Thatcherism
Under her administration, there was one major exception to Thatcherite changes: the National Health Service (NHS), which was widely popular with the British public.
However, she gave a speech in Solihull during her campaign for the 1987 general election and included in a discussion of the economic successes the remark: "that's what I call Thatcherism".
"[8] [A] mixture of free markets, financial discipline, firm control over public expenditure, tax cuts, nationalism, "Victorian values" (of the Samuel Smiles self-help variety), privatisation and a dash of populism.
Thatcherism attempts to promote low inflation, the small state and free markets through tight control of the money supply, privatisation and constraints on the labour movement.
[10] Thatcher herself stated during a speech in 1983: "I would not mind betting that if Mr Gladstone were alive today he would apply to join the Conservative Party".
As prime minister, Thatcher did not challenge ancient institutions such as the monarchy or the House of Lords, but some of the most recent additions, such as the trade unions.
[15] Indeed, many leading Thatcherites, including Thatcher herself, went on to join the House of Lords, an honour which William Ewart Gladstone, for instance, had declined.
[16] Thinkers closely associated with Thatcherism include Keith Joseph, Enoch Powell, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.
In an interview with Simon Heffer in 1996, Thatcher stated that the two greatest influences on her as Conservative leader had been Joseph and Powell, who were both "very great men".
Biographer John Campbell reports that in July 1978, when asked by a Labour MP in Commons what she meant by socialism, "she was at a loss to reply.
What in fact she meant was Government support for inefficient industries, punitive taxation, regulation of the labour market, price controls – everything that interfered with the functioning of the free economy".
The historian Ewen Green claimed there was resentment of the inflation, taxation and the constraints imposed by the labour movement, which was associated with the so-called Buttskellite consensus in the decades before Thatcher came to prominence.
[20] The historian Christopher Cooper traced the formation of the monetarist economics at the heart of Thatcherism back to the resignation of the Conservative chancellor of the Exchequer, Peter Thorneycroft, in 1958.
[29] Whereas some of her heirs, notably Michael Portillo and Alan Duncan, embraced this libertarianism, others in the Thatcherite movement such as John Redwood sought to become more populist.
The Labour Chancellor Denis Healey had already adopted some monetarist policies, such as reducing public spending and selling off the government's shares in BP.
A common theme centres on the Medium Term Financial Strategy, issued in the 1980 budget, which consisted of targets for reducing the growth of the money supply in the following years.
The money supply, as measured by M3, has been allowed to grow erratically, while calculation of the public sector borrowing requirement is held down by the ruse of subtracting the proceeds of privatisation as well as taxes from government expenditure.
Writing as Tribune's education correspondent, Heath wrote: "It will be argued that teachers are members of a profession which must not be influenced by political considerations.
[65] Utley contended that the term was a creation of Thatcher's enemies who wished to damage her by claiming that she had an inflexible devotion to a particular set of principles and also by some of her friends who had little sympathy for what he called "the English political tradition" because it facilitated "compromise and consensus".
Utley argued that a free and competitive economy, rather than being an innovation of Thatcherism, was one "more or less permanent ingredient in modern Conservative philosophy": It was on that principle that Churchill fought the 1945 election, having just read Hayek's Road to Serfdom.
[67] Such leftist critics as Anthony Giddens claim that Thatcherism was purely an ideology and argue that her policies marked a change which was dictated more by political interests than economic reasons: Rather than by any specific logic of capitalism, the reversal was brought about by voluntary reductions in social expenditures, higher taxes on low incomes and the lowering of taxes on higher incomes.
Cowling claimed that Thatcher used "radical variations on that patriotic conjunction of freedom, authority, inequality, individualism and average decency and respectability, which had been the Conservative Party's theme since at least 1886".
[70] Historians Emily Robinson, Camilla Schofield, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Natalie Thomlinson have argued that by the 1970s, Britons were keen on defining and claiming their individual rights, identities and perspectives.
[72] When she resigned in 1990, 28% of the children in Great Britain were considered to be below the poverty line, a number that kept rising to reach a peak of nearly 30% during the government of Thatcher's successor, John Major.
In the 1980s, the now defunct Social Democratic Party adhered to a "tough and tender" approach in which Thatcherite reforms were coupled with additional welfare provisions.
The New Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were described as "neo-Thatcherite" by some on the left since many of their economic policies mimicked those of Thatcher.
[8] On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Thatcher's 1979 election victory, the BBC surveyed opinions which opened with the following comments:[82] To her supporters, she was a revolutionary figure who transformed Britain's stagnant economy, tamed the unions and re-established the country as a world power.
[83] As a political-economic philosophy, Thatcherism was originally built upon four components: commitment to free enterprise;[84] British nationalism;[85] a plan to strengthen the state by improving efficiency; and a belief in traditional Victorian values especially hard work and civic responsibility.
The dream of restoring traditional values by creating a property-owning democracy has failed in Britain – ownership in the stock market has plunged, as has the proportion of young people who are homebuyers.
Journalists such as Ross Gittins of The Sydney Morning Herald have cited this as a move away from the standard arguments made historically by Thatcherites and related advocates.
