Was Thatcherism anything more than traditional Conservatism adapted to the conditions of the 1980s?

Popular Leftist thinkers such as Tony Benn went further and attacked Thatcherism from a hegemonic perspective. For Benn the term ‘Thatcherism’ acts in a deliberately misleading manner to mask the ‘real developments in British politics’. From this outlook, to term this new Conservative programme of financial deregulation ‘Thatcherism’, is merely to humanise it, and to sell it to the electorate. For these reasons, Thatcherism can be seen to continue the Conservative tradition of ‘statecraft’, the ability of preserving bourgeois interests to create new forms of political and cultural domination over the underprivileged, whilst successfully winning elections and retaining power.  

When Thatcher herself emerged on the political scene, acting on the shadow cabinet, she saw Britain as the ‘sick man of Europe’. The ruling Labour party was in chaos, being kept in office only with support of the Liberal Party and then eventually succumbing to a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons. The Winter of Discontent, of 1978-1979, and the huge economic decline that Britain was suffering at the time, can be seen to play a huge role in shaping the Thatcher Governments that immediately followed it.

When considering whether Thatcherism was anything more than traditional Conservatism adapted to the conditions of the 1980s, one must note that it can be seen to contradict the traditional ‘one-nation’ Conservatism ideology in a plethora of ways.

Conservatism as an ideology is based on a form of common sense or pragmatism. The maintenance of a status quo where social institutions exist because they work and have naturally evolved to take their present form. This form of Conservatism can be seen to be at odds with Thatcherism and its radical constitutional alterations it proposed. Thatcherism and the “New right are radical because they seek to undo much that has been constructed in the last sixty years”, like the alterations to the institutions of the welfare state and the removal of trade unions. “Conservatives tended to be the party of the community, protection, paternalism and state intervention” , rather than the market, free trade, self-help and laissez-faire economics which were the core values of the Thatcher Government.

The Conservative Party has traditionally been held up as the only party that ‘conserves’.  Whether that be the United Kingdom against European Intervention, the protection of the British Empire, or developed institutions that permeate the public sphere, the conservation of ‘British Values’ was paramount. However, the party can instigate change, as seen by Benjamin Disraeli, whom like Thatcher offered the traditional Conservatives a diversion off their typical path to merely maintain the status quo.

The philosophy behind Disraeli and other ‘One Nation’ Tories was that something was more important than the conservation of traditional sources of authority and that was the ‘elevation of the condition of the people’. To do this state intervention in the public and private sphere would have to be accepted, in what was then a novel concept.

Here Disraeli was successful in adapting traditional conservatism to the conditions of the 1880’s, as it was in the ruling aristocracies interest to raise the conditions of the poor of the late-Victorian Era. This can be seen to prevent any social upheavel and a Socialist revolution in an era where Socialist ideas were becoming increasingly popular and a serious threat to the Establishment. So in essence, it could be argued that Disraeli and his ‘One Nation Followers’ were again as they would want to do, maintaining and conserving the British Aristocracy by ‘acting’ in favour of the poverty stricken masses.

Therefore, it is possible to argue that Disraeli and his push for change to the Conservative ideology was merely an adaptation to the conditions of the 1880’s. Thatcherism can be seen to be doing the same things, albeit to the conditions of relative affluence of the 1980’s. By adapting pre-Disraeli classically Liberal economic strategies, Thatcherism began to rapidly strip away any restrictions on the  free market, theoretically allowing businesses to earn unrestricted ‘cash flow’ and therefore to promote individual enterprise. In contrast to Disraeli who endorsed a state responsibility  to create a ‘safety net’ for the extreme poverty, Thatcherism promoted the ‘trickle-down effect’, the creation of more cash flow for private British industries that would create more job oppurtunities. However, this move from the Keynesian economic priority of full employment to a Monetarist inflation controlled economy can be seen to consistently fail the lower strata of society, especially when unemployment levels reached twentiethth century highs.

Thatcher, unpreturbed by this, felt unemployment was preferable if that was the price to prevent a “creeping policitisation of the economy and the suspension of markets in the determination of wages and prices”,  . In fact, many of her followers felt that this was only a temporary situation, as the new private based economy would create more jobs than the public sphere ever could.

Furthermore, traditional Conservatives settle for the benefits of a customary way of life with a ‘heavy emphasis on the importance of tradition, both social and institutional’. Traditional Conservatives heed gradual evolutionary reform, allowing institutions space to be modified and continually adapted to society’s needs, so institutions are not rendered obsolete. Thatcher and the New Right Thinkers however, can be described as radical instigators of change directly opposed this idea; they did this by effectively destroying any institutions that attempted to curtail free market forces, like the Trade Unions.

For Andrew Gamble, one of the main defining characteristics of Thatcherism is to ‘drastically reduce public expenditure and to return as many services in the public sector as possible to the market and to the family’. In order to do this the government is charged with the responsibility to control the money supply of the state by adjusting rates of inflation. Thatcherism saw the blame fall for the high levels of unemployment (over 3,000,000 by January 1982), not on the swift privitisation of nationalised industry as a result of aiming to keep inflation rates down, but on the trade unions themselves. The Thatcherism doctrine suggests that, “the trade unions are directly responsible for the level of unemployment if they insist on a level of actual wages which private firms cannot pay”.  For Thatcher, the trade unions had grown to be bloated on power and represented the ideals of the post-war consensus, so had to be abolished, as they strongly resisted the type of economic reform she had herself proposed.

Traditional Conservatives would have been more inclined to listen to pressure groups, such as the trade unions, to form a balanced argument and therefore reach a better and more informed decision for all groups involved. Thatcherism, however, dictates that any hindrance on the free market should be “rolled back”. This is seen through her policies of denationalisation of industries nationalised after the post-war settlements of Clement Atlee.

Thatcherism, in fact shares more with certain aspects of Liberalism than traditional Conservatism, as I will display here.

Firstly, Thatcherism and the neo-liberal thought pioneered by free market economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, actively resisted the expansion of money supply needed to cope with such high levels of unemployment and falling living standards, usually through the welfare state, because of the resulting increase of inflation.

Secondly, Thatcherism adopted an essentially Victorian classical Liberal ‘laissez- faire’ approach to state involvement in British citizens lives. For Thatcher, the state under Labour had become a sort of ‘behemoth’ that had grown inflated and more tired as it tried to compete with the natural efficiency of the private sphere. For Thatcher, the answer was to ‘roll back’ the expensive welfare state, and she went about achieving these aims by overseeing a radical policy off mass privatisation of previously nationalised industries. This particular policy sent shock waves throughout British politics with the effects still being felt today.

Finally, Thatcherism promoted the classical Liberal idea of the rights of the individual being of paramount importance over anything else. By reducing high-end taxation, Thatcherism aimed to foster a ‘free enterprise culture’, where small, grass roots businesses and entrepreneurs (like Thatcher’s green grocer and local M.P father) could gain confidence and flourish. Even at a cost of a reduced tax income for the welfare state, Thatcher proudly declared in an interview for ‘Women’s Own’ that, ‘There is no such thing as society’. Thatcherism’s promotion of individuals and families as the ideal unit of which society should be based, harbored a competitiveness in individual materialistic gain, that was at odds with Disraeli’s ‘one-nation’ vision for Britain.

This belief in the promotion of the individual over the ‘common good’ was also represented in the popular Thatcherite policy; the 1982 ‘right to buy’ council houses given to tenants. By 1987 over 1,000,000 council houses had been sold. This policy can be seen to relate very closely with the traditional Conservative idea that property ownership guarantees some degree of personal security, particularly liberating the propertied individual from state interference. Furthermore, it generated a significant amount of instantaneous cash flow required to cover the cost of lower taxation. However, as council houses in ‘desirable areas’ were being sold at below their market rate and often to property developers seeking to make a profit, new developments of council houses were concentrated in ‘undesirable areas’, with little employment opportunity for their tenants. Nonetheless these policies ‘transformed the state more strategically and ruthlessly than any other previous Government’ and yet remained popular with the electorate. For Stuart Hall, a Marxist , ‘right wing government enables right wing supporters.’ Therefore, it has to be acknowledged that policies like the selling off of council houses or privatisation do work in their supporters favour, therefore resulting in a dynamic and flexible state mechanism that was not possible before the rise of Thatcherism. 

Thatcherism could also be seen to be an extension of traditional Conservatism, with its emphasis on security and leanings towards a strong political authority. This is shown through Thatcher’s own no-nonsense approach to foreign affairs. She was immensely fearful of the loss of national sovereignty and was therefore strictly against further E.U integration, and devolution, which she felt, would lead to the break up of the United Kingdom. However, this uncompromising attitude towards Europe would ultimately prove to be the downfall of Thatcher, when Geoffery Howe, the only surviving member of Thatcher’s 1979 cabinet, resigned on the grounds that Thatcher was no longer acting in Britain’s greater interest, amid her disdain to the European Community. This attitude retains the strong Conservative tradition, of the necessity of a clearly definable top-down authority. This strong authority is crucial to the public who respond positively, as human beings are considered to be essentially security seeking creatures. Thatcher’s reluctance to dissolve this clear sense of authority, through devolution or further European integration, reflects this traditional Conservative idea.

In conclusion, it has been shown that Thatcherism as its own social and economic doctrine, created and fostered an almost revolutionary new culture, the promotion of the individual, and a new active state-dynamic which appeared to disrupt Britain’s slow economic decline since the end of World War II.

Thatcherism had the confidence, during a period of social upheaval, to stay wide of the political centre and portray a vision, a radical new thinking that helped redefine ‘conservatism’.  In return Thatcher achieved popular support, winning two landslide electoral victories as the people continued to align themselves within her own individual values.

However, I would argue that Thatcherism did this not by adopting traditional Conservative strategies, but rather acting on practical impulses and a combination of neo-liberal and neo-conservative thought, which can be seen as more ‘radical’ and to go further in their quest for a minimalist state, than their classical counterparts.

For me, Thatcherism acted as a clean break from the past, though idealising the Victorian era for their family values, her economic policies transcended traditional Conservative ideology, almost beyond recognition.

It is still contested as to whether ‘Thatcherism’ can be defined as it’s own ideology, but the series of doctrines that Thatcher initiated and their influence on British politics since (see the rise of ‘Blatcherism’ in the late 1990’s) is undeniable.

Bibliography

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• Eric J. Evans, (2004) Thatcher and Thatcherism, London: Routledge.
• Andrew Gamble, (1988) The Free Economy and the Strong State : the politics of Thatcherism, Basingstoke: Macmillan Education.
• Bo Yung Kim, (2008), ‘The Role of Political Ideology in the Policy Development of Personal Social Services from 1960’s to 2000’s in Britain’, December 2008, [Internet journal] available from <http://www.boyung.net/docs/Ideology_and_policy_development_titile_pages.pdf ideology and policy development>.
• Robert Eccleshall, (1984), Political ideologies : an introduction, London : Hutchinson.
• Andrew Gamble, ‘Thatcher – Make or Break Marxism Today’, [Internet journal], 22nd  November 1980, available from <http://www.amielandmelburn.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/80_11_15.pdf >, [Accessed on 14/06/2012]
• Douglas Keay, (1987 ), ‘Woman’s Own’, [Internet Journal], September 27th 1987, available from <http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689>, [Accessed on 14/06/2012].
• Stuart Hall, and Martin Jacques, (1989 ), New times : the changing face of politics in the 1990s, London: Marxism Today.

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