There was an undeniable turbulence about the month of October 1987. In the early hours of the 16th England was pummelled by the worst storm since 1703. The hurricane force wind seemed to shriek with a malevolent glee as it ripped off terracotta roofing tiles and uprooted noble trees. Two days later, on what became known as Black Monday, the markets were spooked and rattled by circumstances which to this days have never been adequately explained and are possibly best regarded as early proof of the existence of voodoo economics. If this had been a film these tempestuous events might have acted as foreshadowing for some unholy act of sorcery, suggesting the troubled stirring of the ether before a diabolic enchantment was given voice and power by a zealous necromancer of extraordinary potency.
On the last day of that month, an interview with the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was published in Woman's Own magazine. The 31st of October is a day celebrated by some as Halloween. One phrase from the interview transcript would gain infamous status; "There is no such thing as society".
Out of context it remains a particularly stark and shocking assertion. In context a marginally more benign light is shed on her pronouncement, for what Margaret was attempting to explore was the notion that society can of itself be expected to solve any given problem, when it is actually nothing more remarkable than a large numbers of separate persons. She is in effect rejecting the glib response sometimes offered in the face of a prickly issue, that it is ' society's fault'. "There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first" she explained. She has a point, but not, I think, a good one. This is a bit like asserting that there is no such thing as a forest, for a forest is actually just a collection of individual trees. Indeed if it did follow that society did not exist because it was comprised of individuals, then presumably she would happily concede that there was no such thing as an audience, a crowd, a conference, a congregation, a constituency, a party or, for that matter, a nation. She really should have thought it through.
I'm certain after the article was published the professional politicians made of it what they could; the left using it as a stick to poke the premier, the right conceding that whilst the wording might be a trifle clumsy, they had nothing but scorn for the way it had been twisted and spun. But I don't suppose that anyone realised the true significance; for in retrospect it now seems certain a spell was cast. Part mantra, part curse, the words permeated our subconscious and began to eat away at something fundamental about who we thought we were. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps there was no such thing as society. Perhaps everyone else understood this and it was only you that still clung to some misguided notion of community. I bet they're laughing at you now. Sniggering behind their hands. They don't care about you. And if they don't care about you, why the hell should you give a damn about them? Any of them.
The real tragedy of this story is that however tempting it might be to portray Margaret Thatcher as some sort of satanic manifestation, I suspect in reality she may have been closer to the character Professor Knowby who featured in the movie Evil Dead II, in that very same year. As you will no doubt recall it is the Professor who recites a passage into a microphone and in doing so inadvertently summons all manner of demonic mayhem and grief. Like the Professor, Maggie was just too bound up in her own self delusion to understand what hellish future she was ushering in. So blinded was she by her sense of ideological destiny that she failed to understand that the rational response when faced by increasing social ills is not to deny society, but to strengthen it.
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