5. 1981

This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Now, history's biggest leaps started as hard questions that people didn't want asked. Yeah, there's a classic example of that at the end of the 15th century. And the hard question in particular was, what is out there beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the west? And as you will know, the man who found the answer to that question was the explorer Christopher Columbus. And he realizes, or rather everybody else realizes, that there is a vast continent out there. And it is, of course, the Americas. So, yeah, Anthropic knows the importance of questions. And it's why Anthropic has found it on one hard question above all. How can we ensure that the AI revolution really goes well for ordinary people? So, they asked over 100,000 people, and what came back wasn't just fear. There was hope as well. People wanted to know, will cancer ever be cured? Can kids have a better future? It turns out that there is hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claw.ai/restishistory and keep thinking. This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. Right now, all of Mint's plans are $15 per month, even unlimited. So go to mintmobile.com/history. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxis and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20 gigabytes of hotspot capable device required. Availability speed and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. This episode is brought to you by the Gates Foundation. We have touched on the fall of the Roman Empire a few times on this show, haven't we? But what our listeners may not know is that among the causes that historians talk about, it's not just barbarian invasions. There's also talk of a disease which people call Roman fever, which I believe we know now as malaria. For thousands of years, humanity was defenseless against it. But thankfully, we live in a time of incredible ingenuity and American scientists and partners around the world are fighting back with support from the Gates Foundation. Yes, so they're creating a new generation of bed nets that kill up to 90% of mosquitoes. That leads to a 50% drop in malaria, saving lives, and protecting vulnerable communities. The Gates Foundation, partners of human potential. Search gatesfoundation.org/mosquito to learn more. [Music] Hello and as LP Hartley famously said, the past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. But do they today on our episode of The Restless History? We want to look at the very recent past prompted by the return to Netflix of the Crown. But before we come to that, and I know, Dominic, you'll be straining the leash about this because recent British history is very much your subject, isn't it? So you're going to have lots to say. I just wanted to say to thank everybody who's listening for having helped us get off to such a great start. It's fantastic. We were a bit nervous about launching this, but we're thrilled that so many of you are out there listening and emailing in and tweeting and contributing. Please do keep that going. Yeah, it's quite a surprise, isn't it, Tom? I was expecting a torrents of abuse. Well, I mean, I obviously get torrents of abuse naturally on a daily basis anyway. So this is a nice break for me to- Well, I was kind of expecting, I was kind of expecting tumbleweed, to be honest. So neither abuse nor tumbleweed. So do please keep, you know, keep letting us know what you think. Shall we read out some tweets? Shall we be a very good idea? Yeah, let's engage with the great British public. Yes. So we had somebody Alex Berson, he wrote, "Thanks for doing it. The rest of his history is great. For your amusement, Stephen the Great of Moldova was sanctified by the Orthodox Church in the 1990s and is now Stephen the Great and Saint. He had four wives, as Saint should, and was known to be quick to spill blood, but he built churches and defended Christianity. He was quite great. It's just that the Saint is both a late edition and amusing in the context of episode one." So there you go. Yeah, I mean, being a saint and great. I mean, that's a square in the circle, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, he did a bit of everything, didn't he? Yeah. Folly math. We also have a mess from Andrew Walker. He's been wondering about academic reassessment of Nero. Oh, good, good, academic reassessment of Nero. That's very much my thing. This is definitely the person who exists, and I knew I was a full snake, Tom. My sock puppet. He's heard about it on another podcast, Boo His. It amounts to, well, he was rather popular with the plebs. People after him invoked him to boost their appeal and his critics were fake news from the swamp. Yeah, I mean, basically, yeah, I can't disagree with that. And then we've got lovely, lovely comment from Emma Salisbury. I'm listening to this right now. It's rather nostalgically like being at a friendly dinner party with fellow historians, even though Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook can't hear me chiming in. So that speaks to somebody who's clearly never been as a dinner party with historians. The mood of bitterness and rancor. Well, bitterness and rank is what we're all about. Anyway, you can, there's dinner party, this friendly dinner party, do join in. You can chime in, tweet us, hashtag, the rest is history. And also very excitingly, we've got an email address now. Rest is history [email protected]. And I like that idea of the ultimate historical dinner party. I mean, I think that would be a good idea for a future episode. Say what kind of people from across the range of history who would make the ideal dinner party? Genghis Khan. No, he'd be terrible. He'd shut your head off and drink out of your skull. That's a terrible idea. Anyway, we're not going to get on to that. Let's get on to the crown. Yes, let's. Because I'm guessing you have, do you have views on this? Have you seen the crown? As you well know, Tom, I have never seen the crown. I have not seen so much as a minute of the crown. Why would I? I mean, I spend, you know, my working day thinking about Harold Wilson or whatever. And, and Danick, has the fact that you have never seen the crown? Has it prevented you from writing about it? No, obviously not. I mean, that would be an act and it's all I stand for. Have you, have you, have you just written an enormous spread about the '80s to coincide with the new series of the crown set in the '80s? No, I haven't, but I have given, have given a long interview to BBC History Magazine around. But they know I haven't seen it. So they describe it to me over the phone. They tell me what happens and I tell them what I think of it. I think it works very well. And just to make it clear to the listeners, you have, you've written a highly acclaimed series of books about modern British history that exactly cover the, the span of the decades that exactly cover. Yeah, exactly. And your most recent book was, it was what, it was kind of like 7,000 page volume about three, the first three years of the fact of government. So from 79 to 22. So, so I'm banging the, banging the middle of, of that is, is the summer of 1981, which of course has the royal wedding. Yeah, well, the royal wedding's obviously a big deal for the crown, isn't it? Diana and all that, carry on. And it's a, it's a bigger deal for the crown than it is for your book. It would be fair to say. There's a, it is mentioned in my book. I mean, there is a, there is a whole section. About the royal wedding, but I'm kind of more, I mean, to be honest with you, Tom. Cakes, dresses, you know, page boys. That sort of stuff fills me with utter gloom and, and misery. So when I talked about it in my book, it was more, what did people make of it? What was the meaning of it? And also actually putting it against the background of all this other stuff, which is so interesting, which is going on in 1981. So the riot, the recession, the cricket, of course, which we'll come to later. This sort of tumultuous year, you know, 1981 is one of those years, I suppose, a little bit like sort of 1968 or something that has a, has a meaning beyond. Or 2020, perhaps. Or 2020, exactly. I think it's a, you can make a reasonable case that 1981 was the grimest year in our lifetimes. And actually grimot than 2020, because 2020 is worldwide. Whereas 1981 was just, you know, it was Britain that was uniquely in a terrible mess. So, so, I mean, the key thing about the role where everyone said it was like a fairy tale. And the irony about that is partly that the backdrop is this, you know, Britain in a state of complete turmoil, unemployment, rioting and so on. But also the fact, of course, that the marriage was going to go terribly wrong. And I just wanted, before we get, before we get on to the kind of historical context for 1981 provides, what's your view as a historian of modern Britain about the way in which the story of the raw family has kind of become like the matter of Britain, you know, like the matter of Britain in the Middle Ages was the story of King Arthur that in a way for lots of people, the story of King Arthur was, was more real, you know, they knew more about that than they knew anything about, you know, what was actually happening in medieval England. And there's a kind of slight sense with, you know, that globally, what people know about British history is kind of, you know, and the story of Diana in particular, it's kind of like the modern matter of Britain. People know about the story of Diana, it's become this mythic story. It doesn't have any historical significance. I mean, what does that say about Britain's role in the world? Okay, so I think that's true of Diana. right? I think that's true that you can take the story of Diana and you can say but you can also tease out sort of historical meanings about, you know, the sentimentalization of British culture, Diana obviously played a big part in the sort of a new kind of or a new kind of emotionalism in Britain's sort of public life, you know, sort of embracing aid sufferers and so on. You know, doing things that the monarchy or the public figures wouldn't have done 10 or 20 years earlier, so she's sort of, she is an important figure in that context obviously, but the royal family more generally, I'm not so sure. So I agree with you, there are things that are that people care more about than the usual sort of political events. Sports is actually a really good example of that. So a lot of people, when they make sense of the recent past, they don't think about general elections and governments. They think about world cups and, you know, how their team got on and all that kind of thing and music again. You ask anybody about their youth or the, you know, if they grew up in the '60s or the '70s, it's often music that they turn to as their cultural references and they'll say, well, the '60s ended when the Beatles broke up or, you know, the '70s ended when, you know, Sid Vicious died or whatever it might be. People will look on those things as the sort of, the sort of chronological structuring, I guess, for the recent past. So I'm not sure, sure, that the monarchy is the key one that I would go for. I mean, maybe it's because I don't really care that much about the sort of royal story. It's interesting you talk about music, because actually the thing for me that's interesting about the '80s is that it's when I was a teenager. So I was becoming kind of aware of politics. I remember there were not the nine o'clock news, which is kind of satire show, and they did not the royal wedding. And it was kind of like the first disrespectful treatment of the royal family that had come across. And I remember, you know, it was kind of 13. I thought it was great. But what I also remember is that there was a series on, I think, on Radio One at the time, it's called 25 years of rock, and it ran from 1955 to 1979. And it kind of set current affairs to a soundtrack of the music of that particular year. And it stopped in '79. It never went on into 1981 and so on. And it was hugely disappointed about that. But what I was thinking now, when you were talking about music and the tumultuous events of '81, is the way in which the really scarring experience was mass unemployment in a city deprivation. And the soundtrack to that, you'll always get is ghost town. And that's kind of like, you know, your moment you hear that, that is early '80s, that tourism, it's just kind of conjured it up, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. I mean, I did a TV documentary about the '80s. And I can't have a views ghost town or not, but when we were doing it, we kind of went through and we said, everybody expects it, that when we do the minus strike by law, by sort of UN mandated law, you have to have two tribes, don't you? Yes. You have. So the footage of the battle of all grief and two tribes is playing. And we sort of said, we need to steer clear of this as much as we can, although I think we probably did use ghost town. So you're right, but that's true of, I mean, that's true of older periods too, right? When you're doing mid-victorian Britain, you always use Dickens. Yeah, but you're talking about music. Music is a kind of lingua franca, if you like. It's everybody understands what it means, everybody has the same associations and so on. So I don't think it's actually that different from using literary sources from earlier periods to illustrate, you know, to sort of connotive particular time, a particular atmosphere. Don't you think? Well, I think it's slightly different to the degree that music, since the 50s, has kind of provided a soundtrack that everyone remembers and recognises. Simply because the music industry has grown so much and the ability of people to consume it has grown exponentially. And kind of, for that reason, it does kind of conjure up image. So rather like the Royal Family, Britain has been very central to the music industry. So I would say that the story of the Beatles is a kind of parallel to the story of Diana, that it's a kind of almost mythic tale that everyone kind of instinctively knows. And likewise, the story of music, the story of the Royal Family, the story of sport, all of this is a kind of part of the fabric of recent history. And I just wondered, is it part of that because that's what we remember, that's what we experienced most vividly, or is it more significant than that? Ah, that's a good question, is it more significant than that? I think it, there is a sort of a story about the Britain's decline on the world stage, and the way we sell ourselves to the world, we sell ourselves through pop culture now in a way that we wouldn't have done, you know, in let's say the 19th century. So if you'd said to somebody in 19th century Britain, what the most important thing about this given moment is that tremendously rich tradition of musical, and we will be remembered for our splendid novels, people would have laughed at you, they'd have said that's not important at all. Whereas now I think we do think these things are important and they are redderland of Britishness. So they're what we think matters. So when Danny Boyle did his 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, a lot of it was about Britain's tradition of music and storytelling and all the rest of it, that these things were kind of intrinsic to Britishness. So it's not surprising that when we tell a story of the very recent past, it's those things that we look to, because actually those things seem more sort of vital than, you know, the story of the rise and fall of Ted Heath's government, which most people couldn't give a damn about. And yeah, I suppose one of the things about the early 80s is actually that politics is really kind of viscerally in your face in a way that perhaps it hadn't been at any other period. I mean, maybe maybe in the, I don't know, in the Heath government with a three week. No, my far more than in the Heath government, I think politics in the 80s is such a great narrative story. And the divisions in Britain in '81 between North and South, between country and in a city, I mean, give a sense of how divided the country was. I think enormously divided. And, you know, for people who don't, for younger listeners who don't remember it, Margaret Thatcher would come in in '79 after sort of perceived years of decline. And she basically said she was going to, she was going to administer this shock therapy, this sort of harsh medicine that would turn Britain around. And after two years, everything seemed to have got incalculably worse. So Britain was in recession. We had an employment at more than, you know, heading towards four million effectively young people in particular couldn't get jobs. You had riots, first of all in Brixton in April and then spreading around the country in the summer. You had massive unrest, massive rioting in Northern Ireland where you'd had the hunger strikes of Republican prisoners in the maze prison. You had this sort of sense that the whole country was coming unglued. And that's almost uniquely in Western Europe. You know, here was this sort of former imperial power, this major industrial nation. There was just coming apart and people were sort of, and that it was politically tearing itself apart as space. So the government was, the most unpopular government since records began. The Labour Party, the opposition party was incredibly bitterly divided. And there was this real sense of, which far greater, I think, than anything even over Brexit, of ranker and of sort of, you know, hostility. A real sense of the stakes being so high and the stakes being the survivor of the United Kingdom, you know, the prosperity of you and your family. You know, this is not a sort of, these are not symbolic issues. These are incredibly visceral kind of bread and butter issues. But you see, the reason why recent history is, I find it kind of challenging to get a handle on is that I lived through it. And I was in a, a, a dillic wheelchair village. And oddly, I now live in Brixton. So, you know, and Brixton was kind of the epicenter of police brutality and the rioting. But, you know, it was, it was, it might as well have been a million miles from me. And what I remember about the summer of '81 is that my, my, my mother was in hospital. My father said, you know, he had to look after me. Didn't know what else to do. He said, well, let's watch a test match. And I had no interest in cricket. I had no interest in sport at all. That test match was, um, headingly. And it was one of the most transformative, remarkable, cricket matches of all time. I know that people who are not interested in cricket, certainly people who are, who are not British listening to this will be slightly bewildered by it. But it, it, there was this astonishing kind of fairy tale reversal where England had been down and out. They, they, they, they trapped against all the odds over Australia, our old sporting rival. And Ian, both of them, a figure who is now famous chiefly for supporting Brexit and having been raised by Boris Johnson to the House of Lords was the hero of the hour. And that essentially changed my life because it persuaded me to take off cricket, which has been the one of the great last of my life ever since. So that is how I remember 1981. So emotionally, personally, that's, that's my state in it. Um, I, I, I had no personal experience of riots or unemployment or, um, or anything like that. And it's kind of, you know, it makes you as what, what's often said about the great events is that actually often, and it's a point you make repeatedly throughout your books that often, even when terrible things are happening, most people are actually perfectly happy. Yeah, I think That's right Tom. I mean, I think we should get onto the cricket in a second. I can't believe, by the way, it took you more than 15 minutes of his podcast to turn the conversation to in both them. However, let's put both them on one side. Let's come back to both them and the cricket because I think the cricket actually does have a proper historical significance, which we can get into maybe after the break. But before that, yes, it's a very strange thing writing about contemporary history because, of course, often when you're talking about it, you're talking to people who live through it. Now, it's not a problem that you really have when you're doing, you know, dynasty or Rubicon or any of your books on the Romans or the Greeks or whatever. I mean, they're not around to tell you you're wrong. When I go to talk about my books, often, you know, there'll be people nodding in the audience and then there'll be other people who say, "Oh, but the 60s wasn't like that at all." Or the 70s, you know, it wasn't like that. I mean, that's very common. And I guess one of the things with being a historian of contemporary Britain is, first of all, you have to put your own experience on one side. But also, you have to juggle, you know, your own job as the historian, which is to impose your pattern and to tell your story. But also, the complexity of all these kind of individual stories. Now, that's not really something that you have to confront as an ancient historian because you don't have many sources. So you don't have all the individual stories of all the people who are unrepresented. That's true. That's true. But I think that one of the fascinating things about ancient history, often, is that the glimpses you get occasionally of people leading their normal lives. Right. And it could be preserved on tombstones. It could be preserved in a poem, you know, the hints of what it's like to just go out and lie in a field while you're always going around you. Give us an example. Well, actually, the example that always sticks in my mind comes from the left of Cicero. And Cicero, of course, is intimately involved in the convulsions that ends the Roman Republic. But there's a letter in which he writes about a house he owns and it's got a crack. You know, crack has opened up and he's a bit worried about this. You know, how's he going to repair it? And the idea that even amid all the events that Cicero is intimately involved in, he's worrying about kind of DIY repairs and things like that, what's he going to do? I think that that's expressive of a fundamental truth that life carries on. It goes on. There's kind of famous Hardy poem, isn't there, which I think he wrote? Well, he says, "Do you know what? Let's go for a break and I'll look that Hardy poem up and I'll read it to you when we come back." This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. Right now, all of Mint's plans are 15 dollars per month, even unlimited. I'm front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months, plan required, $15 per month equivalent, taxes and fees extra, initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy, includes up to 20 gigabytes of hotspot capable device required. See mintmobile.com. Welcome back everybody. I think Tom has a poem for us. I do. It's the first poem that we've had on the rest of history. It's by Hardy, and it's called "In Time of the Break Information". I'm going to read the third verse, and it's "Yonder are made in her white come whispering by, 'Wars, annals, will cloud into night, air their story, die.'" So, you know, people, guys and boys will hang out with each other even though wars are going on. But interestingly, the first verse, only a man harrowing clod in a slow silent walk with an old horse that stumbles at noughts half asleep as they stalk. So, hard to say, you know, that people will be plowing with horses till the end of time. And that obviously isn't true. No. That's a good example about this. I was thinking one before, just before the break. So, the only source from the day that Alexander the Great died was a Babylonian astrological diary kept by a priest. And it's all about the weather. So, he sort of says that the king died. Meanwhile, it was very cloudy and overcast and bloody, and he gives more attention to the weather than he does. And that's how most of us think about politics and, you know, the world, isn't it? It's, it's a pockful, isn't it, that on the 14th of July, the Louis XVI's diary read nothing much happened. Yeah, I think that's, I think it was, maybe it was the record of game or something. I think that's what, I think that's what all kings posted about 1700, a spacer of written about major events. Anyway, back, back to '81. Yes. You were going to say that actually the, the, the, the, the cricket 1981 was of immense historical significance, which I'd love to be reassured on that, because that would be great to learn. I think it is a big, great historical significance. So, the news for Britain, since the late '60s, had been pretty awful. So, although most people are actually better off than they'd ever been, the sort of headlines were always bad. So, from about 1967 onwards, which is when Harold Wilson devalued the pound, governments had been constantly in trouble and everything had been bad for Britain. And I think at the end of the 1970s, you, you started to get this sense that people were thirsting for some good news. So, the first sign of that, I think, was the reaction to the SAS's raid on the Iranian Embassy, which they lived in from a siege in 1980. And you have this almost hysterical reaction from the tabloids and so on, that Britain is great again with top nation, all of this kind of stuff. And then you see it again twice in 1981, once is the Royal Wedding. When, you know, we, we lead the world and pump on pageantry. And the other time is this incredibly hysterical reaction to winning one test match. No, three, we won three. We won three. Yes, but it's the helling new test that, that sparks the reaction. So, it's the comeback. And I think the funny thing about it is, so both of them, who is the hero of the hour, he had been England captain, he'd been this incredibly sort of youthful figure, this sort of raging lion, who's carrying more before him, who's appointed England captain, then he, he doesn't win a match as captain. He has the worst record of any test captain at that point in history, and he's sacked from the captaincy. And the day that he's sacked from the captaincy, the headlines are juxtaposed with the images of rioting. So, they're the two main stories. And they're both basically the same story. And that story is Britain has been great, but now it's rubbish. It's tearing itself apart. It can't win cricket matches. It's cities are in flames. All is sort of disaster. And then both of them of all people, the sort of incarnation of conservative working class England, turns it around, doesn't it? And this extraordinary sort of herculean feat. And the presser beside themselves, we are top nation again. And then just a couple of weeks later, you have the royal wedding. And of course, what that all lays the foundation for, I think, is the sort of populist patriotism that you get with the Falklands. So it's basically laying, you know, these are all omens of what is to come a year later when the Falklands were happens. And these are elements of what you'd call fatterism, of fatches sort of, you know, nationwide appeal to a particular audience, which both from still incarnates. Well, it's, it's often said of the players association, which is the trades union of professional cricketers that it's, it's the only trades union that's more right wing than its employers. And, and, and, and, and, and both, I mean, both and becomes a kind of emblem for the triumph of, of fatterite, like England, really, right? Yeah, fatterite England. He's a hunting, shooting, fishing man. Um, and he, in due course, he becomes Brexiter and he's now in the House of Lords. Um, well, what's interesting about him, right? Is that he's forward looking and backward looking? So if you take him both in 1981, he, you know, you can sort of look forward and say Brexiter and all of that kind of stuff, or you can look back and you can say he's basically, what is he an 18th century figure? You know, you can imagine him on the deck of HMS victory. Yes. You know, the roast beef of Old England. I mean, it's, it's very nicknamed beefy. Yes. Could not be more 18th century. And there was a very embarrassing, um, stage where he went to L.A. to try and, but James Bond, which I think will draw a curtain over that. But there is also another aspect to, um, to, to, to both of them, which ties in interestingly with, with particularly the race riots in, is, is that, um, both of them was, was great friends with Viv Richards, the, probably the, the, the, the great West Indies batsman, the greatest batsman of his day. Um, both of them was always slightly in his shadow. Uh, and interesting, another thing kind of, you know, looking forward to 2020 is that the, uh, the trophy that West Indies and England compete for had been called the wisdom trophy is now the, the, um, the Viv Richards in both them trophy. So there is also a sense in which he's looking forward to a future in which, uh, race relations will be less explosive than they were in 1981. Yeah. That's a really interesting point. And I think one reason that he got on so well with Viv Richards was they were both outsiders. And both of them felt very keenly his outsider status in a game dominated by white public schoolboys. So he, he sort of, he bonded with Viv Richards, didn't he? I think he wore the Jamaican colors in a kind of wristband to show his solidarity with, with Richards. Yeah. Yeah. And that's really interesting because you have this sort of almost like back and white alliance of the outsiders against the old guard, the Tofs that both of them and Richards felt were dominating the game. Okay. And so, so that's a, that's the kind of thing that, that, uh, a, a historian would do is to pick up on a Teachemic figure like that and tease out aspects of him that perhaps you could then feed back into the broader context. Is that a fair thing to do? I mean, if we're looking at the role wedding, we're looking at the, the cricket, we're looking at the music. Um, what does that tell us about, uh, trade union policy of the FATCHING government? I'll tell you that. Okay. You've sent me a challenge here. Well, I mean, my answer to that would be that such as trade union policy succeeded because most ordinary trade unists generally agreed with the piecemeal bits of the so each individual reform that she passed individual trade unionists agreed with their leaders didn't agree with them but she obviously appealed to a kind of aspirational working class you know sort of skilled respectable upwardly mobile working class people particularly in England so your classic Essex man. Now Ian both of them is not an Essex man but there are definitely parallels and there's a kind of working class conservatism that thatcher's union policy reaches out to which is you know your unions actually she says your union is holding you back your collective loyalty is holding you back you should think of yourself as an individual and get on and fight for a better life that's what he in both of them is about isn't it? Right and so so opinions on moving off from both of them I mean actually opinions on both of them but but opinions on on the thatcher government and perhaps yeah Mrs. Thatcher particularly it's it's a subject of history but it still remains very very intensely a matter of politics as well yeah your opinion of what Mrs. Thatcher did will define you politically today in 2020 that's absolutely right Tom you know in a sense you know like the French Revolution it's too early to tell well I don't know about this too early to tell I tell you what a story I was when I first decided I was going to write this series of books about modern Britain a friend of mine who's now Professor of History leads he said to me are you going to do the eighties and I said oh yeah I have to and he said what you're going to do thatcher I said yeah yeah well and he just kind of laughed and quite a sort of mocking way and he said everybody will really hate you you know and I said why he said well because I know you you're trying to find you know you'll see both sides you'll try to be balanced and all this you can't be balanced about thatcher people just want you to hate her and of course there's some truth in in that and my way of dealing with that partly was to say of thatcher you know in some ways she's the last sort of great man we talked about greatness in the first episode great man great woman sort of historiographical subject left so people basic their attitude to thatcher as they think she changed Britain either for good or ill and and one of my big arguments is actually you know is that really true or is she really reflecting changes that are driven from below as it were you know if she died in 1978 would Britain have been very different my argument is that it wouldn't that what happened actually happened you know she was a symptom of the change rather than the cause of it so actually it doesn't matter whether you think she was brilliant or terrible because one of the one of the one of the arguments about what's happening at the moment with covid and the way that it's affecting the north of England much worse in the south is that this reflects kind of deep deep deep rooted trends that for which Mrs. Thatcher is held responsible the kind of the destruction of heavy industry mining and so on do you do you think that there is I mean can we trace the threads of what happened in the 80s through to the it's rates of infection and covid or is that what does that remain a kind of political rather than historical judgment I think there is a political judgment actually Tom and two things occurred to me about that one is first of all there'd been a big divergence between north and south right long before that I mean I know you're a big fan of that book by Dan Jackson the Northumbrians yes and that really I mean you look at books like that that really brings alive just how different the north the experience in the north of England felt for hundreds of years from the experience in the south you know they're not they were two nations as it were long before any Margaret Thatcher had been a glint in alderman Roberts's eye and so your perspective is is basically the Marxist one that these are deep rooted issues that you know these are the great surging waves of history and that someone like Mrs. Thatcher is just the kind of the foam on the crest of the wave that is exactly my position Tom and I'll give you an example of that you talked about the death of heavy industry does anybody seriously think that without Margaret Thatcher you know tens if not hundreds of thousands of people would would every morning be going down pits to dig for coal I mean all that that heavy industry has died in every other year virtually every other European country so the idea that it's all Margaret Thatcher's fault and it would happen I mean it might have happened more slowly it might have happened less contentiously it might have happened you know things might have worked out differently but the basic story would still have been the same so in that sense yes that is kind of Marxist history isn't it great big forces and all the rest of it I wonder whether Mrs. Thatcher will continue to hold this kind of demonic status or you know the status of heroin depending on which side of the debate you stand because I remember there was some was it last year maybe the year before there was a really excellent series on the BBC about Mrs. Thatcher which is so glad you mentioned that Tom because I was the consultant for that series okay well it was I thought I thought Dominic well it was it was it was really excellent I think and I think it it it didn't have any commentary at all did it it was just kind of no presenter no commentary yeah contemporary footage and and interviews and I watched that with my daughter who must have been I don't know 16 at the time or something knew nothing about the subject at all and her take on it was very much that of a kind of young feminist that she was watching a woman try out thing over over these kind of show venous dinosaurs and that was that was her take yeah I think that story that side of it will definitely come out um you know your people will see her as a working woman surrounded by men in a way that they didn't you know 20 years ago they didn't see the femininity of Margaret Thatcher or indeed they said she's not really a woman at all which nobody really would would say now I can see that the even as I'm speaking the producer is is throwing text at me to say she didn't like women she didn't champion women and all this kind of thing but in that respect actually Margaret Thatcher was typical of women of her type people used to talk at the time about Queen bees about women who had got ahead in the 60s and 70s and didn't pull up other women after them and psychologically actually you can sort of understand why some women behave like that they thought right Margaret Thatcher thought well I've got ahead on my own merits why should I you know um institute affirmative action for other women they should work just like I've worked and there was always this tension between those women who'd been the first ones to get ahead they're kind of professional women and then those who who came after them but you're right I think people will younger people I mean younger people won't care will they in 10 or 20th time will they care about the foreklens of the miners strike well but I think I think I think that what what my daughter's response to just to the that story we're having no sense of the broader politics of it was that there was a again a kind of mythic arc to the story of the woman who emerges from nowhere and and and becomes prime minister which again aligns her with Diana and it's interesting that the two you know we do have these two kind of mythic figures and they're both women in the 80s and I guess that that's what the the crown will be will be riffing off that's what it's all about isn't it this series is all trading on that yeah business isn't it I mean but but it does suggest that that a crucial aspect of how history is understood and in a sense consumed is as myth yeah the mythic qualities are themselves of historians and Africans that's absolutely right Tom and I think you're where you say the the mythic qualities are of historic significance that seems to me right too because you am I going to that you I mean she was consumed as it were by the audience as a sort of she's either Cruella Deville and yeah or she's she's the people what do they call it the Catherine the Great of Finchley oh yes oh yes or she's you know her her admirers see her as Budica as Britannia as Elizabeth the first yeah so there there is there are these there's this constant myth of the the regal woman of the patriotic woman surrounded by men and the which yeah and the which and she which part you think she plays depends on your politics but people always put her into these sort of mythic roles don't they I mean nobody just says she's a politician like any other she's a working woman like any other they talk about we're almost as this super human you know I on the same level that they talk about Elizabeth the first or or or Diana or well Diana or Diana because Diana likewise was similarly divided people you know was she the the Queen of people's hearts or was she you know history on it and and and lacking backbone and again the country was kind of divided on that we don't really do that with men though no I mean no maybe Henry VIII but not many there aren't many men that we talk about in the same sort of dualistic way yeah we've run out of things to talk about I think I think have we have we just have we have we've we exhausted the whole of the whole of the of the 80s do you know what's on there's so much we didn't talk about Tony Ben we didn't talk about Bobby Sands Ken Livingston but that just means we'll have to have another podcast all about 1981 in a few months time oh tell you what you haven't what you haven't mentioned this is Dranger Anne and Simon Le Bonne and no the the the fit my favorite quote in your entire book on on the Fatcher period from all 7,000 pages which actually because I was swatting for this I've I've got it here and this is with reference to union of the snake and Hungary like the wolf and Simon Le Bonne said I've always liked poets like TS Elliott who are a little bit obscure and that's definitely part of my style lyrically so there you go the waste land could have been a planet Earth and the wasteland there we go proof rock and you knew the snake yes so this this really is the the podcast that that reaches the parts that other parts don't you we should do have a during and during reference every week, don't you? - No, I'm sorry, it's a challenge. - No, we can move on to stand out ballet and-- - Yeah, well, yeah, it's a new romantic, so we're trying to quote a new romantic's lyric, every year, every week. That would be an interesting challenge. And talking of every week, I think it's a time to close off for this week, we'll be back. Next week, don't you want anything else to add? - Lots, but we don't have time, so I'll probably have to just forgo it. But I hope you've enjoyed it, and we're gonna be out every Monday, don't we, Monday morning, Tom? - Yeah, Monday morning, yeah. - That's the plan, so please do subscribe and rate and review. - Well, any review, if it's a positive review, obviously. - Yes, yeah, just send those negative reviews directly to Tom. (laughing) - And any questions, any thoughts, any comments? Do contribute. The rest is history, [email protected]. Rest is [email protected]. That's how to contact us or you can message us on Twitter. And we will be back next week. - Bye-bye. (upbeat music) - Is history anything more than the story of heroes and villains? Of course it is. 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If you don't buy a copy, you will probably regret it till the day you die. Goodbye.