There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters

399 Pages·2008·2.32 MB·English

by  Claire Berlinski

0465002315-Berlinski:Layout 1 7/23/08 2:26 PM Page i
“There Is No Alternative”
0465002315-Berlinski:Layout 1 7/23/08 2:26 PM Page ii
This page intentionally left blank
0465002315-Berlinski:Layout 1 7/23/08 2:26 PM Page iii
“There Is No Alternative”
WHY MARGARET THATCHER MATTERS
j h i
Claire Berlinski
A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP
NEW YORK
0465002315-Berlinski:Layout 1 7/23/08 2:26 PM Page iv
Copyright © 2008 by Claire Berlinski
Published by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
information, address Basic Books, 387 Park Avenue South,
New York, NY 10016-8810.
Books published by Basic Books are available at special
discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by
corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more
information, please contact the Special Markets Department
at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite
200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call [phone], ext.
5000, or e-mail [email protected].
Designed by Timm Bryson
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berlinski, Claire.
“There is no alternative” : why Margaret Thatcher matters
/ Claire Berlinski.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-465-00231-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1.
Thatcher, Margaret. 2. Great Britain—Politics and
government—1979–1997. 3. Conservatism—Great Britain. I.
Title.
DA589.7.B47 2008
941.085’8092—dc22
2008024595
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
0465002315-Berlinski:Layout 1 7/23/08 2:26 PM Page v
FOR
MISCHA and CRISTINA
0465002315-Berlinski:Layout 1 7/23/08 2:26 PM Page vi
Boudicea, with her daughters before her in a
chariot, went up to tribe after tribe, protesting
that it was indeed usual for Britons to fight un-
der the leadership of women. “But now,” she
said, “it is not as a woman descended from noble
ancestry, but as one of the people that I am
avenging lost freedom, my scourged body, the
outraged chastity of my daughters. Roman lust
has gone so far that not our very persons, nor
even age or virginity, are left unpolluted. But
heaven is on the side of a righteous vengeance; a
legion which dared to fight has perished; the rest
are hiding themselves in their camp, or are think-
ing anxiously of flight. They will not sustain even
the din and the shout of so many thousands,
much less our charge and our blows. If you
weigh well the strength of the armies, and the
causes of the war, you will see that in this battle
you must conquer or die. This is a woman’s re-
solve; as for men, they may live and be slaves.”
—ANNALS OF TACITUS, BOOK XIV
0465002315-Berlinski:Layout 1 7/23/08 2:26 PM Page vii
C O N T E N T S
A Note on Style and Sources ix
Preface xi
one The Shrine of Mother Margaret 1
La Pasionaria of
two 15
Middle-Class Privilege
three “I Hate Communists” 47
four Diva, Matron, Housewife, Shrew 71
five The Sledgehammer 113
six For Strategic Sheep Purposes 157
seven Coal and Iron 183
eight Miners Is Miners 237
nine The Triumvirate 263
ten No! No! No! 307
conclusion Why Margaret Thatcher Matters 343
Epilogue 361
Photograph Acknowledgments 364
Acknowledgments 365
A Guide to Further Reading 369
Index 373
vii
0465002315-Berlinski:Layout 1 7/23/08 2:26 PM Page viii
This page intentionally left blank
0465002315-Berlinski:Layout 1 7/23/08 2:26 PM Page ix
A N O T E O N S T Y L E A N D S O U R C E S
Thanks to the Margaret Thatcher Foundation—to whom every
scholar of Thatcher is indebted—much of the archival material
to which I refer in this book is now online. Many of the speeches
and interviews I describe are on YouTube. Where possible, I have
tried to guide the reader to original documents, video clips, au-
dio files, and photographs on the Internet. On my Web site,
www.berlinski.com, you may listen to samples of my interviews
with Thatcher’s friends and enemies. I encourage the reader to
think of this as a multimedia book and to treat my notes as hyper-
links. This is why I have used footnotes, not endnotes. I don’t want
to hunt and rifle through endnotes while I’m reading. I don’t know
why anyone else would.
The use of ellipses in quoted text indicates that I have short-
ened a quotation, but readers who wish to consult my unedited
interviews will be able to do so. Following the paperback publica-
tion of this book, I will donate my recordings and transcripts to
the Margaret Thatcher Foundation. I will also give them to the
Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, where they will join the
Thatcher Papers.
For consistency, I have changed British to American spelling,
even when quoting British source material, although I have not
changed proper names (such as the “British Labour Party”). For
brevity, and because British honorifics are generally meaningless
ix