has been getting a lot of flak in the press since Margaret Thatcher’s death. She has, say the Lefts, created a generation or three of selfish individuals at the expense of the kindly caring community.

In death, Thatcher is still demonised – and misquoted (“I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There’s no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”).

Miners on the other hand, who held the country to ransom till she grabbed both the country’s reins and her warrior’s spear, are sanctified, their festering hatred treated as gospel while ignoring some unpalatable truths – “…there were more pit closures under Harold Wilson than under Thatcher. For comparison: 406 pits closed in the 1960s, with 315,000 job losses; only 146 closed in the 1980s, with 173,000 jobs lost…” (Tom Chivers).

I still recall the electricity cuts, the three day weeks, rubbish piling high on the streets, the dead unburied, not knowing if my job was safe – and all because of the ripple effect of striking miners. Not that today’s chatterati seem to remember – or want to remember. Striking miners bullied those who chose to work – some community spirit – harassing and intimidating women and children and for what? To keep open uneconomic nationalised industries? If they were viable, why not buy them from the nation?

Actually I remember voicing just such a thought at the time. Seemed eminently logical to me. But far too many people want to pass the buck. Echoing a thought from my last blog post, too many just want someone else to provide them with a 9-5, Monday to Friday job. They do not want the responsibility of running a company and a workforce but still demand rights.

It is the individual mind that is the risk-taker, carrying the weight of however many employees they may have, burdened by excessive regulation, most of which serves to stop them hiring more.

(I am excluding here the old boys’ network, the merry-go-round of chairmen and chief executives, those who hog corporate jobs, usually do a lousy job while lining their pockets with ever higher salary packages, then swing off into a similar position elsewhere even if sacked.)

Yet the individual mind, from Einstein to Gandhi to David Livingstone and Joan of Arc, has created immeasurable good for the community. Even unstarry individual minds up and down the land form local protest groups for a perceived greater good. That local individual mind is both the heart and the limbs of the resistance.

Communities benefit from the efforts of the individual usually without getting personally involved. Most (as we know locally here with unwanted house development) are totally clueless but quick to moan when they can’t get their child into school or to see a doctor. Individuals keep the flame burning not communities.

The individual mind is free to think and often to act. The community mind, even down several generations, is boxed and blinkered at best, putting the brakes on change, and sometimes passing down a poisonously negative influence at worst.

The individual mind is often a voice of conscience while the community mind more often than not wants simple low-humming life.

Communities are rarely the life-enhancing support mechanisms we are frequently lead to believe. While many do operate a much-needed controlling hand over those with similar ideals, the other hand is usually enforcing such delights as honour killing, genital mutilation, marriage within class (a black woman is marrying into the ranks of the British aristocracy in June – something that is noteworthy even these days) and so on. If people do not conform within their given communities, they are ostracised or worse (see above re non-striking miners).

Sportsmen and women in pushing the boundaries of their specialty need to be single-minded. Selfish, even. Individual.

However, their achievements become achievements for the community. So there is not one without the other. The advantages gained by the individual are spread out to the wider whole in some way. Otherwise we all dumb down to the detriment of all.

In the dim and distant days when I had to fill out a personality profile test during some job interviews, I would invariably get ‘source of ideas’ and ‘high creative influence’. But I would also get ‘good team player’.

This was a brilliant mix if I was interviewed by a Sales Director or Managing Director – but a one-way ticket out the door if I was unfortunate enough to see anyone in HR first.

“Too individual” has been said to me and/or about me more often than I can recall.

Needless to say I objected passionately. It is wholly possible to be individual and a good team player (ie to have community spirit). Indeed I even started a newsletter after one such rejection – ISJ – the Individual in Society. Me with my individual thoughts and creative bent, trying to help society in my own way.

Plus ça change.

Eugene Leo Edward Labon – never forgotten

PS Am posting another blog to test out whether the images will show as opposed to the Gravatar or nothing.