As what many would call the Thatcherite Revolution recedes into the past, the time has come for historians to reconsider and explain how Mrs Thatcher's three Governments between 1979 and 1990 and for that matter the build up to them were actually received at the time. The contemporary 'informed' view was that there was not going to be a Thatcher era at all, and that one emerged tended to be attributed to short-term aberrations occasioned by such 'accidents' as the Winter of Discontent and the Falklands War, and it was commonly argued that the ideologically driven Conservative Party and Governments were determinedly going in the wrong direction especially in terms of what the electorate wanted. In some contrast, in the view of this writer, Thatcherism was arguably no more than a mixture of economic liberalism, very mild populism, and pragmatism. This article argues that an explanation for the many misinterpretations on the part of newspaper, television, and academic pundits was that they were 'conviction commentators' as much as Mrs Thatcher was a 'conviction politician'. These commentators clung to various assumptions about the desirable nature of the post-war political and economic settlement. Not the least of these was the assumption that 1945 marked not just the election of the first majority Labour Government but also the birth of modern British politics.

After the excitements of the Winter of Discontent and the Labour Government’s dramatic fall and Airey Neave’s murder by Irish terrorists at the outset of the campaign, the General Election of 3 May 1979 proved to be an anti climax, not least because some form of Conservative victory was always overwhelmingly the most likely outcome. With the Tories having no particular need to win the voters over, and, of course, no wish to alarm the electorate, what was simply called The Conservative Manifesto 1979 was a cautious document, which, indeed, stated that ‘those who look in these pages for lavish promises or detailed commitments on every subject will look in vain’.1 Only 76 per cent of those entitled to vote in the 1979 Election did so. The Conservatives secured 43.9 per cent (13,697,923) of the votes cast, and 339 seats, which meant that they had a majority of 43 in the House of Commons. The Labour Party obtained 37 per cent (11,532,218) of the votes cast, and 269 seats. The Liberals attracted 13.8 per cent (4,313,204) of the votes cast, and 11 seats. The Scottish and Welsh Nationalists both won 2 seats, and 12 MPs were also elected for other parties in Northern Ireland.2 ‘By any of the measures of swing, the Conservatives secured the biggest net movement between the two largest parties at any Election since 1945,’ the relevant Nuffield Study observed, ‘This substantial swing produced the decisive outcome of the Election; it gave the Conservatives as large a plurality of votes (7 per cent) over the next largest party as any party has enjoyed since Labour’s 1945 landslide — larger, in fact, than the 1955 and 1959 Conservative victories which produced bigger Parliamentary majorities.’3 In terms of postwar politics, then, the Conservative victory in 1979 was a remarkable achievement. ‘A dramatic day in British politics’, Benn wrote, ‘The most right wing Conservative Government and Leader for fifty years; the first woman Prime Minister. I cannot absorb it all.’4 Benn was to be given plenty of time to do so.

Thus, in these sentences of the Queen's Speech delivered on 15 May 1979, the Thatcher Government set out its statement of intent about the future management of the economy,1 and there were those who noted that similar sentiments had been present in the Queen's Speech of 2 July 1970 delivered shortly after the Heath Government had taken office.2 Of course, there were only so many things that Conservatives could say, and the conventional wisdom was that the Heath Government's experience would be replicated, meaning that anything resembling an economic liberal strategy could not survive more than about two years. Though the Heathites got more than their fair share of Cabinet appointments overall in 1979, Mrs Thatcher made sure that 'true believers in our economic strategy' controlled the Treasury and most of the main economic departments. Thus, Geoffrey Howe became Chancellor of the Exchequer, in which post'some of the toughest decisions were to fall to him' and'he never flinched'. Another economic liberal, John Biffen was made Chief Secretary of the Treasury, where 'he proved rather less effective' than Mrs Thatcher hoped 'in the gruelling task of trying to control public expenditure'. Sir Keith Joseph 'took over at Industry, where he did the vital job that no one else could have done of altering the whole philosophy which had previously dominated the department'.3

‘The sheer professionalism of the British Civil Service, which allows Governments to come and go with a minimum of dislocation and a maximum of efficiency, is something other countries with different systems have every cause to envy.’ At least in writing those words, Mrs Thatcher1 spared her readers, and for that matter the officials themselves, the platitude that Britain had the best Civil Service in the world. In terms of career Civil Services, Britain had one of the two most impressive such Services in the world, the other being that of France, and, since the governance of ‘Europe’ tended to be conducted in accord with French administrative culture as well as that country’s interests, the British Higher Civil Service had an unenviable task in conducting the relevant negotiations. When it came to running Britain itself, as one of their number, Sir Roy Denman, recorded with regret, the days when, at least he believed, higher civil servants were ‘the real, albeit shadowy, rulers of the land’ did not survive Mrs Thatcher becoming Prime Minister. She undermined ‘the bowler hated barons of Whitehall who had discreetly run the country’s affairs’, with it supposedly being the case that though she was on good terms with a few civil servants, mostly those who became her acolytes … for the most part she despised them. Her heroes were those who earned huge salaries in the City; those who worked for the State were by definition second-raters … The Civil Service found itself openly and publicly despised by its political masters and told that the role of the most senior was that of courtier … The quality of their advice suffered. So did the quality of the Service.

What Kind of Revolution? The Conservative Ascendancy: The Pattern of British Politics 1979-1990 The Thatcher Cabinets and Governments, Her Court, and 'An Old Whore of a Party' The Economic Liberal Crusades I: The Quest for an Economic Renaissance The Economic Liberal Crusades II: The Recasting of the Welfare State The Economic Liberal Crusades III: The Reconstruction of the Civil Service The Economic Liberal Crusades IV: The Confrontation with Local Government The Governments of the Iron Lady and the Defence of the National Interest The Unfinished Revolution

'It is a familiar truism to say that the Conservative Party has been in existence much longer than the Labour Party [but] it is a less familiar proposition that Conservative concern for and involvement in what we nowadays call welfare politics has been much more marked, and much more effective, than that of any rival party', Mrs Thatcher wrote in 1977, adding: 'Practically every measure of social amelioration passed through Parliament in the nineteenth century was passed by Conservatives … The greatest social reformer of the period was the Tory, Lord Shaftesbury … it was the Tories who… sought to mitigate the rigours and the consequences of the Industrial Revolution.' Mrs Thatcher denounced 'the uncaring dogmas of socialism' and declared: 'Once everything is provided and controlled by the State, the voice of the individual is silenced, the ability to choose eliminated … I believe that only the Conservative principles of thrift and industry will provide that stability of provision which alone can provide shelter for the vulnerable. And I believe that only a free society can hope to be a truly compassionate one.'1

Within a week of becoming Prime Minister in April 1955, Sir Anthony Eden announced that a General Election would be held in the following month. As the Conservative Government had maintained full employment and the Welfare State, and as the economy seemed to be characterized by boom conditions, a Tory Election victory was always the most likely outcome. Just to make certain, many later thought, or as an act of economic policy mismanagement, which seems more likely, Butler's Budget in April 1955 included a sixpence reduction in the standard rate of income tax. At the Election in May 1955, the Conservatives' overall majority in the House of Commons increased from 17 to 58,1 only just short of the 60-seat margin anticipated by Woolton as Party Chairman.2 Eden pronounced the outcome 'better than I had dared hope'.3 The Conservatives obtained 49.7 per cent of the poll,4 which was the highest percentage obtained by any political party or alliance of them since 1935, and it was to be neither equalled nor bettered during the rest of the twentieth century. During the Election campaign, the Austrian Treaty was signed by the USA, the Soviet Union, France, and Britain leading to the withdrawal of foreign troops from Austria, and that country's unification, independence, and neutralization, for which Eden had been negotiating for years.5

'A Welfare State is a State in which organized power is deliberately used (through politics and administration) in an effort to modify the play of market forces in at least three directions', wrote one of its historians. 'First, by guaranteeing individuals and families a minimum income irrespective of the market value of their work or property; second, by narrowing the extent of insecurity by enabling individuals and families to meet certain "social contingencies" (for example, sickness, old age and unemployment) which lead otherwise to individual and family crises; and, third, by ensuring that all citizens without distinction of status or class are offered the best standards available in relation to a certain agreed range of social services.' The same historian observed that 'the first and second of these objects may be accomplished, in part at least, by what used to be called a Social Service State, a State in which communal resources are employed to abate poverty and to assist those in distress. The third objective, however, goes beyond the aims of a Social Service State. It brings in the idea of the "optimum" rather than the older idea of the "minimum". It is concerned not merely with abatement of class differences or the needs of scheduled groups but with equality of treatment and the aspirations of citizens as voters with equal shares of electoral power.'1

'Macmillan was a Whig, not a Tory … he had no use for the Conservative loyalties and affections; they interfered too much with the Whig's true vocation of detecting trends in events and riding them skilfully so as to preserve the privileges, property and interests of his class.' So wrote Enoch Powell,1 appalled at the ruthlessness with which Macmillan pushed aside Butler in order to replace Eden as Prime Minister. Much of Macmillan's subsequent behaviour and that of the Governments he led could be interpreted as justifying Powell's analysis all the way down to his ridiculous choice of successor. However unimpressive he had been at the Foreign Office and at the Treasury, from the beginning of 1957 to mid-1961, Macmillan commanded British political life. A foolish socialist cartoonist dubbed him 'Supermac', and, successfully for a time, Macmillan cultivated an image of 'unflappability', a form of Edwardian effortless superiority. Macmillan was said to see Butler as his social inferior,2 though even he must have wondered if marrying into the Devonshires was worth the personal humiliation it brought, and nobody could take seriously any suggestion of intellectual superiority. Bevan was not alone in disliking merit being spurned when Butler was passed over,3 and, for Macmillan, to judge from the defensive nature of his over-extensive memoirs, social confidence was not enough.

‘Thus, then, on the night of the tenth of May, at the outset of this mighty battle, I acquired the chief power in the State, which henceforth I wielded in ever growing measure for five years and three months of world war, at the end of which time, all our enemies having surrendered unconditionally or being about to do so, I was immediately dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their affairs.’1 So wrote Winston Churchill retrospectively of his appointment as British Prime Minister in 1940, and of his dismissal from that office as a consequence of the defeat of the Conservative Party that he led in the General Election of 1945. ‘This is not necessarily the end’, Churchill said of his defeat at the time,2 and this more immediate judgement proved to be the sounder one in the sense that he was to be Prime Minister once more as soon afterwards as 1951, and Conservative Governments then ruled until 1964. Churchill was not to leave the centre of the British political stage until 1955, and he was not to die until 1965, but in or out of office, alive or dead, Churchill was a Ghost in the Machine of British politics, a reminder of the country’s Finest Hour in 1940, and a symbol of Britain’s continuing aspiration to be a Great Power, which, of course, he articulated better than anybody else.

‘We’re a working-class family and no two ways about it’, Edward Heath’s father once declared to a biographer.1 This was strictly true when Heath’s father had been a carpenter and his wife originally had been a domestic servant, but not, of course, when the father later became a master builder. In few other countries in the world would such distinctions matter, but Heath always bore the scars of his journey through the British social structure of his time. It was a long haul from a grammar school in Broadstairs to Balliol College, Oxford, to be then commissioned in the Army during the Second World War in which he saw active service, and, after it, briefly, to be a higher civil servant and also a journalist, and then, from 1950, a Conservative MP. As late as 1963, the social elite that had run the Tory Party had been powerful enough to ensure that Lord Home had become its Leader and for a time Prime Minister. Heath supported Home’s candidature, and even the admiring James Prior believed that Heath did so because he believed that this was the best way to ensure his own eventual succession.2 Soon after the Tories had been consigned to Opposition following electoral defeat in 1964, Home was prevailed upon to introduce a system of election for the leadership of the Conservative Party, and, when he stepped down in 1965, Heath defeated Maudling and Powell for the succession.

‘Winston has crawled back into Downing Street’, Lord Moran wrote in late October 1951 in the aftermath of the Conservatives having obtained only a majority of 17 in the General Election, though he found that, far from this outcome being ‘a great disappointment to him’, Churchill was relieved simply to be back as Prime Minister,1 and if this meant a return to office on any remotely politically acceptable basis at all then, for once, Churchill reflected the dominant mood in the Tory Party. Churchill was well described as ‘not … a Conservative at heart’,2 and, ideally in 1951, he may have wanted to lead a Coalition Government including the Liberals. He had spoken in support of Violet Bonham-Carter at Colne Valley in the Election,3 and, when composing his Cabinet, he offered the post of Minister of Education to the Liberal leader, Clement Davies, who refused it.4 For several years afterwards, the conventional wisdom was that between 1945 and 1951 the Conservatives had made themselves into the most effective Opposition of the century, having had their policies revamped by R.A. Butler and his ‘backroom boys’ as thoroughly as Lord Woolton as Tory Chairman had reconstructed the party machine.5 There had been a Woolton Revolution in organization, but, however seriously such as the One Nation Group took their activities, the Butler ‘Revolution’ was primarily presentational.