‘The Black Queen versus the Red Knight’

Abstract

When Mrs Thatcher won the 1979 general election, a power struggle with town halls was inevitable. Like other Prime Ministers, her instincts were essentially centralist. She had a longstanding distrust of Labour local government stemming from her days as Education Secretary in the 1970–4 Heath government. This was reinforced in the late 1970s when she saw the potential of urban councils to grow into power bases of municipal socialism, determined to thwart the assumed supremacy of the Westminster mandate.

‘We have to face the facts of the present position…. It is tempting to say to hell with them and continue all our programmes as if nothing had happened with continued growth and unabated recruitment. This would be political suicide’ (Ted Knight, June 1979).