Abstract
In what ways, if at all, do past ideologies shape the values of subsequent generations of citizens? Are public attitudes in one period shaped by the discourses and constructions of an earlier generation of political leaders? Using Thatcherism – one variant of the political New Right of the 1980s – as the object of our enquiries, this article explores the extent to which an attitudinal legacy is detectable among the citizens of the UK some 40 years after Margaret Thatcher first became Prime Minister. Our article, drawing on survey data collected in early 2019 (n = 5781), finds that younger generations express and seemingly embrace key tenets of her and her governments’ philosophies. Yet at the same time, they are keen to describe her government’s policies as having ‘gone too far’. Our contribution throws further light on the complex and often covert character of attitudinal legacies. One reading of the data suggests that younger generations do not attribute the broadly Thatcherite values that they hold to Thatcher or Thatcherism since they were socialised politically after such values had become normalised.
Past Studies of Thatcherite Values: What Do We Know?
One of the questions to which political scientists devoted considerable attention during the period from the late 1980s was the extent to which the governments led by Margaret Thatcher contributed to a ‘Thatcherite’ attitudinal shift. In this article, we reassess the relationship between ‘Thatcherism’ as an ideology and the values and attitudes on key topics and issues held by members of the British public in the twenty-first century. We start by discussing the attitudes which have come to represent ‘Thatcherism’, before addressing how dominant ideologies of the past continue to resonate in subsequent decades. We then explore the impact of Thatcherism on citizens’ attitudes, noting that as time has passed and as better data sets have become available, so the evidence for a Thatcherite attitudinal legacy has mounted. This fresh data suggests that the answer to the question, ‘Did Thatcher alter attitudes?’ is time-variant – in all likelihood because it is linked to questions of political socialisation exhibiting a cohort-like temporality (Grasso et al., 2019a, 2019b). The second half of the article explores which social groups hold what may be thought of as ‘Thatcherite’ attitudes, values and desires 40 years after she was first elected. 1 This section outlines the methodology we deploy and presents the core findings. Above all, it discusses the implications of the reputational legacies we reveal for our understanding of Thatcherism in the 2020s. We conclude with a broader reflection of the ways in which political leadership can, in some cases, shape popular attitudes decades later (see also Farrall et al., 2020c).
We hold the view that Thatcherism remains important given its enduring policy legacy and the profound influence of the changes it initiated on UK society, institutions (social, economic and political), political discourse and voting patterns (Albertson and Stepney, 2019). Thatcher’s legacies would appear to be stubborn, emotive and agenda-setting in both the normative and discursive senses. Moreover, the policies and normative positions attributed to her and her governments on a series of key decisions are frequently invoked in popular and media debates. Unlike, arguably, earlier or more recent Prime Ministers, Thatcher still haunts contemporary British politics, lying behind many of the events of the years since she left office in 1990.
This article seeks to both review and reassess what is known about Thatcherite attitudes. Above all, we seek to establish whether and to what extent the British electorate can be seen to have become Thatcherite over time (‘Past Studies of Thatcherite Values: What Do We Know?’ section). Our review of the literature (‘How and Why Might Past Ideologies Shape Subsequent Attitudes?’ section) suggests that the initial dismissal of Thatcher’s influence has, over time, and as data sets and analyses have become more sophisticated, increasingly been questioned. On the basis of this review, we turn to questions of methodology, describing the survey we commissioned to mark the 40th anniversary of Thatcher’s first general election victory which was undertaken in early 2019 (‘Measuring, Exploring and Assessing Thatcherism in 2019’ section). We then present the findings from this survey, showing in the process that Thatcherite values have become deeply embedded in British value structures (‘Regression Modelling’ section). In ‘Reputational Legacies?’ section, we deal with reputational legacies, before providing a discussion and conclusion in ‘Discussion and Conclusions’ section. Our contribution to these previous studies is to explore the extent to which British citizens have come to hold aspirations and desires consistent with key elements of a Thatcherite instinct or disposition.
What Are Thatcherite Attitudes?
Before one can establish whether or not Thatcherism changed social attitudes, one has to establish why (in and through what mechanisms) this political doctrine may have served to change social attitudes. Next, one has to have some idea about the sorts of attitudes which it may have changed, and the direction of these changes. One also has to establish some sort of temporal dimension too; the attitudes of adults do not change easily. Let us consider each of these in turn.
We think that there are good reasons to assume that political leadership, especially if maintained over a reasonably long period of time, can and does effect social and political attitudes (see Grasso et al., 2019a, 2019b; Gray et al., 2019). One strand of research has argued that political elites influence each other. As such, even if Thatcherism did not affect the views of the electorate during the 1980s (Crewe, 1989; McAllister and Mughan, 1987), her position did influence thinking within the Labour Party, which, over a long period, shifted to the right in response to her electoral success, the changes she made to the economic and social contexts and the threat posed by the creation of the Social Democratic Party (Hay, 1999; Heffernan, 2000). In a similar vein, Curtice (2009) argued that Thatcher influenced the Labour Party, but that the wider shift in public values which she sought was actually achieved by Blair.
Gamble (1988) summarises the tenets of the New Right (of which, Thatcherism is one variant) as being that state intervention did not work, alternatives to the market were flawed, government failure was more common than market failure and finally that individual citizens’ rights were violated by anything other than the most minimal of states. The New Right was a flexible combination and synthesis of two strands of right-wing philosophy, which emphasised authority and control on the one hand and liberty and individual choice on the other (see Gamble 1988, Ch. 2, and Hay, 1996, Ch. 7 on the origins of these strands of thought). It is beyond dispute that the Thatcher administrations aimed their policies at re-drawing the public–private boundary and reducing the role of the state via the privatisation of a range of key services that had been taken into state-ownership since the late 1940s (Gamble, 1988: 7, 11). Gamble goes on to recount the principal objectives of privatisation as portrayed by Thatcher: greater freedom of choice, greater efficiency, the reduction of the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement, reduction in the costs of public sector pay, the removal of key decisions from the political arena altogether, increased share ownership among the citizenry, the promotion of liberalisation and competition, an increase in active citizenry and a reduction of state dependency. To this, Leys (2001: 3) adds the desire to make the state serve business interests, remodel the formers’ internal operations to become more like the latter’s and to reduce the government’s exposure to political pressure from the electorate. Marwick (2003: 241) notes also that Thatcherism expressed overt hostility towards 1960s-style ‘permissiveness’.
Culled from a range of sources (see inter alia Crewe, 1988; Crewe and Searing, 1988; Gamble, 1988; Hay, 1996; Hayes, 1994; Levitas, 1986; Russell et al., 1992), the following have all been cited to be some of the values which distinguished Thatcherism from the stances taken by both Conservative and Labour politicians who came before her:
Governmental Role in Society: including a distrust of government, anti-welfare state, local government and anti-comprehensive education sentiments, anti-wealth redistribution and (associated with this) anti-taxation.
Social and Moral Conservatism: including support of ‘traditional’ values, pro-family values (especially towards the concept of ‘traditional’ nuclear families and pro-physical discipline), the fostering of obedience and respect (which was associated with being ‘tough-minded’ on wrong-doing and crime), being anti-immigration, holding ‘nationalistic’ values, being anti-gay rights, sexual permissiveness, pornography and against freely available abortions.
Economic Outlook: including being anti-trade unions, anti-nationalisation, pro-free trade, pro-enterprise and in favour of self-reliance.
Some of these elements may also attract support from the left (few politicians are pro-pornography, for example), and there have arguably been elements of overlap and convergence between them on many issues (Hay, 1999). Thatcherism’s success, as many have pointed to, was to be able to manage at a narrative and policy level, a flexible synthesis of these ‘instincts’ (Hay, 1996). In which direction and at what sorts of speeds ought we to expect to see attitudinal change? If Thatcherism were to have been broadly accepted by the electorate, one would have expected to see, over time, attitudes move towards increased levels of agreement with the Thatcherite position. In other cases, one might have expected to see little change, since Thatcher was articulating values which had seen her elected in the first place. Similarly, one might expect to see Thatcher’s period in office being associated with ‘halting’ or slowing some of the attitudes she opposed (for example, pro-gay rights sentiments). Relatedly, there will have been long-term attitudinal shifts which neither she nor anyone else would have been able to halt; attitudes towards women working in the economy, equal rights for those members of society previously discriminated against and the increasing social acceptance of divorce, for example. Therefore, the speeds at which such changes occurred might differ and fluctuate for a number of reasons. First of all, as some have noted before (Fieldhouse, 1995; Green, 1999), the attitudes which Thatcher articulated can be traced to the 1950s and 1960s and were already held by a reasonably large proportion of the electorate. In addition, it must be remembered that Thatcher only polled around 40% of the votes in the General Elections between 1979 and 1987 (43.9% in 1979, 42.4% in 1983 and 42.2% in 1987), and one ought not to expect huge levels of support for any specific value she promoted. Finally, given that the formation of attitudes takes place early in an individual’s life (Mannheim, 1928), processes of intergenerational replacement may mean that considerable periods of time may pass before attitudinal shifts start to appear in surveys. Thus, social attitudes which might be thought of as ‘Thatcherite’ would take time to filter through, either because Thatcherism was a response to these pre-existing shifts or because her message and some of the values it contained took time to become embedded in wider social and political cultures.
How and Why Might Past Ideologies Shape Subsequent Attitudes?
Studies of the continued relevance of past ideologies are interesting since attitudinal shifts in the general population (regardless of how these are initiated) may have consequences for the policies which subsequent governments and political parties feel they can legitimately pursue (and also ‘need’ to pursue if they are to curry favour with the electorate, Downs, 1957). A ‘hardening’ of popular attitudes towards crime may result in governments and political parties trying to produce ‘tougher’ policies both rhetorically and in actual application to demonstrate that they are responding to public concerns. Similarly, attitudes on one topic may, over time, produce changes in feelings about other topics. For example, a hardening of attitudes towards ‘offenders’ may pave the way for a later hardening of attitudes towards other rule-breakers (such as excluded schoolchildren or people who are perceived to be exploiting welfare payments). If media and popular discourses conceptually link or draw connections between groups of people, then this pattern may be consolidated further. In this respect, it is important to recognise the important role attitudes can play in the establishing of a political legacy. As we shall see below, age-period-cohort analysts (Grasso et al., 2019a, 2019b; Gray et al., 2019) have been suggesting that long-term shifts in attitudes can indeed be a long-term consequence of political leadership.
Did Thatcherism Alter Attitudes?
One of the earliest surveys of attitudes towards Thatcherism was conducted in Manchester by researchers at the University of Salford (Edgell and Duke, 1991). These surveys ran in late 1980 to early 1981 and again in late 1983 to early 1984, and found little by way of support for Thatcherite values. The surveys suggested that respondents wanted increases in spending and taxation (not decreases) with an attendant drop in support for spending on the armed services. The surveys also found large levels of support for local government (Edgell and Duke, 1991: 81) although they did find some support for the idea that the power of trade unions needed to be curbed (however, trade unions were still seen as being needed, Edgell and Duke, 1991: 83).
Some of the earliest forays into this topic conducted by political scientists were conducted by Crewe (1988, 1989). Crewe (1988) posed the question, ‘Has the electorate become Thatcherite?’, to which he answered ‘no’, pointing out that by some analyses, the population was taking a ‘hard line’ on some issues before 1979 and that by 1987 was actually showing quite ‘anti’-Thatcherite sentiments. Crewe (1989) subsequently used data from a 1988 MORI poll and focused on the topic of self-reliance. This again suggested that not only was there little enthusiasm for this, if anything respondents were moving away from support for this idea (Crewe, 1989: 247). Crewe and Searing (1988: 376) further argued that there was little evidence that her ideology had gained much by way of popular support, and, in fact, the electorate had become less Thatcherite. McAllister and Mughan (1987: 47), using data from the British Election Studies for 1974–1983, found that an analysis of the October 1974, 1979 and 1983 general elections suggested there had been ‘little fundamental change in the electorate’s overall attitudinal structure’. Studlar and McAllister (1992) extended these analyses to include the 1987 general election and came to very similar conclusions.
From this point onwards, the data analyses started to become more sophisticated, with analysts tackling regional shifts, the notion of ‘political generations’ and examining longitudinal patterns from the British Election Studies dating back to 1963. Johnston and Pattie (1990: 492), for example, demonstrated regional variations in public Thatcherite attitudes, but nevertheless concluded that ‘the Thatcherite project has failed, in that the majority of the electorate . . . did not embrace its core values to any significant extent’. Summarising this body of work, it appears that UK political scientists believed that Thatcher had had little impact on attitudes. Their collective endeavours had suggested that the electorate had remained resolutely unimpressed by much of her approach to the challenges which the country faced and, in many respects, had started to lean away from her policies.
However, a number of observations of these studies can be made. Crewe’s contributions were criticised by Hetzner (1999), who argued that Crewe’s (1988, 1989) key studies did not include reference to periods before Thatcher’s time in office (thus failing to establish an adequate ‘base line’). Of more concern was the fact that many of the assessments were taken while Thatcher was still in office and hence needed to be seen as interim findings, rather than providing a definitive account. This observation is important in two respects. First, adults do not often dramatically change their values ‘overnight’, and as such, long-term trends need to be considered. Second, attitudinal change may be subject to ‘intergenerational replacement’ – that is, that older generations (who may hold different values from younger generations) are more likely to die and, as such, leave the population or electorate. Such changes, however, may emerge slowly. These issues come to the fore when one considers that in the UK, under-18-year-olds are not routinely surveyed in attitudinal surveys. For example, it was not until 1997 that those born in 1979 were eligible for inclusion in surveys. Similarly, those perhaps most affected by Thatcherite social attitudes and the new structures of institutions and thought which her governments brought about (born between, say the mid-1970s and mid-1990s) would not be 18 until the very late 1980s and late 2010s.
Hetzner (1999) also noted that just because there was a decline in support for various Thatcherite social and economic policies (Crewe, 1988, 1989) does not mean that respondents did not support her agenda; it might simply have been that they felt that enough had been done on that topic, a point which Crewe (1989: 247) hints at too. Hetzner (1999: 122–123) points to the fact that decline in the popularity of privatisation came after the bulk of the sales had taken place (and there were, therefore, fewer entities which could be sold off). In this respect, while many analysts may have expected the surveys they used to show attitudinal changes in line with Thatcherite values, given that Thatcherism was (in part) a response to post-war social and economic changes (Dorling, 2014; Green, 1999), an additional approach may have been to look for a Thatcherite impact in terms of slowing or halting of those attitudes and beliefs not in keeping with her philosophy. In short, it might simply have been that Thatcherism arrested other long-term trends (Tilley and Heath, 2007).
Political Generations, Longer Time Series and New Data Sets
Russell et al (1992) extended the work by Johnston and Pattie (1990) and explored the possibility that Thatcherite values had affected first-time voters to a greater extent than other voters. This hypothesis was partially supported, although the results did not suggest any especially straightforward trends. For example, first-time voters in 1983 were more left-wing in their attitudes towards law and order than either the 1979 or the 1987 first-time voters. Similar trends were observed for beliefs about private or public schools (with first-time voters being more left-wing). Attitudes towards egalitarianism (that is, pro-nationalisation, pro-trade unions and pro-redistribution) showed a complex change, however. While the first-time voters in the 1983 general election were still more left-wing than others in that election, they appeared to be less left-wing than first-time voters in 1974, 1979 and 1987 (Russell et al., 1992: 749–750). This ‘Thatcher effect’ Russell et al. (1992: 749, 752) observed for unemployment, with the 1987 first-time voters being more right-wing than those in 1983. The same trend could also be seen for attitudes towards taxation and self-reliance (Russell et al., 1992: 753). Russell et al. (1992: 754–755) concluded that previous assessments failed to explore the role of political socialisation, which may produce what one might think of as intergenerational replacement.
The next key development coincided with the fall of the Conservative Party at the 1997 General Election. By this point, the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS) had been running for almost 15 years and afforded a new opportunity to assess the extent to which the population had become ‘Thatcherite’. The BSAS provided data which were used to question the dominant view that Thatcher’s impact on attitudes was an extremely limited one. For example, Heath and Park (1997: 6) found that the fall in identification with the Conservative Party was lowest for the youngest cohort (raising the question as to whether Thatcherism had appealed more to the younger, ‘1980s’ generation). They also found that those who grew up in the 1980s were more materialistic than their predecessors (Heath and Park, 1997: 9). This same cohort (born after 1960, and socialised in the late 1970s and 1980s) also thought inequality was ‘too big’ (Heath and Park, 1997: 10), but possibly only because they were at that stage among the poorest in the labour market. Heath and Park (1997: 18, 19) concluded that the 1980s/Thatcher’s generation did not identify with the Tories (indeed they were less likely to identify with them than other generations); however, there were signs of a shift towards materialism and a growing sense of disenchantment among this generation. Curtice and Jowell (1997: 97) found that between 1985 and 1996, fewer people in the BSAS agreed that governments ought to provide healthcare, provide a decent standard of living for the old, keep prices under control, help industry to grow, help low-income families send their children to university, provide accommodation for the poor, reduce economic inequalities, help the unemployed maintain a decent standard of living or provide jobs for people, all of which suggest deeper shifts in public attitudes.
One of the benefits of the BSAS series is its ability to track change over decades. Rowlingson et al (2010: 10) show that the percentage agreeing that ‘governments ought to redistribute income’ stood at 45% in 1987, rose slightly to 48% in 1991 and then fell to 36% in 2009. The percentage of people agreeing that the ‘government ought to spend more on benefits’ fell from 55% in 1987 to 27% in 2009. In this light, it appears that Thatcherite attitudes – which New Labour had ceased to contest – have asserted themselves in the decades since 1990.
More recent studies have become more sophisticated still. The data sets used are more varied, the time frames longer and the idea of there being ‘political generations’ has become more thoroughly embedded in this approach. Tilley (2002: 129–130), for example, has shown that younger generations tended to disassociate with the Conservative Party, but that this trend stopped and went into reverse in the 1980s and 1990s. Further work suggests that while feelings of national pride have declined, Thatcher was able to arrest some of this decline (Tilley and Heath, 2007: 669). Compounding this, Tilley and Evans (2014: 25) show that the generations which came of age during the 1930s, 1950s and 1980s (all period of conservative dominance) were all more conservative ones, even if these differences are only slight.
Building on the work of Sowell (2012), Grasso et al. (2019a, 2019b) test the ‘trickle-down’ theory of social change. They argue that during the initial period of Thatcher’s rule, there was deep ideological contestation. Following this, political opponents and rival partisans internalised market liberalism as these became the new ‘rules of the game’. For the UK (alongside the US, and Australia to a lesser extent), the 1980s were marked by a concentrated shift towards neo-liberal economic thinking. The term ‘trickle-down’ was employed in popular discussions of President Reagan’s administration and other laissez-fair capitalist economies (although the concept had originally first been used by US Democratic presidential candidate, William Bryan 1896, Sowell, 2012). Essentially, the idea is that political discourse and ideas, as well as shaping organisations and institutional norms, will shape popular attitudes. They report that it indeed was the case that: across eight of nine indicators, Thatcher’s Children are more right wing and authoritarian than the generation preceding them (Wilson/Callaghan’s Children) . . . Blair’s Babies are also more right wing and authoritarian than this political generation, confirming that Thatcherite values were reproduced under New Labour, and become stronger and embedded in the generation that came of age after Thatcher’s time in office (Grasso et al., 2019a: 30).
They go on to conclude that: there is an upward swing in right-authoritarian values from around the start of the years of birth of the Thatcherite political generation (that is, those born in 1959) at least up until the end of it (those born in 1976), and in several cases lasting well beyond. This suggests Thatcherite values were growing in strength among the cohort that became political adults during the Thatcher years (Grasso et al., 2019a: 30).
The authors argue that the results provide strong evidence of cohort effects. The data which they use (drawn from the BSAS) suggest that those cohorts growing up during prolonged periods of Conservative Party rule would appear to ‘absorb’ the values which these administrations promote. What is especially striking about these findings is that they suggest that these governments were able to ‘off-set’ the more socially liberal tendency often found among younger citizens. As such, they were able to show that the generation which grew up during Thatcher and Major’s time in office became a particularly conservative one.
What we take from this more recent work is that with the emergence of longer time-series data, it is clear that we need to revisit and, indeed, to reject that idea of earlier scholars that Thatcher and Thatcherism were unlikely to have any enduring attitudinal impact. This is not of course necessarily to suggest that Thatcher or Thatcherism ‘created’ these attitudes, but rather that her administrations (and perhaps those that followed, too) re-articulated them, gave an ideological coherence to them and helped to embed them into political discourse. Certainly, this occurred at a specific moment in time and space that permitted these values to slowly, but surely, percolate into the national consciousness and thinking. In this sense, ‘Thatcherite values’ are not simply a new or novel set of mores, but rather a (re)configuration of existing values supported by a unifying narrative embedded in the heart of a critique and prognosis of British society in the 1970s, and which was promoted in an unprecedented manner. As data sets with longer time series have started to be more rigorously analysed, so we have seen the emergence of the idea that the impact which she had was on the generation of people born in the 1960s through to the late 1970s and who grew up during the 1980s and 1990s.
Measuring, Exploring and Assessing Thatcherism in 2019
Against this backdrop, which suggests that there is considerable – even growing – support for Thatcherite attitudes in the years since her time in office, we designed and undertook a survey aimed at assessing and identifying who held Thatcherite values in early 2019, some 40 years after the Winter of Discontent, the vote of no confidence in the Callaghan government and the election of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1979. Following a series of survey experiments and cognitive interviews to assess question-wording (see Farrall et al., 2020b), we commissioned an online stratified random sample survey on the contemporary relevance of Thatcherite values. 2 The vast majority of interviews (n = 5581) were conducted online, with a further 200 face-to-face interviews with respondents identified as being low-level Internet users. Fieldwork was conducted between mid-January and mid-February 2019. The sample drawn was representative of Britain.
Operationalising Thatcherite Values and Thatcherite Desires
We developed a model based on the two key streams of 1980s New Right thinking (Hay, 1996; Hayes, 1994) – namely neo-liberalism (Figure 1) and neo-conservativism (Figure 2). Following Gamble (1988), Hay (1996), Levitas (1986) and Hayes (1994), we see these two strands of thinking as representing the two key ‘fault lines’ in Thatcherism, and indeed the 1980s New Right more generally. Both sets of items were asked as part of the same battery of questions, and all questions shared the same set of response codes. 3
Neo-Liberal ‘Thatcherite’ Values.
Neo-Conservative ‘Thatcherite’ Values.
These items were factor analysed to form one battery of items measuring neo-liberal values. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) was 0.757, and the eigenvalue was 2.288. 4 The factor loadings ranged from –0.322 5 to 0.667 and were all in the anticipated direction.
The items in Figure 2 were factor analysed to form one battery of neo-conservative items. The KMO was 0.760, and the eigenvalue was 2.369. The factor loadings ranged from 0.604 to 0.753. In addition to these two indices, we measured what might be termed ‘Thatcherite Desires’ – aspirations held by individual respondents which chimed with the ideals which the Thatcher governments promoted. We focused on three of these (owning one’s own business, owning one’s own home 6 and sending one’s children to private schools), see Figure 3.
‘Thatcherite’ Desires.
These three items, because of their different sample sizes (a consequence of some people already owning houses etc.), were not factor analysed and are examined herein individually. The above three batteries are our dependent variables in regression analyses. Our modelling also included four other factors (Beliefs about Thatcherism; Social Nostalgia, Economic Nostalgia and Political Nostalgia), all of which are outlined below.
The Beliefs about Thatcherism battery (Figure 4) assessed respondents’ beliefs about the immediate and long-term effects of her government’s policies. These items were factor analysed to form one battery of items. The KMO was 0.890, and the eigenvalue was 4.465. The magnitude of factor loadings ranged from –0.467 7 to 0.894.
Beliefs About Thatcherism.
We fielded a further set of questions which gauged respondents’ feelings of nostalgia (differentiating between social, economic and political forms of nostalgia, see Figures 5–7).
Social Nostalgia Battery.
Economic Nostalgia Battery.
Political Nostalgia Battery.
The Social Nostalgia battery was factor analysed; the KMO was 0.837, and the eigenvalue was 3.450. The Economic Nostalgia battery had a KMO of 0.722, with an eigenvalue of 2.105, while the KMO for the Political Nostalgia battery was 0.765, and the eigenvalue 2.612.
Operationalising Key Socio-Demographic Variables
In order to assess which social groups expressed the highest levels of Thatcherite Values and Desires, we asked our respondents a series of questions aimed at assessing their age, gender, past voting patterns, parental voting and so on. These are listed here (along with their recoding, when appropriate, Figure 8).
Socio-Demographics.
Analytic Strategy
Our analytic strategy was to undertake multiple linear regressions in order to build models to explain the three Thatcherite desires and the Neo-Liberal and Neo-Conservative measures of Thatcherism. The Neo-Liberal and Neo-Conservative values are used as independent variables in the modelling of the desire to own a business, privately educate one’s children and own one’s home.
Regression Modelling
The data relating to Thatcherite desires (home ownership, etc.) were used as dependent variables in their raw form (a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). In order to retain as many cases as possible for analyses, we recoded those people who already owned their own businesses, wanted to educate their children privately or to own their own homes as ‘6’ (with the exception of those without children aged over 19, who were dropped from the analyses for the education question). Our logic being that ownership of a home was the realisation of the desire to own a home, and as such scored higher (6) than the highest level of desire to own (5). These models are reported in Table 1. This exercise was repeated for the Neo-Liberal and Neo-Conservative values (outlined in Figures 1 and 2). All of the models start with socio-demographic variables, before introducing variables relating to values and beliefs. 8
Multiple Linear Regression Models of Thatcherite Desires.
Std. Err: standard error.
Shaded cells are statistically significant and only included to aid readability.
Tenure was not included in the model for Home Ownership.
Modelling Thatcherite Desires
We find, for example, that males are more likely than females to want to own their own business, but females are more likely to want to own their own homes (Table 1). Older age groups are less likely to want to own their own business or to educate their children privately than younger age groups, who, in turn, are less likely to want to own their own homes. There are either no statistically significant findings or no clear trends in the data for urban/rural dwellers (rural dwellers want to own their own businesses more than urban dwellers, however), religiosity, being the chief income earner (CIE, who are less likely to want to their own homes), or household income (although higher earning households are more likely to want to own their own homes). Those who had bought their local authority homes wanted to privately educate their children, while the reverse was true for those who described themselves as middle class while growing up. Those people with degrees were more likely than those without to want to own their own business and to educate their children privately. Home ownership was not associated with any of the Thatcherite desires.
The variables relating to past voting patterns (either by the respondent or by their parents) showed inconsistent patterns. None were statistically significant when it came to the model of desires to own a business. Those whose mothers had voted Conservative were more likely to want to privately educate their children, while those who fathers had voted Labour were less likely to want to buy their own homes. Of particular significance here is the finding that few of the variables appear to help explain the desires to own one’s own home. This was a core Thatcherite aspiration in the 1980s. However, over time, it has become a much more commonly held and normalised aspiration. The power of explanatory variables to account for it is, as a consequence, all the weaker.
Moving on to political values and beliefs, the measure of Neo-Liberalism (outlined in Figure 1 above) was positively associated with the desire to own one’s own business and to educate one’s children privately (as one might imagine, as were Thatcherite Beliefs). It was not, however, associated with wanting to own one’s home as this was so prevalent (see above). Neo-Conservative values (outlined in Figure 2 above) were negatively associated with wanting to own one’s own business. Of the nostalgia batteries, only that relating to Political Nostalgia (Figure 7) was related to any of the Thatcherite desires (being positively associated with wanting to own one’s own business and educate one’s children privately).
What lessons can we draw from the multiple linear regressions in Table 1? Let us start with the socio-demographic variables. Rural dwellers’ association with desires to own their own businesses could represent a middle-class ‘flight’ to rural homes. In terms of gender, it would appear that males have bought the Thatcherite desire of ‘being one’s own boss’ (separate analyses found that men were more likely than females to own their own businesses), while females were more likely to want to own their own homes. Perhaps the most interesting findings again relate to younger people. We find younger people wanting to own their own businesses, to educate their children privately and to own their own homes. Those educated to degree level held consistently pro-Thatcherite desires. Turning now to the theoretical variables, one sees that none of these predict desires to own one’s home, indicating both the prevalence of such desires. Owning one’s own business is positively associated with higher levels of Neo-Liberalism, higher levels of Thatcherite Beliefs and higher levels of Political Nostalgia for the Thatcher period (as one might imagine). Neo-Conservative values are negatively associated with wanting to own one’s own home. This picture is largely replicated (without the Neo-Conservative values) when we look at the desire to educate one’s children privately.
In terms of the models of Neo-Liberal and Neo-Conservative values (Table 2), we find quite contrasting models. In terms of explaining Neo-Liberalism, being younger, less religious, the Chief income earner in a household, and a local authority home buyer were all associated with having higher Neo-Liberal values. Voting for a left-leaning party was negatively associated with Neo-Liberal values (as one would expect). 9 While feelings of Social Nostalgia, Political Nostalgia and Thatcherite Beliefs were all positively associated with Neo-Liberalism, Economic Nostalgia was negatively associated with Neo-Liberalism (neo-liberals are less economically nostalgic, but more socially, politically nostalgic and hold Thatcherite Beliefs). In terms of explaining Neo-Conservativism, those in households with higher incomes were more likely to hold Neo-Conservative values, while those with degree were less likely to hold Neo-Conservative Values. Having voted to leave the EU was associated with Neo-Conservativism, while voting for a left-leaning political party was not. Feelings of both Social and Economic Nostalgia were associated with Neo-Conservativism.
Multiple Linear Regression Models of Thatcherite Values.
Std. Err: standard error.
Shaded cells are statistically significant and only included to aid readability.
Reputational Legacies?
One of the things which we also wished to establish was the extent to which popular opinion was supportive of Margaret Thatcher’s period in office in terms of her reputation. When she left office in November 1990, MORI asked people if, on balance, they thought that Thatcher’s governments had been a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ thing. We repeated this question in our survey in January/February 2019. The data for both are presented in Table 3.
The Reputational Legacy of Thatcher/ism.
All figures are column percentages.
In November 1990, some 52% of the MORI survey felt that Thatcher’s governments had been a good thing (a +12% Good/Bad rating). This had dropped by some 28 percentage points at the point of our survey to 24% (a –13% Good/Bad rating). On the contrary, those thinking that her governments had been a bad thing had dropped by only three percentage points to 37%. Understandably, the percentage of those with no opinion had risen more than fourfold to 38%.
As can be seen from Table 4, the percentage of people reporting Thatcher’s governments as being ‘good’ increases with age from a low of 15% for those aged 16–24, to 52% for those aged over 75. The ‘bad’ ratings do not vary much, ranging from 33% to 47%. This is a fairly linear increase of about six percentage points for ages 16–64, thereafter jumping to 11 percentage points. Notably, the highest levels of ‘bad’ assessments come from those aged 45–64 (born 1955–1974, and aged 16–35 when she left office). This group would have been among those whose life-courses would have been most affected by her government’s policies (see Farrall et al., 2019a, 2019b, 2020a, for example). Those with the most positive assessments are those aged over 65 (so born before 1955, and hence aged at least 24 when Thatcher was elected in 1979). This group is the age cohort most likely to have gained from policies such as the right to buy one’s council home and lower taxes on salaries for those in work. As one might expect, the ‘no opinion’ assessment decreases with age.
Reputational Legacy of Thatcher/ism by Age.
All figures are column percentages.
Another way of assessing what people feel about Thatcherism today is to ask whether the changes her government initiated ‘went too far’, ‘were about right’ or ‘did not go far enough’. Table 5 summarises these data. What we see is that the 45- to 64-year-old groups again stand out as least supportive of her governments’ policies; they alone reach 60% for the ‘went too far’ response (shaded cells), and they score the lowest on the ‘did not go far enough’ response (lighter shaded cells). Interestingly, ‘about right’ was most popular with those over 65.
Did Thatcher ‘Go Too Far?’ by Age.
All figures are percentages.
Discussion and Conclusions
Where does this leave us? Who holds Thatcherite Values in the early 2020s, 40 years after Thatcher won her first General Election? And who promotes these values today? Age is negatively related to all three of the desires, and Neo-Liberal Values, suggesting that (contrary to some expectations) younger people are more Thatcherite than older people in the values they express. Similarly, religiosity is also negatively related to wanting to run (or already running) one’s own business and to privately educate one’s children (or to do so already), and with Neo-Liberal Values too. Those with higher household incomes are more likely already to own or to want to own their own businesses, to want to or already to own their own home and to report Neo-Conservative Values. Those with degrees are more likely than those without already to run their own business (or to want to), to privately educate their children (or to already do so) and they are more likely to hold Neo-Conservative Values. Those who bought their local authority homes either want to (or already) privately educate their children; they tend also to express Neo-Liberal Values. People who voted for left-leaning parties in 2017 score lower, as one might imagine than those who voted for right-leaning parties on both the measures of Neo-Liberalism and Neo-Conservativism. Both Thatcherite Beliefs and holding Neo-Liberal Values are associated with desires to run one’s own business and to educate one’s children privately (or already doing so). The nostalgia batteries predict (in various pairings) support for all of the measures of Thatcherite Desires and Values, with the exception of home ownership.
The variables which do not feature prominently in the five regression models (appearing only once or twice if at all) relate to gender, area of dwelling (urban or rural), being the chief income earner, being a home owner, being middle class when a child, reported parental voting behaviour and EU Referendum voting. It is these last sets of variables (unassociated with Thatcherism) which, we contend, offer some intriguing clues when it comes to answering the question of who holds Thatcherite values today. Home ownership in the UK has reached such high rates of saturation that very few of the variables we used are associated with it, and when used as an independent variable, it fails to predict either Neo-Liberalism or Neo-Conservativism. This suggests, in keeping with our argument, that some Thatcherite values and desires have become embedded in UK society (Farrall et al., 2020d). Although home ownership was once a core part of that Thatcherite dream for the aspiration working class, it is now a much more commonly held and normalised desire (a routine expectation). In part, this suggests the value structures Thatcherism promoted were the ‘right’ ones – which appealed to people’s desires. However, in another way, it also reflects the fact that many of our local authority–owned housing estates are no longer places many people would ‘aspire’ to reside in for the long term (Farrall et al., 2016). Moreover, that parental voting is unrelated to Thatcherism suggests that any intergenerational voting bloc has been eroded. In general, younger people, in households with higher incomes, who have degrees and report lower levels of religious belief are likely to hold Thatcherite Values. Local Authority home purchasers want to privately educate their children (or have already done so) and to hold Neo-Liberal Values.
In some cases, however, the data in Tables 3–5 suggest a dislike for Thatcher and her governments’ time in office. However, Thatcher and Thatcherism are different beasts, and while the terms ‘Thatcher’ and ‘Thatcherism’ have become unpopular, negatively connoted, and associated with a turbulent period in the UK’s recent history, the actual values and desires which Thatcher promoted have become embedded in British society, especially so among younger members of society. In this way, one could see Thatcher has having ‘lost the (discursive) battle, but won the (ideological) war’.
Our study is not a study of political discourses, and as such, we are unable to reflect on which sections of society or systems of political thought and control ‘advance’ the sorts of arguments which underpin and buttress ‘Thatcherite’ attitudes. However, the recent work of French scholars Dardot and Laval (2013) gives some clues. Their work attempts to understand the ways in which ‘the neoliberal project’ (and hence for us a key part of the Thatcherite project) has shaped both society and the key social actors within it. They argue that neo-liberalism is: productive of certain kinds of social relations, certain ways of living, certain subjectivities. In other words, at stake in neo-liberalism is nothing more, nor less, than the form of our existence – the way in which we are led to conduct ourselves, to relate to others and ourselves (Dardot and Laval, 2013: 3).
The principal characteristic of neo-liberalism is what they term ‘competitive behaviouralism’ (Dardot and Laval, 2013: 4). Drawing on Foucault, they claim that neo-liberalism is a form of ‘government of life’ (pp. 4–5) and as such not simply as a set of prescriptions about economics or economic policy, but also a societal form (p. 11). Their insights into politically induced attitudinal behavioural change suggest that this project has produced a new human condition (p. 255), and the attitudes and values needed to survive in it. In that sense, all social actors are involved in the reproduction of these values which, over time, become norm (such as the desire to own one’s own home, above). Some (such as politicians, for example) will have louder voices which reach further and who are able to establish and promote particular agendas. As such, individuals, organisations and institutions will work consciously or unconsciously to reproduce and promote the values associated with Thatcherism and neo-liberalism more generally. Alongside this, argue Dardot and Laval, private insurance replaces socialised health care, pension and welfare schemes – as the field of action of the ‘responsible’, ‘choosing’ neo-liberal subject grows and competitive individualism becomes institutionally embedded (p. 277). US political scientist Pierson argues in a similar vein that: Policies may encourage individuals to develop particular skills, make certain kinds of investments, purchase certain kinds of goods, or devote time and money to certain kinds of organizations (Pierson, 1993: 609).
He notes that ‘public policies also provide resources and create incentives for mass publics’ (Pierson, 1993: 605). In keeping with Dardot and Laval, Pierson highlights the ways in which social and economic policies shape what people want and are capable of achieving. As such, these attitudes emerge from the contexts in which individuals live and orientate their lives and goals (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998).
One of the limitations of our study is that it is based on cross-sectional data. However, what we know from the work of Grasso et al (2019a, 2019b) and Gray et al (2019) is that those people who grew up under the Thatcher and Major governments, and subsequently the Blair government, do appear to hold values which are in keeping with Thatcherite ideology and discourse, and more so than earlier generations. However, when asked about their feelings towards Thatcher, we find that they are much less keen to embrace ideas that might be seen to bear her name and, by extension, less keen to identify themselves with her or Thatcherism (Table 4). This, we surmise, is because these individuals hold values which they developed while they were growing up (during the Blair era, when such values had become more normalised and relatively unchallenged (an empirical confirmation, in effect, of the argument advanced in Hay, 2004)). As such, they appear to embrace ideas whose origins seem to lie in the Thatcher years, without thinking of them in such terms. In some respects, then, these individuals hold ‘Thatcherite’ values (as we have demonstrated empirically) but do not think of themselves as Thatcherite (exhibiting a form of what might be termed political cognitive dissonance). There are, nevertheless, a small percent of younger respondents who felt that the changes her government brought in did not go far enough (around 10%–12% for those aged 16–34, Table 5). Those aged 45–64 (and arguably those whose life-courses would have been most dramatically altered by Thatcherite policies) consistently appear to be the least positive about her time in office. This, perhaps, shows the importance and slow-burning nature of political socialisation. For those aged under 45, neo-liberalism was already the norm when they were being socialised (between 1975 and 2003). For them, expressing neo-liberal values is to express or take a position on questions that had become depoliticised and less contested than previously so. So, in effect, these are Blair’s babies as much as they are Thatcher’s children.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We would like to extend our thanks to Cyril Benoit, Andrew Gamble, Andy Hindmoor, Peter Kerr, and Alex Nunn, as well as three anonymous reviewers, for their comments on draft versions of the paper, which undoubtedly helped to improve the quality and clarity of our arguments. At BMG Research, we extend our thanks to Rob Struthers for organising the survey fieldwork so smoothly.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: We would like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for their generous funding (Award No. ES/P002862/1).
