Thatcher and Thatcherism

Thatcher and Thatcherism ( Making of the Contemporary World)

By Eric J. Evans

# Publisher: Routledge
# Number Of Pages: 141
# Publication Date: 1997-09-08
# ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0415136946
# ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780415136945

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Book Description:
Eric J. Evans surveys the origins and impact of "Thatcherism" as a cultural construct, economic creed and political phenomena. Drawing extensively on Thatcher's political memoirs, this invaluable guide provides an interdisciplinary account of recent British history, economics and politics.

Hi all,
Ezinma, would u please change this RapidShare link, 'cause I can't download it. If u can do it on MediaFire it'll be much better. Thx in advance.

Here is the new link : Click

That's another wonderful book. You might find it useful:
Modern Britain Since 1979: A Reader (2003), by Keith Laybourn, Christine F. Collette
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Book Description:
In 1979, Margaret Thatcher rose to power and the ensuing years are key to understanding Britain in the 21st century. Keith Laybourn and Christine Collette have gathered a carefully selected collection of materials from primary and secondary sources. They cover the major themes in British social and cultural history and politics of the last 25 years; trade unionism, the welfare state, Conservative politics, Blair's "Third Way". The conflict over Britain's relations with Europe, along with regionalism and devolution are illustrated, as well as the shifts in ethnicity, racial and sexual equality and immigration.


Happy reading!

How I love you Ezinma! This is exactly what I need. I have a presentation abt Thatcher Foreign Policy next week. This is very helpful, thx a million dear sister. I don't know what should I say but this is very kind of u ...
Thx again and a again ...

Ya Rabbi Nchallah A3tilha Ma Tetmanna , Amine .

Warmest regards.

Outstanding!
As always.

ok, hello everyone, i wonder where is the content of the book that is displayed in the website. im not finding the works im choosing!

Thatcherism


By Dr Robert Pearce


new perspective Vol 9, No 3








Margaret Hilda Thatcher (b 1925) has
many claims to fame. She was our first woman prime minister. She was premier
for longer than anyone else in twentieth-century Britain, winning three successive
election victories (in 1979, 1983 and 1987) and heading Conservative
governments for a total of 11 years. She was also an extremely controversial
figure, both idolized and vilified. Uniquely, she was the only premier to give
her name to a set of political policies and attitudes. But what exactly is
‘Thatcherism’?

The
economy

When
Thatcher first become PM her political allegiance was, of course, to
Conservatism. The only other ‘-ism’ to which she subscribed was ‘monetarism’ -
the doctrine that inflation is caused by printing money and can be cured by
restricting the money supply. Monetarists argued that, in the interests of
efficiency, taxation should be kept low, state-controlled industry should be
privatised, and free market forces be allowed to operate.

Such
right-wing economic thinking was a major factor in Thatcherism but was not its
essence. Thatcher did not originate these ideas, and nor was she the first
British politician to put them forward. Furthermore, her Chancellors were often
keener monetarists and tax cutters than she. She privatised a swathe of British
industry, beginning with British Telecom in 1984, but such a policy had its
precedents and she cautiously exempted the railways. Similarly, she sold
council houses to their tenants but was not the first PM to adopt this policy
and nor did she pursue it with the gusto of some of her ministers.

The
‘Nanny State’

‘Economics
is the method’, she insisted in 1981; ‘the object is to change the soul.’ By
rolling back the frontiers of the State - which stifled individual initiative -
she believed that the genius of the British people would flourish. Hence, her
governments attempted to cut back on welfare spending and refused to prop up
ailing industries for the sake of avoiding unemployment. It was not governments
which caused unemployment, insisted Thatcherites, it was the trade unions,
whose demands for higher wages priced their members out of jobs. Thatcher
defeated the long miners’ strike of 1984-85 and, in successive Acts of
Parliament, curbed the power of the unions.

Battling
Maggie

‘I
can't bear Britain
in decline, I just can’t’, Thatcher had insisted in 1979. Her aim was not just
to reverse economic decline but to boost Britain’s stature in the world. Her
chance came in 1982, with the Falklands war -
a turning point in the construction of Thatcherism. Thereafter, she
flamboyantly combated the centralising tendencies of the European Union (‘no,
no, no’) and, alongside President Reagan, was a fierce critic of communism.

She
also achieved a high degree of personal dominance in Britain. She even began to use the
‘royal we’ (‘We are a grandmother’). Now she took on the miners. Now she took
on the consensus-seeking ‘wets’ in her own cabinet - and was not above
lambasting her own loyal colleagues, including the long-suffering Geoffrey Howe
(‘more and more like a blancmange’). She was effectively ‘packaged’ for the
media as the ‘Iron Lady’. Thatcherism became synonymous with confrontation.

‘What a
superb creature she is, right and beautiful!’ gushed the poet Philip Larkin.
Her great virtue, he said, ‘is saying that two and two make four, which is as
unpopular nowadays as it has always been’. To her detractors, however, she was
adopting a presidential style and destroying cabinet government - so that, essentially,
Thatcherism meant the cult of the leader.

Conclusion

It
seems clear that Thatcherism was not an ideology. Its ideas were neither
original nor consistent. John Campbell has recently identified Thatcherism’s
main contradiction: she ‘celebrated a culture of rampant materialism …
fundamentally at odds with her own values which were essentially conservative’.

But
were Thatcher’s policies particularly significant for Britain? ‘I
came into office with one deliberate intent: to change Britain from a dependent to a
self-reliant society.’ Did she do it? What overall effect did she have on the
welfare state? Did she produce an economic miracle, a vigorous ‘enterprise
economy’? What of British culture? Did deregulation - for instance, with the
Broadcasting Act of 1990, which pleased her most ardent admirer, the media
tycoon Rupert Murdoch - provide greater consumer choice only at the cost of
debasing standards? And what of Britain’s
position in the world? Did this latter-day Britannia really put the Great back
in Britain?

On the answers to such questions will ‘Thatcherism’ stand or fall. At the
moment, we probably lack the sense of perspective to judge fairly. Will Mrs
Thatcher be admired by future historians? Or will Thatcherism be seen as no
more than a rhetorical spasm of indignation at Britain’s irreversible relative
decline? If the latter, Thatcherism may be considered little more than the
bombastic style of one remarkable but deluded woman and a concoction got up by
the media to help sell tabloid newspapers, the political equivalent of a page
three nud

I don't think the links are still working!!
I wanted to have that book! :bka1:

Hello,

Messi Click here

Happy reading!