Remembering the 1970s
And there's something else that has been almost completely forgotten by those who call the Thatcher eighties greedy. It was a time, the seventies, of remarkable selfishness. There was no age of community-mindedness before her. A repeated refrain at the time was that "I'm all right, Jack" had become the order of the day, and it was a reaction against this selfishness that helped sweep her into power. Her message as Opposition leader - I was to write it often enough - was that the Conservative Party would stand up for people "who care about their country". The message was not (as she later carelessly said and never believed) that there was no such thing as society; quite the contrary: it was trade-unionists who were called anti-social.


Matthew Parris Chance Witness (2002)