Reversing Thatcher’s failed legacy of privatisation can be a Labour vote-winner. If you see Keir, tell him |
In the summer of 1987, as life in Britain was being steadily reshaped by Margaret Thatcher, I landed a temporary job as an electrician’s mate in a steel-drum factory. I was a truly useless assistant, and justified my existence by singing songs to entertain my boss as he worked. As I recall, by the time I left Stuart had come round to quite liking Bob Dylan, but still had no time for the gothic gloominess of the early Cure.
While I handed him tools he didn’t need, and failed to locate the ones he did, we occasionally talked about politics. Stuart was a gentle man in his mid-20s, already married and hoping to buy a house. He was also, it turned out, a cautious believer in Thatcher’s promise of a “people’s capitalism” in which working people would get a piece of the action. Prior to my coming to “help” him, he was one of the millions who had responded to the previous year’s Tell Sid ad campaign and bought shares in newly privatised British Gas.
You can still see some of the ads on YouTube. In one, an upper-middle-class type sporting a bow-tie and tweed jacket enters a crowded village pub full of honest-to-goodness folk. Asking that “Sid” be alerted, he whispers details of the government’s share offer to a punter, adding, “It couldn’t be easier to apply!” As word of mouth spreads, even the local postman is seen rushing to get his forms filled out.
I don’t know whether Stuart held on to his shares. Most small investors like him quickly cashed in, as the “loadsamoney” era arrived in a booming post-big bang City. But for Tory ministers who originally conceived of the privatisation programme as a means of balancing the books and shrinking the state, the........