It is only recently that I have become more politically active. However, I came across this in my journal of some years' back and it made interesting reading, for me at any rate. The text is as I wrote it originally.

On some aspects of Thatcherism

A personal view

By

Stuart Yates

Today I drove back from Leeds, having driven up yesterday. Yesterday was the occasion for the worst miners' riots so far and the sign 'County of South Yorkshire' held more meaning than usual. It was no surprise to pass motionless winding gear and I have no sympathy with the present dispute, yet driving through the area of my birth and upbringing evoked archaic feelings. I had seen the sad remains of Stanton Ironworks before (and recently seen French iron pipes being laid locally), but it was the change in Tinsley that came as a shock. Where before the air was thick with sulphurous fumes and the atmosphere buzzed with activity, now the chimneys stood like dead trees amongst still buildings. Most ominously, the Sheffield landscape, never flat, looked oddly straight where spoil heaps had been levelled, their use at an end and other areas were devoid even of mute buildings, but for the concrete flooring and a few bricks.

There was something of D H Lawrence in the sights and feelings, hence the use of archaic earlier. Amongst the familiar sloping streets, the grey lightened only by the washing lines, the ghosts of exploiting owners walked and I could somehow share the anger of those whose life belongs there. The contrasts too with the gentle countryside: one field overflowing with poppies, evoking a different conflict, deer grazing in another, and glimpses of houses, large houses, that must once have belonged to the pit owners. If my brief sharing in that past binds me, how much more must be bound those who are generation-rooted there.

It was in Sheffield that I grew up in the sense of becoming an independent adult and there, over twenty years' ago, the land was being laid flat. That time the slums were being razed to re-create the city centre and its immediate surroundings. This time the flattening is of the proud source of Sheffield's energy.

Wider issues were also brought into focus. I heard the news that a large retail group are negotiating with an Italian company for the supply of, I believe, lighting equipment. Can we not make them here? I understand, I think, the logic behind Government policy, the new technology (after all my job is concerned with it), but what if the timing is wrong? The country is bening prepared, at great cost to millions, for the new era. But if the timing is wrong Britain will not benefit, that sacrifice will have been in vain and the explosion of anger will be violent indeed. The extermination of the Conservative party will be a minor detail. I'm sure Mrs Thatcher has a dream, but I'm equally sure she has a private nightmare alternative.

Meanwhile, although I know her citizens would proudly refuse an outsider's sympathy, I grieve for my adopted city.

June 1984