By Michael Faulkner – 08 March 2009
In May it will be thirty years since Margaret Thatcher
became prime minister. In view of the dire state of the economy and the daily
news of bankruptcies, mortgage foreclosures, and the boundless avarice of
disgraced banksters, it might be considered an anniversary
warranting little attention. But it has not been so. A television drama dealing
with her final weeks in office has been much praised. Former colleagues, both
admirers and detractors, have resurfaced to regurgitate their views of the
woman in whose shadow they served for eleven years. Political commentators from
the left and right have been delivering their verdicts on the 1980s decade of
“Thatcherism.” In terms of serious political analysis, the results of this
retrospective have been quite meagre.
The current issue of the weekly New Statesman, which for
many years was a serious publication on the social democratic left, is entirely
devoted to the woman and her legacy. In the sensationalist style that has come
to characterize the journal, “the
Thatcher issue”, features a cover picture of the former PM waving to a crowd of
Muscovites under the caption “THATCHER: 30 years on, the final verdict.” The
contents fail to fulfill the promise. Far from presenting a final verdict, most
contributions do not go beyond the anecdotal. Only one, from Martin Jacques,
former editor of the former journal “Marxism Today” (which coined the term
“Thatcherism” in the early 1980s), amounts to anything like a serious
contribution to our understanding. Amongst the other contributors are several
Tories who deliver predictable homilies. This approach is in line with recent issues of the NS, which last week
featured an uncharacteristically long but characteristically superficial
“exclusive” interview with the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, written by the editor, Jason Cowley. The cover of
that issue depicted Miliband reclining on a
giant-sized globe, under the vacuous banner headline: “MILIBAND’S MISSION. Is
this the man to save Britain?” Needless to say, no answer is forthcoming to that question, but as the
question itself is meaningless that is hardly surprising.
Apart from the current predilection for marking
anniversaries for the sake of nostalgia, is anything to be gained by ruminating
on the Thatcher years? I think it
is only worthwhile if an appraisal of the woman and her legacy goes beyond the
superficialities that pass for serious political commentary in much of the
media. A summary of much of the commentary from those more or less sympathetic
to her would go like this:
By the end of the 1970s Britain was in a mess. The
“consensus” politics that had prevailed since 1945, producing the “mixed
economy”, had broken down. Business enterprise was shackled by punitive
corporate taxation; industrial relations were abysmal; trades unions were far
too strong and were “holding the country up to ransom”; years of Labour government had resulted in an over-dominant state;
the nationalized industries were inefficient and encouraged a poor work ethic.
Previous Conservative governments shared responsibility for this state of
affairs because they had endorsed the consensus that had produced it. The
country was stagnating and drastic action was needed to “restore Britain.” According to this reading of the
situation, Thatcher was elected to power in 1979 with a mandate to carry
through a “conservative revolution.” Her government would get the state off peoples’ backs, privatize the
nationalized industries, break the power of the trades unions, encourage an
unrestrained free market economy – for, as she proclaimed “you can’t buck
the market.” Thatcher, it is said,
was a “conviction politician” and that is what was needed. It is even argued,
by her admirers and some of her critics that she carried through a
revolution. Despite the fact that
she was forced out of office in 1990 by conspirators in her own party who
realized that she would lead them to electoral defeat, she is still revered by
Tories, most of whom place her second only to Churchill in the pantheon of great
British prime ministers. By the mid 1990s the Blairite architects of New Labour had also become believers in
the “Thatcherite” credo, although they hesitated to
say so publicly. Her views, and those
of her admirers may be summed up in the rather banal phrase that she coined:
There Is No Alternative – (TINA).
Needless to say, this is not a view I share. It is widely acknowledged that Thatcher
aroused intense feelings in many people. She was loved and loathed in equal measure. Personal feelings cannot be
ignored and I cannot pretend to have had any affection for her. But this is
hardly the point. Intense personal
feelings can often prevent us from understanding the real political and
economic forces that are in play at crucial times in history. Likewise, terms such
as “Thatcherism” and “Reaganism” often serve to
obfuscate by personalizing policies that can only really be understood as
expressions of deeper underlying social and economic trends. So, how should
Thatcher and her legacy be understood? I can only offer my view, for what it is
worth.
Thatcher herself produced nothing new in terms of political
and economic theory. Her mentors were people like Keith Joseph and Alfred
Sherman who, in turn got their ideas from von Hayek and Milton Friedman. The
Chicago School assault on the post–war Keynesian consensus had been
germinating since the 1960s and Thatcher was a relatively late convert. She had
the knack, as did Reagan at about the same time, of giving the free market
ideologues’ views a populist gloss. The myth perpetuated by her admirers has it that she embarked on a grand
project to “set Britain free” and, due to her great success in this project , succeeded in winning three elections in 1979, 1983
and 1987. The reality is rather different.
The Tory election campaign in 1979 was launched with a
clever propaganda poster depicting a long line of unemployed workers waiting
for their dole money outside a labour exchange with
the message “Labour isn’t Working”.
Indeed, unemployment under Labour had gone over I
million. The Tories were elected to office with a parliamentary majority of 35
seats – hardly a landslide. Within a few years after her election, unemployment rose to 3 million
and inflation remained very high. By 1981 Thatcher’s popularity had plummeted.
But in 1982 Argentine General Galtieri came to her assistance
by invading the Malvinas (Falkland Islands), a British territory in the South
Atlantic. The successful Falklands War, waged with the full panoply of
jingoistic flag-waving, restored her popularity ratings, contributing greatly
to victory in the 1983 election.
The years that followed saw the most bitter class conflicts
in Britain. A year long miners’ strike, sparked by the
government’s intention to close pits and run down the coal industry, ended in
defeat for the miners. This was the showdown that Thatcher had been waiting
for. The National Union of Mineworkers was the strongest union in Britain and
its back was now broken. The defeat of the miners and the passage of punitive
anti trade union laws led to the weakening of the whole labour movement. The bargaining power of labour was
drastically reduced in the face of a sustained onslaught
which effectively destroyed Britain’s manufacturing base. Swathes of the
country’s industrial heartland were laid waste and have never recovered.
Thatcher’s removal from office in 1990 led to the
expectation on the part of those who had suffered most during her years in
office that the Tory government would not survive another election. Opinion polls indicated that Labour would win in 1992. Had they done so it would have
been on the basis of a clear social democratic mandate. But Labour lost narrowly to the Tories and John Major’s government continued Thatcher’s
policies by privatizing the national railway network in the face of strong
public opposition. By this time public opposition to privatization and to
unregulated free market capitalism was widespread. The recession of the early
1990s helped to swing public opinion decisively behind the Labour Party. But, following the death of the social-democratic leader, John Smith,
the leadership went to Tony Blair and “New Labour”
was born.
The economic crisis that is deepening by the day is a
consequence of the deregulated financial system that was promoted by the
Thatcher governments after 1979. Had a different course been adopted in 1997 it might have avoided the
economic disaster that looms before us. But New Labour had become converted to Thatcher’s belief that “there is no alternative” to the
course pursued since 1979.
Gordon Brown, during his years as Chancellor of the
Exchequer, embraced the bankers and financiers and encouraged precisely those
malpractices that have led to the present depression. One of his first acts after he succeeded Tony Blair as PM in
2007 was to invite Margaret Thatcher to 10 Downing Street for tea. Seemingly, he no longer believes that
there is no alternative to the course she advocated, but he will live with her
legacy until, like her, he is forced from office. 