Conclusion

It would be ludicrous to ascribe personal blame or (according to political conviction) credit to Margaret Thatcher for all – or even most – of the changes associated with globalisation and the extraordinary lurch towards economic neo-liberalism that has taken place over the last thirty years. The attack on the Keynesian consensus had already gained purchase on both sides of the Atlantic at least a decade before she became prime minister. Arguably, also, Thatcher was more the beneficiary than the initiator of a powerful shift in British political attitudes. By 1979, voters were already convinced both that trade unions had too much power and the Labour Party, the unions’ natural allies, had muffed its opportunity to reach an effective arrangement with them. In consequence, economic productivity was lower than that of Britain’s main competitors with damaging consequences for the manufacturing sector. The trade unions’ excessive wage demands contributed significantly to damagingly high levels of inflation. In 1979, the UK inflation rate was 13.4 per cent and rising. It had also been well over 10 per cent in four of the previous five years. Voters decided that a new approach was needed. Thatcher was unable to halt Britain’s relative economic decline after

1979, although its extent during the second half of the twentieth century should not be exaggerated. Against this, British citizens experienced demonstrable improvements in living standards and economic security in the second half of the twentieth century.1 Annual growth rates in the years 1979-88 and 1988-97, at 1.9 per cent and 1.5 per cent respectively, were considerably higher than those achieved in the period 1973-9. However, these successes represent relative failure set against other developed economies, especially those of Germany, Japan and the US. Growth rates in the 1950s and 1960s – the years of the hated ‘Butskellite Consensus’, as Thatcher came to see them – were much higher than when she was in power. Nevertheless, the rate of inflation

in Britain, which stood at 22 per cent at the end of Thatcher’s first year, came down dramatically thereafter. During the Thatcher decade, levels of inflation, a crucial blip in 1990 apart, were similar to those of its main industrialised competitors.2 Since inflation was routinely considered the greatest economic threat facing Britain in the 1970s and early 1980s, its decline can be considered as a substantial achievement. Thatcher had a number of high-profile political successes. She won

three successive general elections, two with landslide majorities. For much of the 1980s, her control over the Conservative Party was near to total. She was more successful than her predecessors in introducing managerial practices to a notoriously change-averse civil service. She successfully piloted a succession of privatisations through Parliament, though how much these contributed to Britain’s material prosperity remains debatable. Without doubt, she brought to heel an over-mighty trade union movement. For many of ‘her people’, this was the most noteworthy achievement of all. Most biographers emphasise the ‘life’ element in ‘life and times’

studies of their subjects. This is particularly so in the case of distinctive or particularly powerful figures. Thatcher was both distinctive and powerful but, for much of the 1980s, her policies followed dominant intellectual and economic fashion. She was, however, leader of a democratic nation and success depended on the ability both to win general elections and to retain support from other powerful figures in her own party. She managed the former but eventually failed in the latter. Even at her most dominant, she needed to do deals and to compromise, at home and abroad. To stay in power, the lady had to be ‘for turning’ rather more often than she liked to admit. Nor can Thatcher be accused of personal participation in the culture

of vulgarity and crass acquisition that, so her critics argue, was the consequence of her most successful economic initiatives. As one biographer has put, she ‘presided over and celebrated a culture of rampant materialism … fundamentally at odds with her own values which were essentially conservative, old-fashioned and puritanical’.3 Personally, she was thrifty. She believed in family as the basis of a secure, stable society. However, her economic and social policies made it more difficult for poor families to stick together in adverse circumstances. She believed that working hard was a duty and that more was expected from those with the ability to give more. Flinty, rigorous and unforgiving in political argument, she was widely reputed among her staff and other subordinates to be kind and considerate, remembering their birthdays, the names of their spouses and asking after ailing relatives.