thatcherism
214185345
Behavioural Thatcherism and Nostalgia: tracing the everyday consequences of holding Thatcherite values
With the passing of time and the benefit of hindsight, there is, again, growing interest in Thatcherism above all in its substantive and enduring legacy. But, to date at least, and largely due to data limitations, little of that work has focussed on tracing the behavioural consequences, at the individual level, of holding Thatcherite values. That oversight we seek both to identify more clearly and begin to address. Deploying new survey data, we use multiple linear regression and structural equation modelling to unpack the relationship between 'attitudinal' and 'behavioural' Thatcherism. In the process, we reveal the considerably greater behavioural consequences of holding neo liberal, as distinct from neo conservative, values whilst identifying the key mediating role played by social, political and economic nostalgia. We find that neo liberal values are positively associated with behavioural Thatcherism, whilst neo conservative values are negatively associated with behavioural Thatcherism. In exploring the implications, we also reveal some intriguing interaction effects between economic nostalgia and neo conservative values in the centre left vote for Brexit. In the conclusion, we reflect on the implications of these findings for our understanding of the legacy of Thatcherism and, indeed, for Brexit itself.
Stephen Farrall Colin Hay Emily M Gray Philip Mike Jones
226613310
'The Iron Lady? She Devastated the Country' Former Scottish Steelworkers' Narratives of Unions, Community and Thatcherism
The impact of deindustrialisation on former occupation dependent communities has been overwhelmingly negative, yet it remains difficult to capture fully the emotional disruption of deindustrialisation and its aftereffects. This chapter draws on seventeen oral history interviews with former Scottish steelworkers, it explores their post redundancy experiences of trade unionism and occupational community compared to steelmaking, and concludes with a discussion of steelworkers' interpretations of the underlying motivations of Thatcherism.
J M Ferns
127576549
Thatcherism and Planning
This work explores the impact and influence of the New Right's intentions for planning through Simplified Planning Zones. It identifies the contradictions and confusion of Thatcherism that led to vague legislation and objectives allowing localities to interpret Thatcherism for themselves, often using policies such as Simplified Planning Zones for reasons different than those intended. This study examines four Simplified Planning Zones in detail, and concludes that local authorities have substituted their own objectives for the zones and used them for reasons which are at odds with their Thatcherite aims. This work therefore consolidates the implementation perspective of Thatcherite policy failure through the example of Simplified Planning Zones.
Philip Allmendinger
226455005
Thatcher's Young Men and the End of the Party: Parody, Predictions and Problems in Literary Representations of Thatcherism
As Thatcherism's long legacy in British politics faces new challenges, its original contradictions are increasingly exposed. This chapter links two of them: Thatcherism as nationalist project versus its orientation towards transnational wealth; and its appeal to ambitious, destructively creative young men versus its social conservatism. The chapter explores that appeal through its literary representations from Alan Hollinghurst, Hanif Kureishi, and Ian McEwan.
Dominic Dean
226627948
Intellectual Reactions to Thatcherism: Conceptions of Citizenship and Civil Society from 1990 2010
This chapter investigates Thatcherism's legacy by examining its ideological impact on conceptions of citizenship and civil society in the 1990s and 2000s. It argues that in the 1990s, political thinkers on the Left as well as the Right largely accepted the Thatcherite argument that a global free market could be harmonized with a flourishing civil society, but grew far more critical in the 2000s, querying Thatcherism's fundamental ideological assumptions.
Edward D Neill
226030395
The less acceptable face of capitalism a study of British documentary during the rise of Thatcherism
This thesis is a study of the oppositional documentary practices produced by the Left in Britain during the rise of the New Right (c1968 1997) By situating the issue of class at the centre of my study, I seek to challenge poststructuralist histories of this moment which, I suggest, inadvertently hastened the triumph of Thatcherism by foreclosing the production of, or the devotion of critical attention to, representations of class. One project forms the kernel of this inquiry. It is Exit Photography Group's photobook Survival Programmes: In Britain's Inner Cities (Milton Keynes: The Open University Press, 1982) a study in words and images of the those whom Exit designate 'the less acceptable face of capitalism' This thesis is a careful and sustained analysis of Survival Programmes and a select series of interrelated documentary projects, both photographic and filmic, with which I place the photobook in conversation. Through the prism of Exit's project, I explore representations of class and how those representations intersect with questions of race and gender, as well as with concerns about the changing usages of, and connotations attached to, public and private space. My approach is informed by the contemporaneous writings of the cultural studies and media theorist Stuart Hall. His work provides a lens through which I interrogate how oppositional image makers have mobilised the camera as a prism through which to scrutinise Thatcherism, as well as the mass media institutions through which that ideology has been creatively mediated and mobilised. I ask if we can write social histories of documentary after 1979 without reverting to the duality between the naive celebration of so called "community photography" on the one hand and, on the other, deterministic accounts of the inevitable critical and political failure of the documentary modality.
Stephanie King
225304875
Data Driven Government: The Triumph of Thatcherism or the Revenge of Society?
Margaret Thatcher's statement that 'there is no such thing as society' has overshadowed Conservative Party politics since the 1980s, and has been the subject of exegesis and attempts at repudiation ever since. This chapter considers the statement in the context of Angus Maude's critique of 'society' as a statistical abstraction, which comes, erroneously, to be taken as an agent in its own right, able to take on the responsibilities of individuals to their communities and 'little platoons' and ultimately to become the end of policy itself. This digital modernity, nascent in Maude's and Thatcher's day, is becoming increasingly influential, thanks to data based policy and data driven agency. The chapter argues that Maude's subtler analysis still yields a conservative critique of digital modernity, whereas the less nuanced neoliberal individualism valorised by Thatcher may be seen as one of its enablers.
Kieron O'Hara
216595184
Euroscepticism, Thatcherism and Brexit
"The British people have spoken and decided to remain in [a] reformed European Union," British Prime Minister David Cameron planned to proclaim on Friday, June 24, 2016. Instead, he delivered his resignation speech, saying, "I was absolutely clear about my belief that Britain is stronger, safer and better off inside the EU..But the British people made a different decision to take a different path." The outcome of the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum sent shockwaves around Britain, Europe, and the world. Brexit constitutes the first time a state has voted to exit a major supranational institution and has since left the UK's role in a globalized world in a state of uncertainty.The cause of this unexpected referendum result is highly contested. On the one hand, the Brexit vote can be viewed as a revolt by the 'losers' or those left behind by globalization. On the other hand, the unexpected outcome may be attributed to, as Tim Shipman put it, "the culmination of three decades of Euroscepticism cloaking a nation in its suffocating embrace."
Amira Higazy
226606392
Thatcherism and Wales: Impacts and Legacies
The Conservatives have usually been Wales' second political party. Before the 2019 general election, the Party's best performance was in the Thatcher era. This chapter explores the links between that period and the very recent one. It examines how Thatcher's Welsh Office was, in some regards, proactive and interventionist in Wales, especially in the way it supported and bolstered the Welsh language. The Party also helped make Wales look and feel more like its own nation state. However, the chapter also covers the way in which the Party undermined a key symbol of Wales its heavy industry prompting long lasting political divisions in the process.
Sam Blaxland
158085097
The Legacy of Thatcherism in European Labour Relations: The Impact of the Politics of Neo Liberalism and Austerity on Collective Bargaining in a Fragmenting Europe
Miguel Martinez Lucio Aristea Koukiadaki Isabel Greco Tavora