Has The Conservative Party Abandoned Thatcherism?

‘The main reason for conservative dominance in the years 1951 to 1964 was labour disunity’ Assess the validity of this view. (June 2011)

Although the contrasting Right wing faction of the conservative party ‘Thatcherities’ oppose this, as Margret Thatcher reduced the size of the state, and they believe State intervention to be negative as it took a lot of industries out of public control and into the state.

Neoliberals however have significantly challenged the idea of tradition and focuses more on modern principles are theories such as individualism, rationalism and laissez-faire economics. For example, neoliberals are radical in the sense of trying to dismantle and roll back the interventionist government – this breaks away from tradition as traditional conservatives believe in the government having authority; therefore intervention is a must in order to ensure stability. They also view welfare as having provided a culture of dependency making welfare the cause of disadvantage not the cause. Charles Murray argued that welfare also provided the basis of breakdowns in the family as women no longer feel obliged to depend on the ‘breadwinning’ man in the family; they are given an alternative way to survive in society through welfare.

Another way the party has deviated from traditional conservative principles is through education. In contrast with the traditional elitist view on education by the conservatives, under Cameron there has been a strong emphasis on the idea that everybody should be able to go to university if their ability allows them too, supporting labours policies on scholarships to students from disadvantaged backgrounds and also attempting to establish more apprenticeship jobs and work experience jobs to encourage young people who perhaps wouldn't go to university to learn skills that would provide a better future for them. However, the fact remains that the vast majority of Cameron's conservatives graduated from private schools which does make the overview of the party seem very elitist but, its policies and support for scholarship programmes seem to challenge this idea and show that perhaps the conservative party has changed from that traditional view.

In the past, previous governments have always placed great emphasis upon collectivism, yet, Margaret Thatchers government saw the future as being more individual and made an attempt at reducing/abolishing collectivist thinking. The government wanted people to think more individually. Mrs Thatcher viewed that the collectivist way of thinking would get in the way of the

Another contributing factor at this election may have been performance in office, which in the above statement is not seen as important as personality and image. However, performance in office may have been extremely detrimental for the conservatives in 1997 because of their crisis in 1992. This focuses on the retrospective model, as people saw the Conservatives as incompetent in handling the economy because of Black Wednesday in September 1992. The Conservatives and especially Noramnt Lamont, Chancellor of the Exchequer, were to blame for the crisis that saw the pound forced out of the ERM. This didn’t help at the 1997 general election where they did extremely badly in a huge Labour win.

If we were to argue that there was indeed a post war consensus in British politics from 1951 to

The Falklands conflict was, in the opinion of both Thatcher and many historians believed to be a key reason for Thatcher’s re-election. The fact that the Conservatives had a jump in support of 11 per cent between February and July 1982 showed that the conflict was beneficial to the party, despite initial resistance

Thatcher from the start also wanted to promote freedom and she thought by ridding the country of trade unions she would achieve this. This hatred stemmed from when Labour was in power, this is because trade unions had way too much power and influence on the economy and government. Trade unions damaged economic performance as they essentially held Britain to ransom by enforcing 4 working days a week and endless amounts of strikes and wage demands. Thatcher attempted to target the miners as they were the backbone of trade unions and they were seen as the most powerful. She introduced a law where walkouts were no longer allowed and strikes ballots were required, if unions did not comply there were consequences.

During her term of office she reshaped almost every aspect of British politics, reviving the economy, reforming outdated institutions, and reinvigorating the nation's foreign policy. She challenged and did much to overturn the psychology of decline, which had become rooted in Britain since the Second World War, pursuing national recovery with striking energy and determination. In the process, Margaret

When Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister the first thing she wanted to do was limit union power. She felt that union power applied to nationalized industrial monopolies resulted in poor service at exorbitant cost to the taxpayers. She pointed to inefficient work practices, over employment and restrictive employment

In 1949, Thatcher made her first political run in the Labour-held seat of Dartford. Previous Conservative candidates hobnobbed only with the elite of Dartford, but Thatcher took an entirely different approach. Foreshadowing her strategy in the 1979 general election, she instead went to the poorer parts of town; spoke with the common people, and began relating with them. The strategy worked, cutting the Labour lead in half, but failed to provide Thatcher with a victory. Trying repeatedly in 1950 and 1951, she still could not win the election.

The new Conservative Government differed significantly from the Conservative Governments that had been in power throughout the ‘Butskellism’ era. Butskellism is an acronym derived from the cross party consensus on state welfare and housing that had dominated since the 1950s (Alcock, May & Wright, 2012). The Conservatives New Right ideology was one that advocated privatisation, managerialism and competitive markets. The ideology supported the sale and privatisation of National commodities such as British Steel, British Telecom, and other utilities such as water, gas, and electric (Bochel, 2012). Housing did not escape the Conservative Governments goal of complete privatisation; according to Legislation.gov.uk (2015), in August 1980, chapter 51 of the Housing Act 1980 incorporated the right to buy scheme. As supported by Baldock et al (2012), the right to buy refers to a housing policy that supported the compulsory sale of council

In Tony Blair’s Socialist Manifesto (1994), he reinvents the idea of “social-ism” in order to “fit the ideology to the world” since the economic and social interests of people are constantly evolving. After World War II, the economy became a lot more global, the service industry grew and there has been an increase in human rights movements as the public have been less progressive. Aligned with the ideas of “socialism”, Blair supports a concept called the “Third Way” which is based on the idea of combining center-right economics and center-left social policies (“The Third Way”, n.d).The idea was developed by Anthony Giddens, the sociologist and director of the London School of Economics, he argued that the reformist governments could no longer rely only on the ideas of complete social and economic state control in the face of the forces and finances of globalization. Therefore, Giddens proposed an idea that would support center policies, but also remain committed to radical measures. Blair refers to the third way as his version of “socialism” which is in favor of economic growth and entrepreneurship as well greater state intervention to improve social justice and equality among civilians (“UK Politics: What is the Third Way,” n.d.). Using the ideas of the third way, Blair reformed the Labour Party and their ideas. Under his leadership, the Labour Party became the New Labour Party with a

Her father’s urging “Never follow the crowd, make up your own mind” and a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox “One ship drives east and another drives west With the selfsame winds that blow. Tis the set of the sails And not the gales Which tells us the way to go” (Thatcher, 1995, 05:20). The influence of these words on Maggie proved to determine the future of the whole country. The following years Margaret worked herself through Oxford University, where she has started to establish her name in the political arena. In 1951 Maggie got married to the wealthy businessman Denis Thatcher.