Thatcher's Unintended Legacy

Around the time she came to power, one of Margaret Thatcher’s close aides described her to me as “the reality principle in skirts.” It is an image that evokes a different age. In 1979, there were no computers in Downing Street. Telephone calls were routed through a switchboard, and no one could make a call from his desk. Rolls Royce and Jaguar were state-owned companies; electricity, gas, and water were public utilities; government had a majority stake in British Petroleum; British Airways was a nationalized industry. But by the time Thatcher was ousted in an inner-party coup in 1990, all those enterprises and more were in private hands. The transformation that occurred during the Thatcher years has been seen as the work of her powerful will, and in some ways so it was. Yet it was also a continuation of powerful trends: British manufacturing had been shrinking for much of the century—a process that advancing globalization would only increase. By breaking with the policies of the past, Thatcher in fact accelerated changes in the economy that were already underway.