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Margaret Thatcher’s political career was marked by a series of “firsts.” In June 1979 she became the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom. She was the first U.K. prime minister in the twentieth century to win three consecutive general elections (1979, 1983, and 1987), and upon her resignation in November 1990, she had become Britain’s longest continuously serving prime minister since 1827.
Thatcher was also unique in having her name associated with a set of ideas, policies, and style of governance known as Thatcherism. Yet the extent to which Thatcherism as an ideology guided the policies of Thatcher’s governments in office has been disputed. What is not in dispute is that these policies fundamentally altered the trajectory of the United Kingdom’s economy, society, and polity and continued to impact upon policy outputs, political discourse, and electoral competition long after the demise of the Thatcher government.
Thatcherite economic policies were broadly labeled monetarist even though, technically, a monetarist strategy was only pursued for a limited initial period. In an attempt to reverse Britain’s long-term economic decline, Thatcher challenged the basis of the postwar Keynesian social democratic consensus by attempting to restructure patterns of property ownership, taxation, and social attitudes toward welfare. An ambitious program of privatization transferred major state-owned industries and public services into the private sector, and 1.5 million public-sector houses were sold to their tenants. A parallel program of marketization promoted the use of market criteria by public-sector service providers—especially local authorities and the National Health Service. Taxation policies sought to reward “initiative” and “enterprise” through reduced rates of income tax. In parallel, welfare and social benefits were restructured, reduced, and increasingly means tested; and social attitudes toward collective welfare provision were challenged, most famously in Thatcher’s phrase “there is no such thing as society” (from an interview with Douglas Keay, 1987).
A hallmark of Thatcher’s period in office was her style of governance. She confronted most of the powerful social and political institutions in the United Kingdom. Major state institutions—most particularly the civil service and local government—were reformed, and a wide range of regulatory bodies was introduced. A “community charge” (known as the poll tax) was imposed to reform the system of local government financing. This tax was extremely unpopular and prompted widespread nonpayment and, ultimately, riots in London in November 1990. The legal position and standing of trade unions was altered radically by five major legislative acts. Thatcher’s foreign policies also revealed her combative nature. Her condemnation of Soviet-style communism earned her the epithet “the Iron Lady” in the Soviet press. Her support for Ronald Reagan (1911-2004), and for a close relationship with the United States, was reflected in mutual transatlantic perspectives on the cold war. Her general hostility to further European integration and her specific resistance to the creation of a federal European Union earned the United Kingdom the title “the awkward partner.” However, the Falklands War, waged in 1982 against Argentina, secured Thatcher’s status as a “warrior queen” in the popular press in the United Kingdom. The war lasted for seventy-four days, between April and June, and ended when British troops successfully reclaimed the British dependency of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic after an invasion by Argentina. Thatcher’s image as a decisive war leader strengthened her poll ratings and was emphasized successfully in the Conservative Party’s 1983 election slogan “the resolute approach.”
After her resignation in 1990, Thatcher remained a member of Parliament until the 1992 general election. Thereafter she joined the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher, and after a series of strokes she retired from public speaking in 2002. However, the legacy of Thatcher was profound, not least because of her impact upon her political opponents. Indeed the policies pursued by the Labour Party under Tony Blair were variously described as sub-Thatcherite, neo-Thatcherite, or simply Thatcherite.
Bibliography:
- Campbell, John. 2000. The Grocer’s Daughter. Vol. 1 of Margaret Thatcher. London: Cape.
- Campbell, John. 2003. The Iron Lady. Vol. 2 of Margaret Thatcher. London: Cape.
- Keay, Douglas. 1987. AIDS, Education, and the Year 2000.Woman’s Own. (October 31): pp. 8–10.
- http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106689.
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