What exactly is Thatcherism?

"Thatcherism" is a system of political thought based on the policies of the former Conservative prime minister of the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher. The broad definition of Thatcherism would encompass her social, diplomatic, and economic doctrines. Margaret Thatcher was a British stateswoman who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and the Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and the first woman to have held the office. Margaret Thatcher is undeniably one of the most influential figure on Britain politic and is the one who can be said to make change in Britain political direction in the way that nobody else does. This essay is going to discuss her presidency, compare and contrast the period before and after her term.

Before Thatcher, in the period after war II, there is a rise of Labour party which Labour party became the most support for the first time in history. Attlee became the first PM after the war. He’s a socialist. He introduced welfare state to Britain including ‘national health service that it’s to provide free health care. It’s a great development on issue of equality, social judgement. Also introduced nationalization. The idea of public ownership where all of the national service were owned by the sate. Labour was also party was known as political consensus in which its opponent, would agree on the common area where conservative return back to the politic to continue nationalization. As a result, British economy in this period was moving toward something like mix economy. The period before Thatcher also led by The Labour Governments that enacted a political program rooted in collectivism including the nationalization but it’s all began to change.

In 1979, Thatcher won the election and became conservative prime minister. In her presidency, she promote the idea of individualist and the culture of money making that people should be on their own with the least government support. People should try hard to make a living and make money on their own as her idea is that people are selfish and in order to encourage them to work, they should rely as little as possible on the government. She make a big deal of ‘wealth creation’ that in order to be progression, they need to create wealth through industry. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. Her policy later known as Thatcherism.

Thatcher focused greatly on the economic reforming issue. She went through 4 main aspects and issues which are: the privatization of the British Industrial, reduce of the union power, the reduction of public spending in order to allow cuts in taxation, controlling the prices inflations.

she’s also an anti socialist as think of them as a barrier of progression. This is because the socialist are calling for social welfare where government must be responsible for living basis of the people. Also the socialist want a public ownership where government own some part of the industry that concern on basis need for people like train, coal, water, electric, etc. This contrast with Thatcher favor of private sector as her economic doctrine is to make people work on their own to create the most value for society.

She’s against by Tony Blair who was socialist that her doctrine create the culture of selfishness where it promote some people over collective. He accused her of creating social darwinism that it’s her agenda where it only promote the fittest of the society and left those who are ‘not making money fast enough’ behind.

However, she won the election and became the prime minister of United kingdom for 11 years from 1979 to 1990 and her doctrine continue influencing conservative until now. She is the one who change the direction of Britain politic. She won three consecutive general elections despite her popularity immensely decreasing during her first term alone. Her doctrine became norm, orthodox for the next generation to come especially the new labour by Tony Blair.

Despite Thatcher policy success, she brought the long time in power of the conservative party which it became norm for people and the labour party became less relevant. However, there is a guy name Neil Kinnock who attempt to give labour new image following by John Smith and Margaret Beckett. They are all losing for the conservative so the huge change along with the effect of Thatcherism took place in Tony Blair leadership who create ‘new labour’ that pursue ‘third way' policy that tries to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies or liberal Thatcherism economy but also strong sense of social justice of labour. He adapt Thatcher economic doctrine policy as an attempt to redefine the new labour to make it more appeal to people. Also at that time the conservative part led by Major who is a current prime minister was accused of corruption. Moreover, there is a economic recession that called’ black Wednesday’ that people saw it as a result of Thatcherism economy of favor private industry which little government intervention. The result is Blair won the election of 1997-2007. It’s the first winning election for labour party for the first 80 years. Blair carry on many Thatcherism policies in term of economy eg. Try not to reverse privatization but he change in some aspect e.g stop some trading treaty, introduced minimum wage. The economy in his term was really good but some believe that it’s the same time of economic up term in the business cycle.