What was thatcherism

By Jeremy Gaunt. Whether it is euro zone finance ministers demanding debt-laden countries privatize state-run companies, U. Thatcher, who died on Monday aged 87, stood for deregulation, a smaller state, free markets and privatization. If that sounds familiar, it is because her playbook has been copied around the world.

On the other, policies that were taken seriously - like the command economy - are no longer taken seriously. Thatcherism - and its U. The term privatization, for example, was barely known before her tenure. A Google search in brings up more than But Thatcher's deregulatory push created the new internationally focused City. For better and for worse, it hasn't looked back. As part of a famous television ad campaign from September , an ordinary looking bloke is shown in a fictional village pub.

Lost in thought, he almost knocks a passing postman from his bike. It turns out he is preoccupied with the news that he can buy shares in British Gas.

After passing on the good news to the postie, he adds: "If you see Sid, tell him. The age of Sid was not simply a PR myth.

Initially there really was a popular scramble by ordinary folk to sign up to the "people's capitalism" and reap the rewards. Four million people applied for British Gas shares at p a pop with a minimum purchase of Many then sold them almost immediately for a quick profit. Thatcher said that privatisation was a chance to give "power back to the people".

In fact, as Robert Philpot, director of the Progress pressure group, wrote last week: "Now, in , it's clear that the result of electricity privatisation was to take power away from the people. Small British shareholders have no influence over the overwhelmingly non-British owners of the firms that generate and distribute power in Britain. Saatchi and Saatchi's "Labour isn't working" political poster, apparently featuring a long dole queue made up of actors , became perhaps the most famous in the nation's history.

British electioneering was changed for ever. The brutal repartee of the terraces expressed a fundamental truth of the Thatcher period: the north suffered the worst of the deep recession and high unemployment of the early years; and it benefited least from the eventual boom of the late s. It would be wrong to say that Thatcher planned the decline of the north's most vital industries and sources of employment.

In fact, northern England suffered precisely from the absence of a plan in Westminster. In , explaining why she believed regional planning in Britain was a non-starter, Thatcher said: "If we try to discourage development and economic growth in large parts of the south of England, in the hope that it will happen in the large cities in the north, we risk losing them altogether. Left to its own devices, the British economy rebalanced irrevocably to the south.

Employment in the manufacturing industry, vital to the north's wellbeing, slumped, falling from 7. Services and the booming City eventually took up much of the economic slack, but the good times were happening in the south. Thatcher came to power ready to take on the the National Union of Mineworkers, which had humiliated her Tory predecessor, Edward Heath, during the s.

The miners' strike of allowed her to destroy the power of the NUM and institute a series of legal obstacles to industrial action — which she believed had bedevilled Britain in the 70s. Meanwhile, the decline in Britain's manufacturing industry, which Thatcher's government did little to reverse, destroyed the power bases of British trades unionism.

High unemployment and recession critically weakened the unions' bargaining power in the early- to mids. A confrontation between the police and a picket line degenerated into battle. The strikers were consequently depicted in the tabloid press as animals who were entirely responsible for the violence, although it was later proved that only a series of false statements had prevented the police from being accused of having deliberately provoked the incident. The goal was to dismantle trade unions, this bastion of corporatism and socialism.

This denunciation of the working-class and its culture is paralleled with a critique of the class sytem, a so-called Communist construction But far from creating a classless society, for Thierry Labica, Margaret Thatcher reinstated a class society and what relative power the working-class possesed, was taken away from them to be given once again to a capitalist elite, the dismantling of trade unions being simply envisaged, here as a way to break the barriers preventing capital from accumulating in the hands of a few.

Thierry Labica then concludes that the result of this was the destruction of society and with it of some parts of Britain situated on the geographical fringes North of England and Wales , as well as some on the social margins, i. This, according to Thierry Labica, was the legacy of Thatcherism. The conclusion is that Thatcherism was meant to endure given the depth of the transformations and the length of time the Conservatives were in office. It is indeed Tony Blair who is seen as her true heir because once he had accepted her views on the economy and on the need to preserve and even complete most of her reforms, he fulfilled her dream, according to Dennis Kavanagh, the dream of every politician, of leaving a legacy.

There is, however, a notable difference between the Conservative Party that campaigned for the election and the Coalition Government that was formed in May. Most of the more progressive electoral pledges seem to have been either moved to the bottom of the agenda or quietly abandoned. Whether this was because of circumstances, or because David Cameron did not really believe in them in the first place, is another question.

For this reason, he has proved to be a different style of politician from Thatcher, i. But both are now more suitable subjects for historians than a guide to contemporary politics. Alexandre-Collier, A. Po, Bale, T. Bale, Tim, The Conservatives since The drivers of party change , Oxford, OUP, Blair, T.

Bochel, Hugh ed. Dorey, Peter, British Conservatism. The politics and philosophy of inequality , London: I. Espiet-Kilty, R. Evans S. Evans, S. Jenkins, S. Kavanagh, D. Quadrant , vol. Moore, Charles, Margaret Thatcher. The Authorized Biography. Seldon, A. Thatcher, M. Wilding, P. Wilson, Rob. A ceremonial funeral is very similar to a state funeral.

The latter has to be approved in Parliament and the carriage carrying the coffin is escorted by the Royal Navy, but a ceremonial funeral is otherwise just as expensive. Evans, K. Ewing, P. Greenleaf, British Political Tradition : vol. Taggart P. The Comparative Party Politics of Euroscepticism, vol. The aim was, of course, not to state a fact but to denounce a certain vision of society.

Site map — Syndication. Privacy Policy — About Cookies. Skip to navigation — Site map. Abstract On 8 th April , Margaret Thatcher passed away at the age of Outline The legacy on the Public Sector. Full text PDF Send by e-mail.

I would argue that t She then steadily moved up the ministerial ranks, becoming secretary of state for education and science when the Conservatives retook power in Nonetheless, she was able to keep her job, and in , with the Conservatives back in the opposition, she defeated former Prime Minister Edward Heath to take over leadership of the party. Thatcher was now one of the most powerful women in the world. She rejected the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes, who advocated deficit spending during periods of high unemployment, instead preferring the monetarist approach of Chicago economist Milton Friedman.

In April , Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands , a sparsely populated British colony located miles from Argentina and 8, miles from the United Kingdom. Thatcher dispatched troops to the area. On May 2, a British submarine controversially sank an Argentine cruiser that was outside of an official exclusion zone, killing over people on board.

Later in the month, British troops landed near San Carlos Bay in East Falkland and, despite persistent air attacks, were able to capture the capital of Port Stanley and end the fighting. The war and an improving economy propelled Thatcher to a second term in In what became a key part of her legacy, Thatcher also privatized British Telecom, British Gas, British Airways, Rolls-Royce and a number of other state-owned companies.

On the foreign policy front, Thatcher often found herself allied with U. In Asia, meanwhile, she negotiated the eventual transfer of Hong Kong to the Chinese. In Africa she had a mixed record, facilitating the end of white minority rule in Zimbabwe but opposing sanctions against apartheid South Africa. After Thatcher was elected to a third term in , her government lowered income tax rates to a postwar low. On November 14, , former Defense Minister Michael Heseltine challenged her for leadership of the party, partly due to differences of opinion on the European Union.