Thatcherism

Thatcherism is a political ideology that was established and guided by British politician Margaret Thatcher during her tenure as prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. Thatcher served as the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990, and under her leadership Thatcherism helped to outline a governmental model that favored the promotion of a free market state and smaller government. Together with the related American Reagonomics—named after President Ronald Reagan—Thatcherism helped to redefine conservative ideologies in the United Kingdom and abroad for a generation.

Thatcherism largely developed as a response to the social democratic policies that had been in favor in the United Kingdom since the 1950s. In the wake of World War II (1939–1945), the British government developed strategies intended to help rebuild the country’s infrastructure and national psyche. Many industrial sectors were run by the government with the belief that government-sponsored social engineering would promote a stronger and healthier society. By the 1970s, these policies had led to a stagnation of the British economy. For British voters, Thatcher’s ideological beliefs that favored lower taxes and smaller government appeared to be an antidote to what was perceived as bloated government overreach.

Though Thatcherism was largely defined by its economic policies, it encompassed a wide range of beliefs that have helped to shape twenty-first century conservatism. Among these, Thatcherism was defined by its opposition to communism and support for British nationalism. Thatcher opposed big government, which necessitated reducing social benefits and ending the previous government support for full employment policies. In addition, Thatcher supported heightened family values that evoked the highly conservative Victorian mores of the late nineteenth century.

Background

Thatcher’s background played a major role in the development of Thatcherism and she used her humble origins to promote her image as a self-made woman in the press. She was born October 13, 1925, as Margaret Hilda Roberts in Grantham, Lincolnshire, in northeast England. Her father, Alfred Roberts, owned a pair of small grocery stores and the family lived in an apartment above one of them. Thatcher was introduced to politics by her father, who served as a local alderman and mayor. Thatcher proved to be an excellent student and won a scholarship to a local private school, and a position at Oxford University’s Somerville College. There, Thatcher majored in chemistry and served as the head of the school’s Conservative Association despite her own family’s Labour Party loyalties. After graduating from Somerville in 1947, she worked as a research chemist.

She remained active in politics and was first nominated as a party candidate in 1950, though she did not win office in the Labour district where she ran. In 1951, she married fellow party member Denis Thatcher and converted to the Anglican faith. Beginning in 1952, she chose to study law and qualified as a lawyer in 1953. By 1959, she had won election to the House of Commons as the representative for Finchley. Despite her short tenure in office, she was identified by party leadership as a promising candidate and was appointed as the parliamentary undersecretary for pensions and national insurance in 1961. After the Labour Party returned to power, she was named to the Conservative shadow cabinet that would be placed into cabinet-level positions should the Conservatives win a majority. Though she had to wait until 1970, Thatcher’s patience was rewarded with the high-profile role of secretary of state for education and science.

In this role, she began establishing the conservative credentials that would foreshadow her own government’s policies. In order to reduce government spending, she eliminated the free school milk program for children aged seven to eleven. Although she received bad press for her role in this initiative—including being given the nickname “Thatcher, Milk Snatcher”—the event hardened her reserve, a characteristic that would earn her another nickname: the “Iron Lady.” Although the Conservatives lost power again in 1974, Thatcher used her party’s reduced influence to promote her candidacy as the woman to bring the Conservatives back to power. She was elected leader of the Conservative Party in 1975 and, in the process, became the first woman to lead the opposition party in the House of Commons.

Her rise to power coincided with a political and economic crisis in England with origins that dated back to the post-World War II era. The war had a devastating effect on the United Kingdom. Its industries had been badly damaged by German bombing raids, and the national psyche had been equally ravaged. To help rebuild, the nation moved towards policies of social democracy in the 1950s and 1960s. Led by the leftwing Labour Party, the country enacted a series of measures intended to restore the nation to its pre-war strength. Among the most important objectives was to boost economic growth by reducing taxes and increasing government spending. Among these measures, the government worked alongside trade unions on workplace relations to establish 100 percent employment rates and limit inflation.

The government assumed ownership of many industrial sectors, including such utilities as gas, electricity, and coal. In addition, the government managed the rails, postal service, and other arenas that employed large numbers of people, while providing greater funding to the National Health Service (NHS) and the national health insurance system. Other hallmarks of the British experiment with social democracy included progressive taxation, greater welfare spending, and promotion of foreign policies that transitioned the country from empire to commonwealth. The United Kingdom also gained membership in such organizations as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Community.

Initially, such policies were supported by both Labour and Conservative Parties as they were popular with the working-class communities they depended on for support. However, by the 1970s, these generous state sponsorships led to incrementally reduced levels of production, higher inflation, low economic growth, and reduced living standards. Equally troubling, it gave rise to what Conservatives deemed the “Welfare State” in which growing numbers of people were entirely dependent on government handouts for survival.

Both Conservative and Labour governments in the 1970s sought to reverse the British economic stagnation by working with unions to bargain for static wage increases. Other attempts to raise economic activity in Britain led to trade imbalances, foreign debt, high unemployment, and rising inflation. By 1976, these issues had become so debilitating that Britain was forced to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a humbling financial rescue. Against this embarrassing backdrop, several public service sectors became paralyzed by a series of union-supported strikes. The Labour government lost the support of both the unions and the working class, leading to a Conservative triumph in the 1979 elections and Thatcher’s rise to prime minister.

Overview

While Thatcher had run on the principles of smaller government, lower taxes, and the promotion of economic growth, she did not have an established policy of “Thatcherism” set in place at the outset. Instead, she allowed her principles of conservatism to evolve as circumstances dictated. Among the earliest and most key elements of Thatcherism, for instance, privatization of government sectors was not among her prescribed initiatives. While the post-war government saw ownership of utilities as a key tenant of economic recovery, Thatcher saw their continued sponsorship as detrimental to growth. Ultimately, Thatcher oversaw the sale of the electric, gas, and telephone sectors as well as the privatization of British Rail. She also offered many public housing units for sale to its tenants in a bid to increase private home ownership. As a result, British home ownership rose from 10.2 million in 1981 to 13.4 million by 1991. Similarly, public housing occupancy fell from 5.4 million in 1981 to 4.5 million by 1991. Individual welfare benefits came under increasing scrutiny, with beneficiaries being required to clearly demonstrate their need.

In addition, she sought to limit the power of labor unions. She initiated a series of laws that eventually limited the strength of unions. These included requiring a ballot of union members before strikes, ending a requirement of union membership as a precondition of employment (called a “closed shop” industry), and forcing unions to pay for any damage that occurred during strikes. The government also ended its policy of officially consulting with unions on economic policy decisions. Ultimately, Thatcher’s goal was to promote natural economic forces. She felt that the government had been too involved in personal and business affairs and sought a more hands-off approach.

While these measures were part of her mandate to reduce government, her foreign policies were more the result of considered responses to international affairs. For instance, the 1982 Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, a British possession, led to a ten-week war and a clear British victory. The result strengthened confidence in Thatcher and seemed to support her argument that strong leadership would ultimately restore Britain’s economic and political power on the world stage—a conviction that had particular relevance for a British public still at odds with its diminished international status and the end of the British Empire after World War II.

The combination of lower taxes and a clear British military victory helped propel Thatcher and the Conservatives to easy election victories, eventually enabling her to become Britain’s longest tenured prime minister of the twentieth century. It also had the effect of splitting the Labour Party off from its traditional working-class base. As a result, Labour was forced to adopt several of Thatcher’s ideas, including acceptance of a smaller government role in industry, limits on union power, economic policies that lowered inflation, limited borrowing, and the need to promote private enterprise. However, one of the greatest legacies of Thatcher and Thatcherism is the enhanced role of the prime minister. Thatcher was highly involved in all aspects and sectors of government, a strategy subsequently followed by her successors in both the Conservative and Labour parties.

Bibliography

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