same-with-bagels:

People who was born in a very fortunate time when, you know, my parents’ generation and my grandparents’ generation fought very hard for a welfare state in my country in which the rights of the individual were underpinned by the collective provision of free healthcare, free education, decent affordable housing, proper pensions… – and that was what we referred to in my country as the Post-War Consensus. 

Parties came along, Labour, Conservative, Liberal, and nobody ever changed that, until Margaret Thatcher came along. And she decided that it would better to pay less taxes. And so she began to take apart the welfare state and that provision. And the government owned the coal mines and although there was plenty of coal under our country she decided so close them down and so they went on strike.

And really the strike was a defense of that welfare state, of those ideas of collective responsibility and collective provision and as a singer-songwriter who’d grown up listening to Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie and the Clash it seemed to me that my place was to be there on the picket line playing songs. 

And it was interesting, it was a bit of an education for me because I didn’t go to college and so I didn’t know a lot about socialism and it was a very steep learning curve, they wanted to know why this pop singer from London had come up to the coal fields, staying long nights sitting on sofas with people, drinking cups of tea, smoking cigarettes, talking about politics, and so I can tell you the great inspiration in my politics was Margaret Thatche. If not for her, I probably wouldn’t be a socialist.

I migrated to Australia as a consequence of Thatcher’s cuts to non-vocational adult classes (such as language classes).