Abstract
A distinction should be drawn between the philosophical and political roots of what became known as Thatcherism. Mrs Thatcher is the only British politician of the twentieth century to have had her name enshrined in an ideology, and because of this and her combative character it was easy for her critics to call her an ideologue; this is to miss the main point of naming a creed after the woman — which was that it was closely bound up with her personality. Hayek, Friedman and the Institute of Economic Affairs simply gave ‘substance and intellectual respectability to her beliefs and instincts, but most of these derive from her own experience and her idea of what is commonsense.’1 When she told the Party Conference in 1975 that ‘the economy had gone wrong because something had gone wrong spiritually and philosophically’, she was expressing her deepest feelings and those of millions who could identify with what she was saying; if Sir Keith told her that monetarism could help deal with this situation, all well and good. The personal nature of Thatcherism helps explain some of its contradictions.
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Notes and References
Simon Jenkins, ‘An Indigestible pill’, The Times, 14 June 1995, p. 16.
John Campbell, ‘Defining Thatcherism’, Contemporary Record, vol. 1, no. 3, 1987, p. 3.
Angus Maude, ‘The Conservative Crisis - l’, The Spectator, 15 March 1963.
Nigel Lawson, The View From No. 11 (1992), p. 249.
David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1979 (1980), p. 151.
Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of 1979, p. 354.
Hugo Young, One of Us (1989), pp. 138–40.
Jock Bruce-Gardyne, Mrs Thatcher’s First Administration (1984), p. 58.
Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 122.
See especially Hugo Young’s One of Us and Andrew Gamble’s ‘Thatcherism and Conservative Politics’, in S. Hall and M. Jacques (eds), The Politics of Thatcherism (1983)
see also William Keegan, Mrs Thatcher’s Economic Experiment (1984).
See for example John Vincent, ‘Margaret Thatcher: Her Place in History’, in Contemporary Record, vol. 1, no. 3, 1987, pp. 23–4 and his piece in Ruling Performance, and also Cosgrave’s Thatcher: the First Term.
See David Sanders et al., ‘Government Popularity and the Falklands war: a reassessment’, British Journal of Political Science, vol. 17, pp. 281–314.
Simon Jenkins, ‘An indigestible pill’, The Times, 14 June 1995, p. 16.
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© 1998 John Charmley
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Charmley, J. (1998). The Iron Lady. In: A History of Conservative Politics, 1900–1996. British Studies Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14691-8_11
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