In early 1979, England was economically at the brink of total collapse. The nation's financial structure had been decimated by taxes, debt, deficits, government spending, and regulation of the markets. The results were inflation and unemployment. As George Will writes, it was "Margaret Thatcher who helped bury socialism as a doctrine of governance."
Like a bucket of cold water on a drowsy snoozer, Thatcher's introduction of radical economic freedom came at first as a shock to the system. At first briefly painful, as the vital signs of the economy were forced to hit bottom to jump-start a wave of entrepreneurial activity, Thatcher's leadership was invigorating and bracing in the long run. Her tactics foreshadowed the economic doctrine of 'shock therapy' which would deliver freedom a few years later to the nations of Eastern Europe as they emerged from the tyranny of Soviet communism.
She aimed to be the moral equivalent of military trauma, shaking her nation into vigor through rigor. As stable societies mature, they resemble long-simmering stews — viscous and lumpy with organizations resistant to change and hence inimical to dynamism. Her program was sound money, laissez faire, social fluidity and upward mobility through self-reliance and other “vigorous virtues.” She is the only prime minister whose name came to denote a doctrine — Thatcherism. (“Churchillian” denotes not a political philosophy but a leadership style.) When she left office in 1990, the trade unions had been tamed by democratizing them, the political argument was about how to achieve economic growth rather than redistribute wealth, and individualism and nationalism were revitalized.
Earning for herself the reputation of being a woman of ideas, and earning for her Tory party the reputation of being the party of ideas, her intellect extended beyond domestic economics. Donald Rumsfeld, who was Special Envoy to the Middle East in January 1984, was working to see if any solution could be found to the bitter and complex civil war which was destroying the country of Lebanon, when he met with Margaret Thatcher. Although Thatcher was generally and often allied with the United States, she was not afraid to disagree: she pointed out to Rumsfeld that American diplomats were sending mixed messages. Rumsfeld writes:
When I met with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, she made it clear as only she could that when it came to U.S. policy on Lebanon, she was at best a reluctant team player. I had long been a fan of "the Iron Lady," as the Soviets called her. I found that her stern reputation masked a dispassionate realism - which was certainly visible in her approach to the Middle East. In our meeting, she bore to the heart of the issue with crisp, unforgiving precision. She was skeptical of Lebanese President Gemayel's ability to expand his coalition and, in a break from the American position, equally skeptical of Israel's role in the standoff. She believed that our coalition lacked a clear mandate. She did not favor taking a tough stance with Syria because she believed that we needed them for a successful Middle East peace effort. She noted that even when the United State challenged Syria, some American officials behaved in a way that signaled to the Syrians that we lacked the will or cohesion to actually follow through. A mixed message was the worst kind to send to an authoritarian regime, she noted. In that, as in many things, she was absolutely correct. If anyone left our meeting with an impression other than that the Prime Minister would be happy to be done with the whole business at the soonest possible opportunity, they hadn't been listening. In her public statements Thatcher was more diplomatic, offering words of solidarity with her political soul mate, President Reagan. But she also indicated what I knew well: our time was running out.
Later in that same year, Thatcher demonstrated courage in the face an attack on her life. Rumsfeld writes:
A month later, Prime Minister Thatcher barely escaped assassination by the Irish Republican Army. She was in her hotel room when a bomb exploded, destroying the bathroom she had been in only moments earlier. Her would-be assassins left Mrs. Thatcher a chilling note that I've reflected on many times since. "We have only to be lucky once," they wrote to her. "You will have to be lucky always."
As quick as she was to criticize American diplomatic efforts vis-a-vis Syria, so quick she was also to agree with America's desire to retain its own sovereignty. The issue arose in discussions surrounding the 'Law of the Sea Treaty' which, if enacted, would have each signatory nation surrender its sovereign control over its borders, and instead allow an international tribunal to decide matters over each nation's coasts, waterways, and maritime boundaries. In 1982, Rumsfeld visited England to discuss the matter with Thatcher. He recalls:
A few days later I met with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street in London. I explained my mission and Reagan's concerns. Quite briskly, Mrs. Thatcher bore right into the heart of the matter.About the first Iraq War (1990/1991), Thatcher also had strong opinions. She saw that, if Saddam Hussein were allowed to retain power in Iraq, the root causes of the war would not have been addressed. She foresaw that leaving him in power necessitated a second such Gulf War. She urged the United States to press on in the war. America's stated goal in the war had been to liberate the oppressed nation of Kuwait, which had been invaded by Saddam Hussein's forces. The United States planned to stop after liberating Kuwait, and not to continue the war until Saddam's government fell. Rumsfeld writes:"Mr. Ambassador, if I understand correctly, what this Law of the Sea Treaty proposes is nothing less than the international nationalization of roughly two thirds of the Earth's surface," she began. "And you know how I feel about nationalization."
"I do indeed, Prime Minister," I responded. Mrs. Thatcher had made transferring nationalized businesses, from utilities to mining companies, back to the private sector a hallmark of her premiership.
She smiled. "Tell Ronnie I'm with him."
Others I respected had a different view. While still Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher had famously warned President George H.W. Bush not to "go wobbly" after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. But the formidable Thatcher had been voted out of office before the war was concluded. She seemed unhappy with the result in Iraq. "There is the aggressor, Saddam Hussein, still in power," she later observed. Contrasting his fate to Bush's and hers, she noted, "There is the President of the United States, no longer in power. There is the Prime Minister of Britain, who did quite a lot to get things there, no longer in power. I wonder who won?"
A strong sense of justice guided Thatcher, whether it was returning the ownership of utilities and mining companies back to the people, or defending the rights of a sovereign nation to defend its own territory. Prior to Thatcher, the British government had followed a trend of nationalization. All kinds of businesses, from airlines to car companies and from railroads to telephone companies, had been taken over by the government. Ordinary people were not allowed to own such companies, nor were ordinary citizens allowed to make decisions about how such companies would be operated. When Thatcher was undoing such nationalization, she was transferring both ownership and decision-making authority back to the common people. Likewise, she saw no great complexity in the decision to defend British soil when the Argentines attacked the Falkland Islands. In 1982, the Argentines invaded the islands, which were recognized by all parties as belonging to the English. As she would say, almost ten years later about a different war, "When good has to be upheld, when evil has to be overcome, then Britain will take up arms!"
Like many wars in the last half of the twentieth century, and in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, it was an undeclared war. Neither the British Parliament nor the Argentine government officially declared war. Nonetheless, Thatcher was firm and decisive in her response to the unprovoked Argentine aggression. The British were somewhat disappointed that the United States did not eagerly and promptly join the English cause. Eventually, President Reagan did support the British war effort, but only after long deliberation. The Americans found the situation complex, given the Monroe Doctrine. But Argentina's attack was clearly a case of militaristic expansion and of firing on innocent and unaware civilians. George Will writes:
The Argentine junta learned of her decisiveness when it seized the Falklands. The British, too, learned. A Tory MP said, “She cannot see an institution without hitting it with her handbag.”
Thus the same vigor which she unleashed at the Argentine attackers was the same vigor which she unleashed at the economic regulations which were impoverishing the Britons.
Britain has periodically been a laboratory for economic ideas — those of Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, the socialism of postwar Labor. Before the ascendancy of Thatcher — a disciple of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek — Tories tried to immunize Britain against socialism by administering prophylactic doses of the disease. But by 1979, Britain’s fundamental political arrangements were at issue: Such was the extortionate power of the unions to paralyze the nation that the writ of Parliament often seemed to run not beyond a few acres along the Thames.
Thatcher's first few months in office were bumpy. As she predicted, the transition to a free market, while bringing liberty and prosperity in the long run, would cause growth pains in the short run. Despite the short-term economic pains, the voters saw hope on the horizon, and reelected Thatcher.
In 1979, she won the most lopsided election since 1945, when there had not been an election for 10 years. In 1983, she became the first Tory since 1924 to win two consecutive elections. In 1987, she won a third. Her 12 consecutive years were an achievement without precedent since the 1832 Reform Act moved Britain, gingerly, toward mass democracy. The most consequential peacetime prime minister since Disraeli, by 1990 she had become the first prime minister to govern through an entire decade since the Earl of Liverpool from 1812 to 1827.
Having so many consecutive years in office, Thatcher was able to significantly change the course of England. The socialist habit of nationalizing industries, taxing people at continuously increasing rates, and taking economic decision-making away from ordinary citizens had been a British pattern in the decades after WWII. Thatcher would change that. Her goals were clear: reduce taxes, let people own businesses and operate them, and allow economic creativity to flourish unimpeded by governmental regulation. David Brooks writes:
Margaret Thatcher was a world historical figure for the obvious reasons. Before Thatcher, history seemed to be moving in the direction of Swedish social democracy. After Thatcher, it wasn’t. But her most pervasive influence was on the level of values.She was formed by her disgust with 1970s Britain. She witnessed a moral shift in those years, away from people who were competitive and toward people who were cooperative, away from the ambitious and toward those who were self-nurturing and self-exploring, away from the culture of rectitude and toward the culture of narcissism. Especially in the prestigious reaches of society, people were often uninterested in technology and disdainful of commerce.
The tectonic shift which Thatcher wrought in British politics was so powerful that after her time as prime minister, both her party and the opposing party would see her views as axiomatic. It was not one of Thatcher's Tories, but an opponent from the Labor Party, Tony Blair, who would in many ways carry on both her domestic and foreign policy legacies.
Her political legacy may be so enduring because it is so foundational. It has not to do with the intricacies of policy, but rather with the goals and justifications of policy. Pragmatism can be, in some cases, a virtue; but it is never by itself a virtue. Rather, pragmatism is a virtue only in the service of some higher cause, like justice or charity. Justice may demand an armed response to Argentine attackers; justice may demand deregulation to lift citizens out of poverty and give them a fair chance at entering the middle class. Pragmatism is the tactic to justice's strategy. Pragmatism may ensure that the efforts on behalf of justice are effective. But a clear vision of justice is necessary. David Brooks continues:
In the political sphere this translated into an aversion to conflict, a desperate desire for consensus, which often translated into policy drift and a gradual surrender to entrenched interests. Thatcher saw this as a loss of national potency. She saw it as a loss of will, a settling for mediocrity, a betrayal of Britain’s great history and an acceptance of decline.Margart Thatcher was guided by ideas, not by personalities. She enjoyed an excellent friendship with American presidents and diplomats, and yet was not hesitant about dissenting from American policies when her sense of justice demanded it. She was disappointed by Reagan's lack of instant enthusiasm for her war against Argentina; she was not enthusiastic about Reagan's military liberation of Grenada. She advocated shifting Cold War strategies to include defense in addition to offense: she supported America's development of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Likewise, she was not swayed by the leaders of her own political party, with whom she sometimes disagreed. Indeed, it was her own party which finally turned her out of office, a departure which she made with grace, giving a final memorable speech in Parliament.The daughter of a small grocer, she led a fervent bourgeois Risorgimento. She was the voice of the ambitious middle class. She lionized the self-made striver. Loving tidiness, she checked to see if the space above the picture frames was properly dusted.
She championed a certain sort of individual, one who possessed what the writer Shirley Robin Letwin called the Vigorous Virtues: “upright, self-sufficient, energetic, adventurous, independent-minded, loyal to friends and robust against foes.”
If her predecessors stood for consensus and the endless negotiation of interests over beer and sandwiches, Thatcher stood for steadfast conviction on behalf of the national good. An admirer of the free market, her companion goal was to restore the authority of the state, and she was willing to centralize power to do it.
At a time when others were sliding toward moral relativism, Thatcher stood for individual responsibility, moral self-confidence and often, it has to be admitted, self-righteous certitude.
Put aside her personal failings, she was a militant optimist for a country slipping unconsciously toward defeatism. Beyond her policy decisions, she was part of a values shift.
Today, bourgeois virtues like industry, competitiveness, ambition and personal responsibility are once again widely admired, by people of all political stripes. Today, technology is central to our world and tech moguls are celebrated.
Tony Blair and Bill Clinton embraced and ratified her policy shifts. Millions more have been influenced by her idea of what makes an admirable individual.
