The Limits of Thatcherism and the Conservative Party

Abstract

Mrs Thatcher’s leadership — and Thatcherism as a specific ideology — was born from bitter and deep divisions within the Conservative Party in the early 1970s.¹ These divisions simmered up to 1979 and then exploded in the first Thatcher administration in the battle between left and right on economic issues, wets versus dries. By a series of Cabinet reshuffles, Mrs Thatcher outmanoeuvred the wets and by the use of Prime Ministerial power to the full limits of its constitutional propriety, was able to implement her economic strategy despite wet opposition. In the parliamentary party, a large minority wet presence could be counted upon to embarrass the ‘monetarist’ policies, but was not sufficiently large effectively to challenge them. Only in the party in the country, where the activists in the constituencies supported Mrs Thatcher, were the left wingers in a small enough minority to be discounted. In all, Thatcherism has always faced internal high-level and persistent dissent from within the Conservative Party.