1979

At the time of the 1979 general election, I was living at Trieste in northern Italy, teaching English as a foreign language. Falmouth reminds me of Trieste. The naval vessels visiting port, which at the time included a US airforce carrier. During lunchtime siesta breaks, I would catch a bus to the nearest beach to go swimming. Former fishing boats also ferried people to villages and beaches along the Serbian coast. At weekends, both Venice and northern Yugoslavia (as it was at the time) were a short train ride away.

I heard the result of the 1979 general election on the BBC world service. I was in the office at the language school. When the radio headline announced that Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, one of the directors at the language school said 'jolly good'. That wasn't how I felt, and the result certainly didn't strengthen my inclination to return to the UK. After the language school term ended, I advertised in the local paper for individual students; there were just enough. I stayed on in Trieste, and then spent a few weeks travelling around Italy, before returning to the UK to take up a university place in the autumn.

The publication today of papers from Margaret Thatcher's first months of office reminded me of two things.

One is the historical irony that - despite Thatcher's predilection for public spending cuts, combative approach, and thick skinned capacity to engender rising poverty and tolerate its human consequences - soaring unemployment meant that the total welfare bill rose rather than fell on her watch and that of John Major. It is also clear from the reports of the papers published now just how little traction a monetarist approach gave the incoming Tory administration on the economy.

The descriptions of Thatcher's dismay at the lack of immediately discoverable profligate public sector waste to trim also reminds me of recent reports of the incoming Tory dominated Cornwall Council executive. In particular, Cllr Jim Currie's apparently annoyed response to an independent report which confirmed that the Council's finances are in reasonable shape with current borrowing levels - and even though, as audit assessments have highlighted, some aspects of their financial management need improvement.

In 1979, the idea that a general election might change the Party governing the country wasn't novel. It was the fourth general election in a decade, and those in 1970 and 1974 - as well as 1979 - had transferred government between Parties. Maybe it was because I was living in Italy during the general election campaign that it was only after I returned that I understood the depth of political change brought by the 1979 general election - persuasive evidence if it were needed that politics, voting, and elections really can change things.