An interesting if grim set of results from the latest Guardian/ICM survey. Asked to assess Margaret Thatcher's term in office and it's legacy a narrow majority of people look favourably on her destroying the basis of social democracy, in this case trade unionism and council housing, but oppose the (some would say logical) result of that destruction, structural unemployment and widening class divisions.
Now, we're Gramsicans; we take it as read that median subaltern consciousness in average times is contradictory, that's why we organise. And of course this is just one survey, and surveys are not neutral examinations. But, if it is true, this political agnosticism, people wanting the ends but not the means of social democracy, suggests why a coherent anti-austerity movement has proved difficult to put together.
