Funerals

I was asking myself this week whether Harold Wilson was still alive or when he died.

A bit of checking informed me that he died in 1995. As I was working happily and very successfully in Munich/München at the time, it does not surprise me at all that I took little notice then. One of his major claims to fame was that he managed to win four General Elections in a principally conservative country. No other UK politician can claim to have done that in my lifetime.

I was also wondering why there was no massive public funeral for him when he died - or maybe there was, but I do not remember hearing much about it. Somebody who was well-known on the world stage, who was popular enough to have won four general elections? I can be almost certain that huge amounts of public money were not spent on the occasion, though. Nor should they have been.

Was I a fan of Wilson? No, but that is not the point. I did, to my later regret, vote for his party in 1974 though. We all make mistakes.

The last even half-decent Prime Minister that the UK had was, in my opinion, Harold MacMillan. It says a lot that this opinion indicates that the UK has not had a decent Prime Minister since 1963. Look at the state of the country now if you want a reason. I know for a fact that MacMillan did not get a highly expensive funeral, but if anyone deserved one ....

What did people have under MacMillan? Growing prosperity across the board (for the people as a whole, not just for the fortunate few), low personal indebtedness (even if government finances were sometimes a problem) and unemployment figures that were so low that it would now take some believing. Tax rates were high? Maybe, but my working-class parents were prepared to vote for MacMillan's version of the Conservative Party (which was nowt like the post 1979 model) because, as my father never failed to inform me, they always thought that they had more money at the time they were in power.

Which is hardly what could be said in the 1980s!

The party under MacMillan practised what was known as "one nation" conservatism. Why this one nation theory should be such a problem baffles me. It is worth repeating until we are blue in the face that a country is all its people. I recall one individual in my mylot.com days constantly quoting Churchill and stuff like the "British people".

All well and good. It is worth remembering that the job of a government is to serve its people. ALL ITS PEOPLE! Not a selected few, not just the "captains of industry", not just the lobbyists, not just the party contributors, not just the people who voted for it! Or if you like not just the Trade Unions, not just the employees and the unemployed - either!

Any wonder there is such a response this week? An old Judy Garland song is the most played piece of music in the country and the conservative dominated media is shaken to its foundations that there has been such a venomous response to the death of their "flawless icon"!

Were the people ungrateful? What is with all these young people who were not even born usw usw .... They weren't, but their parents and grandparents were and have some gruesome tales to tell - particularly across the North of England and Scotland, but note some of the other critical musical notes are coming from musicians (Elvis Costello, Paul Weller usw) who came from the "affluent" South.

And when you see the government in power who are the logical heirs to what was there in the 1980s, are you not surprised when so many young people celebrate when the old conservative icon passes on?

Meanwhile the government is slashing benefits for the poorest members of society "because it cannot afford them", but has the gall to find 10 million pounds worth of public money for the funeral of a polarising individual who was not popular with, and very often despised and hated by, nearly half the population of the country?

One nation? OK, they are talking about building a statue for the aforesaid icon. Rather than putting it in Trafalgar Square, try building one and putting it in the centre of Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne or Glasgow and check what happens. The point being though that all those cities and their residents are part of that nation as well. Their views need to be heard, their situations understood, their lifestyles improved. All of them!

Postscript - to the 27-year-old (who also did not live through much of the 1980s) who informed me the other day that it was all about Thatcher and Scargill - go learn some history. Both were polemicists. Choosing between them is like choosing between cholera and typhus. The fact remains though that the Miners' Strike (deliberate uppercase) did not start until 1984. By then the terminal damage to the industrial base and the mass unemployment across the North of England were into their fourth year. There is an argument that the Miners' Strike was the product of what preceded it, but the damage had already been done before it ever started. Go check your history book!