Why did it end so bad?
The LRB finally gets around to reviewing John Campbell's The Iron Lady (II) and a cracker it is too (not yet online though). One of the most disappointing things in politics these days is the lack of understanding of her premiershp, with views either she was brilliant, or she was evil.In a surprisingly complimentary review (Blair's appallingness it seems has turned us all into Thatcherites), Ross McKibben draws 7 conclusions, worth repeating briefly.
1. Her first government was the best. Indeed I have argued elsewhere that her last government was possibly the worst in post-war history.
2. Crossing the Rubicon (Howe's 1981 budget) was not something the electorate were keen on. But the Falklands war changed all that. So she was lucky, but she made her own luck, and deserves credit.
3. Thatcherism developed slowly and cautiously, and indeed Thatcher was often less Thatcherite than her cabinet - Kenneth Clarke for instance was much more prepared to radically reform the NHS.
4. Thatcher was obseseed with the 'Secret State', i.e. the nexus of defence, foreign policy and spies.
5. Thatcher was always much more European than her post-premiership record would indicate. To the degree she came anti-Europe during her premiership it was in reponse to Labour's pro-Europeanism. She was also much -- much -- less subservient to the US than Blair.
6. She accelerated the decay of Cabinet government, mainly because at first she couldn't get her own way in Cabinet.
7. Campbell claims her hatred of local government is due to her disguised hatred of her father.
McKibben also notes that the 'paradoxes' often noted about Thatcher, such as her wish to free the state but as PM making it evermore burdensome, her belief in prudence and saving but her policies of uncontrolled debt, her views about 'useful' occupations in a woman who quit industry for the law, her attempts to creat a classless society yet her creation of hereditary peers, her belief in an entreprenurial class but her dislike for immigration, aren't really paradoxes, at least for her. With respect to the State, for example, Thatcherites prefer the word 'freedom' to 'liberty'. Freedom to them means freedom within a market polity constructed to favour some against others. Liberty has a different connotation, and Thatcher is a Conservative, not a libertarian (note similarly to most 'libertarians' on the internet).
The main thrust of the essay however is why did it end so badly? In Thatcherite (not Thatcherist) lore, it's because the nasty left-wingers stabbed her in the back. This of course isn't true. Thatcherism essentially unleashed forces that were to destroy her premiership.
At its basic level Thatcher's aim was to destroy the Labour Party and 'socialism', not to, say, transform the British economy. If the economy was transformed, that was good, but it was a second-order goal. Socialism was to be destroyed by restructuring the electorate, essentially through the destruction of the industrial working-class. This was done through attacking the idea of class as a concept, via home ownership or popular capitalism, and the economy viewed not as a productive force, but as a lottery in which many would gain, and many would lose.
The problem of course was that it was incredibly unstable, and many of the winners became losers. Furthermore the political strategy was also risky. To take up populism and against Old Etonians is 'to play with fire' -- the outcome might not be what you wanted. McKibben notes that Thatcher spent much time grovelling to tabloids, but tabloid culture in the end was as damaging to the Tories as Labour. Furthermore the class system she brought into place, a large and ill-defined middle class, was not really Conservative at all. The old Tory working-class meanwhile had sisappeared.
So her legacy was destructive. McKibben notes that of her successors, only one wasn't Thatcherite, and she did her best to destroy him. Hague thought about changing direction, but panicked. IDS was more Thatcher than Thatcher. Howard is a Thatcherite who's good at bruising (my attempts to recast him as a social democrat have clearly passed Lancaster and McKibben by).
In conclusion she was really riding a wave common to most western countries, and indeed many (New Zealand for example) went much further than she. However this historic and successful movement she gave 'a vocabulary, a dynamic force, an indomitable character, which personalised it and made it inescapable'.
posted by Matthew @ 3/12/2004 09:16:00 AM
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