British Civilization

Thatcherism | Oxford Dictionary of Politics:Thatcherism |
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The economic and social policies pursued by Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. There are many different notions of what Thatcherism comprises, but core elements include deregulation and privatization, combined with authoritarian social policy.

The word was first coined in the late 1970s, when the Conservatives were still in opposition. After the Party's election victory 1979 it became a regular item in the vocabulary of media comment on British politics. It also spawned a cottage industry of academic analyses. A minimalist definition of Thatcherism would push three themes: it is the most convenient shorthand description of what Conservative governments did between 1979 and 1990; it suggests that what they did had a heavy ideological or doctrinal base; and it implies that all the Conservative administrations in this period were dominated by their leader, Mrs Thatcher.

Much of the practice of Thatcherism is contested and debated. The classic interpretations of Thatcherism are rooted in the period of Mrs Thatcher's first two administrations, 1979 to 1987. Three emerged, all of which were associated with the predominant elite political cultures of the time, namely, the Thatcherite, ‘middle opinion’, and neo-Marxist.

For Thatcherites the origins were the Conservative Party's delayed realization that the post-war consensus was responsible for Britain's decline in both economic and international status terms. Thatcherites argued that by the end of the 1970s Britain had reached the stage of ‘last chance saloon’: without the radical change of course instituted 1979 Britain would have sunk to the status of an ungovernable ‘banana republic’. The most important initial objective was to defeat inflation. After that the goals were the creation of a more competitive economy, raising Britain's status in the world, changing the ‘hearts and minds’ of the British people regarding the scope of government, and the defeat of British socialism (that is, the Labour Party). All this, the Thatcherite interpretation argued, had been achieved by 1987. In short, Thatcherism was a success. The principal cause of this success was Mrs Thatcher herself. It was her convictions, drive, and authority, which had ensured that Thatcherism had developed as a coherent doctrine, consistently and comprehensively applied, and one which suffered no serious ‘U-turns’.

Middle opinion, which in Britain at the time ranged from the left wing of the Conservative Party (the so-called ‘wets’) through the Liberal/Social Democratic Alliance, to the right and centre of the Labour Party, rejected all this. It did not deny the short-term successes of the Thatcherite project, but it did emphasize the huge cost of those successes to the country and to particular groups in society. The moderate, and modern, social democratic consensus of the post-war period had been replaced by the politics of an ideology rooted in the harsh and outmoded principles of nineteenth-century laissez-faire, the contemporary manifestation of which was the economic doctrine espoused by Thatcherism and labelled monetarism. Inflation, so middle opinion argued, had been defeated, but only at the cost of mass unemployment and deindustrialization. Public expenditure and the size of the public sector had both been cut, but only at the cost of weakening the welfare state and creating vast profits for privatization speculators. Moreover the traditional and essential intermediate associations of British democracy, the trade unions, the professions, the civil service, and local government, had been fatally weakened. Finally, the foreign policy of Thatcherism was rejected both for its style, ‘megaphonic diplomacy’, and its substance, too close an attachment to Reagan's America and too hostile an approach to the European Community. For middle opinion the principal force behind this awful revolution, and hence its principal actor focus, was Mrs Thatcher, who had hijacked the Conservative Party, rejected its ‘One Nation’ doctrine, and who crudely and cruelly dominated her cabinet colleagues.

The neo-Marxist camp had been the first to spot this awful potential of Thatcherism. Hence in many ways their interpretations reflected the complaints of middle opinion. They, too, accepted that Thatcherism was an exceptional phenomenon in terms of post-war British political development. They, too, accepted the short-term successes of this revolution and its costs, especially to the working class. They, too, objected to the special relationship with the Reagan administration. But they went further than the simple negative hostility of middle opinion. Neo-Marxists were fascinated by, and envious of, the excesses of Thatcherism. Here was a party elite which actually pursued the interests of its class supporters. Here was a party elite which knew what had to be done to bring about a revolution in post- fordist Britain. Because of these concerns the neo-Marxist camp tried to analyse Thatcherism rather than simply praise or attack it. As a result it was far less interested in telling stories about Mrs Thatcher or providing dreary accounts of particular policies. It was far more interested in considering the global and domestic structural context in which Thatcherism operated and the governing techniques it employed to protect or promote its various projects.

After 1987 the provision of ‘big-bang’ interpretations of Thatcherism became a less popular exercise. First, there is general agreement that Mrs Thatcher's third administration made a number of serious mistakes, mistakes which eventually led to Mrs Thatcher's resignation. Examples commonly cited are the poll tax, welfare state reforms, the return of inflation, and policies towards the European Union. Secondly, even during the classic period of interpreting Thatcherism there were sceptics who denied its developmental exceptionalism, its ideological coherence, and its operational consistency. By the early 1990s this approach had assumed greater importance. In other words, commentators began to stress increasingly the implementation policy failures of the Thatcher-led governments. Finally, in the light of the problems encountered by John Major's governments, it could be argued that the wonder is that anything was done at all between 1979 and 1990. Privatization, industrial relations reforms, and the 1988 Education Act were successes achieved in a very difficult context. This highlights the fact that there are no agreed criteria for assessing the performance of British governments, apart from electoral victories. Until this is resolved Thatcherism will remain open to dispute and debate.
— Jim Bulpitt
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