Thatcher and Thatcherism Dr Robert Saunders

The Three Day Week, 1974

‘The Winter of Discontent’, 1978-79

The National Character (1992) ‘the British character is quite different from the characters of people of the Continent – quite different. There is a great sense of fairness and equity in the British people, a great sense of individuality and of initiative. … How else did this really rather small people … go out into the larger world and have such an influence on it? All this was submerged by the terrible creed of socialism … Our task as Conservatives was to uncover the enterprise, uncover this remarkable character. We didn't discover it. We knew it was there: we had … faith that … if we got the laws right again, the spirit of enterprise would re-emerge’.

Morality and Policy ‘Privatisation … was fundamental to improving Britain’s economic performance. But for me it was far more than that: it was one of the central means of reversing the corrosive and corrupting effects of socialism. Ownership by the state is just that – ownership by an impersonal legal entity: it amounts to control by politicians and civil servants … Through privatisation – particularly the kind of privatisation which leads to the widest possible share ownership by members of the public – the state’s power is reduced and the power of the people enhanced … Privatisation is at the centre of any programme of reclaiming territory for freedom’ ‘council estates bring together people who are out of work but enjoy security of tenure at subsidized rents. They not only have every incentive to stay where they are: they mutually reinforce each other’s passivity and undermine each other’s initiative. Thus a culture grows up in which the unemployed are content to remain living mainly on the state with little will to move and find work’

Sale of Council Houses

Poll Tax Riots 1989-1990

The Miners’ Strike, 1984-1985

‘Battle of Orgreave’, June 1984

Conservative Leader, 1975-90

Sir Anthony Meyer

Michael Heseltine

Thatcher’s Britain Robert Saunders

MTAlien: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhdHO5_HSQQ ‘Go Now’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGEBh7xybRc Grantham Anthem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFvgiCyChA Panorama, 1987: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpdbEK3E4U8