The 80's

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By alphadog1

Sun, 10 Aug 2014
  • 3147 reads
10 comments
 

 

 

Those who remember the 80's well
Don't live in a wasted dream 
They remember with anger 
The suffering and the pain.
They remember 
the end of manufacturing
The end of mining 
The end of a glorious Britain 
Not run by socialism 
But by a complex system 
That the enemy simply despised. 
How many recall 
the battle of the bean field 
For freedom was blasted on that bitter day 
How many recall the petrol bombs of Brixton 
The violence of a Liverpool in flames 
The disgrace of Hillsborough 
The ending of lives in Gibraltar
The monster 
Reaping what she did not sow 
cutting out the council homes 
Renaming them social housing, 
and creating greater division, 
and so began the real welfare state: 
not the safety net that is was constructed to be, 
But a vile trap built by snakes
who craved a killing in the money market 
Over the hard work of honest people. 
here the whore of Babylon 
bathed in her propaganda 
while establishing a 3 million acceptable loss
In the working environment. 
beginning the death of the NHS 
While Waving flags and fighting tin pot generals in 1982 in a phony war

And ignoring the reality of the fucking poor
While members of her elite
Buggered little children 
Behind closed doors in 1984
What about the greed 
What about the hype
What about the hypocrisy? 
What about Oman 
The cover up
And a pact made in hell!
Then there are the poll tax riots 
When the poorest just said no. 
It was not all suits or new romantics 
It was not all yuppies on a cocaine fix
To justify 
Their political acclamations and association . 
While they toss themselves off 
To Gold. 
It was not just living the dream 
It was simply enslavement 
And it all began with both
Apathy 
And complacency.
For we were force fed TV
and the utter blaspemy 
of flag waving as we went to war 
Over a scrap of sheepland  land 
Thousands  of miles away. 
We didn't know or understand
Because the 'me' was so cool The corporate we was lost And if you stood against it you were alternative to their world What's wrong with living on the road?  Unless you think that money is for you? 

I choose to stand by these people
Whom look at the 80s with despair:
The honest the meek the brave and the true
Those who say that the 80's was a trap 
Made by a gutless lie
Because they shine 
And even now 
Despite the shame and pain 
they still do. 
(C) ADH2014

Certificate 18
Poem
Rant

Comments

Submitted by Philip Sidney on

You are so right.  All of this is so truthful. 

Submitted by alphadog1 on

I like many, are in fact pretty annoyed that we were flogged a  nigjtmare of a dream over the death of our evolving cultural  identity. I have also commented below.  
Thank you. I know it does not scan well, but its not supposed to, this is a reflection of the times simply jarring. 

 

Submitted by alphadog1 on

 I think it boils down to the fact that we -in the uk- were force fed a lie and this lie damaged us culturally. 
The self deluded glorification of the self is not and has never been an idea that embraces the lower classes who think in a more cooperative way. It only gives self aggrandizement to those of middle income and upper income wage earners.  
In truth the only people that really profited from the 1980s were greedy already wealthy gits who gladly followed the political system because it made them rich. They did not think of the future because they were fooled that this was some sort of new idea when in truth it was a dying horse on its way to be flogged death.
Many say that the hindsight cannot be considered from the moment, but I disagree, for options are awlays there,  and the harder option is never chosen over the far more complex and economically challanging one. 
That is the truth of the 80's.  That is our legacy. 

 

Submitted by Philip Sidney on

The truth of the 80s is an important story to tell.

Submitted by Naomi Abdull on

I really enjoyed your poem.  Although I was born in 1984 and therefore my recollection is only through the conversations of older siblings and my parents, documentaries and new bulletins, your poem creates a vivid picture.  The poem feels very truthful and raw, the rhythm of it adding to creating the vivid picture.

Submitted by celticman on

I remember the eighties very well. Looking back a decade earlier it was the miners to blame for blackmailing a nation and making us weak. Bankers and the other wankers who created a bubble to make us rich, were not to blame when poverty struck again. None of them jailed, or held to account. Of that there can be no doubt.  It was the idle poor that did not want to work. You can blacken the miners, but you can't blacken the company bosses whose first reaction is to cut wages and make workers work longer hours. Look at the front page of The Observer today. Progress? Not in my watch.

 

Submitted by alphadog1 on

The world has changed since the late seventies, I was a 70's child growing up in a small  sussex village was a versy sheltered experince, but with all the knowledge  we have gained, partly with hindsight, I also think that there was another solution open to us, but the nation voted for her, and her policies broke the manufactiring base and led down a path away from making anything and into a partial free market economy, which put more status in the waking banker and the vile stock broker than the factory worker the builder  or the grocer. We -as a nation had and could still have all the means  to build up old industries, yet, the eighties ended all of that. 
I know that in many ways  it was the miners and the manufacturing  unions  that held the nation to ransom, but at the same time, I don't  think that is entirely an accurate picture of events: I think  its as much propaganda  from the right as anything else. We however, have nothing to prove this, as history is in the hands of the victors. Personally, The belief that the unions held the nation to ransom, justifies their posiition and gives the leader of the nation at that time a greater sense of her value than she deserves. But lets not also forget that the bin strkes began with a conservative council cutting the wages  of the bin men. From here the metaphor used by William Burroughs in naked lunch comes  to mind, "the anus, having been driven sick and tired of being bossed about by the brain,  clogged  up"  and eventually "forced the brain out of the arse with a hideous glooping sound" 
without looking at the short sightedness of her decisons  and the lack of thought behind them. Many politicans  say thay hindsight is impossible to factor in decision making. I disagree, I think that if you follow a certain policy to its bitter end the repocussions  are clear to compute, howvever they are not cost effective enough to carry out.
In many ways, the company boss is as much to blame as the worker, one gathering in a greater salary than the other;m perhaps  to justify his ego and the value he or she sees in themselves over the worker. But If the worker didn't make the product, then  the company boss would have  nothing for his sales staff and they couldn't make even more money for him.
But that is by the by. The real problem -for me- is how family values and cultural ideology  cahnged in the UK in the 80's. This led to the decline in family and in turn the structure of society altered. Work and the the work ethic and the sense of empowerment though work, led to "acceptable losses"  and this "acceptable loss are 3.5 million people.  many of whom have not been able  to get a job since. Why is this still seen as acceptable? these  people are the broken ones, I see them every day.  And its increased generation on generation. 
I remember the power cuts and very vaugley seeing Heath discuss the three day week. But I also recall decimilastion,  and recalling goods, being sold  for 10p. Name one thing we can buy  for ten pence now? 

In the end, I guess, I am annoyed by the way the 80's  are not portrayed accurately. Any more than the 70's, or the 60's  for that matter; but the 80's  in particular as they are seen, in papers like the observer and others as a decade to look back at and see our propserity. But I don't think people were any richer than they are now. I think that too is a lie that we tell ourselves because things now are tough. What we fail to see is that it was percicely this short term thinking  of the  goal fo the free market that led to the depression of the 1930's  and the depression of today. if it could happen in the past, then why not learn from it? why not add safeguards?  By the end of ww2, safeguards did exist, the free market was seen as a joke; many nations began by rebuiding its manufacturing base.  
Market forces was not -or could it be ever seen- as a good idea and lead to a proseperous nation, this is because trickle  down does not happen. The powers at the time, did consider the laffur curve  as a means  to a political end, and this gave the markets influence on a global level.  The 70's and the 80's  were the dawn ing  of globalistion. Not only that many magazines depicting  either a positive  future or a negative future were on sale (2000ad) now the future is here: and its a mess.  because of policies that dragged us here. 

 

Submitted by celticman on

trickle down economics is a myth or shibboleth. Trickle-up economics is a fact. Use any index and it shows the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Reagan, in particular, and Thatcher, accelerated this process.

 

Submitted by alphadog1 on

I agree  :( 

 

Submitted by Tom Brown on

It was just another illusion. On two of the local radio stations they play only 80s music over weekends and that is all. There is enough new popular music which is just as good. I think it's time to let go.

Best wishes! Tom