:01:25. > :01:35.Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, the war of words between the Yorkshire men
:01:35. > :01:35.
:01:35. > :13:38.Apology for the loss of subtitles for 722 seconds
:13:38. > :13:48.who were at the side of Margaret Thatcher and her enemy Arthur
:13:48. > :13:48.
:13:48. > :37:58.Apology for the loss of subtitles for 722 seconds
:37:58. > :38:03.Coming up today, we ask, how should Margaret Thatcher be remembered in
:38:03. > :38:08.our part of the world? We will be in her hometown of Grantham. We will
:38:08. > :38:16.hear the views of the Yorkshire men who were at the side of the Iron
:38:16. > :38:22.Lady and her arch, Arthur Scargill. It was also an attack -- it was a
:38:22. > :38:25.wholesale attack on the mining communities. And it was an attack on
:38:25. > :38:30.the values that people had in those communities. She was not a bully.
:38:30. > :38:32.She didn't like the fight of the kind she got at all. Over the past
:38:32. > :38:37.few days, people across the country have been flocking to the
:38:37. > :38:44.Lincolnshire town of Grantham to pay tribute to the grocers daughter who
:38:44. > :38:47.became our first and so far only woman Prime Minister.
:38:47. > :38:54.This is where it all began for Margaret Thatcher. The flat above
:38:54. > :38:58.her father's grocers shop. He wasn't unjust aggressor. He was a local
:38:58. > :39:03.politician and also a Methodist lay preacher. He expected his children
:39:03. > :39:08.attend church three times on a Sunday and often engage in political
:39:08. > :39:13.debate around the dinner table. I spoke to the headteacher at the
:39:13. > :39:15.grammar school where Lady Thatcher attended as a child to ask how she
:39:15. > :39:20.will be remembered. She was very happy here. There were difficulties
:39:20. > :39:27.because she was very forthright even as a child. She was a person who
:39:27. > :39:32.stood her ground. There must've been something about her singled out.
:39:32. > :39:38.head girls are voted for by the girls and stuff so if she was a very
:39:38. > :39:44.strong personality, she campaigned strongly to become head girl.
:39:44. > :39:49.that was her first of election victory? That may be the case. The
:39:49. > :39:53.death of Lady Thatcher has led many to reflect on her extraordinary
:39:53. > :39:59.journey from Lincolnshire town to number ten Downing Street. Hearing
:39:59. > :40:03.Grantham, people have been queueing to sign a book of condolence. And
:40:03. > :40:11.for a lasting memorial in her memory.
:40:11. > :40:16.I would guess art Andrew Percy, Conservative MP for brick and cool.
:40:16. > :40:20.And in our Westminster studio is George Galloway, the respect MP for
:40:20. > :40:24.Bradford West. In Sheffield is Angela Smith, Labour MP for
:40:24. > :40:31.Penistone and stocks bridge. If I can start with you, George Galloway.
:40:31. > :40:34.You've been at the centre of some controversy. Within hours of
:40:34. > :40:37.Margaret Thatcher's death, you said Trump that dirt down. Is that a
:40:37. > :40:42.respectful way to speak of our former leader? I didn't respect in
:40:42. > :40:48.life. It would have been hypocrisy to do so in death. She murdered the
:40:48. > :40:52.north the country, all the places we are talking to know were devastated
:40:52. > :40:56.by her decade in power. She murdered the coal industry, she murdered the
:40:57. > :41:02.steel industry, she meant -- murdered the ship industry, merchant
:41:02. > :41:05.shipping and so on. Everybody watching theirs is living in a
:41:05. > :41:11.community which was murdered by Margaret Thatcher. So I am more
:41:11. > :41:15.concerned about Thatcher's victims than about her. Andrew, you might
:41:15. > :41:20.take a different view. At least George is being consistent in his
:41:20. > :41:24.views but I grew up in Humberside, as it was then, throughout the 80s
:41:24. > :41:27.and 90s, and it is not true to say that communities were murdered by
:41:27. > :41:35.Margaret Thatcher. The biggest land grant ever given for regeneration
:41:35. > :41:38.came from the Thatcher government of the city of Hull in the 1980s.
:41:38. > :41:42.Appropriately, she divided opinion. Parts of our region, large parts of
:41:42. > :41:46.Yorkshire, certainly Lincolnshire and the area I represent, swung
:41:46. > :41:50.heavily behind Margaret Thatcher when she was in office, electing
:41:50. > :41:54.Conservative MPs in places where Conservative MPs were not elected at
:41:54. > :41:59.the last election even. She divided opinion, no doubt, but she did a lot
:41:59. > :42:02.of good for the region as well. Angela Smith, why are so many Labour
:42:02. > :42:07.women sniffy about Margaret Thatcher? Didn't she pave the way
:42:07. > :42:11.for more women to succeed in politics? She certainly achieves the
:42:11. > :42:18.accolade of being the first female prime minister. But she pulled up
:42:18. > :42:21.the ladder behind her. The fact we have so many Labour MPs in
:42:21. > :42:24.Westminster now is not Margaret Thatcher's legacy but the legacy of
:42:24. > :42:34.the work that Labour women have done through the decades, people like
:42:34. > :42:38.
:42:38. > :42:40.Barbara Castle. That is the woman we will look up to. She didn't do much
:42:40. > :42:45.for women at all, Margaret Thatcher. I want to be dignified and to show
:42:45. > :42:50.some respect for Margaret Thatcher in death. But like David Blunkett,
:42:50. > :42:53.I'd say one thing. I cannot forgive her for what she did to communities
:42:53. > :42:58.across South Yorkshire. She will never be forgiven in our area for
:42:58. > :43:02.what she did. As George Galloway said, she devastated the coal
:43:02. > :43:09.industry, severely damaged and devastated the steel industry as
:43:09. > :43:11.well. And we will never forgive her. Is it acceptable for people to
:43:11. > :43:16.celebrate the death of Margaret Thatcher? I am not myself
:43:16. > :43:22.celebrating but the fact that some art is a measure, as Andrew said, of
:43:22. > :43:26.just how divisive a person she was. She was elected with big majorities
:43:26. > :43:31.but on 40% of the vote, she never commanded anything like half of the
:43:31. > :43:40.support of the British people. She was only elected because of the
:43:40. > :43:43.traitors of the SDP as it was, now scrumming on the Tory coalition
:43:43. > :43:48.bench. It was their defection from Labour and the votes they took with
:43:48. > :43:52.them that allowed a Tory government with sufficiently large majorities
:43:52. > :43:58.to ram home their Thatcherite policy. That the diversion of the
:43:58. > :44:04.Falklands War, which course is including the war crime against the
:44:04. > :44:08.ship, Belgrano, where 300 young conscripts were sent to a watery
:44:08. > :44:13.grave on Mrs Thatcher's order, even though they were shot in the back
:44:13. > :44:18.even though they were speeding away from the exclusion zone and heading
:44:18. > :44:26.back to port. What is your take on that version of history? It is a
:44:26. > :44:32.unique version of history and does not a majority view. The idea that,
:44:32. > :44:40.you know, taking out an enemy ship as a war crime when we had had a
:44:40. > :44:45.piece of our territory invaded doesn't stand to much scrutiny. In
:44:45. > :44:48.terms of Thatcher 's broader legacy in our region, it is important to
:44:48. > :44:52.point out that for a lot of people, people from normal backgrounds,
:44:52. > :44:54.people like me from a traditional Labour background, we were attracted
:44:54. > :44:58.to Thatcher, even though I was attracted to the idea that it
:44:59. > :45:02.doesn't matter where you are, who you are, where you come from, you
:45:02. > :45:07.can do well for yourself. That is that something that I and a lot of
:45:07. > :45:12.people in Yorkshire, because she got a 44% of the vote, which is more
:45:12. > :45:18.than Tony Blair had, there were a lot of people that were inspired by
:45:18. > :45:24.that message. Taking into account a lot of people in our region who had
:45:24. > :45:27.other views. Let's speak to one of Margaret Thatcher 's most closest
:45:28. > :45:31.allies, former press secretary Bernard in, offering his thoughts on
:45:31. > :45:39.Margaret Thatcher with some strong views on her enemies.
:45:39. > :45:47.Britain needs an Iron Lady. legacy was to create a government
:45:47. > :45:51.which delivered the goods. It hadn't been delivering up to this -- up to
:45:51. > :45:57.1979. If she had failed, where would we be now? That is what we should be
:45:57. > :46:03.asking. We might have been living in a country is somewhat akin to to the
:46:03. > :46:08.Kremlin rule in Russia. It is a gross simplification to say that
:46:08. > :46:12.Margaret Thatcher 's Margaret forces broke the coalmining industry. No
:46:12. > :46:17.government in this country would have done the damage to the
:46:17. > :46:22.coalmining industry that Arthur Scargill 's strike did. We will roll
:46:22. > :46:28.back the years of Thatcherism and tyranny. It can only mean disaster!
:46:28. > :46:34.The last thing a prime minister trying to reform the country wants
:46:34. > :46:37.is a row with the trade unions. They had had enough of them. But she knew
:46:37. > :46:42.and she knew without any doubt that Arthur Scargill wanted a row and it
:46:42. > :46:51.didn't matter what the government wanted, he wanted to row and he
:46:51. > :46:54.would use his bullyboys to drum the NUM to fight to the bitter end. Hang
:46:54. > :46:59.your head in shame, Arthur Scargill, you are a disgrace to Yorkshire and
:46:59. > :47:03.you up a ruin of the miners. There had been neither freedom or order in
:47:03. > :47:13.Britain if we had given into violence. There would have been no
:47:13. > :47:14.
:47:14. > :47:18.hope for any prosperous industry. She didn't mind an argument, she
:47:18. > :47:24.loved an argument. She didn't mind losing if she thought that the
:47:24. > :47:28.person against had a very, very good case. But what she really loved was
:47:28. > :47:34.the argument, the intellectual exploration of the problem. And
:47:34. > :47:37.arguing with Margaret Thatcher successfully can get you anywhere.
:47:37. > :47:43.We have become a grandmother of a grandson called Michael.
:47:43. > :47:47.She was actually a human being. You could read her like a book. And that
:47:47. > :47:54.was the great virtue of her position. Good evening. Good
:47:54. > :47:58.evening. I'm very pleased that I got more than half the Parliamentary
:47:58. > :48:03.party. And disappointed it is not quite enough to win on the first
:48:03. > :48:07.ballot. People knew where they stood and they came to realise she would
:48:07. > :48:12.carry out what she said she would do. She was a great bonus in the
:48:12. > :48:16.politician. The thoughts of Sir Bernard Ingham.
:48:16. > :48:21.Angela Smith, if you could click your fingers, would you turn back
:48:21. > :48:27.the clock to the country that was governed by Labour back in 1979?
:48:27. > :48:31.What I would say is this. It wasn't about Thatcher or Scargill in the
:48:31. > :48:38.end. What it is really about is all those thousands of men and women in
:48:38. > :48:42.some cases who lost their jobs in villages across Barnsley and in the
:48:42. > :48:46.city of Sheffield as the result of the changes that Thatcher sought to
:48:46. > :48:56.put in place. Yes, she changed the economic landscape, but the price
:48:56. > :48:57.
:48:57. > :49:00.paid by South Yorkshire was huge and we are still paying the price. I
:49:00. > :49:02.would finish on this. The economic legacy everybody is talking about at
:49:02. > :49:06.the moment is one that increasingly people now are saying has to change.
:49:06. > :49:12.It is failing. It failed in 2007 when we had the global economic
:49:13. > :49:17.crash. It is not working. Thatcher's legacy, it has been suggested, is
:49:17. > :49:20.injuring. I don't think it will draw much longer. George Galloway, what
:49:20. > :49:28.kind of country would we be living in now had Scargill won the miners
:49:28. > :49:32.strike? Britain was a far better country in the 1960s than it became
:49:32. > :49:38.in the 80s, 90s and in this decade just passed. As Angela said, the
:49:38. > :49:41.bubble, the credit bubble, the debt bubble that was built up by the new
:49:42. > :49:45.-- neoliberal governments we have had, Thatcher and all her heirs and
:49:45. > :49:51.successors, and they have all followed that policy, has taken us
:49:51. > :50:01.over the cliff and into ruin. Mrs Thatcher, when she came to power,
:50:01. > :50:09.
:50:09. > :50:11.had a Financial Services Industry that represented 3% of the British
:50:11. > :50:13.economy. Now, tenet of make at least until the crash, it represented 40%
:50:13. > :50:15.of the British economy and therein lies the problem. We used to make
:50:15. > :50:17.and build things. We stood do things. We didn't play around with
:50:17. > :50:20.computer screens and money. Margaret Thatcher preferred that kind of
:50:20. > :50:23.economy both because they were her kind of people but also because they
:50:23. > :50:27.didn't have any trade unions and that is one of the reasons why she
:50:27. > :50:33.favoured it. She was out to destroy the trade unions which, at the end
:50:33. > :50:36.of the day, whoever is their leader, they are there to defend the
:50:36. > :50:40.interests of the working people. Mrs Thatcher represented the interests
:50:40. > :50:46.of a tiny fragment of the population. Mr Scargill, whatever
:50:46. > :50:51.you think of him, was elected to defend the miners. And �50 notes
:50:51. > :50:55.were known as Scargills in South Yorkshire. He did a great job for
:50:55. > :51:04.the miners. There was only a strike because Mrs Thatcher was closing the
:51:04. > :51:07.mines. That was the strike, not for money, not for perks. It was for her
:51:07. > :51:09.to stop the mines. If we hadn't closed the mines. If we hadn't
:51:09. > :51:11.closed minds, we wouldn't be dependent on Putin's gas and the
:51:11. > :51:16.King of Saudi Arabia's oil. Margaret Thatcher create an
:51:17. > :51:22.north-south divide? There has been an north-south divide since the
:51:22. > :51:24.Industrial Revolution. It has got wider still. That includes under the
:51:24. > :51:31.previous government. There is a reason why the Labour government
:51:31. > :51:35.didn't turn back anything significant undertaken by Margaret
:51:35. > :51:40.Thatcher in terms of reforms. There is a reason why Tony Blair, whom I
:51:40. > :51:43.admire, carried on those reforms because they recognise that those
:51:43. > :51:52.reforms had brought greater wealth, all levels of income have increased
:51:52. > :51:55.since that period, and they allow people who may not have gone on to
:51:55. > :51:58.university, they allowed a salt to become wealthier and to become
:51:59. > :52:08.richer, which is what I think most people want, whilst having regard
:52:09. > :52:10.
:52:10. > :52:11.for other people, and they also included improving of the public
:52:11. > :52:13.services. Under Margaret Thatcher, the number of nurses and doctors
:52:13. > :52:16.have increased massively. What about all those working-class people that
:52:16. > :52:21.bought council houses? They did by their council houses, but they were
:52:21. > :52:24.buying them before Thatcher came to power. My parents bought theirs in
:52:24. > :52:29.1970 and they bought their council houses, Labour voters, by the way.
:52:29. > :52:38.Andrew's point is that the vast majority of people got richer and
:52:38. > :52:44.better. But in Sheffield, in 1987, the unemployment rate was 4% of the
:52:44. > :52:49.national average. That is over 16%. In one part of Sheffield, it was
:52:49. > :52:51.29%. When Arthur Scargill was sent a text of the news this week, he
:52:51. > :52:53.reportedly replied to the message "Thatcher Dead" with the words
:52:53. > :53:03."Scargill Alive". That's according to his friend and former
:53:03. > :53:05.
:53:05. > :53:11.vice-president of the Yorkshire NUM, Ken Capstick.
:53:11. > :53:15.I think undoubtedly Margaret Thatcher decided in 1979 when she
:53:15. > :53:23.came to power that she was going to take on the National union of mine
:53:23. > :53:26.are the, the most powerful union in the country at the time. She
:53:26. > :53:31.manufactured that situation. She wasn't just closing an economic pit
:53:31. > :53:36.to here or there, it was an all sale attack on the mining industry, and
:53:36. > :53:41.mining communities. And more than that, it was an attack on the values
:53:41. > :53:45.people had in those communities. We believed in society and caring and
:53:45. > :53:55.sharing. We believed in looking after the young, the old, the sick
:53:55. > :53:58.
:53:58. > :54:03.and infirm. She believed that greed is good. The selling off of certain
:54:03. > :54:13.private industries like British Gas, where people saw an opportunity to
:54:13. > :54:16.
:54:16. > :54:18.make a quick killing or to become shareholders in that, but when you
:54:18. > :54:21.look at it now, especially with British Gas, when bills have gone
:54:21. > :54:27.through the roof, as a result of privatising and as a result of the
:54:27. > :54:30.closure of Britain's coal mines, people might look back and think
:54:30. > :54:40.that whilst that looked wonderful at the time, we are paying for it
:54:40. > :54:45.
:54:45. > :54:48.today. The reality of it is that people are in debt, they don't own
:54:48. > :54:54.shares because they can't afford to, they can't hardly afford to go
:54:54. > :54:59.to the supermarket, let alone and shares. At the same time, the rich
:54:59. > :55:09.become richer and richer, and the poor become poorer. That is a result
:55:09. > :55:13.
:55:13. > :55:16.of Thatcher's policies, based on greed. Thatcher was a divisive
:55:16. > :55:21.politician. That is no doubt. She did a lot of damage to many
:55:21. > :55:27.communities in this country. Then, when they resisted, they were
:55:27. > :55:31.referred to as the enemy within. People will not forgive that.
:55:31. > :55:34.Andrew, can you understand why many people in mining areas and those
:55:34. > :55:38.towns and villages that lost traditional industries are still
:55:38. > :55:42.angry about the decisions made in that area? Of course. It is
:55:42. > :55:45.important to remember that on mining, the industry had been in
:55:45. > :55:50.decline since it was nationalised. We saw hundreds of jobs lost and
:55:50. > :55:56.many mines closed in the 50s and 60s and 70s. Margaret Thatcher, like
:55:56. > :55:59.many politicians in many countries in Western Europe and in the US
:56:00. > :56:02.inherited a declining industry. That is why across Europe and across
:56:03. > :56:07.other nations, there has been a huge decline in the number of people
:56:07. > :56:17.working in the industry. There is one thing we have to be clear on.
:56:17. > :56:19.
:56:20. > :56:22.Let's run and what that strike was about. There was a huge subsidy
:56:22. > :56:24.going into that mining industry, paid for by taxpayers. The real
:56:24. > :56:26.issue with that strike was the NUM's failure to call pithead ballots. We
:56:26. > :56:31.talk about democracy, Margaret Thatcher was prepared to go before
:56:31. > :56:33.the electorate, but the situation there was you had miners who were
:56:33. > :56:40.not balloted and of course we know what happened with those miners that
:56:40. > :56:46.did work. Angela, briefly, you respond. Can I just correct Andrew
:56:46. > :56:49.on this history of the mining industry that he has given us. The
:56:49. > :56:53.industry was nationalised post-World War II. It was already severely
:56:53. > :56:57.weakened by the refusal of the previous mine owners to reform the
:56:57. > :57:01.industry when it needed reforming. That is one of the key reasons why
:57:01. > :57:06.it was so uncompetitive. The key point as well is that when you let
:57:06. > :57:09.go of a national asset like coal reserves, it is very difficult to
:57:09. > :57:18.get them back. That is the fundamental damage done to the
:57:18. > :57:20.country by Thatcher's decision to close the pits. As seen with other
:57:20. > :57:23.western European countries. Look at Germany, look at France. How many
:57:23. > :57:27.people work in those industries there as opposed to how many worked
:57:27. > :57:31.in the 1970s. The point is we've got huge coal reserves and now we have
:57:31. > :57:35.to make use of carbon capture and storage to tap into them. The damage
:57:35. > :57:39.done is immense and now we import coal that we are using to fire power
:57:39. > :57:43.stations. We should have used our own. George Galloway, would you want
:57:43. > :57:47.to go back to the era of power cuts, a three-day week and the immense
:57:48. > :57:53.power held by the unions? I'll tell you what happened to this miners.
:57:53. > :57:56.They are all unemployed and their pits are closed. If the country and
:57:56. > :58:01.other unions and Labour 's front bench, for that matter, had gotten
:58:01. > :58:06.behind the miners in the way they should have, then the miners might
:58:06. > :58:09.have survived. And this accountancy over economic's would now be
:58:09. > :58:19.laughable because Andrew says the mines were uncompetitive. They might
:58:19. > :58:21.
:58:21. > :58:24.have been when oil was at $15 a barrel, but they are not when it is
:58:24. > :58:27.at $115 in barrel and situated in places that are unstable. They might
:58:27. > :58:34.have been uncompetitive compared to gasp before Russia became an
:58:34. > :58:39.absolute Eldorado of gas production. This is rewriting
:58:39. > :58:45.history on a grand scale. In the 1960s and 70s, Britain at least had
:58:45. > :58:49.a society. It had a society that was moving in the direction of travel of
:58:49. > :58:54.more equality. Young people like me grew up with free school dinners,
:58:54. > :58:58.free school milk come a cod-liver oil and the orange juice, a council
:58:58. > :59:07.house and a real prospect of an education and a job. None of that
:59:07. > :59:10.survived the Thatcher era. Or her politics. People also grew up
:59:10. > :59:13.contempt of row up in the same social class they were born into,
:59:13. > :59:23.often going into the industry is their families had been in, whether
:59:23. > :59:24.
:59:24. > :59:27.or not they wanted to be. In terms of his coal issue, is this the
:59:27. > :59:30.policy now of the Labour Party, that it is to burn more coal? I was
:59:30. > :59:34.pretty sure the policy of the last government and this Government was
:59:34. > :59:38.to burn less and less coal and moved to other technologies. Gas in the
:59:38. > :59:48.short-term but we knew a energy. Now we apparently want to burn more
:59:48. > :59:53.coal! I don't want to burn more coal. We could have burnt more clean
:59:53. > :59:59.coal. I'm going to give you five seconds to sum up Margaret
:59:59. > :00:04.Thatcher's legacy. She damaged the industries, damaged manufacturing
:00:04. > :00:10.and set in place an economic model that has ultimately failed. Needles,
:00:10. > :00:13.crime, idleness and vice. That is what was left in the desolation of
:00:14. > :00:18.post-industrial Britain. Most of the people watching this are living in
:00:18. > :00:28.post-industrial Britain. Everything she did was so terrible that the
:00:28. > :00:28.
:00:28. > :00:30.last Labour government never reversed any of it. That tells you
:00:30. > :00:33.all you need to know about Margaret Thatcher 's legacy. I didn't agree
:00:33. > :00:34.with many other things she did, one thing everybody would agree on,
:00:34. > :00:36.whatever you thought of her politics, she at least had
:00:36. > :00:41.conviction and principles. There are very few people in politics today