Margaret Thatcher Archives - ... on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

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Andrew Feinstein slams Rory Stewart’s excuse for MP corruption

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The agency to decide how our world is organised

Finally, Feinstein finished with a rallying cry to voters and activists across the country:

And I think that’s what we need to do. We need to realise that one of the things that the sort of late era neoliberal capitalism does is it intentionally stifles our imaginations and our creativity to make us believe there is no alternative. As Margaret Thatcher famously and evilly said, to believe that this is the only way the world can be organised. And it’s not. We have the agency to decide how our world should be organised and we need to take that agency.

Referring to his upcoming book set for release in Autumn this year, he added:

And this book [Making a Killing] is an attempt to give people the information and to propose some of the ways in which we can take agency about something that is destroying our societies and our politics. And I’m always reminded when people feel very depressed and defeated, which of course I sometimes do too, I’m always reminded of what Nelson Mandela said when he was asked how he retained hope in an apartheid prison and in very dark and depressing days.
And he [Mandela] said, because anything is always impossible only until it’s done.
And I think we have the ability, we have the brains amongst us ordinary people to change the world profoundly and fundamentally. And I hope that this book will be a very small contribution towards that.

Rory Stewart and his neoliberal ilk can consider themselves ‘told’ after this brilliant takedown from a man who makes fighting corruption his day job.

Post author:dizzy
Post published:11 February 2026
Post category:Andrew Feinstein human rights violations Margaret Thatcher Neo-liberalism new authoritarianism plutocracy politics the filthy rich
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Morning Star Editorial: Unison’s Andrea Egan speaks truth to power

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/unisons-andrea-egan-speaks-truth-power

Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers his keynote speech during the Labour Party Conference at the ACC Liverpool, September 30, 2025

NEW Unison general secretary Andrea Egan has done a service to the entire labour movement. Barely a week in office, she has spelt out exactly what is wrong with the Starmer government, and what needs to change.

We make no apology for quoting her words, written for Tribune, extensively. First the crisis: “The first far-right government in our history is a very real prospect. Nigel Farage in power would be the biggest triumph for the enemies of the working class since his idol Margaret Thatcher took office…

“It would be a global victory for a billionaire-backed ethnonationalist project represented by the administration of Donald Trump…for every worker, active trade unionist or anyone who wants to live in an open and democratic society, the political stakes of the coming months and years are potentially existential. We are staring down the barrel of a historically devastating offensive against our class.”

Then, the blame: “From witnessing the recent behaviour of Labour’s ruling faction, you wouldn’t know it. Spearheaded from Downing Street, this narrow Westminster grouping often gives the impression it would rather hand the country over to Farage and put the labour movement’s survival on the line than consider any change in policy direction or lose the slightest control over the party machine.”

Egan slams the “stitch-up” which blocked Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election, with the reasons offered “an insult to the intelligence.”

Then the warning: “Trade unions will not tolerate this self-destructive approach any longer. The costs are simply too high, and it is our members — our whole movement — who will pay the price.

“Labour’s rotten internal culture is a significant cause of its failure to deliver for workers while in government, which in turn drives its historic unpopularity and lays the ground for the far right.

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Original article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/unisons-andrea-egan-speaks-truth-power

Keir Starmer confirms that his government is cnutier than Suella Braverman on killing the right to protest.

Post author:dizzy
Post published:30 January 2026
Post category:Andy Burnham crap pretend Labour Fascism Keir Starmer Labour Party Margaret Thatcher Neo-liberalism Nigel Farage plutocracy politics Reform 2025 Ltd (Reform UK)the filthy rich
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UK plotted ‘covert’ measures against Irish republican hunger strikers

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https://www.declassifieduk.org/uk-plotted-covert-measures-against-irish-republican-hunger-strikers/

A mural in Derry depicts Raymond McCartney, who took part in the 1980 hunger strike. (Photo: Deirdre Hamill / Alamy)

The UK government planned “covert” measures to monitor “everything” which was said and written by Irish republican hunger strikers in prison in 1980, declassified files reveal.

The strike had been called in response to the removal of political status for convicted paramilitary prisoners, with seven men in HMP Maze refusing their first meal on 27 October.

It ended 53 days later, with some of the hunger strikers claiming the UK government had gestured towards meeting their demands before reneging.

The incident set the scene for the 1981 hunger strike, which saw ten Irish republicans including Bobby Sands starve themselves to death amid a showdown with Margaret Thatcher.

Files released to the National Archives in London now detail how the UK government was acutely concerned about the domestic and international implications of the 1980 hunger strike.

It produced weekly bulletins on the situation, monitored media coverage, liaised with the Catholic church, and even considered meeting some of the strikers’ demands, the files show.

Plans were also made to employ “covert techniques” in order to “find out as much as possible about the day-to-day state of mind of each striker”.

This would apparently include eavesdropping on the prisoners’ private conversations and intercepting mail so that the British state could know “everything” that was said and written.

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Article continues at https://www.declassifieduk.org/uk-plotted-covert-measures-against-irish-republican-hunger-strikers/

Post author:dizzy
Post published:18 January 2026
Post category:human rights violations Margaret Thatcher politics Sinn Fein
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Morning Star Editorial: South East Water should be taken into public ownership

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/south-east-water-should-be-taken-public-ownership

A worker hands over bottled water at a water station in East Grinstead, after bad weather was blamed for more water outages in Kent and parts of Sussex, January 12, 2026

HOW much longer are people in south-east England expected to put up with the depredations of South East Water?

Seventeen communities across Sussex and Kent, including 30,000 households, were without a water supply today, in some cases for the fourth day running. And this comes after prolonged outages last year, notably in and around Tunbridge Wells.

There is no more basic human requirement than a water supply. Without it, society starts to crumble and, indeed, schools, libraries and health clinics have had to shut in affected areas while elderly residents have been asked to travel up to seventy miles to secure a bottled water supply.

The only thing not in short supply from South East Water is excuses, mainly around the weather — that and fat-cat payments of course.

As recently as 2023 the company was spending millions more on dividends and interest payments on debt — it was debt-free when privatised by Thatcher — than it was in investing in its crumbling infrastructure.

And bungling chief executive David Hinton was, almost unbelievably, paid a £115,000 bonus last year on top of his £400,000 salary.

This was despite not only South East Water’s wretched service delivery but also the fact that it had to turn to its owners — mainly overseas investment funds — for an extra £200 million in cash to stave off insolvency. The company is barely more stable than the effectively bankrupt Thames Water. Local MPs have unsurprisingly called on Hinton to resign.

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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/south-east-water-should-be-taken-public-ownership

Post author:dizzy
Post published:14 January 2026
Post category:crap pretend Labour Labour Party Margaret Thatcher nationalise Neo-liberalism plutocracy politics privatise the filthy rich
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US aggression, UK support: The ‘special relationship’

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https://www.declassifieduk.org/us-aggression-uk-support-the-special-relationship/

Trump and Starmer at Chequers in September 2025. (Photo: Leon Neal / Alamy)

From Iran to Libya, from Panama to Venezuela, there is a history of the UK supporting illegal US military interventions

Forty years ago, US warplanes bombed Libya, attempting to assassinate its leader Muammar Gaddafi. Failing in that task, they managed to kill dozens of civilians in Tripoli, Libya’s capital.

The attacks, which were in response to the bombing of a Berlin nightclub blamed on Gaddafi, were strongly supported by Margaret Thatcher’s government. Indeed, she allowed some of the US jets to take off from bases in Britain.

In the face of widespread public opposition to the US raid, a defiant Thatcher told parliament it was “a necessary and proportionate response to a clear pattern of Libyan terrorism” and to “uphold international law”.

However, the UN General Assembly, and most world opinion, condemned the attack as a violation of international law.

But for the British prime minister: “The United States has stood by us in times of need, as we have stood by her. To refuse their request for the use of bases here would have been to abandon our responsibilities as an ally and to weaken the fight against terrorism.”

Fast forward two decades, and we find ourselves in a not dissimilar situation over US attacks on Venezuela.

UK ministers give their backing to the kidnapping of a foreign head of state amidst a military intervention, condemned in the wider world but supported in Whitehall because of the so-called “special relationship”.