Thatcherism's toxic legacy lives on in Reform UK

The National

27-05-2025

These towns carry a rich history on their shoulders, but one of startling contrasts. The accumulation of fabulous wealth for the few on the backs of grinding labour by the many. A proud working class, but with many nowadays turning to despair and seething rage at betrayals by modern politicians.
An area that suffered heavily at the hands of Maggie Thatcher's red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism 40 years ago, now in desperate need of a vision of hope, of change, of radical socialist change.
The constituency is built on the Lanarkshire coalfield where the country's richest peers, the Dukes of Hamilton, stole thousands of acres of land from the people in Eddlewood, Cadzow and beyond, with the help of kings, and built unimaginable fortunes on the backs of miners hewing coal from the bowels of the earth, suffering not just starvation, and loss of limbs but frequent deaths.
READ MORE: SNP figures believe Nigel Farage's Reform UK will come second in key by-election
Ancient history, you might protest, but don't the brutal class exploitation and dirty methods echo down the ages?
Forty years ago, Thatcher's Tory government, representing parasitic finance capitalism, deployed police to impose her industrial vandalism on the mining communities of this area. The legacy remains to this day, with savagely reduced wages as a share of national wealth; rampant job insecurity with zero-hours contracts; and the manacles of anti-trade union laws which Thatcher introduced but Labour governments have refused to repeal.
That's why the SSP's call for an immediate £15-an-hour minimum wage for all – and abolition of all zero-hours contracts – has gained such resonance.
Thatcher's infamous 'right to buy' council houses obliterated access to quality, affordable housing for young people and families. It transformed housing into a cash machine for slum landlords, bankers, and property speculators, instead of social provision of the basic human right to shelter.
READ MORE: Why is Labour's Hamilton by-election campaign so bad?
Behind the curtains of many decent-looking houses, with lovingly kept gardens, lurks fuel poverty. Pensioners, low-paid families, even middle-income workers, watching every penny as they juggle the cost of food, household energy bills and public transport.
This entirely avoidable, morally repugnant poverty was created by the profiteering of big energy companies, giant supermarkets and privatised bus firms – who rip profit out of passengers through exorbitant fares, but additionally grabbed £440 million in Scottish Government subsidies last year.
The SSP's advocacy of free travel for all on publicly-owned buses, trains, subways and ferries – saving the average worker £1400 a year, and combating pollution – and our call for democratic public ownership of all forms of energy, have been well received. People are visibly shocked when we explain every household could have been £1800 better off in 2022 if the profit element had been removed through nationalisation of energy.
Lifelong Labour voters shake with anger at how their bills have risen three times in nine months, after Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar promised a Labour government would cut heating bills by £300.
Privatisation of services initiated by Thatcher was escalated by Tony Blair's Labour government, including local schools and hospitals.
Labour's infamous private finance initiative (PFI) means Hairmyres and Wishaw hospitals were built for a combined total of £168 but public funds have been plundered to the tune of £1.5 billion in repayments of PFI fees.
This glut of money siphoned off to capitalist moneylenders could instead pay the salaries of 4000 nurses for 10 years. That's why the SSP have been advocating immediate cancellation of all PFI schemes, to invest the savings in hospital staff and equipment; upgrade school buildings; and cut class sizes to a maximum of 20, creating teachers' jobs.
This by-election occurs against the background of escalating austerity by a Labour Government which stubbornly refuses to tackle wealth inequality, upholds the rule of the millionaire class, and thereby feeds the flames of fury which arch-Thatcherite Reform UK divert into vicious hate-filled scapegoating.
To make matters worse, Starmer has reinforced the momentum of Nigel Farage by spewing out bilious Farage-like talk of 'living in an island of strangers'. The only real strangers to working-class people in Hamilton, Larkhall or Stonehouse are the gang of multimillionaires – overwhelmingly former Tories – who lead Reform UK.
Theirs is an exercise in monumental political distraction. Turning the gaze of some desperate people towards even more desperate people fleeing wars and persecution, away from the real causes of their poverty, poor housing, and collapsing public services: capitalist parties who pamper the millionaires and punish the millions.
With the help of the broadcast media, who refuse a platform to the SSP but for years have promoted Farage, the real arch-Thatcherite aims of Reform UK are hidden from many people who in despair are tempted to vote for them as a way of lashing out at years of betrayal by Labour and growing discontent with the SNP.
READ MORE: Reform UK are a real and present danger in Scotland
Thatcher is long dead but Thatcherism is alive in the form of Reform UK – and stalking the former coalfields of Lanarkshire. Former Tory Party member Farage once said: 'I'm the only politician keeping the flame of Thatcherism alive.'
Reform UK MPs voted to keep zero-hours contracts and retain capitalist bosses' right to fire and rehire workers on lower wages. They want to rip up the NHS and replace it with private, profit-driven health insurance schemes, akin to that of the US, where medics don't so much feel your pulse as feel your wallet to see if you can afford treatment.
They want to slash public services by £150bn a year and drastically reduce taxation of big business and the very rich – which includes the entire Reform leadership.
Far from being anti-establishment, this is an outfit of and for the millionaires. Farage admitted to having claimed £2m in expenses from the European Parliament, which he proclaims not to even believe in; a multi-millionaire former stockbroker who coined in an additional £572,000 in the recent six months, on top of his £94,000 MP's salary. Hardly a man of the people.
You can't defeat Farageism by imitating their poisonous policies. The SSP have confronted Reform with a battery of policies against their extreme Tory agenda of devastation. Instead of perpetuating rule and ruin by the millionaire class – as Reform, Labour and others do – the SSP stand for a massive redistribution of wealth away from the millionaires who hoard it to the millions who need it.
We've advocated a 5% wealth tax on all millionaires – to raise in one year the equivalent of four years' worth of the entire Scottish budget. Even if you narrowed that policy down to the richest 10 people in Scotland – yes, 10 individuals – it would raise £1.24bn in one year for investments in housing renovation, community and youth centres, leisure facilities and other improvements to life.
The SSP's by-election candidate Collette Bradley has pledged if elected she'll lodge a bill in the Scottish Parliament to immediately abolish the unfair Council Tax and replace it with the SSP's income-based Scottish Service Tax, which would mean eight out of 10 people in the constituency paying less, but would double national funds for local jobs and services from £2.7bn to £5.3bn.
The money is there, but it's in the wrong – and far too few – hands.
None of the parties currently in power have any intention of tackling grotesque wealth inequality by taxing the rich or pursuing democratic public ownership of all services and major industries.
But that's precisely what's required to combat the boil of seething discontent from spilling over into a vote for Reform UK. It's a daunting struggle to combat the far-right, but the SSP are determined to offer hope, not despair. To champion genuine socialist change, not a continuation of rule and ruin by the millionaire class and all their multi-coloured political mouthpieces.