I’m grateful to Mrs Thatcher; she turned me into
a socialist. Not particularly because of that “there’s no such thing as
society” nonsense. True, her closeness to
General Pinochet didn’t help. After all, friends of mine were beaten,
tortured and killed by his regime while Britain turned a blind eye. And
while I was attending Free Nelson Mandela concerts, she was condemning
him as a terrorist and refusing to consider sanctions. But that’s not
it.
It all changed when I went to theological college. First stop, a month-long placement in Walker in Newcastle. This was 1984. Across the UK, unemployment was at its highest level, 11.9 per cent, and in Walker, every second man had no job. The housing estates were begging for investment. The inner city felt resented and ignored. I ate every evening with a different member of the congregation, and although many were scraping along on benefits, they were generous to a fault. Every Sunday, the church held a second collection, for the miners, and once a fortnight a minibus with tins of food, children’s toys and other gifts went down to the twinned church in the County Durham minefield.
We were all in it together. Hence the socialism.
And finally, a few years later, I worked out I was gay, and that’s when I really lost it with Thatcher. Again, not because I think she was homophobic. People who knew her tell me she was not. No, my problem was that when her party wanted red meat she gave them Section 28, a ludicrous amendment to the Local Government Act, that prohibited teachers from “promoting” homosexuality or “pretend family relationships”. This was cynicism writ large. It meant another generation of youngsters growing up hating themselves. And she sponsored it.
Chris Bryant MP writing in The Independent.
PS The illustration is of the NOTSENSIBLES single I'm In Love With Margaret Thatcher, which - despite it being rather obviously a piss-take - some Thatcher-lovers have taken literally and started a campaign to make it number one.
Who says irony is lost on stupid people?
It all changed when I went to theological college. First stop, a month-long placement in Walker in Newcastle. This was 1984. Across the UK, unemployment was at its highest level, 11.9 per cent, and in Walker, every second man had no job. The housing estates were begging for investment. The inner city felt resented and ignored. I ate every evening with a different member of the congregation, and although many were scraping along on benefits, they were generous to a fault. Every Sunday, the church held a second collection, for the miners, and once a fortnight a minibus with tins of food, children’s toys and other gifts went down to the twinned church in the County Durham minefield.
We were all in it together. Hence the socialism.
And finally, a few years later, I worked out I was gay, and that’s when I really lost it with Thatcher. Again, not because I think she was homophobic. People who knew her tell me she was not. No, my problem was that when her party wanted red meat she gave them Section 28, a ludicrous amendment to the Local Government Act, that prohibited teachers from “promoting” homosexuality or “pretend family relationships”. This was cynicism writ large. It meant another generation of youngsters growing up hating themselves. And she sponsored it.
Chris Bryant MP writing in The Independent.
PS The illustration is of the NOTSENSIBLES single I'm In Love With Margaret Thatcher, which - despite it being rather obviously a piss-take - some Thatcher-lovers have taken literally and started a campaign to make it number one.
Who says irony is lost on stupid people?
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