Courier Mail 30 04 1999
As the 20th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s election as British prime minister approaches, many views in favour of the “revolution” she began are being offered. In my view, the way to sum up Thatcherism is as narrow-minded and mean-spirited. Thatcherism is not “classical liberalism” but rather the classic Tory philosophy of every man for himself. But it would be difficult to argue against had it worked. It didn’t.
Compare the performance of Australia under the Hawke/Keating government that coincided with much of Thatcher’s prime ministership and the continuation of Thatcherism under John Major. Thatcher took unemployment in Britain to above three million and inflation up to 22 percent. Poverty reached levels not seen in Britain since the 1890s. Thatcher presided over a government which had up to 8 million people, particularly those outside the southeast of England (16 percent of the population), living on or below the poverty line, a million of them homeless.
The continuation of her policies by Major saw this figure increase to one quarter of the population by 1992/93.
Crime increased to epidemic proportions in the inner cities, and riots and violent clashes between police and unionists were the result of “bringing trade unions within the ambit of the ordinary law” – a practice designed to impoverish worker organisations, provoking strike action and social conflict as a means to an end. Unemployment and social security payments were cut and the minimum wage was abolished.
Even now, almost 25 percent of British workers earn less than the equivalent of $A8.75 an hour and the proportion of people with below-average incomes had increased from 8 percent in 1982 to 20 percent by 1994.
Meanwhile, under the Accord, Australia created more than two million jobs between 1983 and 1996. Workers in Australia received regular pay rises (union members or otherwise) and a range of benefits from the “social wage” (including Medicare, compulsory superannuation, family payments and a host of other improvements through increased spending on housing, education and pension increases). In 1983 less than 40 percent of Australian workers had access to superannuation. By 1996 the figure was almost 90 percent.
Under the banner of “restraint with equity” workers and businesses worked in partnership, not confrontation, to make Australia 40 percent more productive as a nation by 1994-95. That the economy of Britain is in better shape now than it was 20 years ago is self-evident. But are the ordinary Britons who paid for the improvements enjoying their place in the sun? Low wages and poor prospects are still the rule for many. Was the misery, the pain and the hardship – which is still evident today – worth it?
A particularly damaging critique of Thatcherism comes from former Tory social security minister Peter Lilley. In a recent speech, Lilley said that to survive and to grow, the Tories would have to distance themselves from the dry economic policies of Thatcher because “the free market was not suitable when applied to the welfare state”.
To have one of her favourite sons say Thatcherism was a failure speaks for itself.