in which Tory Boy puts in an appearance to "big up" an old friend.

8th October 2009


Well, well, well. I couldn't believe my ears. On a news bulletin an extract from a speech made by Tory Boy William Hague telling us all how a government led by Disasterdly will be just as successful as the one led by Thatcher was! He went on to say that successive Labour governments have undone all of the wonderful things Thatcher achieved.

This set me thinking, the majority of my working life occurred under governments led by Thatcher and, because my ambition, my illness, or my disability caused me to change working environments throughout that period I possibly have a unique insight into just how "successful" those governments were.

Between 1972 and 1980 I worked for a company that manufactured agricultural machinery and sold both its own and other manufacturer’s products. At the time I joined the company it was strong and healthy and had just taken over another company meaning it had branches in three separate towns. Between 1979 and 1984 I had a role in the company which meant I had responsibilities in each of the three branches. We survived petrol shortages, we survived power shortages and the three-day week, we survived changes in agriculture. The manufacturing branch of the company had to radically rethink its products and became a market leader with several products and, with one in particular, was a major exporter.

During the first five years of Thatcher we began to benefit from the misfortune of other companies who had been forced to close down. In my department life became more difficult as more and more companies went to the wall and we were increasingly finding it difficult to source spare parts for machinery that was obsolete within months of coming onto the market as small manufacturers closed down at the rate of about one a week.
In many instances the only direct replacement for a British made product was manufactured in the USA or in Japan. Because of the high exchange rates our customers were paying up to twice as much for machinery and equipment that was no better than that which had been manufactured in Britain but was no longer available.

Between 1984 and 1988 I was working in the accounting and IT departments of the company when the worsening financial situation meant we had to close down the branch that had been acquired shortly after I joined the company. Our manufacturing company was frequently let down by raw material suppliers and found its marketplace shrinking as more and more small farmers went out of business.

I left the company in 1988, by 1999 both the retail and manufacturing companies had been forced out of business. So much for the successes of Thatcher's or the subsequent Tory government regarding buisness.

I had moved into full-time Social Work in 1988. I discovered I had moved into a world where staff shortages and lack of resources meant that a lot of overworked people were attempting to provide assistance for an ever-growing population of clients in substandard facilities because of the local government cuts imposed by Thatcher's government.

Children are still at risk today because there has never been enough government money available to compensate for the damage Thatcher caused by ripping the heart out of initiatives that were still in their infancy, (social work as we know it only began in 1972), and were being forced to make cuts in service before they had had the chance to grow to the size they should have been.

Services for the mentally ill were affected in the same way, in fact, almost every time we read in the media of violence being perpetrated by someone with a mental illness it can be shown that this is a person who would have been receiving more support if it were not for the changes brought about through lack of funding in the late 1980s and the early 1990s.

The reason that many older people are being forced to sell their homes to cover the costs of residential care for a much loved dependent relative can be directly traced back to the point at which a lack of support from central government led to social services selling off, or simply closing down, their resources for older people.

At the same time as social work was tossed into this state of turmoil from which it has still not recovered the police, the Probation Service, the National Health Service, and Educational Support Services were left in a similar state of malaise because they were forced into a permanent state of transition as they were called upon to try out the latest "favoured approach" of their political masters before ever being given time to adjust to the previous one.

In 1998 the combination of my illness and my disability forced me to retire from social work. In 2000, having undertaken training, I took up a post in adult education leading courses focusing on Health and Social Care.

Here I was astounded to come across intelligent young adults between 16 and 19 years old who had been so let down by the education system that we had to teach them basic literacy skills before they could embark on the course of their choice. My sadness for them was equalled by my anger at "the system" because I had direct experience of, and was aware of, the cuts made in educational support services between 1988 and that time which led to the removal of the specialist facilities those young people would have benefited from.

Now, if Disasterdly, Tory Boy, Bludgeon, and their chums were to read this their retort would be that Labour governments have had 14 years to put these things right. That is rubbish. They are relying on the fact that the amount of damage wrought upon these essential Social Services is probably beyond the comprehension of any person who didn't experience what was happening at the time. In fact, living in their wealthy families and being educated in their public schools they will never have faced the dilemmas that cause people to turn to the services.

Those of us providing, or attempting to provide, services to children and their families during the early 1990s will never forget the frustration as we witnessed families falling into a poverty trap. We'll never forget our anger as specialist facilities created to teach parents and children how to live together safely were scrapped for being financially unviable. Our amazement as vulnerable adults with Learning Difficulties or Mental Health problems were abandoned to their own devices because their situation did not tick enough boxes on some bureaucrat’s "risk assessment" sheet. Or took part in a battle between Health departments and Social Services over who was responsible for what part of the cost for services for a vulnerable older person whose identity was forgotten as they became labelled a “Bed Blocker”.

Thatcher and her advisors, of whom Tory Boy was one, caused unimaginable damage to Social Services that were still in their infancy and on a learning curve; and to the health, education, police and criminal justice services. Tory Boy knows as well as I do that there has not been sufficient time to address the havoc Thatcher and her government created, and his credibility flies out of the window when he attempts to manipulate these facts for political gain. He should be ashamed of himself.