Like her or loath her, Maggie Thatcher had a huge impact on Britain - and British climbing. Leading mountaineer and ex-miner Andy Cave explains just how the Iron Lady changed his life.
In 1984, most cafes in Britain served weak instant coffee and a mobile phone weighed 1kg. Decent climbers thought nothing of soloing terrifying routes like Archangel on Stanage Edge above a tiny John Smith’s beer towel. Climbing hero Ron Fawcett wore yellow Ron Hill tracksters and Hanwegs - more like pit boots than rock shoes.
As it happens, I owned a pair of actual pit boots, though I hadn’t worn them for months - they were in my locker at Grimethorpe Colliery, beyond the picket line. Like thousands of other UK coal miners I was on strike, in disagreement with the Thatcher government about the national pit closure programme. (Note, it was the ‘Thatcher government’, not the Conservative or New Labour or Coalition government. You don’t often hear the Cameron government bandied about.)
Back then neither dubstep or the ipod had been invented. The UK number 1 single in June 1984 was When Two Tribes Go to War. For many people it seemed as though two extreme individuals had - Thatcher and Scargill, the NUM president.
My brother and sister were still at school, my dad was on strike, my mam performed miracles of management that allowed us to survive without a wage for 12 months. I suddenly found I had time on my hands to climb a few days a week, and my standard rocketed from VS to E4 in three months - like a casual jogger transformed into a regular sub-3hr marathon athlete.
Unemployment was rife, and many unemployed climbers were helping push rock climbing boundaries. There was little money, lots of hitchhiking and heaps of passion. In my book Learning to Breathe, I tell of a trip to Snowdonia where the petrol from my stove leaked into a cake. I ate most of the disgusting thing, as I had nothing else.
I’ve borrowed the title for this piece from a review of my book that the Independent ran. Maggie undoubtedly shaped the environment that made me who I am. As well as climbing, I also began to mix with people outside of my everyday social group, people who had been through higher education. A couple of years after the end of the strike, I quit my job, went to university - there were grants available then – and committed myself to mountaineering in the Himalayas and beyond.
No doubt many of us will reflect on what it was like to be alive during the Thatcher era, and have opinions on the impact of her legacy: The rise of entrepreneurship, deregulation of the city, a diminished role for trade unions, to name a few.
Many people still living in the former industrial regions of the UK - Liverpool, the north-east, South Yorkshire - take issue with what they perceive as Thatcher’s lack of empathy; simplistic, black and white approach to complex social and economic problems; the idea that to be a good leader is not to listen to other people’s point of view. The coal industry in Germany was also scaled down, but with humility. Creating an infrastructure where unions and companies work together has kept the German economy strong. Continued high unemployment in the UK industrial heartlands is being paid for by the taxpayer.
Like her or loath her, Thatcher had a huge impact on Britain, and many of us are the product of her policies, if not her vision
Who is Andy Cave?
Andy Cave has been climbing 30 years this month and to celebrate this he's posting some great old school images on his facebook timeline. Also, there will be a fun competition starting next month where you could win a day out climbing with the man himself - check out
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