really, for the Labour Partyâs inability to cope with the trade unions. But no great expectation that she would be any better at it. They felt she ought to have a chance. I think quite a lot of people thought that she couldnât do any worse than the men . . .
CB: How would you describe the economic climate, the moral climate in Britain back then?
BI: Let me try to make the point this way. Just as I believe people in this country, the most stupid people in our country, most of whom can be found in our government, do not understand the nature of the trauma that hit the United States with 9/11, so the United Statesâand people in this country have forgottenâso people in the United States will have no understanding, really, of the dire nature that British society had reached by 1979. It wasnât quite so bad that people felt that society was breaking down, but it was bad
enough for people to wonder whether they would go into work that day, whether they would get into work that day, whether their rubbish would be cleared, where the next strikeârailway or whateverâwould happen. And it was a poor society. Iâve never been as poor in my adult life as I was in the mid â70s. Devaluation [of the currency] and all that kind of thing. I felt, even though I was a civil servant, I felt impoverished. Because of the shabbiness. The way Britain had become, it felt totally shabby. In the hands of a many-headed dictator calledâ
CB: What did âshabbyâ look like?
BI: It was a fairly primitive society. People living in council houses, under the thumb of local authorities, large areas of working-class houses that had long since seen their best . . . It was shabby.
Britain was shabby, I can testify to this. In fact, I moved to Britain in 1988, at the tail end of the Thatcher era, and it was still shabby. Before this, I had been working in Paris as a fille au pair. The difference between Paris and Londonâeven after nearly ten years of Thatcherâwas shocking. Paris was gay, bright, renovated; London was dreary and sullen. Throughout Britain, people looked ragged and worn-down. The food was inedible. Standards of customer service were appalling. Nearly twenty years later, the transformation of Britain is undeniable. London is now pristine and gleaming, packed with superb restaurants, purveyors of flat-screen televisions and organic linens, upscale aromatherapists. There has been a transformation in the appearance of the British people: They look healthier; they have better skin and glossier hair; they are well-dressed. To take the Eurostar from London to Paris is now to have precisely the opposite reaction from the one I had two decades ago. Getting off the train, one notes immediately that by comparison with London, Paris is shabby.
Prior to the 1979 election, the British ambassador to Paris, Nicholas Henderson, sent a dispatch to the Foreign Office. It was
leaked several weeks later to the press during the general election campaign and immediately became an iconic document, a detailed and devastating dissection of British shabbiness and all that it entailed.
âI myself,â he wrote,
was able to observe Churchill, Attlee and Bevin dealing on equal terms with Stalin and Truman at the Potsdam Conference when no German or Frenchman was present . . . in the mid â50s we were still the strongest European power, economically and militarily . . . It is our decline since then in relation to our European partners that has been so marked, so that today we are not only no longer a world power, we are not even in the first rank as a European one . . .
Indeed in France we have come nowadays to be associated with malaise as closely as in the old days we were associated with success. 22
Contemporary readers of this document will be struck by another remark. âApologists,â wrote Henderson, â. . . will argue that the British way of life, with ingenuity and application
CB: How would you describe the economic climate, the moral climate in Britain back then?
BI: Let me try to make the point this way. Just as I believe people in this country, the most stupid people in our country, most of whom can be found in our government, do not understand the nature of the trauma that hit the United States with 9/11, so the United Statesâand people in this country have forgottenâso people in the United States will have no understanding, really, of the dire nature that British society had reached by 1979. It wasnât quite so bad that people felt that society was breaking down, but it was bad
enough for people to wonder whether they would go into work that day, whether they would get into work that day, whether their rubbish would be cleared, where the next strikeârailway or whateverâwould happen. And it was a poor society. Iâve never been as poor in my adult life as I was in the mid â70s. Devaluation [of the currency] and all that kind of thing. I felt, even though I was a civil servant, I felt impoverished. Because of the shabbiness. The way Britain had become, it felt totally shabby. In the hands of a many-headed dictator calledâ
CB: What did âshabbyâ look like?
BI: It was a fairly primitive society. People living in council houses, under the thumb of local authorities, large areas of working-class houses that had long since seen their best . . . It was shabby.
Britain was shabby, I can testify to this. In fact, I moved to Britain in 1988, at the tail end of the Thatcher era, and it was still shabby. Before this, I had been working in Paris as a fille au pair. The difference between Paris and Londonâeven after nearly ten years of Thatcherâwas shocking. Paris was gay, bright, renovated; London was dreary and sullen. Throughout Britain, people looked ragged and worn-down. The food was inedible. Standards of customer service were appalling. Nearly twenty years later, the transformation of Britain is undeniable. London is now pristine and gleaming, packed with superb restaurants, purveyors of flat-screen televisions and organic linens, upscale aromatherapists. There has been a transformation in the appearance of the British people: They look healthier; they have better skin and glossier hair; they are well-dressed. To take the Eurostar from London to Paris is now to have precisely the opposite reaction from the one I had two decades ago. Getting off the train, one notes immediately that by comparison with London, Paris is shabby.
Prior to the 1979 election, the British ambassador to Paris, Nicholas Henderson, sent a dispatch to the Foreign Office. It was
leaked several weeks later to the press during the general election campaign and immediately became an iconic document, a detailed and devastating dissection of British shabbiness and all that it entailed.
âI myself,â he wrote,
was able to observe Churchill, Attlee and Bevin dealing on equal terms with Stalin and Truman at the Potsdam Conference when no German or Frenchman was present . . . in the mid â50s we were still the strongest European power, economically and militarily . . . It is our decline since then in relation to our European partners that has been so marked, so that today we are not only no longer a world power, we are not even in the first rank as a European one . . .
Indeed in France we have come nowadays to be associated with malaise as closely as in the old days we were associated with success. 22
Contemporary readers of this document will be struck by another remark. âApologists,â wrote Henderson, â. . . will argue that the British way of life, with ingenuity and application
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