Thatcher and the Conservative Party, Fifty Years Later

Was it all a dream? It sure feels that way.

As a boy in the 1990s, the story seemed straightforward. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Britain had invented capitalism, spearheaded the Industrial Revolution, helped develop liberal democracy, and played a pivotal role in the outcome of two world wars. But then, between the late 1940s and the mid-1970s, it had forgotten how to do that sort of thing and, instead, slipped into mediocrity and deterioration. And then Thatcher came, becoming the leader of the Conservative Party in 1975, fifty years ago. Four years later, her premiership arrived and this stern, brave, sometimes disagreeable woman who remembered the fundamental truths of government and economics and who was sufficiently horrified by the prospect of managed decline resolved to do something about it. This she did—and so successfully and comprehensively that when, 18 years later, the historically socialist Labour party eventually returned to power, it felt obliged to retain the core tenets of her revolution.

That story is, of course, a bit simplistic. But, in outline, it’s essentially correct. Britain had lost its way. The 1970s were a catastrophe. Without Mrs. Thatcher, this would not have changed. And, for a while at least, her reforms were so fruitful that none dared touch them in earnest.

My parents met in London in 1976, and when they moved into their first apartment a year later, they were subject to rolling electrical blackouts, endless strikes, and a state-run telecommunications agency that was so badly run that applicants for a new telephone line were told to wait three months. This was normal. At the end of the 1970s, Britain was broke, weak, and dysfunctional. Its economy was crippled by inflation, its people were restrained by taxation, and its government was at the mercy of militant trade unions that had developed so much power that they boasted openly about their ability to bring down the prime minister. By the time that I was born, eight years later in 1984, inflation was under control, taxes had been slashed, key industries had been privatized, the process of reining in the unions was underway, and, by repelling the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, Britain’s post-Suez reputation as the “sick man of Europe” had been reversed. Ten years later, in the middle of my childhood, the United Kingdom was a fun, strong, prosperous, creative, stable sort of place that, by the end of the decade, would be referred to internationally as “Cool Britannia.”

And then? Well, this is where the story gets depressing: Then, the Brits forgot the lesson all over again.

Mercifully, Britain today is not where it was in the 1970s. But, on taxes, in the dysfunction of its public services, in its dearth of cultural confidence, and its lack of opportunity, it’s a great deal closer to it than it was in, say, 2007. The country has come to a circle—not a full circle, perhaps, but a circle. When I was a small child, my father often said to me that, had it not been for the election of Margaret Thatcher, he’d have moved to Canada or the United States. Today, after a break of around thirty years, he has taken to saying the same thing to his grandchildren: Go West, young man! (It is a matter of considerable irony that I moved to the United States in 2011, during the one period in his life in which he was not advising his compatriots to leave.) It has been odd, I will confess, to have left still-Thatcherite Britain and to have returned, sporadically, to a country that has no place in my memory.

Margaret Thatcher was not perfect. She could be overly combative with her allies, which can hurt in a parliamentary system. On free speech, the right to bear arms, and due process, she was a throwback to the Victorian era rather than to the classical liberal epoch that informed most of her other views. And she probably stayed in office too long. However, imperfection is inherent in the nature of Great figures, and Mrs. Thatcher was undoubtedly one.

For reasons that I have never quite understood, the smart set within our illustrious cache of academic historians are allergic to the idea that history’s turning points can be attributed to the personal virtues or resolve of individuals who stepped up at the right moment. I dissent from this view. It is, of course, true that history is about more than birth certificates and obituaries, but even a cursory glance at the last three hundred years suggests that amorphous forces cannot account for all its jukes and contours. A world without George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Nikola Tesla, Henry Ford, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr., and Ronald Reagan is a world that, in my estimation, would look profoundly different—even if one assumes that all the same societal desires and impulses remain. So, it is with Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher had the audacity to take over the British Conservative Party—thereby hijacking a vehicle that, before and after, was characterized by squishy “One Nation” capitulation and steering it toward the eternal maxims of Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises. She dared to take action that temporarily damaged the economy in the interest of a longer-term fix—thereby risking her re-election and, with it, the entire project. She refused to relinquish the Falkland Islands to a hostile foreign power simply because the bien pensant class thought she should—thereby creating a hostage to fortune that, had it gone wrong, would have put her approval rating into single digits. And, above all, she understood that political rights are ultimately won by argument, not by force.

As a culture, we tend to prioritize the pugnacious over the astute—especially these days, when a “girlboss” woman is involved—such that, if you read a quotation from Margaret Thatcher today, it is likely to convey bellicosity or intransigence. There is a treasure trove of these: “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it”; “I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end”; “The lady is not for turning”; etc., etc., etc. But, as with her American counterpart, Ronald Reagan, Thatcher’s greatest skill was in conveying harsh realities in terms that appealed to the average voter. “It’s passionately interesting for me,” Thatcher once remarked, “that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.” Those things? That “pennies do not come from heaven, they have to be earned here on earth.” That “there is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.” That “socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess: they always run out of other people’s money.” Thatcher was well-read, but she did not argue like a university professor. “My policies are based not on some economics theory,” she explained, “but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police.”

It is tough to see where the next Margaret Thatcher is coming from—or, frankly, if the demand that swept her into office in 1979 will ever be replicated. Today, what once looked like a fix for Britain’s slump into the mire increasingly seems to have been a reprieve. In 2005, a reflection upon the anniversary of her election as Tory leader would have called for a victory parade. Now, it calls for a wake—at which the life is celebrated, the loss is mourned, and there is hope in some corners for the eventual resurrection of the spirit.

Charles C. W. Cooke is a senior editor at National Review and the host of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast.