Parris on Britain 2008
I know that I am not writing anything myself but...
a.) I haven't been very well for the past couple of weeks
b.) this is another of those essays - in this case a very short one - which demands to be reproduced everywhere.
Now one does have to point out the irony that Parris was a Tory MP when Thatcher destroyed the coal and steel industries. But that does not detract from the quality of this little gem of an essay. It seems to me to be near perfect prose, leaving one with an indelible image. And there is that central point about the fact that politics matter.
Chesterfield was hit very hard by Eighties Thatcherism. A few miles down the railway from Sheffield, the Derbyshire town depended directly and indirectly on a regional economy rooted in steel and coal. When such jobs disappeared, many youths without much academic qualification joined the Army. Today the deaths in Afghanistan of soldiers from Chesterfield and nearby towns such as Mansfield and Ilkeston appear regularly on the front pages of local papers.
Here's a snapshot from last Sunday, outside Chesterfield station. It is early afternoon. In the driving, freezing January rain stands a young serviceman, in full, neatly pressed, new-looking desert kit, taking a drag on a cigarette. He is standing in the rain because station and platforms have become, by law, smoke-free. He is waiting for the Virgin Cross-Country train.
Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown. Pit closures, private rail companies, foreign wars, and a ban on smoking. People tell you politics make no difference, but - for good or ill - every element in this snapshot was placed there by politicians. Boy in uniform smoking in the rain. Chesterfield, 15.30, 20/01/08. I wish I'd had a camera. <<
from The Times 24/01/08.