It's Not Fair

Around 1979 something happened in England, and it wasn’t just the election of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party.
It was the dawning of the age of self-pity.
The exuberant glory days of a working class who had 'never had it so good' were coming to an end. For twenty years the serfs had been dining at the top table along with the masters. Ordinary people enjoyed unimaginable wealth - cars, foreign holidays, centrally heated, double glazed homes, an abundance of cheap clothing. The childhood killers - polio, diphtheria, pneumonia, whooping cough, - had been defeated.
The world was a sunny place.
And then, suddenly, the flares and the broad lapels, the long hair and the sense of freedom, seemed so far away. The music of laughter and cheek, of love and hate, of war and peace, died. All that was left was a pose, a drum machine - and self pity.
Poor old Mrs. Thatcher, for all her sins (which were many), she is hated for one thing above all. She wanted the precious ones to pull their fingers out, take responsibility for their petty existences, have responsibilities as well as rights, take control of their own destinies.
But the children wanted their toys, so they took out a loan and carried on playing.
They wanted Big Mother but instead they got poor Mrs. Thatcher.
Gone was the swagger and the attitude, the brashness and the spirit. Instead we had the age of ‘Charity’, social concern, equality, the belief that no one should be advantaged, and the hatred for all those who in some way, any way, had more.
Some time around 1979 England was killed.
It wasn’t the wretched Mrs Thatcher who killed her.
No, the ones who killed her were those who sang about Rat Traps, Bricks in the Wall, London Burning,  whingers and whiners like the Clash and the Jam and Elvis Costello, always with a note of hatred and self pity in their mouths, always ready to condemn.
With self pity, which is the prerequisite of fascism, came the resurgence of anti-Semitism, dressed up as criticism of Israel. The New Establishment of the terrorist states, Britain and the US, are people who love their own criminals but hate the Other.
Today is a present filled with fear and blame, witch hunts and worries, bogus diseases and bogus freedoms.
Yes, back then, in the 1970s,  people in England laughed and smiled and strutted their stuff. After all, there was no rationing and no war. They couldn't even hang you any more.
But then the people had got used to playing with toys. They wanted to carry on playing. 
So they stomped their feet and cried out with one resounding voice; 'It's Not Fair'.