SPECTATOR
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UNFINISHED BUSINESS
The further you got from Britain, the more admired you found she was.' Lord Callaghan's remark about the popularity of Mrs Thatcher was not intended as a com- pliment to the American or East European public. Admiration, he tried to suggest, was a function of ignorance. And yet it is only from a distance that things can be seen in perspective. The inhabitants of Omsk or Oregon may be ignorant of the conditions of public transport in the south-east of England or the health warnings on beaches in the north-west; but they are aware of the change in Britain's standing in the world accomplished during the past 11 years. What distant observers find hard to understand — and what historians will find hard to explain from a distance in time — is the way in which Mrs Thatcher was hated by some of those who lived under her. Prime ministers who inspire personal anti- pathy are nothing new, of course. Tories who were shocked by the public cheering which broke out in some places on the news of Mrs Thatcher's resignation should remember their own reactions to the news that Harold Wilson had stepped down in 1976.
But there is a difference. Her overall sincerity of purpose was never in doubt. She was not regarded as a cynic, a juggler or a fixer — not even as an incompetent one. In her, those whose thoughts were governed by the ideologists of the Left had found the perfect hate-object: an ideolo- gical enemy, whose degree of commitment to her ideology mirrored or even out- matched their commitment to their own.
So it was that an entire hostile mytholo- gy of `Thatcherism' was erected around everything she did or said — indeed, around everything that happened under her government. Having an ideological prime minister was a novel experience, which changed the ways in which people thought about the nature of politics. They began to assume that every aspect of life was somehow tinged with the ideological programme of their government. The squalor or inefficiency of public transport was viewed as an expression of 'Thatcher- ism': equal squalor or inefficiency would never have been attributed to `Wilsonism' in the 1960s or '70s. If brash young bankers started using cordless phones in res- taurants, or if working-class people spent more time at home watching videos, these changes were attributed to `Thatcherism' almost as if the Prime Minister had in- vented the technology herself.
The truth is that most of the big social and economic changes which happen, at least in liberal democracies, are not caused by governments. Governments can prom- ote changes or impede them; but they cannot be blamed or praised for everything that happens. The decline of Britain's old heavy industries would have occurred any- way. Mrs Thatcher's tough policies on state aid simply ensured that their decline did less damage to the rest of the economy than it would otherwise have done. Unem- ployment would have risen anyway, both for demographic reasons and because over- manned companies would have gone to the wall sooner or later. Mrs Thatcher's poli- cies simply ensured that some went sooner, and others shed their overmanning and became profitable. Her policy on council- house sales was indeed an innovation; but the rise in home-ownership was, like most of the social changes associated with `Thatcherism', a long-term trend which predated her government.
This is not to say that none of her glory or notoriety was deserved. Historians will recognise three crucial achievements: the reduction of trade union privilege, which transformed industrial relations in this country; the de-nationalisation of more than half the state-owned industries; and the pursuit of a resolute foreign policy, whether defending the Falklands or calling the Soviet Union's bluff with Cruise mis- siles, which raised Britain's standing in the eyes of the world.
But against these achievements one must set the great mass of things which have not changed. The mould of the post-war wel- fare state consensus has not been broken. Public spending continues to rise inexor- ably, and as a proportion of GDP it is roughly where it was when Mrs Thatcher came to power. Not only was she blamed for things she had not caused; she was also accused of 'cuts' she had not made.
The lesson to be drawn is not that it does not greatly matter who runs the govern- ment: quite the contrary. Governing this country is like steering some huge ship with a momentum of its own and a built-in tendency to drift to the left — towards greater public spending and taxation, high- er inflation, more state dependency and so on. Only the extraordinary efforts of Mrs Thatcher in pulling the wheel round to the right have kept it roughly on course. Dropping some of her ideology overboard may cause her successor — who triumphed with the votes of 185 colleagues, compared with Mrs Thatcher's 204 — to be less resented by the passengers; but unless he can keep up the same rightward pressure on the wheel, we must fear that the old, damaging drift to the left will be resumed.
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