Dominic Sandbrook has a new book out on Britain 1979-1982, Who Dares Wins, covering the early years of the Thatcher Government. Sandbrook is a TV historian and writes in the Daily Mail but that is not to say he is not a decent professional historian. He noted some of the main sources used at the beginning of the book,including the Thatcher Foundation archive which I look at myself from time to time.Further the book is well foot noted and those I’ve checked are accurate.
I was interested in his reference to a rally of the People’s March for Jobs in Wolverhampton. Benn spoke and briefly records the moment in his Diary (14th May 1981). Benn refers to 230 marchers ‘bright and cheerful’ and writes of addressing a crowd of 4,000 supporters who displayed ‘tremendous enthusiasm’.
Sandbrook, in part, notes of the crowd that they were ‘stereotypical activists, beards, T-shirts, leather jackets’ which I think comes from a Times report of the same event (15th May 1981).
Sandbrook sees in the support for Benn a kind of religious revivalism (the same could be said for Thatcher and both politicians were religious).However the framework is interesting.
Sandbrook is writing the first draft of history and one question given the decline of British industry , accelerated by Thatcher, and the job losses it led to, is why campaigns like the Peoples March did not succeed.
That however would require a rather different book
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