Whatever Happened to Thatcherism?
| Author | Colin Hay |
| Published date | 01 May 2007 |
| Date | 01 May 2007 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-9299.2007.00128.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Whatever Happened to Thatcherism?
Colin Hay
University of Birmingham
Throughout the 1980s and the early 1990s the pages of journals such as this were filled with debate –
invariably heated – on the nature, extent, significance and reversibility of Thatcherism.Today the echoes
of a once deafening clamour have largely subsided.Thatcherism has all but disappeared from the lexicon
of British political analysis. My aim in what follows is to reflect on this passing and what it indicates about
the state of our understanding of this once most contentious of phenomena. I do so by considering the
two most significant recent additions to the vast literature on the subject, Peter Kerr’s Postwar British
Politics: From Conflict to Consensus (2001) and Richard Heffernan’s New Labour and Thatcherism: Political
Change in Britain (2000).1
It is difficult, on the face of it, to imagine two more different accounts of a single,
almost identically framed, topic. But, like much of the literature that Thatcherism
has generated, superficial differences mask underlying similarities both in
approach and in the analytical insights which result. Peter Kerr’s (2001)
immensely impressive reappraisal of post-war British politics is unapologetically
and self-confessedly iconoclastic.The tone is set by the opening lines in which the
author declares his intention ‘to challenge the established narrative of the evolu-
tion of British politics in the postwar period’ (PBP, p. xi).That he unquestionably
does in almost every aspect, rejecting the very notion of a post-war consensus, the
radical nature of the break with the past that the election of Margaret Thatcher
in 1979 is conventionally held to mark and, as the subtitle of the volume implies,
literally inverting the standard depiction of post-war British politics as a transition
from consensus to conflict. Richard Heffernan’s (2000) no less accomplished
account is, by contrast, and certainly at first appearance, a powerful reaffirmation
of precisely the established narrative Kerr sets out to demystify. It is clearly – and
quite explicitly – wedded to the post-war consensus thesis, to the radicalism of the
Thatcher administration and, more generally, to the ‘punctuated’ temporality of
political change in post-war Britain which Kerr sets out to reject. Two more
starkly contrasting perspectives are difficult to imagine.
Or so one might think. Perverse though it may seem, my argument is that their
ostensible differences in fact hide many considerable similarities. These authors
agree on far more than they acknowledge. Indeed, they agree on far more than
they disagree. Moreover, where these authors part company over substantive issues
and matters of interpretation it is invariably Heffernan who is the more
heterodox.Yet it is with their many similarities that I am principally concerned.
Both authors are highly reflexive about their theoretical and meta-theoretical
assumptions, both adopt a more or less explicitly evolutionary perspective to
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C O L I N H AY
political/institutional change, both highlight the importance of the Thatcherite
narration of the crisis of the 1970s, both see consecutive Thatcher governments,
in policy terms at least, as only cumulatively radical and both cast contemporary
British politics in terms of New Labour’s accommodation to a developing
Thatcherite settlement.
What we have then, as I will seek to demonstrate in rather greater detail in the
sections which follow, are two ostensibly antagonistic and mutually incompatible
accounts which in fact have much in common. In this respect, at least, these two
books are tellingly illustrative of the broader literature on Thatcherism. That
literature, characterised as it has been from the start by conflict rather than
consensus, has simply worn itself into the ground. Protagonists, seemingly anxious
to gain the upper hand and to assert the superiority of their own position, have
both talked past one another and failed to acknowledge the considerable (if
implicit) consensus on the subject that has accumulated while they have bickered.
With most of the combatants having long since shouted themselves hoarse, it is
perhaps an opportune moment to consider the considerable progress in our
understanding of Thatcherism that has developed since their first exchanges in the
late 1970s.That progress is well illustrated in the substantial (if largely unacknowl-
edged) common ground between Kerr and Heffernan.
In assessing the state of our understanding of Thatcherism today and the contri-
bution of Kerr and Heffernan to that understanding I situate each author’s
perspective in terms of the two questions which have most divided the protago-
nists in the Thatcherism debate. These structure my reflections in the sections
which follow.
•
How has Thatcherism developed and how significant a break with the past did
the advent of Thatcherism mark?
•
Did Thatcherism provide a genuine response to, and resolution of, the crisis
of the 1970s or did it offer merely a new and temporary mode of crisis
management?2
I conclude by considering the more general contribution of the literature on
Thatcherism to the development of British political analysis, by identifying a
series of notable omissions which still remain in the literature on Thatcherism,
and by reflecting on the reasons for the disappearance of Thatcherism from the
lexicon of British political analysis in recent years.
The Temporality of Thatcherism
Whatever else it may or may not have done, the literature on Thatcherism has
undoubtedly served to encourage a greater degree of reflexivity among British
political analysts as to the determinants of political change. Indeed, one might go
so far as to suggest that the contested analysis of Thatcherism – precisely because
of the extent to which it is contested – has served to heighten, as never before,
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Political Studies Association
Political Studies Review: 2007, 5(2)
W H AT E V E R H A P P E N E D TO T H AT C H E R I S M ?
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the sensitivity of analysts of British politics to issues of time and temporality. If this
is so, then it is because there is no pair of issues more contentious in the literature
on Thatcherism than the temporality it exhibits and the impact of its political
desires and designs on the temporality of the British state.
For many authors Thatcherism represents an abrupt, decisive and unprecedented
break with the past. This is, perhaps, the standard view of Thatcherism – and is
certainly presented in such terms by Kerr and other critics (Kerr and Marsh,
1999; Marsh and Rhodes, 1992). It is associated, in particular, with the highly
influential early assessments of Thatcherism on both sides of the Atlantic (see, for
instance, Gourevitch, 1986; Hall, 1986; Hall and Jacques, 1983; Jenkins, 1988;
Kavanagh, 1987; Kavanagh and Morris, 1989; Krieger, 1986). Heffernan’s per-
spective would seem to fall squarely within this tradition of writing on the
subject. Others see far greater elements of continuity, pointing for instance to the
Treasury’s proclivity throughout the post-war period for monetary conservatism,
to the correspondingly tenuous nature of its commitment to Keynesianism before
1979 and to the (albeit reluctant) conversion of the Callaghan government to
monetarism in 1976 (see, for instance, Kenway, 1998; Morgan, 1992; Tomlinson,
1986). Still others suggest that, despite the radical rhetoric, the first two Thatcher
governments were characterised more by pragmatism than by ideological fervour
(Marsh and Rhodes, 1992; 1995; Riddell, 1991). In so far as Thatcherism might
be seen as radical at all, its radicalism was acquired cumulatively and incrementally
as its strategic capacity to translate grand visions into substantive policy detail was
learned, through experimentation, adaptation to environmental signals and trial-
and-error. This, in essence, is the view of Kerr.
As this perhaps already serves to indicate, the literature on Thatcherism is
fundamentally divided over issues of temporality. This is made very clear if we
seek to counterpose schematically, as in Figure 1, the range of different opinions
Figure 1: The Contested Temporality of Thatcherism
Pace of change
4
3
2
1
1978/9 1987
1990
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Political Studies Review: 2007, 5(2)
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C O L I N H AY
on the subject. Here I differentiate, in a highly stylised way, between just four of
the contending views of the temporality of Thatcherism as a political and
economic project that can be identified in the existing literature. Each approach
is considered in terms of its assessment of the relative pace of change over time.
As with any such exercise, it is rather easier to identify such stylised positions than
it is to associate them with specific authors. But the exercise is no less useful for
that. Indeed, the difficulty of matching plots 1 to 4 with a range of authors and
works is itself significant – indicating just how easy it is to lose the subtlety and
sophistication of specific accounts in the attempt, so prevalent within the debate
on Thatcherism, to departmentalise the literature.As we shall see, such an exercise
also serves to highlight some of the ways in which common ground between
authors can be masked by presentational devices which serve to highlight the
differences between authors’...
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