16. The Conservative Party Transformation in the 70s and 80s - with Dr Simon Griffiths

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Harry 0:00

Welcome to the modern British political history podcast. For this episode. I'm joined by Dr. Simon Griffiths, whose reader in politics at Goldsmiths University of London. Welcome to the podcast, Simon. Great to have you on.

Simon 0:11

Nice to be here. Certainly.

Harry 0:13

We've prepared some questions, which I'm looking forward to getting into before we get into those It'd be great just to get a little intro about your research interests and that can hopefully segue us nicely into into some questions

Simon 0:26

I, um, I write about British politics. I'm interested in a few different aspects of that. I'm very interested in the kind of the history of ideas and how, um, ideas shape modern party politics. how the idea of conservatism, for example, finds its way into the modern conservative party. Uh, but I'm also interested in, public policy.

Harry 0:48

the first question we prepared Simon was what was the makeup of the conservative party in the 70s and we broke that into a few elements Thinking a bit about who usually voted for the party Who its mps tended to be in parliament and then also what its policy platform tended to look like in the 70s So let's take that first one which is about who voted for the party What did that look like in the 70s

Simon 1:14

there's a, there's a famous quote in, in British, um, politics, um, uh, from Peter Poulter from 1967, and he claimed that class was the basis of British party politics and all else is embellishment and detail, um, and really in that post war period that held true. It's much less true, um, today. Um, but overwhelmingly the, um, conservative party attracted the support of wealthier members of society. Um, increasingly it attracted the support of, um, uh, from the landed to the commercial. Um, interests. However, you know, this embellishment and detail is, is interesting, um, and, um, important. The Conservative Party has always been able to attract a, um, a significant number of working class, um, voters, who I think, um, are attracted perhaps by the... Um, patriotism by aspects of the social conservatism by, um, uh, believing the party represented a kind of stronger line on protection of, uh, of church and particularly, um, the church of, um, England. Uh, and also within that kind of embellishment and detail, the conservative party has until very recently been able to attract more women. uh, than men as voters. Um, so there's been a, at times, pretty significant gender gap, um, in, um, voting. Um, and there's lots of suggestions about why that is, and one of them, um, put forward in the literature on kind of post war, um, politics is, um, the Conservative Party's skepticism about rationing, for example, which, which carried on right until the, the 1950s. Um, labor, um, would have kept it going for longer. The conservatives argued against it and women, um, bore the brunt of dealing with the bureaucracy, uh, of that. They were in charge, um, overwhelmingly of the kind of running of the family, um, books, doing the shopping, um, and carrying out, um, all of that administration. So there is an argument that, you know, the, the. Um, conservative position on rationing, um, uh, attracted, uh, women voters, uh, more than, uh, men. Um, but there's lots of, lots of debates about this. And as society changed in the, in the post war period and more women entered, um, the paid workplace, um, those sort of relationships changed and, um, the relation of, of gender to party support began to change. Um, but... By and large, the Conservative Party, if you're taking a very broad brush, um, you know, was reflective of a particular position, class position, um, and would attract votes that way.

Harry 4:00

and then what about its mps and in that maybe we could draw out Uh some Reflections on whether the MPs tended to reflect exactly that's or similar to that demographic that you've just talked about both on class, and then also I guess there's the demographic of gender as well you've talked about, or if there's to what extent is there a discrepancy between between who voted for it and actually the MPs in terms of what that what they tended to look like so be great to hear a bit about that. Um,

Simon 4:35

Yeah, oh, before I even talk about the MPs, I'll talk about... Um, the kind of people who joined the, um, Conservative Party, um, which is, which is interesting and obviously that's a much smaller group than the number of people who, who voted for it. Uh, and obviously, uh, members of parliament are, are recruited from party, uh, members, but the Conservative Party had by far the strongest claim in the post war period to be a mass political party. Um, it had at one point almost 3 million members. Um, in the, in the UK labor peaked at something over a million members. Um, these are huge numbers by today's, um, standard. Um, but the conservative party was by far the, the largest political party in Britain, in the, in the post war. Now, many of those members wouldn't have seen themselves as strong conservatives, but they bought into the, um, the sort of conservative network, you know, through membership of a, um, political party, um, you, uh, Uh, welcome at the, um, conservative meeting houses. Um, there's subsidized drink. Um, there are, uh, these are kind of social organizations. And, you know, particularly if you are a small business owner, for example, you know, they are respectable places to go to meet fellow. Um, like minded, um, people and so on. So thinking about who votes conservative and then who becomes a conservative MP, you know, the, the network of the conservative associations, um, and conservative party membership. Um, is, is really, um, important, um, there. When it comes to who actually becomes, uh, an MP, that group is, is less representative of society, uh, as a, uh, whole. Um, so think about the Conservative MPs, uh, in the, in the post war, um, period. Well, they, your typical Conservative MP would almost certainly be male. Typical MP would almost certainly be, uh, male up until 1979 that only, uh, 19, uh, women, uh, MPs in the, uh, House of, um, Commons. Um, and this is where the Conservative Party would have been unrepresentative. Even of members, that conservative MP would almost certainly be wealthier, far wealthier, than your average member of society. There was a change in that period where the money would have... Um, being landed, aristocratic, slowly slipped away in the conservative party, um, to be replaced by, um, money gained from, from business. Um, the people who became conservative MPs were far, far, um, wealthier, um, than your average, um, voter. Um, and that's surprising because, you know, uh, right back in 1912, um, The, uh, pay for an MP, uh, was offered for the first time, so that could theoretically have broken the link between, um, um, money and membership of the House of, um, Commons, but that remained, remained strong. Um, and in the 1940s, 1948, um, David Maxwell Fife, um, who later became, um, Churchill's home secretary, um, Conservative MP, um, released a, a report, um, and that report changed the way in which the Conservative Party was funded in quite an interesting way. Um, but right up until the 1940s and 50s, um, conservative MPs were recruited from their local area and were wealthy and gave large amounts of money to the local conservative association. Um, and, uh, the, the, um, Maxwell Fife report broke that link between local conservative associations and, and funding. So, uh, the, the central. Um, conservative party, uh, after the 19 late 1940s, um, were in charge of spending on, uh, elections, uh, and so on. But that meant, you know, right up until the 1940s, 50s, there was this very strong link between, um, the local businessman, the local, um, squire, um, um, becoming a member of the house of commons and representing their, um, constituencies. So, um, conservative party. Uh, MPs were, were wealthier, um, tended to be from, um, local, um, elites, tended to be landed and then later on, um, to have money from, um, business. There were very few. working class, conserved MPs. There was a rise in the number of grammar school, um, MPs by the end of that, um, period, you know, people like Ted Heath, for example, people like Margaret Thatcher who hadn't come from, um, that, um, private or public school, um, background, but. They very much dominated that public private school background, dominated the conservative party and still does, um, um, note down here that the proportion of conservative MPs, um, uh, was it, uh, who were, um, educated at fee paying schools was around 73 percent in, in 19. 79 when Margaret Thatcher was elected. So as a kind of proxy for, for, um, a wealthier background, um, you can see that Conservative MPs were drawn from, from far more, uh, wealthy backgrounds than, than many of their peers.

Harry 10:20

And then Simon, what about the policy platform that the Conservative Party tended to be operating with in, in the 70s? And maybe touching a little bit on, uh, The history, I suppose, of what what what typically the policy platform tended to be and then going into a bit about the seventies in particular would be would be really helpful.

Simon 10:43

Yeah Is the 70s is obviously a really interesting time in in British politics. So, you know to some degree it's a a period of of crisis and a period of crisis that we're still kind of seeing the results of I think, um, in a way, I mean, right up until, until the 1970s, um, the conservative party had dominated politics, um, but they had been elected from, from 1950 onwards, 1951 onwards, um, to, um, administer, uh, a, uh, a social and welfare settlement. That was put in place by Atlee's Labour government. Um, so after some initial scepticism from Churchill's, um, government, Um, to the introduction of, of beverage reforms of, uh, highly centralised. National Health Service. The Conservative Party accepted that. And again, it's, um, you know, it's David Maxwell Fife, um, Churchill's Home Secretary, um, who in his, his, um, Industrial Charter of, of 1947, um, um, Um, almost buys into this for the conservatives, conservative, except that these changes have been introduced after 1947 and by and large for the next generation are happy to, um, govern within that framework. There are arguments around the margins, uh, about exactly the extent of. nationalization in the economy. Um, but by and large during that period from, you know, 1945 up until the 1970s, about 20 percent of the British economy. was nationalized, all the public services, uh, public utilities rather were, um, nationalized, um, and the conservative accepted this. There were, there were minor disagreements about where the steel and haulage, for example, should be included in that, but these were disagreements, um, at the margins. Things began to change in the, in the early 1970s. Um, uh, and a sort of crisis, uh, emerged and the crisis, I guess, came to a head in, in the, the winter of 1978, 79, um, the so called winter of discontent, um, uh, and then that post war settlement really began to, to be, um, challenged. Um, so for example, the, the assumption that Keynesian economics, um, would ensure constant gradual economic growth. Came under pressure. Um, the, um, ability of, uh, the government of the day to work, um, productively with, with trade unions, um, began to, to crumble as, as inflation. The assumption that, uh, the economy would run at around about full employment, uh, began to, to collapse. So all of these things happened in the, in the 1970s, and it led to, uh, a new period, I guess, uh, a period when both the, the right, Um, on the left, we're beginning to offer kind of new radical solutions to the impasse. And on both sides, on the, on the, on the, on the left, so you think about people like Tony Benn within the, the Labour Party, and you, you think about the right, you think about, um, Thatcher and the people around her, Keith Joseph and so on. Um, we're interested, or certainly had a stake in, in, in saying, you know, this is not working anymore, we need radical. So there's a rewriting of the 1970s going on, um, at the moment where many people sort of point to the, the, the positive things about the, the, the decade. But on the right and the left, there were, um, clearly radical alternative solutions being offered, um, to, um, the role of trade unions, to, um, the assumption that Keynesian economics would work, um, to get inflation under control. Uh, and so on. And that's where you begin to get a very different type of politics coming in.

Harry 14:54

And you talked about the acceptance that the Conservative Party, uh, had of Keynesian economics postwar consensus. To what extent was that acceptance? willing and to what extent was it under duress? I'm wondering, was it a case that there was almost a waiting for the opportunity, I suppose, of where What they, you know, the policy platform that ideally most, most of the conservatives would have liked to have pursued, they had that chance to do that because there was a crisis, as you've talked about in the 70s, or was that acceptance under the likes of Harold Macmillan? To what extent do you think that was really genuine and felt throughout the party?

Simon 15:43

That's a really interesting, um, question. I do think that for that generation, maybe 30 years, uh, after the Second World War, um, the Conservative Party in its main accepted the changes that the Labour Party Had introduced, um, the, the mainstream of the party at that time saw themselves as a centrist, um, conservatism, I think as a kind of ideology could embrace that. Um, you know, so I could talk for a long time about, um, kind of one nation, um, conservatism, but it was one nation conservatism, uh, that dominated the conservative party after the. Um, second world war. Um, so one nation conservatism goes back to the days of, uh, Benjamin Disraeli in the, in the mid 19th century. And it, it was in the 19th century that the, the conservative party were. In some ways, the party of social reform, um, so you think about the big industrial reforms, um, and they were often pushed forward by supporters of Disraeli or by Tory politicians. Um, so, uh, the, you know, the Eros Memorial, for example, in, in the, in the middle of London, um, um, by Shaftesbury Avenue is, is officially called the, the Shaftesbury Memorial. And it was there, uh, to honor. The Earl of Shaftesbury in the 19th century, a conservative politician who had, um, pushed for, um, child labor reforms, 10 hour working days, um, greater safety in the mines, all sorts of other things that traditionally today we might see is on the left of, of politics. Um, so. This one nation strand, it became known as a one nation strand of conservatism, was really powerful in the, in the post war period. They're called one nation conservatives after, um, Disraeli's novel. Both a conservative politician and a, and a novelist, and he wrote a novel called Sybil. Or the two nations and the two nations were the rich and the poor, um, by implication the, the item has to be, we, we were all one nation, um, and that strand in the Conservative Party had been really, really strong and it was dominant right the way up until Margaret Thatcher's first, um, first cabinet, um, by which stage they were being dismissed as And, It was the wets, you know, this was a group who didn't have the, the, the backbone, um, needed to, to make the radical transformations Britain needed. But all the way through that post war period, that one nation group within the Conservative Party, um, was dominant. So they, I, I think they genuinely, um, supported, Many of the changes that have been, um, introduced by the Labour government, or at least they came to it to, to, uh, accept them. Now, having said that, there was a group within the Conservative Party who were not happy, uh, with those, um, changes. And, you know, all political parties are, are broad churches and, um, there are crises in particular which, Um, force people to come up with solutions. And so when there's a crisis in the 1970s, okay, people are offering different solutions. But if you go back to 1958, for example, um, Enoch Powell resigns from Harold Macmillan's, um, government along with, um, Peter Thornacroft over a, uh, an, an economic issue. But in short, you know, the argument begins to open up that, um, the state is doing too much, the market isn't. Um, doing enough, um, so there were, um, significant players in the conservative party all the way through this, um, period who were skeptical, um, about the post war settlement, um, and wanted change. Now, by the 1970s, when the kind of the wheels begin to fall off, um, then people kind of revert back to their, um, kind of ideological position and, um, begin to look for, for radical alternatives and, and people who supported. Enoch Powell in the 50s and 60s, um, before Powell's racist rivers of blood speech, switched their support to people around Margaret Thatcher, um, by the, by the, um, 1970s. And she's elected in, in 1975 as, as the Conservative Party leader. And it's not immediately clear what she's going to do. Um, and then by the early 1980s, it becomes clear there is a something that we now know as, as Thatcherism, which is a radical challenge to the, post war consensus. So that's a rather long answer to your, to your question, uh, but in short, I think, you know, a significant proportion of the Conservative Party, the majority, accepted the post war settlement, and that is absolutely, um, compatible with the Conservative ideology, uh, kind of centrist, one nation Conservative ideology. However, within the party, there were others who were more sceptical, and particularly once the crisis hit in the 70s. Who argued this was unsustainable and we need radical change. Um, which in itself is arguably not a very conservative position. Something we might talk about later.

Harry 21:13

I find, I find all that really interesting, that kind of reforming tendency in the Conservative Party that is quite counterintuitive, probably for some people listening, um, uh, and, and yeah, might, might not be what, what you expect, but as you've talked about that, there does exist that, that, that element as well in the, in the history of the party. And then also what you're talking about with, you know, Powell is interesting as well because he's, Margaret Thatcher is often seen as or portrayed in the narrative as coming from nowhere and the ideas of Thatcherism and neoliberalism as seeing as being seen as starting with her, but then actually, like you've talked about, Enoch Powell was talking about these ideas before that, although, you know, uh, More, more to the, more to the margins or, or in, in a less, in, in a less kind of front and center way than, than Margaret Thatcher would come to be. So really interesting stuff. I, I wanted to, um, get into some of the, the meat of what we were gonna talk about, uh, which was about that sort of shift in the seventies and and eighties, um, which you've touched on already. And we had a few different, um, ways of understanding it that we, we. Uh, wrote down as as, as questions, as points to think about. So I'll, I'll summarize them and then it'd be great to hear what you think about, uh, e each one. And the extent to which you think each are, are fair, uh, or true. Simon. So we talked about is, was it a move from one nation tourism to neoliberalism? We talked about was it the party's interest moving from what you might call the estate owner to the estate agent. So you could call that, I suppose, old money to to, to new money. Or the move away from Harold Macmillan's middle way acceptance of the post war social democracy, which I suppose is what we've just been talking about, um, of Attlee, um, and the, the, uh, coalition government of, of the war period back to something else, um, whether it's something more like Victorian liberalism, which Margaret Thatcher talked about. So there's, there's, there's a lot in that, but let's, let's try and take them Take them one by one and then maybe reflect on the whole the whole piece a little bit. So that point around a move away from one nation tourism to Something like neoliberalism What what do you think about that as a as a thesis?

Simon 23:44

There's certainly something in that, and I think there's something in, you know, all of those views you've put forward. Um, I mean, neoliberalism is a tricky word to pin down. And, you know, one of the difficulties with it is, you know, well, While many people would have called themselves one nation conservatives or people call themselves socialists or people call themselves conservatives or liberals, very few people call themselves neoliberals. Um, and it's often criticized on those grounds. You know, it's, it's seen as a, uh, an expression of, um. Seen as a pejorative expression and tends to be used by by people on the left. It's not a kind of neutral. Um term However, there is some really interesting work that does show I mean you might not use the word neoliberal You might use a different term that does show These ideas, the ideas associated with neoliberalism, um, more competition, more use of markets, um, a limited area for, for politics, um, these ideas kind of finding their way slowly into, um, party politics in the, in the post war, um, period, there's, um, there's a good story about this actually with, um, um, uh, and it relates to, to Friedrich Hayek, the, the kind of, the great, the, Liberal, um, thinker, but you're certainly a kind of, um, a figure who influenced Margaret, um, Thatcher. Um, it probably wouldn't have called himself a liberal cause he had a sort of conservative, small C conservative bent to his thoughts. Um, as well, but he had published a very famous book in 1944 called The Road to Serfdom, and it had been a, an international bestseller. He'd been a, uh, an economist at the LSE before then, and he was known in, um, kind of economic, um, circles. Um, but this book came out and it was, it was, uh, you know, a bestseller. It was serialized, um, by the Reader's Digest, for example. And, um, a young, Recently, um, decommissioned pilot, um, it's just coming back from the, the second world war, came to see him. Someone called Anthony Fisher. Um, and Fisher had read, he'd either read the Road to Serfdom or he'd read the, the Reader's Digest abridgment of the, um, Road to Serfdom. And he, he went to see Hayek and, you know, these ideas were outside of the mainstream, um, at the time. These were ideas about, Um, the dangers of, of the growing state and the dangers of socialist planning and, and so on. And so Fisher went to see Hayek at his offices in LSE and, and he said, you know, I read the book, this is what I, um, you know, this is the direction we should be moving. What can I do? Um, uh, should I become an MP? Should I, um, become a campaigner? You know, should I write? Should I become an academic? And Hayek is, is meant to have said, what you should do is set up a think tank, um, or a policy research institute, um, and fund it. And Fisher became, um, an entrepreneur. He became, um, uh, the, well, the leading figures in a, uh, a company called Buxted Chickens, which imported, um, American farming techniques, um, around about battery chicken farming into the UK and Fisher became a very wealthy, uh, man as a result. And he used a significant chunk of that money to fund. think tanks or policy research institutes, um, that push forward this neoliberal for want of a better word, um, agenda. Um, so he used it to, um, put money into the Institute for Economic Affairs, the, the IEA, which is still growing strong, um, today, which attracted money from all sorts of other, um, organizations and businesses, um, as well, set up in the 1950s in 1955, but for 20 years, the IEA. was pushing out pamphlets, offering free market solutions to the problems, and not being listened to. Um, and then, all of a sudden, the 70s hit, the crisis hit, Thatcher becomes leader of the Conservative Party, and there's a, a market for their, uh, ideas. Via the, the, the think tanks, the IEA and later the Adam Smith Institute or the Center for Policy Studies and, and before that, organizations like the, the Mon Pelerin Society that Friedrich Hayek was very involved with, these ideas were, were out there, um, they were marginal, but they attracted interest, um, from people in the Conservative Party, from academics and, and those think tanks, the model, They were pushing for was, you know, these think tanks will be a conveyor belt between academia and politicians and by the 1970s lots of conservative politicians Particularly those around Margaret Thatcher people like Keith Joseph Jeffrey how Nigel Um, Lawson, uh, became increasingly interested in these ideas. Keith Joseph in particular, a really important figure. Um, and, uh, they were providing Thatcher, uh, with solutions to the problems she was facing. So there's a fam there was a famous cartoon in, in Punch in 1975, when Margaret Thatcher's been elected leader of the Conservative Party, still four years before she was Prime Minister. Um, and it shows them all boarding a, a plane. It shows Thatcher and, and... People around her, like Willie Whitelaw, boarding a plane and the, the, the punchline is something like, you know, okay, you're on the plane, but where are the engines? And what it's saying is, you know, it's not totally clear what Thatcher is going to do, what's going to be the, the driving force, what are the policies? 10 years later, you know, if you, if you ask people, you know, what Thatcher was for, it becomes very, very clear. In 1975 when she was elected, it, it wasn't so, um, clear, but in terms of, you know, um, uh, you know, is this a move away from one nation conservatism towards neoliberalism? It is. You can see how these ideas have gone from, from the margins. You know, in, in 1960, someone reviewed Hayek's, you know, great tome, The Constitution of Liberty and argued it was like reading, uh, or seeing a magnificent dinosaur. You know, this was a, a book from a different age. It looked like Victorian liberalism in an age of the... the welfare state by the 1970s and 80s. That book had, uh, was seen as influential on, on, on the Thatcher government. So these ideas percolated through to, to politicians in that period. And there was a move away from, from one nation conservatives who Thatcher was very dismissive of, you know, described them, as I said earlier, as a wets, you know, they didn't have the backbone to deal with the problems Britain was facing towards something much more radical, a kind of neoliberalism and those ideas become. Much more powerful by the 1970s

Harry 30:34

We've talked about this, the ideas element, uh, in, in, in that quite a bit. Um, the next thesis we've, we've put forward is, I think, a bit more about people and demographics, isn't it? It's about how Britain was changing. Not at the level of high political ideas, but at the level of demographics, um, so this move from the estate owner to the estate agent, um, a kind of move away from a particular type of, uh, of landowning aristocracy in the UK. I wonder what you think about that argument. This one makes me think of a conversation I had with Al Wintourne who was talking about cultural, uh, representations of, of, of this, of this phenomenon. So you have, uh, for example, TV programs where, uh, that, that, that conflict is actually very, very important. It becomes the drama of, um, the feeling of, uh, of, uh, a new sort of money class moving in on, on the old money. And, and there's, there's programs where, uh. It's often reflected even in marriages. So you have someone who is of kind of old money Meeting someone who's who's kind of up and coming But yeah, what do you make of that argument? That's more about more about demographics, I suppose

Simon 32:00

I mean, there's certainly something going on. Britain was changing. I mean, countries always change and demographics, um, change. Um, but you know, that, that, those changes in the Conservative Party are, you know, as you've talked about in the past, um, clearly, um, going on at the time, you know, to the man of Bourne was, was the. Um, you know, this huge hit millions of 20 million people would, would watch, um, uh, uh, uh, essentially a kind of culture clash between, uh, old money and a new money. And in the end they, they marry. Um, uh, uh, and the conservative party did change, um, during that, um, period, you know, with, with Heath and Thatcher, they were, they were grammar school. Um, children, McMillan certainly wasn't, you know, old Etonian, um, I think, um, and the, the conservative party, um, did change, um, during that period. So they, they've got that, that going on, you know, the, the loss of control of the, the landed. Um, uh, aristocracy, and it was actually often that that landed up aristocracy who was most sympathetic to the one nation conservative arguments. Um, you know, there was certainly a kind of belief that, you know, for, um, to be born into, to be born into nobility, you also had. obligations to the people you, uh, who were part of your community. It wasn't an egalitarian argument in any way, but you were responsible for, for your people, your communities. It was, you know, this idea of noblesse oblige, the obligations of the, uh, wealthy. So, you know, the Macmillans and so on, who were part of the, the one nation conservative, um, group, certainly accepted that post war. Settlement, um, for Thatcher and the people around them. They were, they were, they were too soft. They might've, um. Their inclinations, you know, might have been, um, honorable, um, but they couldn't solve the problems that Britain was, was facing. Um, and to solve those, you needed to be hard headed. You needed to boost the economy. You needed to, to have a free market, uh, approach. And there were, There were many people coming into the Conservative Party, um, who didn't have any sympathy with the post war settlement, uh, who were highly critical of the welfare state. And by the 60s, on both the left and the right actually, there were, there were criticisms of, of the welfare state. From the right, the, the criticism tended to be that it was, um, encouraged dependency. Um, it, um, um, you could still get this kind of language, um, encouraged kind of shirking and, um, stop people. As Norman Tebbett famously said, getting on their bike and looking for work. Um, um, so, uh, you do get a kind of different conservative party during that period. And, you know, as you said, there's something else going on, something much bigger in British society during this, um, period. And it, it comes about with changes to the, the class structure in the, in the post war, um, period. Um, something which the policies of the... The Thatcher government, um, didn't cause, but certainly, um, sped up. Um, so, you know, in the immediate post war period, we had two very large parties, largely represented. by differing classes. The Labour Party, uh, had a very high number of working class members of parliament. Those members of parliament tended to be recruited through the trade unions, uh, which politicized, uh, workers and gave them a route into, into politics and a route that doesn't exist, um, for, for working class people in the same way. Um, today, um, the, the conservative party, um, as we've already talked about, um, tended to come from a much wealthier moneyed, um, backgrounds. But as that class structure changed, as, um, the role of heavy industry in Britain declined, as the trade union movement, um, declined and declined in part. Significant part, not just because of changes to the global economy, but also, um, a very real, um, attempt to attack and undermine the trade union movement by the Thatcher government, um, and this was very explicitly set out in things like the Ridley Report in 1977, which saw the trade union movement as a real threat, um, and, and which had, uh, undermined Ted Heath's government in 1974, um, you get these changes Um, to, um, to politics, the class system, um, and you get a very different class structure and that leads to different MPs. It leads to a different, uh, a different society. So there's a rather kind of general answer to your question, but something's going on, uh, where the, the, the power of the landed elite has significantly declined in the conservative party over the period we're looking at. And by the seventies and the eighties, um, has been pushed out in favor. Of, um, commercial or business interests.

Harry 37:21

we have talked a little bit about the last point which was about this move away from the post war social democracy the post war consensus, some call it, uh, but we didn't really talk about uh, Victorian liberalism, which is something, um, that Thatcher emphasized quite a lot in her language. I mean, there's arguments, aren't there, about to what extent was, uh, Was it a looking back to to to that period? Um, to what extent was it Thatcher, uh, doing some mythologizing and looking back to that period, but perhaps not? Perhaps missing elements of it. I mean, there's lots about um elements of of that period but then there's things like victorian philanthropy, which perhaps are less emphasized in in in the 80s under thatcher So let let's focus in on that that point around victorian liberalism, do you see that as a Useful lens to think about the change that was that was going on

Simon 38:34

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, and it's, it's, it's interesting because one of the debates about Thatcher, particularly at the time was, you know, is she a conservative? Is, is what? Uh, they're doing to the country now conservative and in some ways it doesn't seem to be particularly if you think of conservatism as it had been in the post war period about kind of, you know, protection of, um, family values of the importance of the church of the monarchy of responsibility for those who have less than you, uh, within an equal society. That's not Thatcherism, um, uh, really. So, you know, people say she's a, you know, she seems much more like a kind of Victorian liberal, you know, there was a, um, Victorian liberal writer, um, Herbert Spencer. Um, and if you look at his work, which is, um, highly skeptical about the role of the state, highly skeptical about welfare, um, extremely individualist, you know, about the individual making their own way, then you can certainly see the influence of. People like him on Hayek, and you can certainly see, you know, some of that language in, in the language that Thatcher and her government used. Um, so, you know, there's certainly a strong liberal strand within what Thatcher, um, was, was trying to, There's also, um, there was a historian called Corelli Barnett who, um, who, who was particularly influential on conservatives, uh, in the seventies and eighties. And at the heart of Barnett's thesis was this idea that sometime in the mid twentieth century, uh, Britain had taken a kind of wrong turn. Rather than... Um, spending money as, as they had elsewhere in Europe on, um, getting the economy going. Um, Britain had spent money on the National Health Service, on, um, public services and, and welfare, uh, and so on. And as a result of that, the economy was sluggish and suffering. So there's an element of, of Thatcher which almost seems to be... Um, seem to be kind of dragging Britain back to that period before, you know, pruning back what she would see as the inefficient spending of the, um, post war period and taking us back to something, um, uh, earlier, um, Stuart Hall, Professor Stuart Hall, um, is one of the most famous. Um, uh, analysts of, of Thatcherism, um, from, from the left, you know, use the term regressive modernization. Um, uh, and it's quite a nice description of what Thatcher was trying to do. It's almost like she was trying to pull us back to a different era, a different period so that then in her mind, the economy could boom and we would be, uh, wealthier and, uh, better off and happier and, uh, and so on. So Thatcher does talk about, she talks about Victorian values. Um, for, for, for example, and, you know, that's seen as, um, you know, the importance of thrift and, um, household budgeting, uh, and, and so on. And, um, particularly kind of Christian moral values, skepticism about indifference, about, um, you know, certain sexual behavior and so on. It's a response to the, what conservatives describe as the permissive society of the 1960s. So there's all that kind of slightly Puritan, um, Victoriana, um, going on in Walt Thatcher. Um, is, is, uh, doing, uh, as well. But, you know, it's one thing to, to be pushing for Victorian values in, uh, in 1900. Um, but a very different thing to be arguing in 1980 that we need to pull ourselves back to those values. After, um, the 1960s, after changes to family structure, changes to views on sexuality, and, and so on. So that makes a very radical argument. That she's not just arguing we need to carry something on. She was arguing we need to reverse and challenge some of those changes that she disagreed with in the, in the 1960s. Changes that many, um, liberals and, and many of us today, you know, accept as, as the norm now around sexuality, around equality, around family structure. Uh, around immigration, around difference, uh, and so on. So it becomes quite a radical conservative argument, saying that we need to go back to something that no longer, uh, exists. Um, so there's certainly something interesting about the, the Victorian element of her, um, thinking and the phrases she uses.

Harry 43:06

And I'm fascinated by the potential contradictions because if you I do go with the argument that economically Thatcherism was about economic liberalism, but there was a social conservatism to it as well, you could call it a Victorian. Social conservatism. Those two don't always align, do they? So the example I always find instructive is, is it conservative to scrap Sunday trading laws? That was a, that was a, uh, a debate, you know, you can come at it from different angles, um, about the free market versus tradition, um, religion playing a role in, in the conservative party. And it was something when I was speaking to Alwyn Turner, the, uh, historian, um, political historian and cultural historian that we talked a bit about was that tension. Do you see, or potential for a tension, do you see that as a potential conflict, Simon?

Simon 44:08

Yeah, I do. Um, now, you know, I think all ideologies have their own kind of contradictions within them. Um, but the, the new right, which is quite a nice heading for kind of summing up. These kinds of ideas that were bubbling up in the 1970s was certainly made up of all sorts of kind of contradictory, um, forces, you know, on the one hand, there, uh, were very conservative. small c conservative elements to it. Um, people who, uh, were, um, deeply skeptical about, you know, this permissive society, uh, were deeply skeptical about, um, educational reform. Um, for example, um, people who wanted kind of, um, People are deeply skeptical about immigration, um, and that was all kind of collided into a kind of movement with, with radical free marketeers, um, who, uh, were much more individualist in their, um, take. So, um, you've immediately got a contradiction there between, you know, the protection of kind of family and family values and arguing that actually the individual. Knows best about what they do with their lives, um, who they want to, to sleep with, to marry, to be friends with, you know, whether they can move abroad to work, whether people come here to, to work. So, you know, All these things kind of clash together and the Sunday trading, um, debate was a really interesting one because yeah, you've got the free marketeers, uh, arguing, well, it's, you know, huge affront to, uh, the freedom of, of businesses to say you've got to close on a Sunday or a Wednesday afternoon. Um, uh, and on the other hand, you've got people who think, well, on Sunday within the conservative movement, you know, Sunday, uh, is about church. It's about family. So that's a really interesting example. And it's interesting partly because, you know, this was, uh, one of the, um, very few, um, uh, votes that Thatcher lost in the house of commons. Um, when she tried to open up shops to, uh, to, to Sunday opening, which we're now all, all, uh, familiar, uh, with, uh, going back to Stuart Hall, you know, he, I remember him saying at one point that, you know, every time you go to a, uh, a Sainsbury's on the way to a. Uh, a demonstrational march, he wrote as a kind of good left wing historian. You know, you're buying into the Thatcher Project, uh, because it means that business is open and capitalism can keep, um, working. Um, but yeah, there are those, those tensions, you know, about which institutions you protect or, or which you shouldn't. You know, should the BBC be protected as a, uh, uh, a site of, um, Public in importance, you know, a place for public debate above the market should radio three be Protected as a example of high culture Um, you know, how much do you protect sundays protect the church and so on or you know, do you open everything up to? Um, and those contradictions are very much part of, of the new rights of which Thatcher was part. And those debates are played out all the way through and, and for kind of, you know, political theorists, people like John Gray, for example, who was writing from a Thatcherite perspective in the eighties and, and changed his views throughout the nineties. Um, this was a contradiction that was never possible to, to kind of, to pull apart. You know, the, the free market undermined. Those things the Conservative Party, in particular Conservatives, um, found valuable in society and I think for, for Gray writing in the 90s, you know, this seemed a, a, a shock, um, that, uh, um, for, for Conservatives, you know, that they never really realized the consequences of a free market individualist, um, policies and how they would undermine kind of institutions that Conservatives had really traditionally tried to protect.

Harry 48:04

Is there anything we're missing in terms of that question, uh, we also put down on the list, which was about what precipitated this shift, uh, in the party in the eighties? We've talked a bit about think tanks, but if you'd like to talk a little bit more about that, we've, there's also, we've talked a bit about the development of the new right, haven't we? Is there anything you feel we're, we're, we're missing, uh, in the, in the kind of puzzle piece on, on what actually caused this, this shift?

Simon 48:29

So there's certainly the crisis of the 1970s that we've talked about. We've talked about the kind of the ideas that were kind of there, you know, bubbling up, waiting to come through. I guess there's the party political bit of it as well. Um, and I think, you know, the way in which the trade union, some of, some members of which, leaders of which had very consciously tried to undermine the Heath government had, really strongly influenced, um, Thatcher. So, you know, Ted Heath, um, Prime Minister from 70 to 74 had gone to the country in 1974, essentially under the slogan, who governs? You know, is it the democratically elected party or is it the trade unions? Um, and, uh, this was, um, against the backdrop of a three day week strikes by, um, coal miners, um, the NUM had been out on, on strike and the country had answered narrowly, but they had answered, um, but you know, it's not you, uh, and labor had been returned to, to office very narrowly for, um, for five. Uh, for five years until, until Thatcher, um, came along. So that experience, um, that Thatcher had gone through, and obviously it was the experience that led Thatcher to become leader of the Conservative Party, I think really shaped her thinking and, and really sort of set a stage where the unions were seen Um, as a problem for the growth of the economy, and some elements within the trade union movement were very, um, vociferously anti conservative. Mick McGarvey, the, the leader of the, um, Scottish miners, you know, saw the, the 1973 4 miner strikes as an attempt to overthrow the government of the day. You know, he was a, he was a communist, um, working with the trade union. Many others in the union movement, including in the leadership, were just trying to, um, come up with pay settlements that kept place. Uh, pace rather with, with inflation, but there was a political wing of the trade union movement that was anti conservative and Thatcher took that to heart and trade unions and the power of trade unions, particularly within the nationalized industry, um, um, began to be seen as an increasing problem and Thatcher really took that on board. And yeah, I mentioned the Ridley report earlier, which, um, offered a solution to that, which was fragmenting the, um, industries, privatizing them. Um, and, um, often various ways of dealing with the, the possibility of strikes and, and threats from powerful unions. So that, that context I think is really important. The, the power of the trade unions, and particularly public sector unions, is really important in understanding where Thatcher came from in the, in the 1970s.

Harry 51:19

And that's primarily the domestic context. How important do you think the international context is in, in all of this? So I'm thinking, for example, of the influence of America, the increasing influence of America on the UK, what some call Americanization, um, over the decades following World War II, um, and free market ideas coming from places like, um, the chicago school, um of economics, um, and there's also the The fact of the soviet union as well. I wondered what to what extent do you think that international context? um plays in into all of this that there's a Is there a sort of reaction to the increasing? State power. That's, uh, in effect in, in the, in the Soviet Union, that that means that there's, there's a desire to, to go in a, a very different direction. That's much more liberal, much more individualistic. So overall, what, what do you think in terms of how important that, that the international context is, uh, when we're thinking about this?

Simon 52:29

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think the Cold War is absolutely vital. Um, it kind of provides a... Um, two poles, um, which, um, you have to kind of face towards one or the other, you know, even for socialists or others within the Labour Party, they had to say, well, okay, if I'm not a Soviet, what am I doing differently to that? You know, is there a kind of, um, Yugoslavia style third way or are we looking for something else or are we rejecting that and facing towards America? So there's that, that wider, um, context and, you know, Thatcher clearly very strongly, um, pro American, particularly after. election in, um, in the early 1980s, um, very strongly pro NATO. So that context sets the, the, the framework. There are other, um, not related to kind of. international relations in the same way, but other issues that were important. Clearly something else is going on in the global economy by the 1970s. You know, I talk about the, the crisis in the 1970s in, in, um, Britain, but the, the, the collapse of some of the kind of the Bretton Woods, um, agreements and, and institutions, um, during that period changed, um, politics, you know, in the United States, there was a move away from, you know, um. Carter's centralism towards, um, Reagan's kind of more radical, um, politics and particularly politics that talks about or pays lip service to freedom all the way through. Even in, in France, for example, which had elected a socialist government in 1981, um, under, under Mitterrand, um, they had to reverse many of the The policies they had promised, um, within a couple of years because the international context, the globalization of the, the, uh, economy made them, um, impossible to, to govern. So,

Harry 54:20

Uh, interesting.

Simon 54:21

were changes going on that were liberalizing the global economy in the West, um, and Thatcher was part of those. Now, there were different approaches, and there's a whole debate about, you know, had the Labour Party won the election? Um, in 1978, for example, when they were heading the polls rather than 1979, would they have introduced the policies that Thatcher? Had, uh, later introduced and it's a, it's a really interesting kind of hypothetical debate and everyone points out the, um, the, the speech that Jim Callahan gave, uh, where he said, you can't spend your way out of a recession if you ever could. And they see that as a kind of example of. Um, uh, of labor giving up on Keynesianism. Um, uh, and they, they look at the kind of, um, mooted moves towards privatization of some aspects of the, the post war economy, that the Labor Party had, had carried out. Um, and undoubtedly, I think, Had Labour won in 1978, um, rather than waiting until 1979 to hold a general election, then they may have done some of the things that Thatcher has done. Um, there may have been those liberalizations of the economy. There may have been some privatizations as there were in France, but there wouldn't have been anything like the. Um, radical financialization of the economy that that should push forward the, um, the vehemence with which he pushed forward privatization, um, uh, of, uh, the public utilities. Um, none of that would have happened, but some of it would have. It wouldn't have happened in the same way Labour would have moved with the wider liberalisation and globalisation of the economy. But Thatcher was, she was at the vanguard, she was pushing it forward, she was embracing those, um, changes. Um, so, um, you know, the, the international context is important, it provided a kind of framework. Both in terms of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, and in terms of a liberalization of the global economy provided a framework within which parties were operating, but Thatcher embraced those changes more than any other politician, I think, um, even more than, than Reagan in the States, for example,

Harry 56:40

And that sparks an interesting question, historical question, about determinism versus, uh, the idea of great people, uh, shaping history. You know, you've talked a bit about some of the changes that Britain underwent towards a more, um, liberalized economy. Uh, you can see those as, uh, More likely to to have happened anyway, or or you can look at them in a more deterministic way. I know Dominic Sandbrook, the historian talks about uh that much of the change in Britain would have happened without Thatcher, but then I segwaying that a little bit uh back into the Conservative Party that question about determinism. How much do you think the change within the Conservative Party was driven Could only have happened with leadership from certain figures, whether it's, you know, Powell and then obviously Thatcher herself versus do you see it as something deterministically that was going to happen. But when you look at kind of the way the economy was changing, you've talked about things like Bretton Woods, um, rising inflation. Uh, we could talk about a bit about that. So, so where do you think the balance lies there? Yeah.

Simon 57:56

it's so hard to answer those kinds of counterfactual, um, questions. Um, but my, my feeling is. You know, Thatcher and the people around her did make a really significant difference. So I kind of alluded to some of the changes, um, that probably would have happened anyway earlier. Um, but they could have happened in very, very Um, ways that, you know, uh, a labor government under, under Callaghan or his, uh, successors might have, um, carried out some privatizations. Um, they might have, um, um, rejected aspects of the kind of Keynesian legacy, but they wouldn't have made the cut to the welfare state that Thatcher did. They wouldn't have gone for the big bang financialization. So it always seems afterwards as if, you know, the changes that took place had to have happened, but I think lots of these things are, are contingent and, um, yeah, that just certainly made that and the people around her. Certainly made a, uh, a difference. Um, and it, it kind of changed the, the British economy, you know, it, it pushed the British economy towards a model that looked much closer to what was going on in the, in the U S um, it, um, distance us from, from what was going on. Um, in, in Europe, um, you know, um, Germany and France were also dealing with problems at the time, but they dealt with them very differently. They involved the trade unions more, they, um, worked together more closely, and as a result that became the, the kind of the dominant powers in, uh, a new kind of emerging, um, Europe that Thatcher first embraced, but then, then increasingly rejected by the time she, she left office. Um, so it's almost impossible to answer, but I don't think any of these changes. Had to have happened, but I think some version, perhaps a much kinder, more humane version, could have happened under a different conservative leadership. Um, or had Labour won the election in, in 79.

Harry 1:00:01

So to wrap up, were there any final, we've covered a lot of ground, were there any sort of final reflections, conclusions that you want to sort of leave the listeners with?

Simon 1:00:18

We've covered so much ground. It's, it's, it's difficult to know what I'd like to talk about. I'm fascinated by the kind of ideas behind, um, party, um, politics and the way in which, you know, ideas that were really seen as on the margins in the, in the post war period, um, you know, um, privatization, limiting the power of the states, uh, much more significantly free market solutions using, um, quasi markets in the public service, how these found their way into, Um, the political, um, mainstream, um, and how they pushed out other equally conservative ideas that have been dominant for most of the post war, um, period, um, and what it took for those ideas to find their hold and, and how they kind of took over the, the, the conservative party that always been a part of conservative, um, thought, but how they move from the margins, how they move from, you know, a couple of people like Peter Thornacroft or Enoch Powell. in the post war period to being the dominant factor by the time Thatcher stepped down in 1990. I find that absolutely fascinating.

Harry 1:01:31

and we're not, uh, in this podcast, we don't do current affairs, but I'm sure there will be things that listeners can think about, um, might be instructive if they do think about the last year, two years, um, of politics that we've undergone, the role of the IEA, um, the influence of Margaret Thatcher on the likes of Liz Truss, but I just wanted to to say finally then thanks For joining us simon. I found it really really instructive really interesting. Um, so thanks once again

Simon 1:02:05

It's been an absolute pleasure. Nice to talk to you, Harry.