Table Of ContentTHATCHERISM
Scope and Limits, 1983-87
By the same author
POLITICAL PRESSURE AND ECONOMIC POLICY:
British Government, 1970-74
*THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT, 1974-79:
Political Aims and Economic Reality
THE FIRST THATCHER GOVERNMENT, 1979-83:
Contemporary Conservatism and Economic Change
*A lso published by Palgrave Macmillan
THATCHERISM
Scope and Limits, 1983-87
Martin Holmes
Senior Visiting Research Fellow
Mansfield College, Oxford
palgrave
macmillan
© Martin Holmes 1989
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1989
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Oata
Holmes, Martin, 1954-
Thatcherism: scope and limits, 1983-1987.
1. Great Britain. Economic policies,
1983-1987
I. Title
330.941'0858
ISBN 978-0-333-49233-8 ISBN 978-1-349-20052-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20052-8
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS VI
INTRODUCTION vii
PART I THE SCOPE OF THATCHERISM
1 Thatcherism Defined 3
2 The Scope ofThatcherism and Economic Policy 19
3 The Scope ofThatcherism and Trade-Union Power 38
4 The Scope of Thatcherism and Privatisation 59
5 The Scope of Thatcherism and Foreign Policy 71
PART II THE LIMITS OF THATCHERISM
6 The Limits of Thatcherism and the Conservative Party 91
7 The Limits of Thatcherism and the British Left 107
8 The Limits ofThatcherism and Intellectual Opinion 122
9 The Limits of Thatcherism and Electoral Behaviour 138
10 Concluding Thoughts 152
NOTES AND REFERENCES 156
BIBLIOGRAPHY 166
INDEX 169
V
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people have greatly assisted me in the writing of this book,
not least the many Cabinet ministers, junior ministers, backbench
MPs, civil servants and Conservative Party officials who gave their
time to be interviewed.
I am particularly indebted, however, to Fennella Morris who
was a most diligent research assistant, to Jane Varley who read
and commented constructively on an earlier draft, and to my trio
of superb secretarial assistants, Jackie Brentnall, Sarah Cramer
and Sally Barker. Marie Schulte prepared the index with speed
and precision.
I would also like to thank the Principal and Fellows of Mansfield
College for providing an atmosphere conducive to scholarship and
appr~ciative of research. Tim Farmiloe at the publishers handled
the manuscript with customary courtesy and efficiency and I am
grateful to hirn.
Needless to say any errors in the following pages are my
responsibility alone.
Martin Holmes
Mansfield College
Oxford
vi
INTRODVCfION
By the time Mrs Thatcher had won her third consecutive election
victory in June 1987, she had been Prime Minister eight years,
party leader twelve years, and had given her name to an unmistak
able political phenomenon - Thatcherism. So much has already
been written about the origins, nature and aims of Thatcherism
that yet another book about it requires justification. For this
author, however, Thatcherism is, and always has been, more than
the political career and philosophical statements of Margaret
Thatcher. It has embodied the transformation of Britain's post
war centre-Ieft consensus into the Thatcherite dream of a
property-owning, meritocratic, entrepreneurial, market-oriented
society.
This development has already been chronicled in this author's
three previous books. In the first, a study of the Heath Govern
ment,1 the crisis in the Conservative Party as it moved swiftly
leftwards under Heath after the 1971 V-turns, was analysed in the
context of a party defeated four times out of five General Elections,
but still retaining its belief that it was Britain's natural party of
government. The events of 1970-4led directly to the overthrow of
the Heath leadership by Mrs Thatcher in 1975 and contain the
seeds of Thatcherism.
The second book,2 traced the agonised, hut temporary, retreat
away from Keynesian economics by the 1974-9 Labour Govern
ment, culminating in the 1976 IMF crisis which proved an intelIec
tual dry run for Thatcherite economic thought. Yet the political
agenda of 1974-9 was still essentially corporatist, with the great
power of the trade union movement ultimately proportional to its
own unpopularity in the 197~9 Winter of Discontent. The 1979
General Election proved that Thatcherism was not unelectable, as
the Conservative left had long argued.
The third book3 studied the first Thatcher Government in the
dual context of the evolution of Conservative philosophy and the
economic changes inherent in Thatcherite policy in terms of the
vii
Vlll lntroduction
deli berate break-up of the post-war consensus on full employ
ment, trade-union power, and industrial interventionism. In each
of the three books, attention was paid to the economic policy
machine and the ultimate relationship between economic policy
and the electoral prospects for the party in office. And to be sure,
these aspects are also present in this book.
However, as Thatcherism has developed from a rebellion
against Heath to a governmental creed, and finally to a political
phenomenon, so many of its mysteries have been c1arified. Thatcher
ism is now de-mystified, little of it uncharted politically or unex
plainable. This study therefore aims to analyse Thatcherism in the
1983-7 period only in terms of why specific policies were adopted
or why more obvious areas of reform were neglected. As such, this
is not a general book; its does not aim at a Cook's tour overview of
Thatcherism. The intention is to assess the scope ofThatcherism in
a number of key policy areas but also to explore what sort of limits
have prevented Thatcherism from either totally transforming
British society or from radically altering the political system itself.
More so than 'Butskellism', or even 'democratic socialism',
Thatcherism excites political controversy by wilfully challenging
accepted centre-Ieft establishment thinking. Any book on Thatcher
ism, therefore, is unlikely to be totally aloof from the policy
changes it describes. This book has not attempted any contrived
neutralism and while that lays it open to criticism of a certain sort,
it also hopes to demonstrate that academic analysis does not lack
rigour as soon as controversial topics are tackled. Thatcherism is
too important to be left only to those who see it in a vacuum of
impersonal political impulses from wh ich lessons can never be
drawn. Fully to understand Thatcherism, inc1uding its scope and
limits, is to realise that the political passions it arouses are apart
of, not separate from, its reality.
viii
PART I
The Scope of Thatcherism
