Nos últimos dias a opinião pública e a imprensa europeias
deram mostras de terem sido surpreendidas pelo voto de 52% dos britânicos a
favor da saída do Reino Unido da União Europeia, apontando-se entre outras
razões para esse resultado: o voto dos mais velhos e dos mais pobres, as
questões da imigração, da crise dos refugiados, da identidade cultural e do
retomar do controlo da soberania contra uma integração política que os
britânicos nunca tinham votado. (aqui)(aqui) (aqui)
Talvez valha a pena então recordar algumas das possíveis
razões para que os mais velhos e os mais pobres tivesse votado pelo “Leave”
relembrando ou dando a conhecer algumas das consequências sociais das profundas
transformações que o Reino Unido sofreu nos últimos 35 anos, com a chegada de
Margaret Thatcher ao poder.
Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013) primeira-ministra do
Reino Unido de 1979 a 1990, conjuntamente com Ronald Reagan, desempenhou um
papel crucial na promoção da agenda neoliberal a nível internacional. Rompendo
com o consenso keynesiano do pós-guerra, em torno do “ social wage”, do pleno
emprego, do tamanho e do papel do sector público, das grandes empresas públicas
como a British Steel, a British Rail, e a British Airways, Thatcher, responsabiliza
o Estado de Bem Estar, os salários altos, a falta de produtividade e o poder
dos sindicatos pela crise económica e financeira dos anos 70, critica o seu
ex-primeiro-ministro Edward Heath (1970-1974) de quem tinha sido secretária de
estado educação pelo chamado U-turn, isto é por ter voltado atrás nas medidas
que tinha implementado e que levaram ao maior crescimento no desemprego desde
1947 (1 milhão de desempregados).
Em Outubro de 1980 em Brighton no seu discurso “the lady's not for turning" na Conferência do Partido Conservador, lança as bases
do seu programa que podemos resumir aqui:
- deregulation
of the labor and financial markets (including the “Big Bang” deregulation of
the City of London in 1986);
- privatization
and marketization of the main utilities (water, gas, and electricity) and state
enterprises ( British Steel, British Rail, and British Airways);
- promotion
of home ownership (including the widespread sale of public housing stock under
the “right to buy” scheme);
- curtailing
of workers’ and trade union rights;
- obligatory
membership ballots before any industrial action;
- restrictions
on the right to picket, including a ban on secondary picketing; and removal of
trade union immunity from damages;
- promotion
of free-market ideology in all areas of public life (including health care and
the civil service);
- significant
cuts to the social wage via welfare state retrenchment ( a 7% reduction in
state expenditure on social assistance between 1979–1989; removal of 16- to
18-year-olds from entitlement; reductions in state pensions; abolition of
inflation-link for welfare benefits);
- acceptance of
mass unemployment as a price worth paying for the above policies;
- large tax cuts for the business sector and the
most affluent (during Thatcher’s premiership, the rate of income tax for the
top tax bracket was reduced from 83% to 40%)
Nos anos seguintes, a desregulação financeira, a
liberalização do comércio e a privatização de bens e serviços públicos,
provocaram na sociedade britânica grandes mudanças.
Chamamos aqui a atenção para duas delas, talvez as
mais relevantes, a desindustrialização e a privatização das casas municipais.
Com a desindustrialização, justificada pela reorganização
industrial, levando à privatização das grandes empresas públicas e ao encerramento
daquelas que não eram viáveis “lame ducks”, milhares de trabalhadores perderam
o emprego, perdendo a esperança de voltar novamente ao mercado de trabalho, passando a ser considerados como doentes ( situação denunciada pela própria BMA) “ The
consequences of deindustrialisation hit huge swaths of the UK, particularly
Wales and northern England, hard. Unemployment
soared from 5.3% in 1979 … to peak at 11.9% in 1984. In 1990, the year of
Thatcher's departure, it stood slightly higher than when her era began, at
6.9%. In 1981, 772,000 people classed themselves as being out of the labour
force because they were "permanently sick". A decade later, this
figure had risen to 1.6 million. In numerous towns across the country, the
increases were markedly higher – with those signed off sick tripling or even
quadrupling in a decade. Twenty years later, in the 2011 census, the figure
remained largely unchanged, despite the UK's growing population: 1.7 million
people were classed as long-term sick or disabled.” (aqui)
 |
| Fonte: Guardian |
Com a privatização
das casas municipais, (esta foi uma das mais emblemáticas medidas do thatcherismo,
transformar os inquilinos das casas municipais em proprietários, fazer com que
os britânicos tivessem casa própria) milhares de pessoas passaram a ter a sua própria
casa, criando um florescente mercado da
habitação, que levou a que a população mais favorecida viesse a beneficiar com a especulação imobiliária ao mesmo tempo
que a população mais desfavorecida acabou por perder as suas casas, por não
conseguir pagar as suas hipotecas, ou por ter de vende-las para não terminar na
miséria extrema na falta de emprego e apoios sociais “ In England alone, more than 970,000 local authority-owned
houses were sold through the scheme during Thatcher's premiership, more than
have been sold in the two decades since. Such changes clearly came with a cost, and one of the most direct costs
was the gradual decrease in the amount of social housing – and the resultant
long waits on housing lists today – from a country with a growing population
and atomising households (the number of people per household in the UK is
slowly but steadily falling, as more of us live alone).
In 1981, England and
Wales had 5.4m households in social housing. By 1991, this had dropped by
900,000 to 4.5m. In the post-Thatcher years, this gradual drop-off has endured,
with 4.1m households living in social housing at the last census. That was only
the most direct effect. In addition, many of the first people to buy their
council homes through right to buy almost immediately started to struggle with
their mortgages.” (aqui)
 |
| Fonte: Guardian |
Ancorando-nos nestes dois exemplos e nas conclusões
de um estudo recentemente publicado no International Journal of Health Services
“THE IMPACT OF THATCHERISM ON HEALTH AND WELL-BEING IN BRITAIN” onde os autores
confirmam o aumento das iniquidades em saúde durante o período do thatcherismo.
“… the combination of policies implemented under
Thatcher led to a rapid rise in unemployment rates. Since 1980, the number of
unemployment claimants rose from approximately 1 million to 3 million in 1983;
a further peak was seen in the early 1990s. Meanwhile, there was a steady rise
in the number of claimants of long-term sickness (disability) benefits. The
rise in the number of disability benefit claimants has been attributed to a
government desire to move people off the unemployment register and to the lack
of jobs in the economy. Figure 3 also shows that the 1980s saw a rapid increase
in income inequalities and poverty rates. By the 1990s and 2000s, these new
high levels became normalized. The rises in cause-specific mortalities such as
alcohol- and drug-related deaths, suicide, and violence, and the widening
health inequalities, occurred during the same time period in which
unemployment, poverty, and income inequality all rose … Given what we know about the impact of
Thatcher’s neoliberal reforms on the social and economic landscape of Britain, it seems clear that Thatcher’s legacy
includes the unnecessary and unjust premature death of many British citizens,
together with a substantial and continuing burden of suffering and loss of
well-being. “
