In the centre of York in the mid-1980s there used to be two pieces of graffiti on adjacent walls. One shouted, ‘No war but the class war’; the other advised: ‘Eat the rich, feed the poor’. Maybe the same person wrote them both? If so, it wasn’t the prime minister. Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t have had much time for the second idea – surely feeding anybody would just breed dependency? Yet she might just have agreed with the first.

Thatcher was a politician who claimed to hate class, but she was at heart a class warrior. In this, she could be both disastrously wrong, but also frustratingly right. She hated class because, for her, it reeked too much of collectivism and group action, undermining the only things that mattered – individuals and families. Despite this, she thought almost continually in terms of class. The trade unions she despised didn’t just represent collectivism, but something worse: working-class collectivism. That is why they had to be crushed. Wherever the blame lies for the confrontations of the 1980s, at the very least a great deal attaches to the prime minister and her class vision.

Mostly the left was happy to love Thatcher’s class enemies, but not always. Sometimes she could frustrate the left, turning on their enemies more effectively than they could manage. She styled herself as a champion of the little man, taking on the establishment – just the kind of ‘class war’ that the left should believe in. She said that she wanted the end of an ordered, historical, hierarchical vision of society that couldn’t be changed. This was problematic for the left, not because we disagreed with this particular part of what she said, but because she stole the clothes that we believed to be rightfully ours. We believed (and still believe) that standing up for the underdog is exclusively a task for the left; she showed us that this didn’t have to be the case.

Thatcher painted her enemies on the right as the guardians of privilege, which she swore to end. If that isn’t a class war, then what is? When she sacked Lord Soames it is said that he gave her the impression that ‘the natural order of things was being violated’. She wrote that his expression was that of a man ‘dismissed by his housemaid’. This is fantastic stuff! Why shouldn’t we rejoice in this busting of privilege, even if it was Thatcher who was doing it? But Thatcher also painted the left as being the supporters of vested interests – the elite, sitting in their trade unions, universities and NGOs, crushing the little man. She inverted and perverted our view of class, but she drew support because of it.

Whenever she was right or wrong – and she was mostly wrong – her posture of anti-elitist support for the underdog and dislike of the establishment is surely something that should win our support. In a battle between a lord and his housemaid, whose side are you on? Yet, too often, Labour at the time and now look too much like the establishment. Or, worse, we look like we aren’t in the establishment, but desperately want to be there. We forget which side we should be on, and that is disastrous for our mission as a party. You don’t have to get dewy-eyed for the days of Militant to agree that Harold Wilson was right – Labour is a moral crusade or it is nothing. And it is difficult to fight a moral crusade from the establishment: just ask Prince Charles.

We should have no truck whatsoever with inherited positions or stultified patronage, regardless of who is doling out the silver spoons. Labour must always be professional and pragmatic, never letting unrealistic idealism stand in the way of tangible social change. We fail the people who rely on us most when we forget this. But we must always remember whose side we are on – the little man and the underdog. We are an anti-establishment party, and we forget that at our peril.

We aren’t alone in sometimes beginning to look like the establishment. All parties do it – it is exactly this sense among traditional voters of all parties that fuels the current surge for UKIP. Never mind that Nigel Farage is a former City stockbroker; his party has tapped into a feeling among many people that the main parties are all the same, and that none of them are fighting against the current order of life. It didn’t matter that Thatcher’s policies benefited the haves over the have-nots. She took a political stance against the establishment, just as Farage is doing now, and it worked.

Often this is a question more of political tone than of policy. Just as championing the underdog can be a pose adopted by the right, so taking on the establishment doesn’t require us to be hard-left. Labour can appeal to wide swaths of voters and win elections by taking a principled and realistic stance against the established order of things. Ed Miliband is doing just that when he talks of vested interests. Thatcher was wrong about most things, but she was right when she flew the flag for the underdog. We must do the same – only, unlike Thatcher, our policies must follow the flag. If we don’t, we’ll find that it is not only UKIP supporters who see no difference between the main parties – our own supporters will agree with them.

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Mark Rusling is a Labour and Cooperative councillor in the London borough of Waltham Forest and writes the Changing to Survive column

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