{"id":1416,"date":"2016-06-10T01:23:38","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T08:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/?p=1416"},"modified":"2023-11-12T12:51:52","modified_gmt":"2023-11-12T12:51:52","slug":"the-enemy-within-how-thatcherism-destroyed-the-white-working-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/?p=1416","title":{"rendered":"The Enemy Within – How Thatcherism destroyed the White Working Class"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"factory_map\"<\/a>\n\nMap of former Rover Car Plant at Oxford<\/pre>\n
Interesting and ground-breaking article from Paul Mason in The Guardian<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2016\/apr\/04\/the-problem-for-poor-white-kids-is-that-a-part-of-their-culture-has-been-destroyed<\/a><\/p>\n
Excellent article by Paul Mason but calling for a ‘white kids community’ again in towns like my hometown of Didcot near Oxford where the ‘aspirant wide-boy migrant’ psychology rampant is harder to realise. These commuter towns were deliberately sold down the river to the highest bidder under Thatcher. This deliberately fragmented working-class communities with sale of council houses. Land deals in the mid 1980s also saw land transferred to global firms like BASF and Tesco which needed low-paid, compliant workforce hence the Oxford Rover Plant was sabotaged deliberately and\u00a0 dismantled as it a highly organised and trained workforce. Its replacement was the ‘temporary’ employees population or ‘service buddies’ which makes up over half of my hometown now. Thatcherism was a well executed plan. Lets leave Thatcher out of it it is a name. It is Neo Con Free market Liberalism imported from USA. It is now triumphant. It will take decades to turn it around.<\/p>\n
I did some research into how land was being parceled up and sold off hence BASF quote. My father knew the local landowners who became millionaires because their land chosen to be the building sites of targeted global distribution networks…Tesco..etc etc .Very shady. Same time as I was a member of Friends of Earth so we uncovered various seedy things being literally buried in various locations after the demolition of Rover Plant. This included old gravel pits being used to bury car paint….<\/p>\n
It is still continuing the recent deaths at Didcot A were because they hastily clearing old Power Station for profit as another node on that distribution site plan. The location bang central in UK with rail and road links hence it was originally a distribution depot at Milton in Wartime. My grandmother was a typist there and Bicester.<\/p>\n
Look at who owns and profits from land and you see history being written.<\/p>\n
1982 Cameron’s father offshoring his wealth under Thatcher. 1982 was year Thatcher removed support for grants at Royal College and I lost MA there. All fits. The working class was being villified from that date. Working class useful in wars and not much else syndrome.<\/p>\n
My Uncle John worked at Rover Plant in paint spray booths. Horrible job but paid the bills. His son was a policeman who actively engaged in diplomatic protection and breaking up the miner’s strike (Police blockaded the route to Didcot Power Station). One side of a family pitched against another just like the Miners Strike. Red Robbo and other propoganda hid the truth that it was the destruction of organised large-scale labour in favour of smaller more ‘manageable’ units that required in Steel, Docks, Car production and Mines. The Mines was most visible but the long-term damage to infrastructure occurred elsewhere. We are paying a very heavy price now. No organised Labour to fight back of course and no manufacturing base. Let them eat cake and service industries….it all we have left.<\/p>\n
Here a poem on subject…<\/p>\n
\"rover\"<\/a><\/p>\n
The Rover Man<\/strong><\/p>\n
He sat, firm and erect, on the park bench,
\nhands wrapped around his white stick
\nhis milky eyes fixed on thirty years before
\nas we walked toward him.<\/p>\n
He recognized my uncle immediately by voice
\nand smiled in our direction, gaze still fixed.
\nThey’d worked together at the Oxford car plant
\nfor almost twenty years.<\/p>\n
My uncle blinking through the paint shop clouds
\nhis gloves and goggles clogged with paint
\nwhilst upstairs this man worked in admin.
\nbelow the ticking clock-tower.<\/p>\n
He’d been enveloped in his milky world
\nsince that day in 1943 when a german bomb
\nhe was trying to defuse exploded
\nthe flash burning out his sockets.<\/p>\n
He had worked every day through strike
\nand shutdown, militants and shirkers, managers
\nand scabs. Had seen the business collapse
\ninto a heap of mangled parts. Bust and boom.<\/p>\n
Now the site is owned by BMW
\nand that clock-tower has collapsed into a heap of rubble,
\nthat my uncle sighs as he drives past the
\nnew industrial park landscaping and fountains.<\/p>\n
An industry and a community gone in a flash.
\nThe newsreels of the factory gates burn on the lens
\nas consultants ditch the site and reinvest
\nMoney or bombs it’s the same effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Map of former Rover Car Plant at Oxford Interesting and ground-breaking article from Paul Mason in The Guardian http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2016\/apr\/04\/the-problem-for-poor-white-kids-is-that-a-part-of-their-culture-has-been-destroyed Excellent article by Paul Mason but calling for a ‘white kids community’ again in towns like my hometown of Didcot near Oxford where the ‘aspirant wide-boy migrant’ psychology rampant is harder to realise. These commuter towns…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[106,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-poems","category-working-class-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6nhh-mQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1416"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2927,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1416\/revisions\/2927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}