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The Fall of Thatcher
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18694 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
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8 / 1991 |
5,638 Words |
| Author
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Alfred Sherman
Alfred Sherman was an adviser to the Thatcher government. |
Margaret Thatcher's sudden fall from power, just when she seemed to bestride the narrow world like a colossus, has far-reaching implications for Britain that will take time to work themselves out. Ministers in the post-Thatcher government are at pains to stress continuity, and at this point she still regards her successor, John Major, as being in her tradition. But de-Thatcherization is on the way, and no one knows where it will stop. It is not simply a matter of ideas and policies, but also of mood, which often determines policy: The Promethean approach cedes to the characteristic fatalism of postwar Britain. Future historians may yet see the Thatcher episode as an interlude in a long history of decline, just as we now see in the reign of the Antonines, which raised such hopes among their Roman contemporaries. Mrs. Thatcher's tribulations are relevant to other Western countries, whose problems are broadly similar, and even further afield, to the Soviet Empire and its succession states, to whom she had symbolized the march toward a free market in a free society.
Whatever the causes, her fall should have come as no surprise. Though it need not have occurred when it did, and she might indeed have made a recovery, were it not for a series of adventitious mishaps, it was in the cards for some time. In THE WORLD & I of April 1989, I outlined Mrs. Thatcher's failure to turn Britain around as she had hoped to do, with the result that things were slipping back into their pre-Thatcher state. The tide of public opinion had begun to turn against her, and "dissident Conservatives keen to get back at Mrs. Thatcher" were harnessing currents of discontent. "Mrs. Thatcher will need all her political strength to fight back as the sense of economic well-being crumbles," I observed at the time. Instead, during the next eighteen months she gave yet more hostages to fortune.
Her fall can be understood on several different levels. Had she not been lulled by complacency and weak advice, she would have fought the leadership election of November 1990 hard when challenged by her ex-colleague Rt. Hon. Michael Heseltine MP, and in that case she would undoubtedly have won it. According to the election rules, in the first round the winner must garner over half of all members of Parliament's votes--whether cast or not--plus a 15 percent majority over the nearest rival candidate. She was only four votes short of this. Had she realized the situation and stayed in London to canvass instead of taking the Parliament members for granted and going off to Paris to participate in an impressive ceremony marking the end of the Cold War, no one doubts that she could have changed sufficient minds and won the extra votes needed to get through the first
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