What was Thatcherism and was it Successful?

Authors Avatar by kirstykb101 (student)
 Much of the Thatcherism ideology is based on Classical Liberalism – the idea of small role for the state achieved by lower taxation, government spending and borrowing, which was supposed to encourage individual responsibility and self reliance. Thatcherism also included a market with much more freedom – the idea that the government was less able to spend money effectively than the populace. It also included privatising industry so as to get rid of monopolisation and therefore allow competition in industry so that prices and quality of service are determined, and hopefully improved, by the market itself. Thatcherism wished to limit the influence of the Trade Union movement so as to allow the market to operate more freely and therefore make industries much more efficient and profitable. Thatcher wanted to promote the values of the traditional family, reward hard work and encourage self reliance, and help people get away from the demoralising effect of the welfare system. Monetarism (which is what many Thatcherite ideas are based on) teaches that the key reponsibilty of the government regarding the economy is to control inflation which is seen as highly damaging to the economy and caused by having too much money in circulation. A major aim of Thatcherism was privatisation. Many nationalised industries at the time were heavily subsidised, overstaffed and inefficient. Thatcher managed to sell off several of these nationalised industries such as BT, Sealink, Jaguar, BA and British Gas. In 1983 BT needed billions to invest in a new system to modernise telecommunications. The Conservatives decided to sell off BT, unwilling to give BT billions of the tax payers' money to modernise. BT was sold off with speed and success partly thanks to a brilliant marketing campaign and an official policy which allowed a small type of investor in stocks and shares. In 1987-8 the Treasury received £5.1 billion from the proceeds of privatisation and allowed Thatcher to cut taxes. As well as Denationalisation
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(selling off state-owned industries to the public) Thatcher also contracted out public sector areas such as the prison service and Local Authorities and introduced Deregulation, for example to Local Bus Services had to have competition in there areas. However there were problems with privatisation. With a lack of sufficient competition, public monopolies became private monopolies. One of the main points of Privatisation was to abolish state owned monopolies but the domination of those industries by the public sector just turned into domination of the market in the private sector. Privatisation also played a major part in the rising unemployment as ...

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