Originally Posted by
Catzsy
Derek Hatton is a convicted criminal - what he has now is due to crime. You said he and Scargill were champagne socialists. Apart from that there is nothing wrong with Champagne Socialists as you call them. Do you think all socialists should wear cloth caps and keep ferrets? Neil Kinnock started the road to progress to New Labour with this speech:
You may me laugh when I say manufacturing industry you always think I mean 'coal' just because I now live in Wales. During the thatcher years the only people that prospered were financiers and bankers. The popular view of the 80s is the decade of greed, its symbol being the City trader driving a Porsche and doing business on a brick sized mobile. The 80s was also time of rising prosperity and rising house prices . However, that prosperity was not shared by all and the 80s was also a decade of deep social divisions and the North-South divide. Britain suffered a severe recession in the early 80s. Many businesses failed and unemployment reached record levels. Mrs Thatcher's strict monetarist doctrines initially made the problems worse and violent riots broke out in Toxteth in Liverpool, Brixton in London and Moss Side in Manchester. It seemed that the country was falling apart. The Specials record 'Ghost Town' (1981), about the economic ills facing Coventry, summed up the mood of the nation. Not exactly as described by you and it was all downhill from there.