To what extent did the Conservatives’ victory at the 1979 general election mark ‘a decisive shift in the national mood, politically, culturally and intellectually’?
By Finn Goddard, Third Year History
This is an exam essay for the second year unit ‘The Making of Contemporary Britain’, receiving a high 1st. It provides a particularly convincing narrative of Thatcher’s election in 1979, and effectively conveys the many ways that her victory has been interpreted.
Peter Kerr in 2001 pointed out that a linear narrative of the post-war period has prevailed. It begins with Attlee’s revolution in social democracy, which is then deconstructed by Thatcher and the neo-liberal spectre in the 1980s, which has been the prevailing economic system ever since. 1979 serves as a convenient demarcation point for this purpose, but ‘Thatcherism’ was by no means guaranteed, or necessarily created in this moment, it has a longer and shorter history, depending on the stream of thought. To this end, this essay seeks to highlight that a ‘shift’ had been occurring, or not-occurring, throughout the post-war period. This does not exclude ‘Thatcherite’ policies originating in Mrs. Thatcher’s time in government which could indicate a ‘decisive’ shift in mood. This essay also does not consider the racial tensions of 1981 in any great detail, as they had been slowly building since the end of empire with the various relations acts and Powell’s speech; and therefore do not mark a shift in national mood worth analysing in relation to the 1979 election.
Historiography has tended to overstate the Thatcherite ‘revolution’. James Vernon for example, in his Modern Britain (2017) conceptualised the death of liberalism in the Keynesian model, and a reinvention made by the 1976 I.M.F crisis. Conversely, Kenneth O’ Morgan in 1990 viewed Thatcherism as reflective of a broader individualistic identity formed by affluence – that 1979 was only made possible by the building of the welfare state in the first place. David Edgerton’s Rise and Fall considers 1979 to be a pivotal moment in dismantling the national economy. This essay largely agrees with Morgan’s 2001 thesis that while 1979 was perceived to be a great shift, it was not a sure thing.
In the political sphere Thatcher’s brand was by no means original in 1979. Conservative antipathy towards the welfare state has been extensively documented in historiography, most notably Ewen Green in 1998. The 1945 election had been fought by the Conservatives for a continuation of the liberal-domestic economy; inspired by The Road to Serfdom and anti-totalitarian-socialism that they perceived in the Labour proposals for social-democracy. Harold Macmillan faced troubles over the higher taxation - that Thatcher would ultimately end - thought to be required for welfare spending; which materialised in the ‘Middle-Class-Alliance’ who wanted a favourable business environment. During Heath’s years in opposition from 1965-1970 Trade Union curbing reforms became part of the Party platform; and while these failed to effectively materialise during the series of ‘emergencies’ in the early 70s, it shows the Conservative political mood was never one of complete confidence in consensus.
Furthermore, monetarism, the doctrine of controlling inflation rather than unemployment, had been in Conservative party circles for a substantial period. Considered a pillar of neo-liberalism under Milton Friedman and Hayekian thinking; it was not even British philosophically. Enoch Powell in the 1960s, when advocating for anti-Keynesian interventionism that had been relatively dominant since the 1930s, saw full employment in nationalised industries as a restrictive method of controlling inflation, and so supported monetarism. James Callaghan’s Government reacted to the 1976 Sterling crisis by applying for an IMF loan, and declared that public spending cannot treat a recession, leading to Dennis Healey at the Exchequer to adopt monetarism to curb the crisis. In housing, the Conservatives had been advocating for a ‘property-owning-democracy’ since the 1930s under Baldwin and their suburban schemes. Thatcher extended this under Michael Heseltine’s 1980 Housing Act, enabling a greater proportion of council tenants to buy their own home, 800,000 by end of 1984 (O’ Morgan, 2001) Furthermore, the electorate were not married to Thatcherism from 1979, and it has been pointed out that election was likely more an indictment of the 78-79’ ‘winter of discontent’ and government breakdown under Labour, rather than an endorsement of Conservatives. (Begley, 2020) Indeed, Thatcher’s first ministry had an approval rating of only 27% prior to the Falklands War, the most unpopular since Chamberlain, indicating her 83’ victory was based on jingoism rather than a national mood favourable to her domestic policies. Her Cabinet in the first government is also indicative of continuity in political mood. They were made up three-quarters welfare democrats and public spenders of the Ted Heath years, itself a continuation of liberal-corporatism, despite declarations otherwise. Figures such as Willie Whitelaw at the Home Office or James Bruce-Gardyne at Employment – who strongly disagreed with monetarism.
The biggest endorsement of cultural-political shift is the reversal of Butskellism; which had broken down in the 1970s under pressure of oil shocks, but had remained government policy despite efforts otherwise. For the first time unions were frozen-out of government communications, which is a decisive break from the co-operation that had characterised the previous decades. Even further indicative was the anti-militancy and anti-industrial action policy undertaken by the TUC in 1981 as a result of Thatcher’s policies, which shows a break from the 1970s. On the other hand, the wider public did not necessarily fully subscribe to Thatcher’s later social engineering in pursuit of the free individual. Amy Edwards (2016) has demonstrated that privatisation was hugely popular in terms of share ownership. For example, the sale of British Telecoms in 1984 attracted two million applications to buy shares, but many sought to sell off quickly, or showed little interest in educating themselves on investment. This was assisted by the consumerist marketing of financial products, such as the ‘Barclayshare’, where the individual could simply place their money in an investment account without having to consider lengthy securities analysis. Furthermore, Thatcher’s grouping of society as just individuals and families, which Major extended under a ‘classless society’ slogan had not materialised in areas which benefited from Thatcherism the most. Biressi and Nunn in 2013 analysed the cultural phenomenon of the ‘Essex’ character; those working-class who converted to Conservatism in 1980s, and experienced new-found affluence in financial services, at the expense of the northern manufacturing jobs. Men and women who had new material wealth were still treated in classist ways, not considered culturally middle-class, despite having their own tennis-courts. These new capitalists were not ‘gentlemanly’ in the way-of old upper-class boozy lunches that had characterised a section of London since the late Victorian period – 1979 had changed classist moods at any rate.
Britain had always had a dynamic capitalist society in London. The ‘YUPPIE’ might have a new cultural phenomenon in Thatcherism, but the City of London was not new. Thatcherite modernity was a continuation of longer trends. The technologically focused state was rooted in the 1950s and 60s. The de Havilland Comet entered commercial usage in 1952. The World’s first commercial atomic power station, Calder Hall, opened in 1956; Thatcher sought more connection with the agreement of the Channel Tunnel with President Mitterrand. (Tombs, 2014) The new managerial class occupied the office blocks sprung up after 1955. The end of ‘austerity Britain’ in that period gave rise to the Milbank tower, supermarkets and TV. (Sampson, 1962) The Macmillan Britons had never had it so good, but a large section of Thatcherite Britons hadn’t either.
In the United Kingdom more broadly Thatcher did not herself create the regional moods, but her policies could be seen to have served to widen differences and encourage separatism. ‘The Troubles’ had begun in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, and Heath had suspended Stormont after continuing violence in battles between the British Army and the I.R.A, such as Springmartin, and Bloody Sunday in 1972. The Provisional Irish Republican Army grew bolder following 1979, although it was not necessarily related. The 1984 bombing of the Grand Brighton Hotel attempted to assassinate Thatcher and her cabinet, indicating a further splintering of the U.K, especially considering the failure of the 1985 Anglo-Irish agreement. There is a degree of continuity in political mood though. Britain began the period with imperial violence in Ireland with the Easter Rising, and while this abated for a time in the middling decades, direct military rule after 1972 and continuation under Thatcher suggests that the British political class still failed to understand, or at least get to grips with, sectarianism across the sea. (Newsinger, 2002) In Scotland and Wales regional moods were certainly heightened with deindustrialisation in the first years of Thatcher’s government. But in the interwar years Scotland especially had suffered from industrial decline, which would continue as a trend throughout the twentieth. For example, one of the designated ‘distressed areas’ suffering from high unemployment in the Great Depression was Glasgow. (Skidelsky, 2014) The establishment of the Scottish Nationalist Party in 1934 can be seen as a reaction to this, a failure of Westminster to protect regional interests. The failure of the devolution referenda in 1979 did not represent a retreat from nationalism either; Plaid Cymru and the SNP were firmly entrenched. ‘Mining and shipbuilding collapsed and the steel industry survived only with difficulty until 1993 when the giant Ravenscraig plant itself closed’; Thatcher’s individualist ‘thrifty’ rhetoric failed to take hold in face of mass job loss from the immediate post-1979 period in Scotland – reflected in Conservative losses in 1987 election. (Kearney, 2014) Therefore, rather than marking a decisive mood change in Scotland, 1979 had acted as a catalyst for already worsening regionalist attitudes.
The 1979 General Election was not an instantaneous, or even necessarily radical, lurch to the right of British politics. While it can be said that by her downfall in 1990 that the political mood had decisively changed, culture was not as reformed as Mrs. Thatcher would have liked. The Conservative Party had pursued home-ownership forms of capitalism for much of the twentieth-century, and monetarism was neither a new concept or a new implementation in British politics, with Callaghan’s denunciation of stimulus-spending. Thatcher’s initial win did not come with a certain outcome, in light of her awful approval ratings prior to the Argentine war and the political necessity of Heathite ‘wets’ in the Cabinet initially. Deindustrialisation certainly worsened the regional-nationalism, but these trends had been underway for decades. This is not to argue that her subsequent governments did not leave a lasting, decisive, impact on the British landscape – such as the service-based restructuring of the economy, but that those first four years did not, overall, set Britain on a path of no-return.