tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/thatcher-38512/articles
Thatcher – The Conversation
2024-03-06T17:14:56Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/221358
2024-03-06T17:14:56Z
2024-03-06T17:14:56Z
How the 1984 miners’ strike paved the way for devolution in Wales
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577265/original/file-20240222-24-1zfxh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2000%2C1310&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Miners from different collieries gather in Port Talbot in April 1984.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/alandenney/2457055287">Alan Denney/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>March 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the start of the <a href="https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/miners-strike-1984-5-oral-history">miners’ strike</a>. In Wales, particularly within the south Wales coalfield, it was more than an industrial dispute. This was a major political event that reflected deeper cultural and economic changes. </p>
<p>These changes, alongside discontent at the emphasis of the then-UK prime minister <a href="https://academic.oup.com/cje/article/44/2/319/5550923">Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government</a> on free market economics, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-strikes-how-margaret-thatcher-and-other-leaders-cut-trade-union-powers-over-centuries-186270">stifling trade unions</a> and reducing the size of the state shifted how many Labour heartlands viewed the idea of self-government for Wales. This was due to Thatcher’s actions hitting at the heart of many working-class Labour voters’ existence, leading to threats to livelihoods and communities. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/what-thatcher-did-for-wales/">Many started feeling</a> that some of the devastation wreaked by Thatcherism could have been avoided had there been a devolved Welsh government. That government would, in all likelihood, have been Labour controlled, acting as a “protective shield”.</p>
<p>Instead, by the time of the May 1979 general election (five years before the miners’ strike), Wales was a nation divided. Only weeks earlier, it had overwhelmingly <a href="https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP97-113/RP97-113.pdf">rejected</a> the Labour government’s proposal to create a Welsh Assembly, which would have given Wales a certain degree of autonomy from Westminster.</p>
<p>Many Labour MPs, such as Welshman Neil Kinnock, had vehemently opposed devolution and favoured a united British state. However, it was now this state, through a National Coal Board overseen by a Westminster Conservative government, that was aiming to further close Welsh coal mines. </p>
<p>The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was both a political and workplace representative for miners and their communities. For a politician like Kinnock, balancing party and local interests was difficult. </p>
<p>Thatcher’s Conservative party won a large majority at the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-information-office/m09.pdf">1983 election</a> and the Ebbw Vale MP, Michael Foot, had been Labour leader during its defeat. His left-wing manifesto had been <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8550425.stm">dubbed</a> the “longest suicide note in history” by Gerald Kaufman, himself a Labour MP. It led to Foot’s resignation and the election of Kinnock as the leader of the opposition. </p>
<p>As a miners’ strike looked more likely, the national context made Labour party support for the strike problematic. Despite his political and personal ties to the NUM, Kinnock <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/509387">disagreed</a> with its leaders, such as Arthur Scargill, and their strategies for the strike. However, the Labour leader supported the right of the miners to defend their livelihood. </p>
<p>In a period of difficult deindustrialisation across nationalised industries, Labour was caught between unstoppable economic restructuring and job losses that affected its traditional voters.</p>
<h2>Thatcherism and Wales</h2>
<p>Gwyn A. Williams, a Marxist historian, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/When_was_Wales/QUJ0QgAACAAJ?hl=en">described</a> Welsh people as “a naked people under an acid rain”. This acidity had two main ingredients: Thatcherism and the “no” vote for a Welsh Assembly in 1979. </p>
<p>According to this analysis, the absence of devolution in Wales had left it exposed to the vagaries of Conservative governance in Westminster. The dangers of this were illuminated during the miners’ strike and in high unemployment rates of <a href="https://www.gov.wales/digest-welsh-historical-statistics-0">nearly 14% in Wales</a> by the mid-1980s. </p>
<p>However, it would be a fallacy to argue that Wales was a no-go zone for the Conservatives, even after the strike. In the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-information-office/m11.pdf">1987 general election</a>, although their number of MPs dropped from the 1983 high of 14 to eight, they were still attracting 29.5% of the Welsh vote. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of Margaret Thatcher with her hands raised in front of a union flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Was Margaret Thatcher one of the unwitting architects of Welsh devolution?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/levanrami/43795237465">Levan Ramishvili/Flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It would take several more years of Conservative policies such as the poll tax, the tenure of John Redwood as secretary of state for Wales (1993-95) and the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13689889808413006">scandal-riven sagas</a> of the party during the 1990s for them to gain zero seats in Wales in 1997. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the strike, and the febrile atmosphere of the period, had carved out a Welsh distinctiveness to anti-Conservative rhetoric. Several organisations and conferences during the 1980s laid the groundwork that shaped new questions about Welsh nationhood. They contributed to the swing towards a narrow “yes” vote in the 1997 Welsh devolution <a href="https://law.gov.wales/constitution-and-government/constitution-and-devolution/executive-devolution-1998-2007">referendum</a> offered by Tony Blair’s Labour government, which came to power in 1997.</p>
<p>In February 1985, Hywel Francis, a historian and later Labour MP for Aberafan, published an article in the magazine, <a href="https://banmarchive.org.uk/marxism-today/february-1985/mining-the-popular-front/">Marxism Today</a>, suggesting that the miners’ strike was not merely an industrial dispute but an anti-Thatcher resistance movement. </p>
<p>Central to his argument was the formation of the <a href="https://archives.library.wales/index.php/wales-congress-in-support-of-mining-communities">Wales Congress in Support of Mining Communities</a> the previous autumn, which formalised some of the “unexpected alliances” heralded by the strike. The Congress coordinated the demonstrations and activism of some of the diverse groups that both supported the miners and simultaneously resisted many of the policies of the Thatcher government. These included trade unionists, religious leaders, the women’s peace movement, gay rights campaigners, as well as Labour members and Welsh nationalist activists. According to Francis, the latter two realised that “unless they joined, the world would pass them by”.</p>
<p>The congress aimed to stimulate a coordinated debate about Welsh mining communities, moving the narrative away from picket-line conflict and towards a democratic vision of Wales’s future. </p>
<p>While the strike ended only a month after Francis’s article, and the organisation itself dissolved in 1986, the congress had bridged many chasms in Welsh society. It showed old enemies in Labour and Plaid Cymru that solidarity could reap more benefits than the overt tribalism that had blighted the devolution campaign of the 1970s. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A large modern building with a large roof that juts out." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Senedd in Cardiff.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cardiff-wales-united-kingdom-06-17-2335002765">meunierd/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Legacy</h2>
<p>In 1988, the campaign for a Welsh Assembly was <a href="https://academic.oup.com/manchester-scholarship-online/book/29790/chapter-abstract/251892249?redirectedFrom=fulltext">established</a> in Cardiff by Siân Caiach of Plaid Cymru and Jon Owen Jones of Labour. It was a direct descendant of this collaborative ethos, feeding an altogether more mature debate around Welsh devolution than had been seen in the 1970s. </p>
<p>For example, Ron Davies, an arch-devolutionist in 1990s Labour, <a href="https://www.iwa.wales/wp-content/media/2016/03/acceleratinghistory.pdf">had voted “no”</a> in 1979. This was predominantly because he saw devolution as a Trojan horse for Plaid. </p>
<p>However, seeing the consequences of the miners’ strike and Thatcherism on his constituency of Caerffili drove him towards a drastic re-evaluation of devolution as being a protective buffer for the people of Wales. He became leader of Welsh Labour in 1998, eventually joining Plaid in 2010.</p>
<p>Historian Martin Johnes <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-16315966">has described</a> Thatcher as an “unlikely architect of Welsh devolution”. Indeed, her inadvertent <a href="https://www.iwa.wales/agenda/2013/04/we-voted-labour-but-got-thatcher/">help</a> in orchestrating the Welsh Assembly rested in the forging of Labour and Plaid Cymru cooperation, with the miners’ strike as a watershed movement. </p>
<p>The strike remains a vivid memory in many Welsh communities. It stands as a reminder to 21st-century politicians that today’s Senedd (Welsh parliament) was built on cross-party cooperation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221358/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The strike saw different political factions uniting, which eventually led to a more collaborative form of politics in Wales.
Mari Wiliam, Lecturer in Modern and Welsh History, Bangor University
Marc Collinson, Lecturer in Political History, Bangor University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/96755
2018-06-06T10:07:08Z
2018-06-06T10:07:08Z
Volunteering levels static since the 1980s – despite all the efforts to increase them
<p>Successive UK governments have tried to encourage more people to get into volunteering. Voluntary sector initiatives, such as <a href="https://volunteersweek.org/">National Volunteering Week</a>, have also led the charge. But how realistic are such calls to action? Our recent study of <a href="https://policypress.co.uk/continuity-and-change-in-voluntary-action">continuity and change in voluntary action</a> since the early 1980s found that despite these initiatives, the proportion of the population engaged in volunteering has actually remained stable over time. </p>
<p>National social surveys have investigated whether people carry out formal volunteering through a group with a visible organisational structure, or through informal volunteering – such as giving direct assistance to people who are not relatives. </p>
<p>To assess long-term change, we examined different surveys conducted between 1981 and 2011, whose time-frames overlapped. Within each survey, we found stability in the estimates of people volunteering. There are variations in the <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0899764004269312">survey methods</a> and it is difficult to compare different results, but because the periods covered by these studies overlap, we argue that very little has changed – upwards or downwards – in volunteering rates since 1981. </p>
<p>This isn’t to say that there have been no changes at all. Work on the 2008-09 recession found a <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-4446.12122">clear reduction in the hours</a> committed to informal volunteering during this period, which the authors attributed to the impact of the recession on households. It’s also been suggested there was a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-official-statistics-show-resurgence-in-volunteering-as-millions-more-give-their-time-to-help-others">post-Olympic “bounce”</a> in volunteering rates in 2012-13 after the Olympic Games in London – although this may simply reflect greater awareness of volunteers due to their high profile during the games. Subsequent surveys suggest that volunteering rates soon subsided again. It seems these types of changes are short term in nature and do not affect the long-term stability of volunteering rates.</p>
<h2>Political pressure to volunteer</h2>
<p>Since the early 1980s, successive governments have been very supportive of volunteering. While support from Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher was largely confined to rhetoric rather than statements of policy or commitments of expenditure, later governments were more proactive. Her successor, John Major, introduced the “Make a Difference” campaign, designed as a national strategy for increasing participation, while the Labour governments between 1997 and 2010 created volunteering programmes targeted at underrepresented social and demographic groups. </p>
<p>When David Cameron, as head of the Conservative-led coalition, launched his vision of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/big-society-speech">a “Big Society”</a>, aimed at getting people to “come together” more, it was criticised for its vagueness. But the coalition also introduced the <a href="http://www.ncsyes.co.uk/">National Citizen Service</a> programme, focused on providing opportunities for volunteering to young people. </p>
<p>Yet all this policy and rhetoric doesn’t appear to have led to any discernible change in the proportions of people taking part in voluntary action over time – though in strict fairness it is too early to judge the long-term impact of National Citizen Service on volunteering rates.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-national-citizen-service-59648">What is the National Citizen Service?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A life volunteered</h2>
<p>Surveys on volunteering tend to be cross-sectional – conducted at one point in time, capturing only the volunteering that people recall in the relatively recent past. They don’t capture previous engagement. Nor do they show how, in any one period, many people will stop or start volunteering. This potentially underestimates who is involved. </p>
<p>To counteract this, we investigated how a person’s involvement in volunteering changes over time, drawing on two key longitudinal sources. We analysed quantitative evidence from the <a href="https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/bhps">British Household Panel Survey (BHPS)</a>, which followed the same people continuously between 1996 and 2008. We also analysed qualitative evidence, following the writing of 38 people involved in the <a href="http://www.massobs.org.uk/the-mass-observation-project-1981-ongoing">Mass Observation Project</a> between 1981 and 2012. </p>
<p>In the BHPS, over this 12-year period, in any one year about 20% of respondents reported volunteering in any one wave of the survey. Yet cumulatively, over the whole time-period, just under 40% reported having volunteered on at least one occasion. This is clear evidence of how individuals move in and out of volunteering. </p>
<p>The same pattern was reflected in Mass Observation writing, where those involved provided narratives of how their volunteering activities had developed over time, and how and why they had moved into, out of, and across different types of voluntary action. </p>
<p>Their narratives demonstrated a relationship between volunteering and key life transitions, such as recovering from illness, a child starting school, or retiring. Life circumstances are not easily influenced by government policy. So perhaps we should not be terribly surprised that little has changed, despite the various government programmes to get more people into volunteering. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221762/original/file-20180605-119850-1yj0kmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221762/original/file-20180605-119850-1yj0kmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221762/original/file-20180605-119850-1yj0kmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221762/original/file-20180605-119850-1yj0kmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221762/original/file-20180605-119850-1yj0kmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221762/original/file-20180605-119850-1yj0kmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221762/original/file-20180605-119850-1yj0kmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Scripts from the Mass Observation Archive.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Mass Observation Archive</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Wary of ‘gimmicks’</h2>
<p>We also examined people’s attitudes towards volunteering. We found that, both in the 1990s and today, the Mass Observation respondents were sceptical about the underlying motivations for calls for greater volunteering. Those from all political standpoints <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/generic/tsrc/documents/tsrc/working-papers/working-paper-95.pdf">were particularly cynical</a> about the “Big Society” project, perceiving it to be “gimmicky” and a political manoeuvre to disguise the effects of cuts and austerity. One called it: “Hypocritical government propaganda – hoping to get things done for free or on the cheap.” Those with long records of voluntary action also articulated a sense of exhaustion and frustration with the government’s failure to acknowledge their existing commitments. </p>
<p>There are both positive and negative messages here. The underlying stability of levels in volunteering, despite the economic ups and downs of recent decades, is worth celebrating. Yet, the strong evidence that people’s decisions to volunteer or not are linked to where they are in their lives suggests there are limits to how far we might expect to increase engagement in volunteering through government policies. And when it comes to attitudes about volunteering, clear and positive messages – particularly about the reasons why they are being called upon to volunteer – are key to motivating people to engage further.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96755/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rose Lindsey receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council; and is a trustee for the Bill Sargent Trust, a research charity that aims to demonstrate need in and around Hampshire. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Mohan currently receives funding from Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Barrow Cadbury Trust, and the National Institute for Health Research . </span></em></p>
New analysis shows government policies to encourage people to volunteer has little impact.
Rose Lindsey, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Sociology, Social Policy, and Criminology, University of Southampton
John Mohan, Director, Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/88733
2017-12-11T15:15:08Z
2017-12-11T15:15:08Z
‘Ghost Town’: a haunting 1981 protest song that still makes sense today
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198036/original/file-20171206-31555-wk7xa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cover of "Ghost town".</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pop Sike</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>England, 1981. In some rural South West discos menace was in the air; no night complete without a fight, <a href="http://mashable.com/2016/03/29/british-skinheads/#lq96___3LgqA">Skinheads</a> attacking whoever riled them, flick knives at the ready. Tracks by <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/madness-mn0000195874">Madness</a>, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-english-beat-mn0000197921">The Beat</a> and <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-selecter-mn0000504276">The Selecter</a> were the soundtrack to these nights. These bands played <a href="http://jamaicansmusic.com/learn/origins/ska">ska music</a>, a popular Jamaican genre from which reggae evolved.</p>
<p>But when <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-13780074">“Ghost Town”</a> by <a href="http://www.thespecials.com/">The Specials</a> came on, everyone stopped. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RZ2oXzrnti4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">“Ghost Town” by The Specials.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Formed in 1977 and arguably the most influential band of the UK’s <a href="https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/2+Tone/">2 Tone Ska</a> scene, “Ghost Town”, a skewed ska oddity, was written by Jerry Dammers, The Specials’ keyboardist and released in June 1981. It was their last song before splitting up and reforming as The Special AKA and stayed at the top of the UK charts for three weeks.</p>
<h2>Odd, eerie song</h2>
<p>It’s an odd, eerie song, nodding to pop convention and sitting wilfully outside of it. It’s included, in passing, in Dorian Lynskey’s beautifully written book on protest songs, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/mar/20/33-revolutions-minute-protest-songs">“33 Revolutions Per Minute”</a>, but unlike the band’s “Free Nelson Mandela” does not merit its own chapter.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AgcTvoWjZJU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">“Free Nelson Mandela” by The Special AKA.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Perhaps because “Ghost Town” cannot be “placed”. It’s not explicitly against any one event. It does not exhort its listeners into any one particular political view. It is not part of any one social movement for change. It is, rather, a stealth protest song. </p>
<p>Starting with a Hammond organ’s six ascending notes before a mournful flute solo, it paints a bleak aural and lyrical landscape. Written in E♭, more attuned to “mood music”, with nods to cinematic soundtracks and music hall tradition, it reflects and engenders anxiety. </p>
<p>The whispered chorus of “This Town/ is coming like a Ghost town” is then heard, followed by front man Terry Hall’s deadpan vocals lamenting how “all the clubs have been closed down” because there is “too much fighting on the dance floor”.</p>
<p>One of the clubs referred to in the song was <a href="http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/lifestyle/nostalgia/gallery/locarno-ballroom-10657835">The Locarno</a> in Coventry, the Midlands UK city where the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/mar/30/2tone-label-specials-madness">2 Tone record label</a> started in the late 1970s. </p>
<p>2 Tone had emerged stylistically from the <a href="https://therake.com/stories/style/street-smarts-mods-rudeboys-teddy-boys-punks/">Mod and Punk subcultures</a> and its musical roots and the people in it, audiences and bands, were both black and white. Ska and the related Jamaican <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ym9n4">Rocksteady</a> were its musical foundations, sharpened further by punk attitude and anger. It was this anger that Dammers articulated in “Ghost Town”, galvanised both what he had seen on tour around the UK in 1981 and what was happening in the band, which was riven by internal tensions. </p>
<p>England was hit by recession and away from rural Skinhead nights, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-16313781">riots</a> were breaking out across its urban areas. Deprived, forgotten, run down and angry, these were places where young people, black and white, erupted. In these neglected parts of London, Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool the young, the unemployed, and the disaffected fought pitch battles with the police. </p>
<p>“Ghost Town” was the mournful sound of these riots, a poetic protest. It articulates anger at a state structure, an economic system and an entrenched animosity towards the young, black, white and poor. It asks,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>why must the youth fight against themselves. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In his book Lynskey argues that “like all great records about social collapse, it seems to both fear and relish calamity” and its ambiguity allows it to soundtrack more than the riots about which it was written. It is an angry elegy for lost opportunity, lost youth, an acid flavoured lament for what was and what could be. </p>
<p>The streets that The Specials conjure up in “Ghost Town” are inhabited by ghosts; dancing is a memory, silence reigns. The sounds of life, community, creativity are no longer, “bands don’t play no more”. In the song’s short bridge section in the bright key of G♭ major, Hall asks us to,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>remember the good old days/before the ghost town/ when we danced and sang/ and the music played ina de boom town". </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And as Charles Dickens wrote in his <a href="http://example.com/">“A Christmas Carol”</a>, ghosts are spectres not only of the past, but of the present and future too, traces of what was, is and might have been. “Ghost Town” is the haunting track of thousands of lost futures. And in 2011, when England <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-14436499">erupted</a> again and the cities burnt, “Ghost Town” was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2011/aug/09/specials-ghost-town">remembered and replayed</a>.</p>
<h2>Strange music video</h2>
<p>Its audio-visual manifestation was also strange. The music video was directed by <a href="http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2015/03/barney-bubbles-feature">Barney Bubbles</a> and filmed in the East End of London, Blackwell Tunnel and a before-hours City of London. Opening with upshots of brutalist grey tower blocks to the sound of those Hammond organ chords and flute, it seems as though there is no one in town but The Specials, who are all crowded into a 1962 Vauxhall Cresta, careering through the empty streets and lip syncing. </p>
<p>This in itself constitutes “eerie” if we use cultural critic Mark Fisher’s work, <a href="https://repeaterbooks.com/product/the-weird-and-the-eerie/">“The Weird And The Eerie”</a>, to understand it. He <a href="http://thequietus.com/articles/21524-mark-fisher-weird-eerie-kubrick-tarkovsky-nolan-review">wrote</a> how,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The sensation of the eerie occurs either when there is something present where there should be nothing, or there is nothing present when there should be something.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here, in a major capital city, where the streets should be teeming, there is no-one but The Specials, a group of young black and white men, from a depressed and demoralised Midlands town. They are in charge. </p>
<p>As if to further underline this, the camera was placed on the car bonnet so we see The Specials as if they are crashing into us. And when they all sing “yah, ya ya, ya, yaah, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya…”, they seem like an insane Greek chorus, before Lynval Golding, the band’s rhythm guitarist and vocalist, murmurs the last line “the people getting angry”. The song fades out in dub reggae tradition, inconclusive, echoing. </p>
<h2>Not a dance track</h2>
<p>So what did those fight-ready Skinheads do in those small town discos when “Ghost Town” came on? Not <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Moonstomp">moonstomping</a>, not smooching. This was not a dance track. It wasn’t the “romantic” one the DJ played at the end of the night. </p>
<p>When “Ghost Town” played, the Skinheads sang along with Terry Hall, smiled manically and screeched. They joined into to the “ghastly chorus” and became, for a few minutes, part of that army of spectres. Because protest sometimes has no words. </p>
<p>It’s just a cry out against injustice, against closed off opportunities by those who have pulled the ladder up and robbed the young, the poor, the white and black of their songs and their dancing, their futures. Drive round an empty city at dawn. Look at the empty flats. </p>
<p>See the streets before the bankers get there and after the cleaning ladies have gone. And put young, poor, disadvantaged people in that car. See how “Ghost Town” makes sense. Now.</p>
<p><em>Protest music has made a serious comeback over the past five years. This article is the first in a series featuring Songs of Protest from across the world, genres and generations.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Abigail Gardner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A 1981 odd and eerie protest song, ‘Ghost Town’, still resonates today. It remains a cry out against injustice, against closed off opportunities by those who have pulled the ladder up.
Abigail Gardner, Reader in Music and Media, University of Gloucestershire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/78579
2017-06-06T10:41:17Z
2017-06-06T10:41:17Z
Why Churchill would have disagreed with Theresa May’s stance on European human rights
<p>History teaches us that the clash within Conservative ranks between populists and free-marketers may be decisive in shaping Conservative human rights policy after the election.</p>
<p>Earlier in 2017, it <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-campaign-leave-european-convention-on-human-rights-2020-general-election-brexit-a7499951.html">appeared likely</a> that the Conservative party would make the UK’s withdrawal from the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) a centrepiece of its next general election campaign, despite <a href="https://www.dominicgrieve.org.uk/news/why-human-rights-should-matter-conservatives">pointed disagreement</a> within party ranks. </p>
<p>The chief instigator was reported to be the prime minister herself. As home secretary, Theresa May had become so irate at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg that she had called on the UK to leave the ECHR outright, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/european-convention-human-rights-eu-referendum-brexit-theresa-may-a6999701.html">expressing outrage</a> that the treaty “binds the hands of parliament.” In February, she <a href="https://www.una.org.uk/file/11615/download?token=4sYI3y1m">reaffirmed</a> that the Conservative government aimed to replace the Human Rights Act, which enshrines the ECHR into British law, with a British Bill of Rights, one that “will remain faithful to the basic principles of human rights found in the original European Convention on Human Rights”.</p>
<p>So proponents of the UK’s continued participation in the ECHR were pleasantly surprised when May appeared to reverse course, at least temporarily. As her newly-minted <a href="https://www.conservatives.com/manifesto">manifesto</a> stipulates: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We will not repeal or replace the Human Rights Act while the process of Brexit is underway but we will consider our human rights legal framework when the process of leaving the EU concludes. We will remain signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights for the duration of the next parliament.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even so, other parts of the manifesto should give supporters of the Strasbourg court pause for thought. These passages, though not directly concerned with human rights law, announce a broader realignment of Conservative views on the relationship between the individual and the state. The manifesto says: “We must reject the ideological templates provided by the socialist left and the libertarian right and instead embrace the mainstream view that recognises the good that government can do.”</p>
<p>This has been widely <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/june2017/2017/05/theresa-mays-conservative-manifesto-buries-dogmatic-thatcherism">interpreted</a> as a repudiation of the free-market individualism of Thatcherism in favour of an affirmation of a strong positive role for the state in domestic affairs. In practice, the document retains longstanding Conservative calls for less regulations and taxes, while proposing an array of government interventions and subsidies in the domain of economic and social policy more sweeping than many of its predecessors. </p>
<p>“We do not believe in untrammelled free markets,” May <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/8460e678-3bb0-11e7-ac89-b01cc67cfeec">announced</a> when introducing the document in Halifax, Yorkshire. “We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We see rigid dogma and ideology not just as needless but dangerous.” </p>
<h2>Removing controls on totalitarianism</h2>
<p>My <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-conservative-human-rights-revolution-9780199811380?cc=gb&lang=en&">research</a> suggests that a less libertarian tenor to Conservative economic and social policy has implications for whether a future Conservative government would take steps to limit the application of the ECHR in Britain. It could also lay the groundwork for an eventual withdrawal from the treaty.</p>
<p>If this is far from obvious today, it is due to longstanding misconceptions regarding the role of Conservatives in the ECHR’s origin. In the late 1940s, Conservative MPs Winston Churchill and David Maxwell Fyfe were at the forefront of campaigning for the establishment of a European human rights court in advance of the ECHR’s adoption by the Council of Europe in 1950. The <a href="http://www.journalonline.co.uk/Magazine/56-9/1010095.aspx">common assumption</a> among supporters, detractors, and scholars of the ECHR alike is that the two men were concerned with the menace of fascism and communism alone – and that their conservative views on domestic matters were irrelevant.</p>
<p>Fascism and communism were certainly at the forefront of their concerns. But another spectre loomed: that of socialist efforts to enhance state power at the expense of individual freedoms and an independent judiciary. It was the fierce attachment of Churchill and Maxwell Fyfe to free-market individualism that distinguished their vision of human rights from that of the left. Following the Conservatives’ loss in the 1945 general election, they feared the awesome powers of a British state whose reach had grown dramatically during the war, and was now at service of a Labour majority. </p>
<p>For Maxwell Fyfe, Britain’s adherence to the ECHR was meant to limit the ability of parliamentary majorities to enact legislation harmful to British human rights, which he understood to mean personal liberties, including property rights, rather <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-civil-and-political-rights-have-been-easier-to-secure-than-social-and-economic-ones-77027">than social rights</a>. He conceived of a higher court that would have the power to declare acts of parliament in violation of the ECHR. </p>
<p>Undoubtedly, Churchill and Maxwell Fyfe would have found much to like in the 2017 Conservative manifesto. Even so, they would certainly have disapproved of its subordination of the individual to the collective, as well as May’s endorsement of a more populist vision of conservatism that rejects judicial constraints on parliamentary majority rule. </p>
<p>By announcing that “our responsibility to one another is greater than the rights we hold as individuals … because that is what community and nation demands”, the <a href="https://www.conservatives.com/manifesto">manifesto</a> signals not just a rejection of Thatcherism. It also sounds the Conservative party’s retreat from a free-market libertarian critique of state power and tyranny of the majority. It was this that had fuelled Churchill and Maxwell Fyfe’s exceptional enthusiasm for Britain’s participation in the birth of a European human rights system with extraordinary controls on national executives and legislatures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78579/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marco Duranti does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Conservative party manifesto’s repudiation of the ‘libertarian right’ bodes ill for the European Court of Human Rights.
Marco Duranti, Lecturer in history, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77334
2017-05-08T12:44:32Z
2017-05-08T12:44:32Z
Nicola Sturgeon is overestimating the toxicity of Tories in Scotland – and could pay for it
<p>When it comes to Westminster elections, Scotland usually stages a one-horse race. This time, however, second place is attracting more attention than usual. Having already achieved the unthinkable and edged ahead of Labour to become the official opposition after the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2016/scotland/results">2016 Scottish election</a>, the Conservatives are on the march. </p>
<p>First came a <a href="http://whatscotlandthinks.org/questions/how-would-you-be-likely-to-vote-in-a-uk-general-election#line">spate of opinion polls</a> predicting a handful of Tory MPs for the first time since the 1990s. Then the party <a href="https://www.holyrood.com/articles/news/conservatives-make-huge-gains-scottish-council-elections-while-snp-becomes-largest">more than doubled</a> its share of councillors in Scotland in council elections on May 4, winning even in hitherto no-go areas in and around Glasgow. No wonder all the talk is about “<a href="http://blog.whatscotlandthinks.org/2017/04/a-tory-revival-and-a-yet-more-polarised-scotland/">revival</a>” and even “<a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/june2017/2017/04/two-referendums-have-revived-tories-and-undone-labour">rebirth</a>”. </p>
<p>Commentators rightly identify the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/events/scotland-decides/results">2014 referendum</a> as the trigger. Scottish politics realigned around the constitutional question after that polarising campaign, and the Tories – the most unambiguous opponents of independence – have become the party of choice for No voters. It looks a classic case of the “enemy of my enemy is my friend”. </p>
<p>The puzzle is that almost everybody used to think this was impossible. For years, the Tory polling graph in Scotland was the flattest line in British politics. Whatever the ups and downs of other parties, the Tories were reliably anchored in the mid-teens. And a large majority of voters were convinced the party was opposed to Scottish interests, dating back to the ugly Thatcher years of poll tax riots and seemingly endless industrial closures. </p>
<p>The brand had been toxic for so long by 2011 that senior MSP Murdo Fraser contested that year’s leadership election <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/scottish-politics/8739927/Scottish-Conservative-Party-set-to-disband.html">promising</a> to disband the party altogether – and only narrowly lost to current leader Ruth Davidson. So has there been a swift detoxification, or was the brand never quite as polluted as previously thought? </p>
<h2>The toxicity tracker</h2>
<p>One way to explore this is to use polls that ask how much people like parties on a scale from zero to ten. I’ve used this to calculate a simple “toxicity index” tracking the proportion of voters who gave the Tories a zero (“strongly dislike”) per the graph below. I’ve broken this into Yes and No referendum voters, and have been able to go back to pre-2014 as pollsters thankfully track voting histories.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168332/original/file-20170508-20753-wl3hfa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168332/original/file-20170508-20753-wl3hfa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168332/original/file-20170508-20753-wl3hfa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168332/original/file-20170508-20753-wl3hfa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168332/original/file-20170508-20753-wl3hfa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168332/original/file-20170508-20753-wl3hfa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168332/original/file-20170508-20753-wl3hfa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168332/original/file-20170508-20753-wl3hfa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rob Johns</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of those who would go on to vote No in 2014, 31% expressed maximum dislike for the Tories in 2011. This was hardly a ringing endorsement but it did mean that seven in ten of these voters – some of them Conservatives, but many not – could find at least some small thing on the credit side of the ledger. </p>
<p>The effect of the referendum on No voters is clearly visible, however. By polling day in September 2014, the Conservatives were a long way to detoxification among this group, even while despised by an unprecedented proportion of Yes voters. </p>
<p>This polarising effect has much to do with the role of the Tories in the campaign arguments themselves. The Yes message equated the Union with Conservative governments and policies held to be at odds with Scottish values and interests. This clearly found its most receptive audience among those for whom the Tories were already toxic, and here the converts to independence were to be found. </p>
<p>By contrast, those voting No were effectively indicating that their dislike for independence trumped any strong feelings about the Conservatives. Those voters form the pool in which the Conservatives are now fishing quite successfully. It is not so much that the Tory brand is detoxified – even if there have been steps in that direction. Rather, the party is winning over more of those voters for whom it was never so toxic. </p>
<h2>It’s Corbyn, stupid</h2>
<p>At the same time, the recent downturn in the party’s toxicity index among even Yes voters signals that this is about more than vocal Tory opposition to Scottish independence. One of the points easily lost amid the constitutional debate is that, for many voters, elections remain primarily about choosing a government, and they are not particularly partisan about it. </p>
<p>In the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results/scotland">UK election</a> of 2015, with a hung parliament and strong Scottish nationalist presence widely expected, voting SNP was seen by many such voters as the best way to influence the Westminster government as part of a winning coalition. Given that 45% of people voted for independence in 2014 but <a href="http://whatscotlandthinks.org/questions/if-the-snp-have-more-influence-in-westminster-do-you-think-that-would-be-a-goo-1">69% of voters</a> agreed in April 2015 that the SNP having more influence in Westminster would be a good thing, that party clearly succeeded in reaching out to No voters to some extent. It duly won an incredible 56 of Scotland’s 59 seats. </p>
<p>This time around, with little prospect of a hung parliament, this question of separate Scottish influence is less relevant. The swing No voters (and maybe even some Yes voters) are therefore choosing between the UK parties. And the <a href="http://whatscotlandthinks.org/opinion-polls">polls place</a> the Scottish electorate in line with the rest of Britain in regarding Theresa May’s Tories as a more competent option than Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. </p>
<p>This raises interesting questions about SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon’s strategy in <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15241464.Nicola_Sturgeon_calls_for_backing_of_voters_in__two_horse_race__with_Tories/">presenting this</a> as a “two-horse race” between the SNP and the Conservatives in which only an SNP vote can hold the Tories to account at Westminster. On the one hand, it should play well with Yes voters among whom the Tories remain widely reviled. On the other hand, it probably overestimates how toxic the Conservatives are – or indeed ever were – among No voters. </p>
<p>The SNP’s best hope of another near clean sweep is a divided opposition, not one increasingly unified around the staunchest opponents of independence. It might therefore be a preferable strategy for the party to focus on those left-right issues that divide Labour and Liberal Democrat from Conservative supporters. </p>
<p>Otherwise, with some of her party’s smallest majorities in seats where the Conservatives already look the likeliest challenger, Sturgeon could well be in for a more mixed night than in 2015. In determining the size of the Scottish Tory contingent sent to Westminster after June 8, tactics rather than toxins might win the day.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77334/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Johns does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Those who voted No in the indyref were never as anti-blue as is often believed.
Rob Johns, Professor of Politics, University of Essex
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.