A Tale of Two Question Times: Part One, a long way from Rochdale

BBC Question Time pic Clare Hegarty/FCHS

Mrs Angry received an interesting text from Miss Angry, on Tuesday. Guess what, she wrote: Question Time is coming to school ... Mrs Angry was taken aback. Not that BBCQT was coming to Finchley, so much as the fact that Miss Angry, who does not take a keen interest in current affairs, knew what BBCQT was ...

Miss Angry attends two schools, for sixth form, one a certain local Catholic Grammar school for girls, of which Mrs Angry is a former pupil, (and where her otherwise impeccably behaved daughter has recently been threatened, with a zeal for female modesty that puts the Taliban to shame, with exclusion, for the dreadful crime of wearing a coat that was one inch above her knee, and boy did they pick on the wrong mum, eh, Miss A?), the other being Finchley Catholic High School, an institution which has, at various times, attempted to educate Mrs Angry's son, brother, and most of the Catholic boys in Broken Barnet.

FCHS was invited, this week, to host BBC Question Time, in a sudden change to plans, following the death of Margaret Thatcher. Finchley Catholic High, it would seem, possibly because it is the only school that has Finchley in its name, was chosen to host what we were told would be a special edition. Aha: only fitting that the death of Margaret Thatcher should be debated in the place where she was MP for three decades - and, of course, where the neo Thatcherite council is at war with its own residents, a losing war, being won by an unprecedented localised rebellion: the Barnet Spring.

Many local residents immediately applied for tickets. This is a baffling process, a careful selection of probing questions which, if asked in the context of an application to join M15, might be considered appropriate, but for a ticket to sit in the audience of a televised debate, would seem to be rather excessive. 

Are you a member of a political party? 

Which one? 

Do you always support the leader of this party- (shit, hope they don't pass the response on that one) ... 

What are your views on Afhghanistan?  

What r my views on afghanistan? texted Miss A, in panic, and a certain amount of dismay. It's like St Michael's, only more liberal, suggested her mother, helpfully. 

And Europe? For or against? Ha: both, replied Mrs A, cleverly, trying to appear like the sort of open minded person who might listen to the informed views of other people. 

Did no good. No response from the BBC for anyone local Mrs Angry knew, or didn't know.

Sitting down to watch the programme, we imagined we would be presented with the sight of FCHS teachers, head boy, and assorted pillars of the local establishment sitting triumphantly in the suitably Tory blue gym, waiting to ask polite questions regarding the legacy of our former MP.

But no: the audience was peopled entirely, as it transpired, by actors and extras from a BBC extras casting agency, playing the part of residents of Broken Barnet. You could tell they were actors because no one asked any really awkward questions, no one laughed, or heckled, or held a silent protest, or held up posters, or spat on the floor of Finchley Catholic High's school gym because someone mentioned the Thatcher legacy, or her only true heirs, our feckless, conniving Tory councillors.

Come on, this is Broken Barnet: probably the most politically dissident borough in Britain.

This is where a local council is at war with its own residents.
This is the home of the Barnet Spring.
This is Margaret Thatcher's worst nightmare: society in action. 
This is what community looks like, remember?

Who were the members of this audience, and where did the BBC find them?

If the point of moving the programme to Finchley was to place it in the context of the Thatcher legacy, clearly this did not happen. There was no reference to the location, other than in thanks to the school for hosting the event, and no engagement with the local community, or any mention of the political situation in Barnet. The whole thing could have been filmed anywhere, or nowhere, and there would have been no difference in the feeling of the debate. Mrs Angry wondered, in a conspiracy theorist mode of speculation, if the whole business, like the moon landings, was a giant fraud, perpetrated in a studio somewhere.

Certainly the panel appeared to be genuine: up to a point. Polly Toynbee, rather downbeat, Menzies Campbell, playing the Libdem facilitator to perfection, David Blunkett, being David Blunkett, Ken Clarke trying to appear avuncular and not frighten anyone, and Thatcher biographer Charles Moore trying to sell his book.

Mrs Angry found Charles Moore to be most entertaining. His recollection of Margaret's amusing story about a load of cocks was particularly enlightening, and his rebranding of her as someone who stood side by side with the ANC, and opposed apartheid was deeply moving. Amandla, Maggie. He also took issue with the use of 'Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead' as a tribute to Mrs Thatcher on the basis that it referred to the wrong witch. Mr Moore would appear not to be a friend of Dorothy.

Glinda Jackson

The truth is, Mrs Angry suspects, that the BBC moved Question Time to Finchley not so much as to touch base with the heart of Thatcherism, as to find a sanctuary from what might have happened if the original choice for last night's programme had been used.

Last night's programme had been scheduled to be held in Rochdale - in fact we thought it was Rotherham, which provoked an even more intemperate post than this, but still ... Rochdale, a centre of nineteenth and twentieth century enterprise, the home of the cooperative movement - hardly a location conducive to the memory of someone who was so devoted to the emasculation of our industrial base, was it? Up North? Much safer to bring it all home to the safety of suburban London, and Finchley ... even safer if you plant the audience with suitably complaisant questioners.

Much of the media coverage of Margaret Thatcher's death - at least the printed press coverage - has taken the voice of middle England, Southern England, as the one to listen to. Our friends in the North, those who felt the impact of Thatcher's war of attrition on the unions, and our mining and manufacturing heartland most acutely, have been sidelined. Just as the present political climate has reinforced the gulf between those who have means and those who have needs, the distance between north and south has lengthened once more.

Instead of attending BBC QT last night, Mrs Angry went to a meeting, just across the other side of the High Road from FCHS, where real questions were asked and debated, by the residents of Broken Barnet, about something that sooner or later, will affect all of us: the privatisation of social care, an enterprise that Margaret's successors in Barnet were very keen to encourage. 
And so, see Part Two, coming soon: another question time - 'Your Choice Barnet' - making profit from need. 

Or rather - not making profit from need, and being rather embarrassed by the consequences.

Margaret Thatcher: the view from Broken Barnet

As we have observed many times, here in Broken Barnet, there is a certain inexplicable synchronicity that underlies the sequence of events, the peculiar chronology, the hidden history, and the unseen geography of our borough. 

Our Tory councillors have no regard for local history, or heritage: Broken Barnet, in their conception, exists in a dimension of its own, in a place caught forever in a moment of time.

Yes: of course we are talking about the Thatcher years. The only legacy that matters, for local Tories, who represent a particularly mutant form of Conservatism, clinging obstinately to a set of values that their own party shoved to the back of the drawer years ago, but probably speaks to a certain type of unthinking, Daily Mail reading voter: a quaintly retro obsession with unions, the threat of 'socialism', an instinctive fear of Europe, a detestation of 'red tape', bureaucracy, political correctness ... 

Finchley constituency was the seat of Margaret Thatcher for thirty three years, from 1959 to 1992. At every election night, she would come to Hendon Town Hall, and wait impatiently for the result - once Prime Minister, as Mrs Angry recalls, this visit would entail an enormous security operation - and a covert installation of copious supplies of gin for the Mayor's Parlour, and the gratification of Denis, as the count inevitably continued into the small hours. 

Look at the following footage of election night, 1987, and the results announced in the council chamber at the Town Hall. (One can only wonder how differently might the course of history have run, of course, here in Broken Barnet, if only Lord Buckethead had won, instead of Margaret ...)

And listen very carefully, half way in, once the speech begins, the admirably rude heckling, and references to 'fascist scum' are followed by what appears very much to Mrs Angry to be a contribution by our dear friend Mr Shepherd, the veteran attendee of all council meetings, who sits throughout sorting through two bags of cuttings from the Morning Star, and making impertinent suggestions to Tory councillors ...



 
That Margaret Thatcher's long reign in Finchley was universally popular is a myth that local Tories would like everyone to believe: but many of them are far too young to remember how it was, and indeed the keen ardour with which they view her, and the iconic status she holds as their generation's political pin-up, is a most peculiar phenomenon. 

The Tory party in Barnet is curiously misogynistic in outlook, and membership: there are a few older women, of the matronly type, who are permitted to sit on a few committees, as long as they do as they are told, and keep their heads down. The majority, however, is a motley collection of frankly deluded old timers and an equally loopy, unseasoned intake of hardline, immature young men, whom suspended Tory councillor Brian Coleman describes as 'The Boys'.

All of them, though, are devotees of the cult of Thatcher, with an unthinking, unswerving loyalty to - well, to what, exactly? A female embodiment of male authority, an iron resolution and a dispensation to be utterly self centred, ruthlessly unsentimental, culturally unresponsive, socially irresponsible. This is everything that gives them a sense of power, but they also loved Margaret because, like them, she was a working class Tory with aspirations to climb the social ladder - they are the same breed, small town Tories, Rotarians, masons, not public school, not Bullingdon Club: they will never belong to the establishment, or have brilliant political careers, but they can dream, and Margaret Thatcher still inspires those dreams.

The Barnet Eye made an interesting point on the day of her death: that it was notable how little official local recognition there is of Margaret Thatcher: nothing named in her honour, no Thatcher House, no Thatcher wing of any local hospital, no -oh, ok - yes, she, in her role of destroying angel,  is really associated with shutting things down, rather than someone you think of to name new things after, perhaps ... and in truth in this respect a fitting commemoration is already everywhere to be seen, in every jobcentre, every hospital, every council estate, every ravaged corner of Broken Barnet.

When Mrs Angry heard Mrs Thatcher had resigned, she was, as it happens, at a meeting in a council office across the road from the Town Hall, in her capacity of something Maggie would have despised - a union convenor. (Yes, Mrs Angry has had many lives and incarnations, before she became Mrs Angry). In the midst of rather obstreperous negotiations, a secretary came rushing in, eyes gleaming, and whispered an urgent message in the ear of the senior officer. He gulped. 'Mrs Thatcher ... Mrs Thatcher has resigned' he said ... Mrs Angry threw her notebook in the air and cheered. 

It was a memorable moment, savoured all the more for the memory of the poll tax demo not long before, outside the same Town Hall, (which nearly proved to be the end of Mrs Angry, due to an incident leading to a ruptured appendix and a nearly fatal case of peritonitis ... )it is hard to explain now the absolute sense of injustice that the Poll Tax engendered, or the hardship that it caused, except to say that what is happening now with the Bedroom Tax is horribly reminiscent. 

And here is the thing, while reminiscence is the order of the day ... for all the dreadful, shameful things that happened in the Thatcher era, it has been clear, since the beginning of the evil coupling of this Coalition government, that the current Tory agenda, affirmed and facilitated by the scabby Libdems, is as bad, or perhaps even worse, than anything Margaret Thatcher produced. Yes, she destroyed our industrial base, and taxed the poor, and oh, devastated every mining community to be found in the length and breadth of the country (and Mrs Angry, without going all Billy Elliot again, has reason particularly to despise this contemptible deed) ... but here now, in her place, we have a Tory leader and a cabinet of monstrosities, a cabal of public school elite men, buffered by centuries of inherited privilege, set on humiliating the despised underclasses of modern Britain, and sending them to the depths of despair.

Margaret did not come from this background, of course, and here was the secret of her success, and her appeal to the Barnet Tories: the outsider who wants to be an insider has only one way to get there, by trampling on the class she comes from. Those who are there already, it might be argued, have no need to demonstrate any such act of betrayal: they trample on the poor simply because they enjoy it, and it reinforces their sense of entitlement.

Mrs Angry was in North Finchley on Monday, walking carefully along that faultline of Broken Barnet, by Tally Ho, opposite the epicentre of the Barnet Spring, Cafe Buzz, and passing by the spot where local legend Horace, much mourned by local residents, used to sit in the street, colouring in his drawings with crayons, and wishing people 'the very best of luck'. 

Mrs Angry then noted another familiar face, out of context: it was one of the squatters who had taken occupation of Friern Barnet library, busking outside a shop, with a battered old guitar. He usually goes about barefoot, this guy, even in the coldest weather, something some of the more conservative minded residents of Friern Barnet found hard to understand. 

A man with a face as worn as his guitar, a raggedy grey beard, and a gap toothed smile, he greeted Mrs Angry, and told her how much he had enjoyed his time in the occupation, and the founding of the People's Library, watching the empowerment of a community: Mrs Angry agreed, and said it had been an experience which was really about so much more than the sum of its parts, the library, or the Barnet Spring: it was the making of friendships, across boundaries which would never have been crossed before, and something else too, less easy to define. He smiled again, then, very sweetly.  Mrs Angry moved off: and then, just a few yards on, with timing surely prompted by the underlying synchronicity of Broken Barnet,  looking at her phone, stopped in her tracks, because she had just received a text saying that Margaret Thatcher had died. 

And when you died, Margaret, as a Mr Damian Mc Bride noted on twitter, there was less mourning for you, here in Finchley, than there was for our man of the street, Horace, whose death was marked by a genuine sense of loss. 

That something indefinable: community, no ... society, a place where people care about each other, that's what we were talking about, Margaret, when you shuffled off this mortal coil. We've been living it, here in your backyard, in the face of your monstrous legacy, the Barnet Thatcherites,  who have been trying to sell us into privatised bondage to Capita for the next fifteen years.

You died in comfort, in your bed in the Ritz, but you died alone, lost in the shadows of dementia, no one at your side, no family, no friends. 

My father died in the grip of the same cruel illness, not in luxury, moved from a hellish local care home to an NHS hospital, here in Barnet, but at least his daughter was there to hold his hand, as he slipped away. I think I know whose was the better death, and who left the better legacy, and who will be truly mourned.

Meanwhile, back in Broken Barnet: Thatcher is dead, but Thatcherism lives on. 

Watch it fighting for survival, then - in the only way it knows how. 




You Thatcherites by name lend an ear
You Thatcherites by name, your faults I will proclaim,
Your doctrines I must blame, you will hear, you will hear
Your doctrines I must blame, you will hear

You privatise away what is ours, what is ours
You privatise away what is ours
You privatise away and then you make us pay
We'll take it back some day, mark my words, mark my words
We'll take it back some day, mark my words