By Jonathan Rowe, YES! Magazine
December 11, 2003
I was hitchhiking around England in the spring of 1983. It happened to
be the middle of an election campaign: Margaret Thatcher was running
for re-election against a professor named Michael Foot, who
represented what was called, with wonderful British aplomb, Labour's
"Radical Tendency."
Polls find that voters support progressive issues. So why have
Americans been voting for such conservative candidates? Because
conservatives are speaking their language
Somewhere north of London I got a ride from a lorry driver. The man
looked as though he had stepped out of a Labour Party poster from the
1930s: gaunt frame, missing teeth, and wool snap-brim cap pulled down
to the eyes. I expected a Labour speech, but got something different.
Yes, Foot was for policies that would benefit workers: progressive
taxes, social safety net, all that. Thatcher, the hardest of Tories, was
against all these things. But Foot was also for unilateral nuclear
disarmament, and this, plus his general demeanor, sent off an aroma that
this driver could not abide. "What a twit he is," he said, in an inflection I
cannot begin to duplicate, especially in print. "Ya goot ta be toooof."
You got to be tough. It's a rough world out there, and this Foot was a
wimp.
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