Thatcher historians' arguments Flashcards
Gamble: The Thatcher Myth
- The ‘Thatcher myth’ exaggerated agency and downplayed the role of contingency and the structural contexts in which Thatcher operated.
- Contemporaries and historians have too quickly subscribed to the ‘Thatcher myth’.
Green: Ideologies of Conservatism
• Origins of Thatcher’s economic policies much earlier than the 1970s.
• Thatcher praised the 1930s. Thatcherism was a rejection of Conservative policies for the last 30 years. Consensus base on a misinterpretation of the 1930s (a period which Thatcher praised).
• The Conservatives were influences by ‘The Road to Serfdom’ in 1945 – it influenced their election campaign, and also Churchill’s ‘Gestapo’ speech.
• In 1968 Enoch Powell argued that the Conservatives should stop apologising for being capitalist and embrace liberal market policies. Green argues that Powell’s ideas were becoming increasingly important among Conservatives.
• Thatcher was influenced by Keith Joseph: his think tank ‘Policy Studies’ (1974) produced a series of policy papers that foreshadowed Thatcher’s legislative developments.
• Reaction to Selsdon Park Conference in early 1970; group created radical free market agenda. Faced criticism at the time but influenced later years.
Overall, ‘proto-Thatcherism’ existed throughout much of the 1970s. Thatcher’s actions part of the long-term, international trend of the convergence of liberal and Conservative politics.
Jackson and Saunders: ‘Making Thatcher’s Britain’
- Victory in the Falklands was significant for the election. Although Thatcher did not gain lots of support directly from them, failure would have cost her her victory
- Thatcher’s harsh economic policies paid off
- Thatcher’s economic policies were pragmatic, not revolutionary.
- Victory over the miners did not generate lots of support – Thatcher is seen as harsh. Miners were pitied.
- If an election had been called in 1987 the Conservatives might well have lost and Thatcher’s leadership is likely to have come to an end.
- Labour was divided over the Falklands
Jenkins: ‘Mrs Thatcher’s Revolution’ (1987)
- Supports the idea that Thatcher led a revolution. Argues that no other European country underwent anything similar.
- Thatcher benefited from the perceived malaise of the 1970s. Labour suffered from social changes that gave Conservatives their chance.
- Thatcher on a self-defined mission to ‘kill socialism’.
Vinen: Thatcher’s Britain: the Politics and Social Upheaval of the 1980s
- Sympathetic to Thatcher’s economic policies; they paid off and began to reverse decades of economic decline
- The electoral significance of the Falklands was limited – however, ‘saved’ by General Leopoldo Galtieri
- Unions;
- Thatcher’s attack on the unions was not radical, it was necessary.
- Even though the strike left a ‘nasty taste’ with increased sympathy for miners, Vinen argues that the gulf between Thatcher and industry was not that wide. Thatcher was lucky in Scargill as her opponent (allowed personal righteousness to cloud personal judgement). The victory was orchestrated by Peter Walker, a ‘wet’ in Thatcher’s cabinet. NOT Thatcherite.
- Vinen stresses the importance of the significance of the failure of the Labour party. They were divided. Their manifesto was ‘the longest suicide note in history’. They chose ‘unelectable’ Michael Foot as leader).
- Key question in book; ‘how much of a Thatcherite was Thatcher? - Thatcher was no much of an ideologue. Views influenced by own middle-class background.
- Thatcher inhabited the ‘myth’ of being a fearless, determined leader – argues that she seldom demonstrated the cold calculation that is popularly attributed to her.
- Thatcher faltered when she ran out of external enemies – cabinet broke up (she faced opposition from Nigel Lawson and Geoffrey Howe, two key Thatcherites).
- (Andrew Anthony) sense that Parliamentary politics are dealt with, but politics in a wider sense (i.e. social tensions) are not.
- Thatcherism changed the nation through privatisation, the sale of council houses, rising property prices and the deregulation in the City of London.
Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Lawrence: Margaret Thatcher and the decline of class politics
- ‘languages of class’ more ubiquitous in the 1970s than in the 1960s.
- context of the emergence of Thatcherism – manifestos of 1974 placed workers’ interests centre-stage, Healey proclaimed he would ‘squeeze property speculators until the pips squeak’ (i.e. squeeze the rich).
- Polls of the mid-1970s consistently found that 2/3 of Britons believed there to be a class struggle in the country.
- Thatcher was herself stamped by class in the mid70s – representing the middle class.
- Thatcherite political language was creative in terms of class.
- Thatcherites rejected the notion of ‘class’ as being Marxist – planned instead a completely new popular constituency. Ordinary working families. Middle Britain. Constructed a cross-class popular appeal around ‘battle cries’ for freedom, self-reliance and enterprise. Were not confident to fully mobilise this in 1979 – some images of ‘typical’ skilled manual workers in election broadcast.
- These were not seen in 1983 – new constituency was reached out to.
- Discipline of sociology came under attack. Budget of the research council responsible for social services cut by ½.
Cannadine
- Argues that Thatcher saw the middle class as embodying virtues she most admired.
- Concludes that Thatcher never projected a fully coherent social vision.
Green: Thatcher
- Green is a supporter of the New Right.
- Argues that much of Thatcher’s achievement lay in her ability to develop policies and to respond to tendencies already in place.
- ‘One Nation’ Conservatives (such as Enoch Powell and Keith Joseph) were among her most fervent supporters
- Heath did not do a U-turn in 1972 – his commitment to the free market had been exaggerated. Only seen as a U-turn against the background of ‘Selsdon Man’.
- Green argues that Thatcher’s career helped transform the Labour Party into a body that could embrace both the market and the consumerist vocabulary of the 1980s.
- Thatcher appeared both in her own time, and later on, as a radical.
- emphasis on individual choice
- transforming our attitudes to business
- unchained the idea that it could be the business of governments to change the culture of the society being ruled.
- Thatcherism has roots on earlier intellectualism (e.g. Centre for Policy studies, Hayek).
Letwin: The Anatomy of Thatcherism
- Thatcher was Conservative – she was trying to restore the ‘moral balance’ that had been disturbed because of the ‘compassionate virtues’ that had come to dominate Britain.
- Thatcher intended to advance ‘vigorous virtues’
Minogue: review of Letwin
• Thatcher’s most significant failure was in being unable to stem the rising sentimental character of British political rhetoric – increasing view that the government should provide services that its subjects needed, rather than sustaining the framework in which individuals should pursue their own projects.
D. Kavanagh: Thatcherism and British Politics; The end of Consensus?
- Thatcher took office as a warrior, not a healer.
- She saw the return to Victorian values as the solution (unleashing of market forces, creation of an ‘enterprise culture’, reductions in public expenditure and direct taxation, cutback in role of state, more individual responsibility and self-reliance).
- The intellectual origins of this go back a long way – Hayek, Milton Friedman, Institute of Economic Affairs, Centre for Policy Studies etc.
- Thatcher has authoritarian views
Sutcliffe-Braithwaite: Neo-Liberalism and Morality in the making of Thatcherite Social Policy
- Between 1975 and 1979, Thatcher’s Conservative party abandoned attempts to develop comprehensive, state-led, paternalistic schemes to tackle poverty.
- Rational tax/benefit system would
- Provide a safety net for the poor
- Encourage effort and thrift
- Marginalize the importance of state welfare for the middle classes
- Re-invigorate ‘bourgeois virtues’ which had flourished in Victorian Britain
- Thatcher’s policies underpinned by a family-centred, moralistic individualism with roots in Methodism, and a Hayekian fear of the state.
- Moral and economic rejuvenation of Britain. Moral (as well as economic) incentives behind tax/benefit system (tax benefits and reduce income tax) – thought they would make the system fair, re-incentivise citizens and re-energise the economy. Slightly different aims to neo-liberals. Given the right incentives, Thatcherites thought that the poor would pull themselves out of poverty.
- Thatcherism was an ideology. Rooted in conceptualisations of society and human nature rooted in Thatcher’s formative years. Stubbornness of Methodist individualism. (focus on Christianity as an influence interesting in light of Callum Brown’s thesis of ‘discursive Chritsianity’ faltering in Britain in the 60s). Thought that socialist structures had undermined Victorian virtues (structure changing culture). Socialism caused economic and moral decline.
Gamble: The Free Economy and the Strong State
• There never was a coherent and cohesive agenda which could be called Thatcherism.
• Downplays the effects of Tory rule in the 1980s. Thatcherism was no more than an opportunistic project of a Conservative Party seeking to reforge its hegemony in British politics.
• Thatcherism never fulfilled its aims, never reshaped popular opinion, never took a firm hold of the Conservative Party itself.
• Monetarism served important ideological and political needs, but it was less important as a guide to policy.
Thactherism did not stick to its principles or carry through its aims.
Cowling
- Thatcher used “radical variations on that patriotic conjunction of freedom, authority, inequality, individualism and average decency and respectability, which had been the Conservative Party’s theme since at least 1886.”
- Cowling further contended that the “Conservative Party under Mrs. Thatcher has used a radical rhetoric to give intellectual respectability to what the Conservative Party has always wanted.
Thatcher – The Downing Street Years
- Directs disdain against both the Labour governments preceding her and the 1970s Heath administration
- Gives the impression that there was an overall strategy and an agenda largely achieved.
- Thatcherism had conceived itself long before coming into power (informed by a set of principles set up by the Centre for Policy Studies in 1974, a base from which the new right attacked the old Conservative Party). Basis of Tory manifesto and Thatcher’s actions until 1990.
