Norman Tebbit attacked a lot of the opposition to the the Thatcherite project as the result of a ‘second-rate’ decade – the 60s. If Tebbit was right to say that the education of the sixties made the adults of the eighties, it would seem to make sense to say that the adults of today – including any resultant societal problems – are the result of the education of the eighties I emphasise that education is more than what happens in schools.

I suppose, ultimately, I’m asking a question in a rather roundabout way. Having no memory of this apparent, pre-Thatcher Golden Age, to what extent am I one of Thatcher’s children, not so much in terms of economic status but in terms of political outlook?

One last thing; can anyone think of a better way of phrasing the zero/null distinction I made above?

xD.

1 – Lijhpart, Patterns of Democracy. Summary here, buy it here.

PS – I should be blogging more frequently next week. Work, home, stress, you know the drill.

The military is used by some people as part of the definition of the common rhetoric of a nation – what Michael Billig called ‘banal nationalism’ – and so when people feel that the military is being wrongfully used, they are likely to react against what they perceive as an usurpation of their nationhood or perversion of their national sentiment. The genesis of the problem is as much in the promotion of the military as a shared symbol by those who give particular criticism or focus to the problem in question.

I would venture that not all members of the armed forces would be such shrinking violets as to be offended by a few catcalls. Garrison towns are known for being a little rough at the edges and the descent of a shipful of matelots can lead to cries of ‘lock up your daughters’. As there can be tensions between town and gown, there can be between city and beret.

Unfortunately, it is not just the armed forces that have problems because of their uniforms. It goes almost without saying that the police do while firefighters are increasingly being targeted, with fake calls being made to draw them into an ambush. Medical staff are also subject to abuse on a fairly regular basis, while traffic wardens,dustpeople, bus drivers and people on the Tube and trains are also often abused. None of the abuse of these people arises the same contention. This, I think, is the heart of the matter: the bizarre centrality to public life that the military seek and some others wish them to have. Are the military praiseworthy? No more, I think, than the police or the ambulance service. There is no particular difference here; attacking someone because they work for the military, the police or any of the other jobs I mentioned above is equally worthy of condemnation.

Ultimately, I agree with Ewan; it is best left to the armed forces and best left to inidividual base commanders to decide how to best manage relations with their locality. As to the wearing of uniforms while not on duty, which is occasionally suggested, one wonders why the same would not apply to the police et al.

xD.

xD.

xD.

Update 1600: thanks to Luke Akehurst for emailing me links to the maps I’m after. Map to come after a period of geekery on the computer.