Bruce Anderson

The Health and Safety Executive is now far more powerful than the House of Commons

The Health and Safety Executive is now far more powerful than the House of Commons

Before the 1979 election, many senior Tories believed that Thatcherism was dangerous nonsense. If Margaret Thatcher did become Prime Minister, they assumed that she would either learn sense rapidly or have to be replaced by a sensible man. Otherwise, as Ian Gilmour later put it, her government would be heading straight for the rocks.

It seemed obvious to these wise figures that a Tory government could only succeed by working within the system it would inherit. Minor modifications apart, nothing could be done about the nationalised industries and the same was true of the trade unions. Keith Joseph had complained about the ratchet of socialism. Labour governments always pushed it on a few notches while Tory governments seemed incapable of reversing it. The senior Tory pessimists did not dissent from Sir Keith’s judgment. But they did not think that much could be done. Some members of Mrs Thatcher’s first Cabinet believed that a Tory government could achieve little more than the orderly management of decline.

Mrs Thatcher herself regarded such sentiments as treasonable. She had not come into politics to preside over decline. She knew that as long as the nationalised industries could take giant annual bites out of the GDP while trade union leaders were using their coerced members as battering rams, there could be no recovery. She did not only seek office. She wanted to use power. Fortunately for the country, Margaret Thatcher was not a sensible man.

Because of her successes, the world has moved on. It is as if the Tory debates of the late Seventies belonged to a different geological era. Yet it is worth recalling those arguments and moral urgencies; there are parallels with our present discontent. Once again, Tory Britain is menaced by a ratchet. As would be clearer if today’s leadership could generate a quarter of the intellectual energy of late-Seventies Toryism, Tories are confronted by a fundamental strategic choice: acquiescence or a fightback.

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