Abstract
On the death of Margaret Thatcher we were inundated with claims that she had transformed British politics. Here we argue that we need to contextualize Thatcherism and question arguments that now seem to be taken for granted. We do not argue that nothing changed as a result of ‘Thatcherism’, that, clearly, would be an indefensible claim. Rather, we would argue that claims of transformation need to be interrogated and that, to some extent, they are based on a particular, and at best partial, reading of the prior period.
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Notes
On the relationship between the PWC and the post-war settlement, see Toye (2013).
The idea of intertextuality most often refers to the way in which the reading of one text affects the interpretation of the meaning of another. Here, of course, we are interpreting the idea of a ‘text’ more broadly.
Hall (1992) argues: ‘many of the ad hoc adjustments towards monetarism made by the 1974–79 Labour Government were forced on it by the behavior of the financial markets, and the popularity of monetarist doctrine in these markets influenced both the Bank of England and the Government’. For a more detailed treatment of this period, which broadly agrees with Hall’s interpretation, see Davies (2012).
We would argue, contra Bulpitt, that, rather than being a ‘Conservative’ statecraft, this is a statecraft pursued, more, or less, effectively, by both Labour and Conservative Governments; perhaps as effectively by the Blair Governments, as by the Thatcher Governments. This, of course, links to the argument about the British Political Tradition briefly considered below.
It is of note here that, throughout the coverage considered here, Mrs Thatcher and her Government are seen as synonymous.
Interesting, he sees this rise of union power in the 1970s as marking the end of a corporatist settlement, just at the time when other were beginning to talk of the United Kingdom as developing into a corporatist state.
In 2012 it fell below 6 million.
These are indicative numbers; in both the 1970s and 1980s the number of days lost/year fluctuated widely. In 2012 1.4 million days were lost, a four-fold increase on the previous year; 93 per cent of days lost were in the public sector.
Of course, there were other changes initiated by the Thatcher Governments which weakened the unions, notably the privatization programme.
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Marsh, D., Akram, S. The Thatcher legacy in perspective. Br Polit 10, 52–63 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2014.23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2014.23