by Gordon

Margaret Thatcher came to power when I was a young man, not long started on a career in a rather staid financial institution. I’d grown up during times of political turmoil, strikes, three day weeks, power cuts, petrol shortages and see-sawing Governments as Labour and the Tories swapped places several times.

I can’t say I was delighted at Thatcher’s election but, at the time, I was persuaded by many of my elder work colleagues that it was the best thing for the country we still called Britain.

One of the things that had plagued the society I grew up in was the number of strikes called by powerful Trade Unions. Everyone was fed up of it, and Thatcher played on this. I can recall watching the BBC News and seeing those vicious miners attacking the Police in unprovoked assaults. The BBC was trusted, you see, and I, like so many, believed what we were being told because there was no other source of information, and we had been brought up to believe in the BBC’s impartiality. I know it sounds stupid now, but that is how it was for most of us.

The other main focus of the Tory agenda was in finance. I can remember the amazement and, to be honest, sheer relief, when Thatcher abolished Exchange Control. Anyone who ever worked in what used to be called the Foreign Section of a bank or other financial organisation will recall with horror the form-filling and seemingly endless restrictions on what we could do with our own money when it came to dealing with other countries. Even going on holiday required forms and passport stamps to approve how much sterling you could take abroad. At a single stroke, Exchange Control was abolished, and a bright new, unregulated future beckoned.

I confess this move persuaded me that maybe the Tories were onto something, so when I heard them propound the theory of Trickle Down Economics, it seemed to make perfect sense. Job creation and wealth creation would flow down to everyone if wealthy people were encouraged to kick start the economy. The Tories declared their intention to adopt this model, and the media dutifully banged the drum.

The only defence I can offer for falling for this is that I was still in my early twenties and working in an organisation which , almost by definition, had a very conservative culture. However, it did not take long before I could see that the Tories’ deeds did not match their words as Scotland’s manufacturing industries were decimated. Working in the financial sector, I was cushioned from that sort of thing, but it was still possible to see the damage the Tories were doing to others.

Now, after forty years of Trickle Down economics, it is plain that the theory simply does not work in practice. The rich have become richer, and the UK is one of the most unequal in the entire world when it comes to income. The wealth has not trickled down, it has stuck at the top. Billionaires are not wealth creators; they are wealth hoarders. That’s how they became billionaires in the first place. Just like Austerity, Trickle Down was a lie.

But the lies have grown. Even Thatcher’s Tories were not as extreme as today’s crop. It’s said that people are more likely to vote Conservative as they grow older, but the opposite is true for me. That’s not so much down to my political views changing as to the shift towards the extreme Right undertaken by the Tories. My views used to be considered slightly right of centre, but now I’m out on the Left without having moved very much at all. The big problem is that the Tories have dragged many people with them in their lurch to the right. With the help of UKIP, the Brexit Party and the media, the Tories have unleashed the xenophobia which has always been a part of British culture, but many people who might have considered voting Tory in the past are still clinging to them out of habit. These people need to wake up and look around. The Tories have never been the Party of the common people, but now they are so far to the Right that they bear almost no resemblance even to Thatcher’s bunch of zealots. They lie as a matter of course, and they pander to the very worst emotions in a populace which has been raised on a diet of jingoism. I sincerely hope that more people will realise what lies behind the crumbling façade and will cast their votes to help Scotland become a normal country so that we can escape a political ideology which is still promoting the idea that Trickle Down is a viable way to operate. All it has done is make life harder for most workers. Zero Hour contracts, minimal wages, eroding of Workers’ Rights, all play into the hand of unscrupulous employers. Tax dodging by the wealthy is largely ignored by the media, while the poor, the unemployed and the disabled are vilified as scroungers. Now we see EU citizens being deported while people with plummy accents tell us they are cleverer than us, so they should be in charge.

Is that really the sort of society you want to live in? There’s no such place as Utopia, and an independent Scotland certainly won’t become a paradise, but surely we can aim to be a better nation than the one the UK aspires to be.

The Conservative experiment has been an utter failure, yet now they are forging even further to the Right instead of acknowledging that moving back nearer the Centre would make more sense. If a Party were to stand in this General Election using a Conservative manifesto from the 1950s or 1960s, they would be derided as part of what used to be called the Loony Left. That’s how far the Tories have taken us, and all the signs are that the voters in England will reward them for it by electing them to power once again.

I have no idea how Nicola Sturgeon intends to free Scotland from the shackles of Westminster, but I know our only chance is to vote SNP in the hope that she and her colleagues have some sort of plan. When I was at school, a bright future did seem to be somewhere ahead, but my life experiences have shown me that much of what we were told was a lie intended to keep us content so we would not upset the social order. It wasn’t all bad, of course. Conditions did improve for many, the NHS has helped us live longer, and technology has altered our lives considerably. But the immediate future now looks bleak, and I hope today’s voters will not fall for the lies that many in my generation did.