…and the scars are still there.
“The first election I was eligible to vote in was the 1983 general election, and I came of political age under Thatcher. The experience has left me with a permanent aversion to the Conservative party, whose centralizing instincts, polarizing disdain for opposition, instinct for class warfare, bigotry, xenophobia and homophobia were a stain on the politics of the 1980s and 1990s. I have no great aversion to the conservative political philosophy of Edmund Burke, but the praxis of his latter-day inheritors gave us a range of happy fun experiences including mass unemployment, Section 28 (of the 1988 Local Government Act), the Brixton riots, the Miners' strike, the Poll tax and subsequent tax rebellion, the Westminster bribes scandal, and … well, I think I'm going to stop there and lie down for a while. Thatcher's ideology was a stalking horse for bigotry, intolerance, and xenophobia — and a clampdown on civil rights exemplified by initiatives such as the Criminal Justice Act (1994).”