John Barnes, Historian

© John Barnes

Political Change in Modern Britain

21 February 2003

Lecture 16-03

Thatcherism represented a profound political, economic, social and even cultural break with the immediate past, and some would argue, less convincingly, with discourses and practices associated with the postwar settlement. Much of the debate about the nature of Thatcherism and the extent of its success takes place amongst state theorists with a Marxist provenance and some of the questions posed in the literature are therefore to be understood in the light of their preoccupations. For example Colin Hay asks whether Thatcherism should be seen as a genuine answer to the crisis of the British state in the 1970s or simply as a new way of managing such a crisis? But without plunging into the depths of Marxist theology, there are a number of debates about Thatcherism which are worth considering, and in particular whether it is best seen as the product of strategic calculation, ideological zeal, or pragmatic opportunism.

David Willetts is anxious to play down the novelty of Thatcherism and to place her within the traditional confines of Conservatism. Although he paints a convincing picture, it is not one that is accepted by her opponents within the party. Gilmour, for example, sees her as an ideologue, but remarks like "We must have an ideology" suggest less a leader driven by ideology than one acutely aware of its uses.

That would fit in well with Jim Bulpitt's view that the activities of political leaders should be examined in terms of their statecraft. Embraced within that term is not only the ability to win elections, but more important, when in office, the achievement of a necessary degree governing competence. There are five major dimensions to statecraft:

1. Party management - normally the aim is quiescence, but after an election defeat, for example, leaders may have to look to their party for a more positive approach and that in turn may cause them problems.
2. A winning electoral strategy - a policy package that will mobilise sufficient of the electorate for the party to gain power, but which is designed also to unite the party and instil in it the belief that it will be able to govern effectively.
3. Establishing a winning argument, preferably hegemonic, in elite debate over political problems, policies and the government's general stance. Bulpitt suggests that political argument is both a cruder and more comprehensive concept than ideology. What is at stake is the ability of a government to make an argument acceptable to the public or at least more plausible than any advanced by its rivals. The contribution this actually makes to a party's overall success is not clear, but Bulpitt is right to see this as essential to the leadership's own self-confidence.
4. Governing competence - this is not confined to the selection of appropriate policies, but involves avoiding those which the leadership believe that they will not be able to implement successfully.
5. Establishing another winning electoral strategy.

Bulpitt argues that Conservative leaders have favoured a three dimensional statecraft:

a continuing commitment to winning power at the centre on their own footing, acting in the role of a political whore in order to secure that end, but once in power taking on what Bulpitt describes as "an almost virginal character" as they seek to insulate Whitehall from both domestic an external pressures. Part of the strategy involved leaving a good deal to local government. Parliament, although an essential intermediary with the forces that they aim to peripheralise, is relegated to the role of a "talking shop". Where economic matters are concerned the Conservative quest is for a major element of automaticity in order to depoliticise the issues involved. Bulpitt argues that the postwar practice of Keynesianism allowed the economy to be managed without infringing the autonomy of business or the unions. The approach was called in question

1. by the modernisation ethic;
2. the perceived need for an incomes policy to contain wage push; and
3. the unbalanced corporatism that developed and which indicated that an ability to work with the unions was essential.

Bulpitt's contention is that the Conservatives party in the 1970s was not converted to monetarism, but adopted it as a plausible means of combating inflation that did not involve an incomes policy or any action that was outwith the control of government.

The argument is attractive. It helps explain Graham Thompson's finding when he considered the economic policies pursued by the Thatcher Governments that there was a limited and uneven impact of New Right ideas on economic policy formation.

It also helps explain the way in which monetary policy metamorphosed in the hands of Nigel Lawson. As M3 in accordance with Goodhart’s law turned out to be an unreliable measure, there were doctrinal arguments among monetarists about how best to measure the money supply. Mrs Thatcher herself became persuaded of the virtues of trying to measure the monetary base. But Lawson, as he explained in his Mais lecture, moved on to make the exchange rate judge and jury and by 1985 was an advocate of joining in a system of fixed exchange rates, the ERM. Mrs Thatcher, who believed in floating rates, was able to resist the pressure of her colleagues and instead Lawson began to “shadow” the mark.

The MTFS of which he was the principal architect and which was adopted in 1980 was clearly seen as a discipline designed to stiffen the resistance of politicians to political pressures rather than a purely economic strategy. But there was a reluctance on the part of Mrs Thatcher to hand monetary policy to the Bank of England (as Lawson proposed in 1988) and she had a peculiarly one-eyed stance in regard to interest rates.

The inconsistencies in Mrs Thatcher's position even in regard to the free market are such as to make certain analysts dismiss the possibility of an ideological interpretation of Thatcherism, at least before her third term. Even the concept of a consciously determined strategy is argued by Riddell to be an "ex-post rationalisation of what has happened". He attacks the idea of a coherent hegemonic project, although with the saving thought that Thatcherism of the late '80s may have turned into a deliberate attempt to replace the postwar consensus.

To imply development over time in Thatcherism does not necessarily undermine the notion of statecraft, although it would lead to a critique of those who seek a constant characterisation of the hegemonic project, for example Hall's notion that Thatcherism is new and is best seen in terms of "authoritarian populism" - " an exceptional form of the capitalist state which, unlike classical fascism, has retained most (though not all) of the formal representative institutions in place, and which at the same time has been able to construct around itself an active popular consent."ⁱ

Hall discerns the penetration of these ideas into the popular press as a key victory, ensuring that Thatcherism would come to seem no more than common sense.

Thatcherite populism combined traditional Tory themes - nation, family, duty, authority, standards, tradition - with the more aggressive themes of a revived liberalism rooted in individualism and anti-statism. The pursuit of self interest was legitimised, freedom and the free market once again identified as inseparable. The strength of Hall's analysis, however, is that he refuses to see this in terms of "false consciousness". Mrs Thatcher was able to turn populist attitudes to her own ends because there existed a genuine conflict between popular attitudes and the ways in which the modern state had developed. It was not simply the disciplining aspect of a corporately agreed incomes policy - although that had an important part to play - but the popular experience of a collectivist state run by bureaucrats and experts on which she was able to draw.

Hall's thesis came under immediate fire from the Left, most of these criticisms have been invalidated by Mrs Thatcher's success in winning elections e.g. that this was a British form of poujadisme or that Thatcherism was a doomed attempt by the financial interest within the Conservative party to roll back the gains of the working class.

In fact Mrs Thatcher was in tune with a world where there was growing financial and commercial integration. If anything was archaic, it was the notion that Britain could operate from a narrow national base as an industrial power. A more rational view suggested that business was prepared to take short-term pain because Mrs Thatcher had set out to destroy the power of the organised working class, although when formulated it added, rather optimistically, that the working class was too powerful to be broken and that industrial militancy would accompany Britain's emergence from the depression. Although the miners' strike could be taken as evidence for this point of view, there was no general rise in industrial militancy and the miners' strike, of course, failed.

Worth mentioning in passing Howell's alternative view in Blind Victory, which rather plays down the importance of Thatcherism, suggesting that technological change etc. meant that Mrs Thatcher was pushing at an open door.

The first point to be made about Hall's thesis is that it relates to the period before Mrs Thatcher came to power. Evans and Taylor come close to suggesting that the populist rhetoric used to gain power was resurrected when needed, but offers little clue to what was done in power. They are not alone in questioning whether Hall has exaggerated the coherence of the Thatcherite project.

The most sustained critique comes from Jessop and his colleagues. It is worth noting before we begin that they err in supposing that Hall believed the Thatcherite project to have succeeded.

Their case against Hall alleges that he is confused but that may be dismissed. All they really mean is that his definition of authoritarian populism does not conform to what they take it to mean. Part of their problem is that they are concerned with Thatcherism in power and hence with characterising it in terms of its "state project" and "accumulation strategy". Hall, as we have noted, is concerned with the ability of Thatcherism in opposition to mobilise civil society. For Hall the battle for hearts and minds is what matters and the "ideological moment" is all important.

But Jessop et al have more serious points to make:

1. Hall concentrates on the ideological and does not analyse Thatcherism in the institutional and political context in which it developed. In fact it has been heavily constrained by its social, political and economic inheritance to the point where it has been unable to make a clean break with the past. Jessop et al do not regard the realm of discourse and ideology as free-floating and autonomous and they accuse Hall of neglecting "the structural underpinnings of Thatcherism in the economic and state systems and its specific and political bases of support among both people and power bloc"ⁱⁱ Hall's defence has force when he stresses that his concerns are with the novelty and specificity of Thatcherism as a hegemonic project and that what is distinctive an unique is its hold on the popular political imagination, but while he is correct in thinking that Jessop et al have missed the importance of the "ideological moment", he is unduly resistant to their argument that a more rounded account is necessary.
2. Hall does not consider the reception of Thatcherism in civil society and therefore universalises its appeal. Clearly it does not resonate in the same way with all sections of society and one needs to identify which messages were accepted and by whom, whether the appeal evolved as Thatcherism developed, and the extent to which the response was socially differentiated. This criticism is well-founded and the implication that Thatcherism was unlikely to achieve total hegemony is plausible, to say the least.
3. Thatcherite ideology cannot be both hegemonic and authoritarian. Perhaps, but Hall is right when he asserts that Mrs Thatcher sought ideological dominance on the basis of what was initially an authoritarian appeal and there is no reason to suppose that moral authoritarianism, discrimination etc. cannot be populist.
4. Nor does Hall make clear whether it is the strategic, calculating imposition of an ideology on civil society or a spontaneous groundswell of resistance to the state. Jessop and his colleagues are on very weak ground here. The originality of Hall's view lies precisely in its ability to demonstrate how Thatcher was able to draw upon and co-opt the many spontaneous discourses of resistance to the disintegrating institutions of the Keynesian welfare state. The moment of crisis came to be lived in Thatcherite terms.

Where Jessop offers a corrective and complementary narrative, it helps explain first, the limited penetration of Thatcherism (at least in the short to medium term) in civil society. It certainly made inroads into the working class and lower middle class, not least through council hose sales and wider share ownership and by the widespread acceptance of an old-style distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor. One can exaggerate the degree of coercive social control and what has been described as the paramilitarisation of the repressive apparatuses of the state and underestimate the appeal of Mrs Thatcher's moral authoritarianism. In effect Mrs Thatcher was able to identify "two nations" and do so in a way that diminished class politics. (productive-parasite; independent-dependent; etc.

Secondly, it offers a periodisation of Thatcherism and takes on board the possibility that it was an evolving project. Hay restates this in terms of his own concerns: the state may take on a new trajectory (one imposed on it) at a moment of crisis, but its "translation into a new constellation of institutional relationships, boundaries and responsibilities is likely to be considerably more drawn out, contingent and cumulative." (p.146) In his view authoritarian populism is crucial to the initial mobilising of support, but immaterial to the restructuring of the state in the period of "radical Thatcherism". In fact Thatcherism slowly and strategically establishes a base in civil society from which it can bid for state power. The first administration on this view is a period in which it consolidates its hold and makes preparations for a fundamental structural transformation of the state and its relations with both the economy and civil society.

The Thatcherite instinct, however strong, is always constrained by a coldly calculating and strategic statecraft. The best analysis of this is not in fact Jessop's but Gamble's, which has been quite unfairly characterised as "reductionist". Like Bulpitt, but less exclusively, he leans to the idea that Mrs Thatcher is pursuing a Tory form of statecraft, but to what end remains a proper question, more so perhaps than Bulpitt opines. Effectively Gamble asks about the relationship between this statecraft and the Conservative tradition and he does not rule out the ideological nature of Thatcherism.

It is, he suggests “an authentic expression of one of the two major strands in the Conservative tradition.” Here he follows Greenleaf, but is not asserting as some of Mrs Thatcher’s followers did, that she was simply reasserting ideas that were dominant in the 19^th century and had eked out a precarious existence since. In some ways what is happening is a rejection of the enterprise state and a reassertion of the notion conceptualised by Michael Oakeshott of a civil association.