Abstract
Much of the novelty and shock of Thatcherism in the 1970s was due to the contrast with the style and the policies of postwar Conservatism. Some Conservatives, such as Sir Ian Gilmour, argued that the Thatcherite wing of the party was repudiating the British Conservative tradition of non-ideological politics and pragmatic statecraft that stretched back to Disraeli.1 But the particular quarrel of the Thatcherites was with the attitudes, assumptions and policies to which Conservatives had become committed in the 1940s and 1950s.2 It was the acquiescence by Conservatives in the social democratic compromise in domestic policy which they most wished to challenge. They always claimed that they were the true Tories, restoring the party to its traditional principles. To understand why Thatcherism was so controversial in the 1970s, it is important to place it in the context of developments in British politics, and in particular in the Conservative party, since 1945.
The greatest task of the statesman … is to offer his people good myths and to save them from harmful myths.
Enoch Powell
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Notes and references
Ian Gilmour, Inside Right (London: Hutchinson, 1977).
See Rhodes Boyson, Centre Forward; and
Andrew Gamble, The Conservative Nation (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974) ch. 5.
See J. D. Hoffman, The Conservative Party in Opposition (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1964); Gamble, The Conservative Nation, ch. 3.
See also Macmillan’s shrewd analysis of the result of the 1959 election in his memoirs, Pointing the Way (London: Macmillan, 1972) p. 15.
R. T. McKenzie and A. Silver, Angels in Marble (London: Heinemann, 1963).
See the excellent analysis of why British Fordism was relatively unsuccessful in Henk Overbeek, Global Capitalism and Britain’s Decline (University of Amsterdam, 1988).
For the debate on modernisation see Andrew Gamble, Britain in Decline (London: Macmillan, 1985).
See T. E. Utley, Enoch Powell (London: Kimber, 1968); and
D. Schoen, Enoch Powell and the Powellites (London: Macmillan, 1977).
See Enoch Powell, Freedom and Reality (Kingswood: Elliott Rightway Books, 1969) ch. 9.
Enoch Powell, Income Tax at 4/3 in the £ (ed. A. Lejeune) (London: Stacey, 1970).
Nicholas Wapshott and George Brock in their study, Thatcher (London: Futura, 1983) note the similarities between Thatcher’s 1968 CPC lecture, ‘What’s Wrong with Politics’ and the ideas Powell was expressing. She was known to admire Powell’s book of speeches Freedom and Reality, she attended meetings at which he spoke and she was the only member of the Shadow Cabinet to wish him well in the 1970 election.
For writing on the Heath Government see M. Holmes, Political Pressure and Economic Policy: British Government 1970–74 (London: Butterworth, 1982);
Douglas Hurd, An End to Promises (London: Collins, 1979).
See Robin Blackburn, ‘The Heath Government: a new course for British capitalism’, New Left Review, 70 (1971) pp. 3–26.
The idea of a U-turn was critically examined by Michael Moran, ‘The Price for Conservatism’, Political Studies Association, 1978. See also
Andrew Gamble and Stuart Walkland, The British Party System and Economic Policy 1945–83 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
Two published collections of Sir Keith Joseph’s speeches are Reversing the Trend (London: Barry Rose, 1975) and
Stranded on the Middle Ground (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1976).
Accounts of the 1975 leadership election are contained in Wapshott and Brock, Thatcher, Robert Behrens, The Conservative Party from Heath to Thatcher (London: Saxon House, 1980); and
Patrick Cosgrave, Margaret Thatcher (London: Hutchinson, 1978).
Lord Stockton, The Times, 9 October 1975.
Lord Stockton, The Times, 9 October 1975.
Julian Critchley, Westminster Blues (London: Futura, 1985) p. 32.
J. Ramsden, The Making of Conservative Party Policy (London: Longman, 1980) ch. 10; Behrens, The Conservative Party from Heath to Thatcher; and Z. Layton-Henry (ed.) Conservative Party Politics (London: Macmillan, 1980).
Margaret Thatcher, ‘Britain Awake’, Let Our Children Grow Tall (London: CPS, 1977) p. 43.
Ibid., p. 44.
Ibid., p. 46.
Ibid., p. 46.
Ibid., p. 47.
See David Coates, Labour in Power (London: Longmans, 1980).
See W. Keegan, Mrs. Thatcher’s Economic Experiment (London: Allen Lane, 1984) Part i.
See Coates, Labour in Power, and M. Holmes, The Labour Government 1974–79 (London: Macmillan, 1985).
Trevor Russel, The Tory Party (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978) p. 78.
See Bill Schwarz, ‘Let them eat coal: the Conservative party and the strike’, in H. Beynon (ed.) Digging Deeper (London: Verso, 1985).
See J. Rogaly, Grunwick (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978).
See Steve Ludlam, ‘The myth of 1976’, mimeo, Department of Politics, University of Sheffield, 1987.
Keith Joseph, ‘Solving the Union problem is the key to economic recovery’ (London: CPS, 1979).
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© 1988 Andrew Gamble
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Gamble, A. (1988). From Butler to Thatcher. In: The Free Economy and the Strong State. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19438-4_3
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