Memorialisation of the wars-Thatcher

  Thatcher's “Victorian Values” traditionalism more of style than substance

Thatcher gave business a heroic pedigree- alternative of national epic

Labour evoked alternative story; Kinnock: “Victorian Britain was a place where a few got rich and most got hell”

If VV struck cord it was because of disenchantment with modernisation of 60s

Growth of new working-class Tory voter: not deferential to rich but disdainful of those lower down the scale

On of Thatcher's strengths was turning policy into moral economy: competition bracing, market created equitable distribution, job-shedding was losing weight

VV wasn't temporal but allegorical- reverse of present

Chapel rather than church but no attempt to turn this into legislation: number of those on supplementary benefits rose from 3.4 billion in 1979 to 5.6 billion in 1988

Outstanding debt rose from 3% a ¼ 1981-1988 to 14% 1987

  Malcolm Smith: Blitz interpreted in two different ways: two competing political mythologies

Left wing emphasises collapse of the bad old guard

Right wing emphasises patriotism of the British people

Thatcher led to domination of the right

Falklands War never seen as People’s Victory- personal victory for Thatcher

Martin Shaw: ““In Thatcher's appropriation of the Second World War memories there was, however, a particularly limited vision of wartime experiences, since she wished to claim the patriotism while jettisoning the sharing og equality under threat”

History as the past and history as a sign of the present: history as a container of meaning

Brannagh's choice of H5 1989 to launch Renaissance Films- signifies history through surface and chain of associations

Branagh ventriquolised Thatcherite rhetoric despite himself: at issue were competing mythologies of the recent past

After 1945 powerful inflections to the left: evoked Great Depression, and social misery and vowed it would never happen again

Accumulations of national anxieties exposed far-reaching confusions in identity

This view of Thatcherism as an aggressive reimagining of British identity became distinctive orthodoxy of 1990 cultural studies

British cinema mines the past but WW2 rarely mentioned

In making portrait about war itself Hope and Glory stands by itself and debunks older narratives of war

Film subverts narrative and symbolic expectations because child removed from military narratives: thank you Adolf when school bombed

Films find a place beyond obvious frameworks of war to tell story of escape

Schepsisi's 1985 Plenty- attempts at eve of Thatcherism to problematise legacy of 1945 from the left

Brassneck, Country- A Tory Story: Calder's Peoples War directly inspired these productions

Plenty is an allegorising of post-war normalising and national decline- Susan Traherne desceneds from episonage to illness- film is attack on postwar restoration and power of state to stifle change

Plenty is positioned between angry radicalism of the 1960s and new defeats of the 1980s