Margaret Thatcher’s death has revived the controversy, rhetoric and hysteria of her time as prime minister. Her supporters claim she ‘saved Britain’ from economic decline or even from a Marxist revolution; that she ended the Cold War, and that she was a beacon of liberty for much of the World. Her opponents make equally extreme claims: that she undermined the sense of mutual-responsibility in our society; that she destroyed British industry; and that by selling council houses, privatising public services and deregulating financial services (the ‘big bang’), she was responsible for the extreme inequality in this country. All of these policies have been designated by her opponents as ‘Thatcherism’, which is portrayed as an unstoppable political force, responsible for all our current ills.
Blaming Thatcher in this way is bizarre: she resigned as Prime Minister 23 years ago. She was succeeded by seven years of John Major, who had a far more conciliatory style of leadership, and then 13 years of New Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The two latter prime ministers, with substantial majorities in the House of Commons and leading a different political party could surely have reversed many aspects of ‘Thatcherism’ had they chose. The New Labour government did indeed begin with about two years of mild left-wing policies. Low income workers were helped by the introduction of the minimum wage and a 10p starting rate of income tax. There were some long-delayed constitutional reforms including the Human Rights Act, devolved governments in Scotland and Wales, and the exclusion of most hereditary peers from the House of Lords. There were also some sensible administrative reforms in the NHS.
After this, however, the New Labour government changed direction. There were substantial increases in expenditure on health, but an increasing proportion of this was allocated to fund independent providers. The NHS in England was substantially re-organised to facilitate competition between providers, and favourable contracts were given to private corporations to provide medicine and surgery. From 2000, New Labour expanded the programme of ‘city technology colleges’ (CTCs) set up by Margaret Thatcher’s government. These were renamed ‘academy’ schools, and, like the CTCs, were ‘sponsored’ and de facto controlled by businessmen.
New Labour also retreated from its initial concern for low-paid workers. The 10p starting rate of income tax was abolished in the 2007 Budget, and loose immigration restrictions kept down wages. Benefits for disabled people were converted into Employment and Support Allowances in 2008, and the work of assessment contracted out to the French corporation ATOS Healthcare. Many people with severe disabilities or terminal illnesses have since been assessed as ‘fit for work’ on the basis of poorly-conducted assessments. The combined result of these measures was to maintain but not worsen the extreme inequality introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government. However, measures like Working Tax Credit introduced by New Labour did reduce the proportion of the population in poverty from 22% to 17%.
The same desire to control public expenditure under the later years of the New Labour government did not apply with financial services. Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced a succession of tax changes benefiting the highest-paid, and created and promoted the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) which channelled billions of pounds into banks, the accountancy corporations and other legal and financial services. Annual payments from taxes to the private corporations holding PFI contracts will rise to about £10 billion/year by 2017. ‘Light-touch regulation’ was used for the City of London, thereby failing to prevent most of the country’s major banks becoming insolvent in 2008.
Until the crash in 2008, the largest financial returns were in property speculation and PFIs, rather than by investing in industry. This, combined with an overvalued pound resulted in a decline in British manufacturing industry to less than 10% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By comparison, manufacturing fell from 18% to 15% of GDP when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister.
Finally, the New Labour government under Tony Blair began to use war as an instrument of foreign policy. Margaret Thatcher’s government had been involved in only one war, to defend the Falkland Isles from occupation by a murderous dictatorship. From 1997, the UK became involved in wars in Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, Serbia and Kossovo, and Sierra Leone.
With the exception of this greater commitment to military action, the New Labour government therefore continued and extended ‘Thatcherism’. The same policies have largely continued under the present coalition government, albeit in much more constrained financial circumstances and with less apparent desire to engage in war.
If Margaret Thatcher’s government was part of a policy continuum, how can we explain the extreme and rival claims about her influence? I think the reason is her style of politics rather than the specific policies she promoted. Margaret Thatcher was essentially a tribal rather than a national leader. When she spoke passionately of Britain, she did not mean all the inhabitants of this land. Instead, her phrase ‘people like us’ excluded whole categories of individuals and institutions. To her, the miners were the ‘enemy within’. She condemned the 96 dead Liverpool football supporters at Hillsborough and exonerated the police. She would never travel on a train as long as the railways were a public enterprise rather than privately-owned.
Tribalism of this kind was characteristic of politics in her time, and was a driving force on much of the left as well as the right. But Margaret Thatcher was unique in British politics in not even making a pretence of speaking for the whole country. Thismade her intolerable to those who did not see themselves as ‘one of us’. We endured night after night of her hectoring elocution-trained voice on television news, speaking with absolute certainty and without a trace of humour or compassion. I am prepared to believe that in her private life she showed kindness and concern for others. But this was rarely evident in her speeches. Margaret Thatcher’s death thus brought back this memory of misery for many of us. The only other person who had a similar effect, for me at least, was Jimmy Savile. He was a frequent visitor to Chequers when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister and counted her as a friend. Perhaps they will be reunited in the afterlife.
See also:
Meet the new boss - same as the old boss
Blaming Thatcher in this way is bizarre: she resigned as Prime Minister 23 years ago. She was succeeded by seven years of John Major, who had a far more conciliatory style of leadership, and then 13 years of New Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The two latter prime ministers, with substantial majorities in the House of Commons and leading a different political party could surely have reversed many aspects of ‘Thatcherism’ had they chose. The New Labour government did indeed begin with about two years of mild left-wing policies. Low income workers were helped by the introduction of the minimum wage and a 10p starting rate of income tax. There were some long-delayed constitutional reforms including the Human Rights Act, devolved governments in Scotland and Wales, and the exclusion of most hereditary peers from the House of Lords. There were also some sensible administrative reforms in the NHS.
After this, however, the New Labour government changed direction. There were substantial increases in expenditure on health, but an increasing proportion of this was allocated to fund independent providers. The NHS in England was substantially re-organised to facilitate competition between providers, and favourable contracts were given to private corporations to provide medicine and surgery. From 2000, New Labour expanded the programme of ‘city technology colleges’ (CTCs) set up by Margaret Thatcher’s government. These were renamed ‘academy’ schools, and, like the CTCs, were ‘sponsored’ and de facto controlled by businessmen.
New Labour also retreated from its initial concern for low-paid workers. The 10p starting rate of income tax was abolished in the 2007 Budget, and loose immigration restrictions kept down wages. Benefits for disabled people were converted into Employment and Support Allowances in 2008, and the work of assessment contracted out to the French corporation ATOS Healthcare. Many people with severe disabilities or terminal illnesses have since been assessed as ‘fit for work’ on the basis of poorly-conducted assessments. The combined result of these measures was to maintain but not worsen the extreme inequality introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government. However, measures like Working Tax Credit introduced by New Labour did reduce the proportion of the population in poverty from 22% to 17%.
The same desire to control public expenditure under the later years of the New Labour government did not apply with financial services. Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced a succession of tax changes benefiting the highest-paid, and created and promoted the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) which channelled billions of pounds into banks, the accountancy corporations and other legal and financial services. Annual payments from taxes to the private corporations holding PFI contracts will rise to about £10 billion/year by 2017. ‘Light-touch regulation’ was used for the City of London, thereby failing to prevent most of the country’s major banks becoming insolvent in 2008.
Until the crash in 2008, the largest financial returns were in property speculation and PFIs, rather than by investing in industry. This, combined with an overvalued pound resulted in a decline in British manufacturing industry to less than 10% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By comparison, manufacturing fell from 18% to 15% of GDP when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister.
Finally, the New Labour government under Tony Blair began to use war as an instrument of foreign policy. Margaret Thatcher’s government had been involved in only one war, to defend the Falkland Isles from occupation by a murderous dictatorship. From 1997, the UK became involved in wars in Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, Serbia and Kossovo, and Sierra Leone.
With the exception of this greater commitment to military action, the New Labour government therefore continued and extended ‘Thatcherism’. The same policies have largely continued under the present coalition government, albeit in much more constrained financial circumstances and with less apparent desire to engage in war.
If Margaret Thatcher’s government was part of a policy continuum, how can we explain the extreme and rival claims about her influence? I think the reason is her style of politics rather than the specific policies she promoted. Margaret Thatcher was essentially a tribal rather than a national leader. When she spoke passionately of Britain, she did not mean all the inhabitants of this land. Instead, her phrase ‘people like us’ excluded whole categories of individuals and institutions. To her, the miners were the ‘enemy within’. She condemned the 96 dead Liverpool football supporters at Hillsborough and exonerated the police. She would never travel on a train as long as the railways were a public enterprise rather than privately-owned.
Tribalism of this kind was characteristic of politics in her time, and was a driving force on much of the left as well as the right. But Margaret Thatcher was unique in British politics in not even making a pretence of speaking for the whole country. Thismade her intolerable to those who did not see themselves as ‘one of us’. We endured night after night of her hectoring elocution-trained voice on television news, speaking with absolute certainty and without a trace of humour or compassion. I am prepared to believe that in her private life she showed kindness and concern for others. But this was rarely evident in her speeches. Margaret Thatcher’s death thus brought back this memory of misery for many of us. The only other person who had a similar effect, for me at least, was Jimmy Savile. He was a frequent visitor to Chequers when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister and counted her as a friend. Perhaps they will be reunited in the afterlife.
See also:
Meet the new boss - same as the old boss
