Reappraisal

Abstract

Just before Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979 with a majority of 43 seats in the House of Commons, James Callaghan, the out-going Labour Prime Minister, observed a ‘sea-change in politics’ of the kind which happened every thirty years or so in British public life and which it was beyond the capacity of any politician to alter or control (Donoughue, 1987, p. 191). Some of the dimensions of that ‘sea change’ have been analysed in the previous chapter. It was an image which Conservatives associated with the Thatcherite project liked to emphasize. One of them — Nigel Lawson — expressed it thus: ‘Our chosen course does represent a distinct and self-conscious break from the predominantly social democratic assumptions that have hitherto underlain policy in post-war Britain’ (cited Kavanagh, 1987, p. 13).

Margaret Thatcher … honestly believed that she was leading a crusade for national regeneration. And in the holy war which was to make Britain strong and free, there was no time to weep for the inevitable casualties. (Hattersley, 1997, p. 268)