Regular readers might have guessed that I am no admirer of Lady Thatcher.But on the principle that one shouldn't speak ill of the dead - and that no-one is wholly bad - here are some things I think she deserves some credit for:
1. Pragmatism. Although both left and right like to mythologize Thatcher as a slasher of public spending, this is not true. During her premiership, the share of spending in GDP fell less than it did in the early years of New Labour, and less than it's planned to fall in the next few years. And spending was higher under her than it was during the 1964-70 Labour government*. Nor was Thatcher a great reformer of the NHS. In both respects, she was driven more by practicality than ideological zeal.
2. A recognition that politicians can effect fundamental change. During the Thatcher years, the Overton window shifted. This wasn't just because her ideology triumphed. She helped it along partly by effecting hard-to-reverse changes such as privatization, and partly by changing the electorate; selling council houses created client voters. A Labour party which spinelessly kowtows to public opinion has something to learn here.
3. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act. In the 60s and 70s, the police were corrupt, racist thugs. PACE was an attempt to rein them in. Of course, Hillsborough and the miners' strike showed that this effort wasn't wholly successful. But Thatcher deserves credit for displaying a greater scepticism about the police than many later copper-worshipping Home Secretaries.
4. "You can't buck the market." Thatcher recognized that there are some things that governments cannot do - for example, control prices and wages by legislation. And Lawson's attempt to shadow the DMark in 1987-88, and the UK's entry into the ERM in 1990 proved her right.
5. Being lucky. Thatcher got lucky in her first term of office in at least two ways. Most obviously, the Falklands war boosted her popularity hugely. But also, the economy did not follow her script. She hoped that the mere announcement of M3 targets would reduce inflation painlessly, by reducing inflation expectations. This didn't happen. Instead, she inadvertently engineered a recession which destroyed workers' bargaining power, thus raising profit margins and (eventually) the motive to invest. In this sense, she reminds us of the importance of luck in politics (and in the latter case, structural economic relationships), relative to that of intentions.
6. Reducing snobbery. When Thatcher became Tory leader, she faced both gender and class snobbery; she was seen as a shrill lower middle-class housewife. Her success reduced class and gender prejudice amongst the rich. I suspect that my job prospects (as someone with an accent similar to her natural one) improved because of her. I fear, though, that this increased equality of opportunity was only temporary.
I don't say all this to sing her praises. I suspect her legacy is mostly a malign one and that she was more of a class warrior than a genuine libertarian. I do so merely to suggest that she was not wholly the devil the left pretends.
* Table 2.33 of the OBR's supplementary fiscal tables.
She had these major stokes of luck; she was faced with a split opposition thanks to the SDP breakaway, she had idiotic and desperate men in control in Argentina who wished to make something of the Falklands and she had North Sea Oil to pay the social costs of the industrial decimation.
Posted by: Dave | April 08, 2013 at 02:29 PM
Yes Dave. One reason why I can't regard politicians as heroes or villains is that their careers are shaped a lot by luck and by environmental factors, rather than by conscious agency.
It's odd that the left - which should be more aware of this than the right with its tendency to a "great man" theory of history - should thus be so keen to demonize Thatcher.
Posted by: chris | April 08, 2013 at 03:12 PM
Hatred never dies, it merely gets old. I for one given half a chance will gladly dance on her grave before pissing on it.
H/T Gollum XIV, "ding dong the witch is dead". She was a judas goat leading our country to financialization, coddled actual murdering dictators on the way.
She deserved far worse.
Posted by: Lasthun | April 08, 2013 at 03:18 PM
Thatcher was a democrat; that I have a lot of hatred towards the policies on which she was elected, she acted with a popular mandate. When she is demonised, we should be honest to ourselves and apply the same attitude towards her supporters. It would be condescending not to.
Posted by: Whiskyandtea.wordpress.com | April 08, 2013 at 04:12 PM
She never got more than about 40% of the vote and so what, say 30% of the actual electorate. Hardly the mandate to carry out the sweeping and mass immiserization that she went on to do.
Posted by: broilster | April 08, 2013 at 04:36 PM
You're principle that one shouldn't speak ill of the dead is ill-founded when it comes to someone who wielded power over so many people's lives. Fine if it's someone unknown, not so for a powerful and controversial public figure who destroyed as much as she created, unless that is you're in the game of writing deeply flawed, misleading hagiographic history.
Posted by: Richard | April 08, 2013 at 05:06 PM
I think it's simplistic to accuse the left en masse of characterising Thatcher as a devil. There are obviously many who did (Ben Elton built a career on "Thatch", though he was a plastic lefty), but there are also many who appreciated her tactical nous (she believed what she said), not to mention her luck.
Where I think you are spot on is that (revisionist) history will judge her more as a class warrior, driven by a visceral response to the 45-75 era, rather than a calcuating neoliberal revolutionary. It's Mr T Blair who will receive that accolade.
But what I can't help forgetting today is the reaction of ordinary working people in the early 80s (depression via Falklands to miners strike). The word you always heard applied to her was "heartless".
Posted by: FromArseToElbow | April 08, 2013 at 07:48 PM
The Thatcher governments signalled the triumph of middle class values and interests over the values and interests of the rest of British society and that hegemony has prevailed to the present day but may be ending with the debt crisis.
Posted by: dilberto | April 08, 2013 at 08:14 PM
The Thatcher governments signalled the triumph of middle class values and interests over the values and interests of the rest of British society and that hegemony has prevailed to the present day but may be ending with the debt crisis.
Posted by: dilberto | April 08, 2013 at 08:14 PM
The Thatcher governments signalled the triumph of middle class values and interests over the values and interests of the rest of British society and that hegemony has prevailed to the present day but may be ending with the debt crisis.
Posted by: dilberto | April 08, 2013 at 08:15 PM
The Thatcher governments signalled the triumph of middle class values and interests over the values and interests of the rest of British society and that hegemony has prevailed to the present day but may be ending with the debt crisis.
Posted by: dilberto | April 08, 2013 at 08:15 PM
Her letter to Hayek regretting she couldn't act like Chile. For that alone, she doesn't deserve the respect due to the dead. For that. alone, she should have been sentenced for treason.
Posted by: Jacques René Giguère | April 08, 2013 at 08:51 PM
Her letter to Hayek regretting she couldn't act like Chile. For that alone, she doesn't deserve the respect due to the dead. For that. alone, she should have been sentenced for treason.
Posted by: Jacques René Giguère | April 08, 2013 at 08:51 PM
Although both left and right like to mythologize Thatcher as a slasher of public spending, this is not true. During her premiership, the share of spending in GDP fell less than it did in the early years of New Labour, and less than it's planned to fall in the next few years. And spending was higher under her than it was during the 1964-70 Labour government
How much of this was due to massively higher unemployment levels, though?
Posted by: ajay | April 09, 2013 at 11:37 AM
The letter to Hayek said "However, I am sure you will agree that, in Britain with our democratic institutions and the need for a high degree of consent, some of the measures adopted in Chile are quite unacceptable"
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