Thatcher (15 page)

Her second lesson –
We now know that it is not government, but free enterprise, which is capable of creating wealth, providing jobs and raising living standards
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– is a familiar rallying cry. The idea that the state should be rolled back, and that individuals were responsible for meeting their own social and welfare needs was forged in Grantham, where charity was given through local agencies and in her experience no one starved. It has not proved true in every day experience today. Perhaps the easiest example lies in housing, where the removal of one million houses from public provision should have sparked a vibrant market in low cost sale and rental housing. This has not happened. Social housing – rental housing for the poor – is now usually provided through registered social landlords, often charities. House prices are high, and first time buyers can be priced out of new housing. Government intervention has been necessary to introduce ‘share buying' and ensure low-cost homes. Nor have living standards risen for the whole population. In 1999, 26 per cent of the population was living in poverty. In 1979, when Margaret Thatcher came to power, the percentage was 13 per cent. Welfare initiatives designed to cut welfare dependency have increased actual poverty. Groups of claimants removed from the right to benefit during the Thatcher years, 17–18 year olds, strikers, have not been reinstated. The introduction of loans through the Social Fund to the poorest people on Income Support has not been reversed. The intention of these measures was to introduce individual accountability and to reduce what Margaret Thatcher saw as an attitude of reliance on the state. If initiative was rewarded with a job and hard work, then everyone could succeed. Perhaps the message has been more successful than the policy – In 2003 the poorest fifth of the population had a median income of £128 a week. The richest fifth had a median income of nearly five times as much, at £616.
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Rich and poor are clustered geographically: The loss of Britain's industrial base in the North, and lack of availability of cheap housing, mean that poverty affects whole communities rather than individuals. The practical result of her actions has been to make it harder for people to move out of poverty, and to increase the gap between the rich and poor.

Her strongest legacy is perhaps in her third lesson.
Third, there is the need for strong defence. And this, of course, is something which is the ultimate test of any government. One lesson from this century's wars cannot be misunderstood: it is that credible deterrence works to keep the peace – and that it is weakness, not strength, which tempts the aggressor
.
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Margaret Thatcher was instrumental in the resolution of the Cold War between the Soviet Bloc and the United States of America. This does not mean that there is no longer any tension between East and West, but it does mean that Europe in general, and Britain in particular, is no longer squeezed between two nuclear powers. Of course the theatre of war has moved – and perhaps the nuclear stalemate that marked the post-war years would have ended any way. The Thatcher legacy was to introduce change by lauding and exporting free-market values with evangelistic fervour. Her understanding of the power of ideas led her to lead this change with the struggle for hearts and minds. Canvassing for the free market, as she did publicly in Yugoslavia and Moscow and privately in talks with the Soviet Union, was both a courageous and an evangelistic thing to do.

Her government also saw the end of white rule in Rhodesia. From the vantage point of 2006 we may regret Robert Mugabe's hold on power and his treatment of the country, but he first came to power in a free election brought about by British intervention. In a similar way, her government negotiated the handover of Hong Kong, and the protection of capitalism there. The Anglo-Irish Agreement laid the bare foundations for the current cease-fire. In all these places, Margaret Thatcher and her government took decisive action, and carried through a clear programme. The end result, from a 2006 perspective is not always what she intended, but there has been a result that has changed the course of international relations. A less successful legacy lies with Europe. There, her intransigent refusal to consider closer union damaged Britain's ability to influence decision making for many years. It also polarised opinion in the Conservative Party itself, giving a focus for an argument that has torn the party apart through succeeding time in government and in opposition.

Her fourth lesson was a different one, and one that did not figure largely during her government.
The Twentieth Century will be looked back on as perhaps the only time in the history of our civilisation when some people imagined they could successfully run an economy and sustain a society with weak families
.
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The view of the family that she expressed throughout her life was an extension of her view of individual rights and responsibilities. The family was the fundamental unit of society, where values were learnt and put into practice. She did not provide support for families through policy because the best interests were served by allowing men and women, fathers and mothers, the opportunity to provide for themselves. She did ensure that young people did not have incentive to leave home because of benefit or housing opportunities. She frowned on the economic and social costs of single parenthood. She said:
The family does not need some special raft of subsidies and privileges to stay afloat. Instead, we must give back to families power and responsibility. And remember: it is through the family that one generation gives the benefit of its wisdom to the next
. The effect of her policies was to increase the responsibility placed on families without providing support. It was the attitude of the middle class families of a small town, with no awareness of the realities of life without money or outside help. Closure of long-stay hospitals shows this very clearly. When her government introduced the National Health Service and Community Care Act in 1990 the intentions included reducing local authority spending and encouraging local authorities to use other organisations to provide services. The effect was to return long-stay patients to their homes or communities. Women bore the brunt of this as carers in the home or low-paid carers in the community, and families were at the forefront of new provision.

In her fifth lesson she returned to familiar ground.
Let us never forget that stability and freedom depend upon popular loyalties to traditional institutions. And the most powerful and pervasive traditional institution which the political world has known is the nation
.
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She used as illustration the example of communist Russia, where the re-establishment of nation states has been accompanied by war, poverty, and sickness. And in her sixth and final lesson she drew attention to the
Value and Vitality
of the Westminster parliament:
Let us renew our resolve that the sovereignty of the Westminster parliament will never be lightly relinquished; that the sacrifices and struggles of previous generations which won that sovereignty will not be forgotten; and that we will never grow weary or become complacent when the inestimable advantage of being ruled under laws made by our own representatives in our own parliament is put at risk
.
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She opposed Scots and Welsh devolution, where local parliaments are now in place. But the lasting legacy of her government has been the dissolution of the Conservative Party as a force for effective opposition over the last 15 years.

She was the first woman prime minister of a Western power. Regardless of her own lessons this could have been her biggest legacy – awareness of the potential for women to lead. She was careful of her appearance and her profile, and used her femininity when needed. She came to power at the same time that Women's liberation and second wave feminism were forces for social change. Equal Pay acts and Sexual Discrimination acts were new on the statute book when she was first elected in 1979. She was clear that being a woman had influenced her career – in her memoirs she discusses being selected for Dartford because she was a woman:
Why not take the risk of adopting young Margaret Roberts? There was not much to lose, and some good publicity for the party to win
.
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She was clear that there were different expectations, and different standards, because she was a woman. She was interviewed with Barbara Castle and Shirley Williams about the implications of being a woman in Parliament and having to order men about. She said:
I think they're
[women]
less self-confident than men. That's often struck me. I think a number of women would hold back and say, ‘I don't know enough about it' when on the same amount of knowledge, a man would jump in and make quite an inflamed and passionate speech about it and he would know no more relevant facts than the woman who refused to make a speech
.
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In the same interview, she talked about being visible as a woman in the House, and staying on the benches so that people would see women were represented. But she made no attempt to encourage women into her Cabinet. Almost no women joined her in government, and her close friends and allies were men. Her secretaries and personal assistants were women, but when it came to government her rhetoric was contradicted by her behaviour:
Oh, I do wish we could get more women into Parliament. First, it would make those of us who are there less conspicuous, and that would be a great advantage, but you know, there are not any more really than there were in the 1930s, and it is a great disappointment because women, as I say, are very able. It is partly, I think, that they prefer getting things done rather than making speeches about it and I notice that when women are in Parliament they are extremely practical about how they can move things forward, extremely good constituency members, extremely good on committee work because there we are dealing with the detail, and they are very good at getting down to their homework and knowing all the facts, and really saying: ‘But it is no good talking general principles, it is how this applies. Look at how it applies to my constituency.' And yes, we want double, treble, quadruple the numbers. Let us make a target first of having a third of the House of Commons consisting of women. That would be terrific and it would alter things, I think, quite a bit
.
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This was a huge disappointment to burgeoning feminists. Although they were ready to support her election at first, her policies about the family, her use of her gender and looks to get results, and her failure to pay any attention to equal rights legislation left many women disappointed. She did offer a role model, but it was one based on individual success in a public world, where private concerns like childcare were individual problems to be solved individually. The result may have been to politicise many women – faced with a feminine role-model with little interest in their concerns, perhaps it was necessary to defeat Thatcherism in order to reclaim equal opportunities.

And what of monetarism? The financial strategy that was worth increasing unemployment and civil unrest for? The belief system that gave an economic foundation for individualistic ideology? As Margaret Thatcher said when describing herself and Ronald Reagan:
Our belief in the virtues of hard work and enterprise led us to cut taxes. Our belief in private property led to the sale of state industries and ‘public' housing back to the people. Our belief in sound money led to the monetarist policies that attacked inflation. Our belief in individual initiative over bureaucratic control led to the successful deregulation of finance and industry. And, taken together, all these policies led to a freer society and the greatest period of uninterrupted growth in our history
. Certainly, there has been no return, even wistfully, to Keynesian economics. The introduction of the free market in the health service and education has not been reversed. The privatisation of industry and business continues. Control of the money supply though control of government spending is as much a matter of political consensus as collectivism was before 1979. However, monetarism alone did not destroy inflation. There is also no easy return to monetarist policies.

So what has she left behind? First, an image of personalised, individualistic evangelistic determination that is larger than life. Sometimes loved, often hated, it is impossible to be indifferent to this image. At her best, she was brave to a fault, honest and very feminine – the image of her, perfectly composed and coiffured, on the conference platform after the Brighton bomb is as lasting an image as any picture of wartime bravery. At worst, the same determination and perfect image walked across picket lines and into scenes of disruption and poverty without turning a hair. For women especially this is a mixed gift. While it is absolutely clear that women can take the public space that she took, it would be a brave woman who risked the negative pictures she has left behind. Second, she turned post-war Britain away from collectivism and socialism in ways that cannot easily be reversed. Industries now privatised, welfare benefits re-designed, state housing almost destroyed are not the strongest example of this. The strongest example is a shift in hearts and minds that she would be heartily proud of, that makes socialism seem monstrous and low taxation desirable in the electoral mind. But she did not go as far as she would have liked. She failed to prune public spending with lasting effect, she failed to reduce the Civil Service. Third, she laid the foundations of Britain's close relationship with America. In doing so, she may have irrevocably damaged Britain's future in Europe. Finally, she adopted a presidential approach to government that permitted Parliament and the Shadow Cabinet to blame her for unpopular decisions, even when they would have supported them. This foreshadows Tony Blair's current leadership style, dependent as it is on the personality and celebrity of the leader.