Norman Tebbit: Margaret Thatcher left an enduring legacy
3 min read
From rejuvenating Britain’s industrial relations, to standing up to trade unions at home and to Argentina on the world stage, Thatcher's enduring legacy is still visible today, says Norman Tebbit
I am reminded of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy every time I go shopping in my home town. People recognising me almost always end our conversation about political affairs of today by saying: “Oh, if only Thatcher could be back in No 10 today.”
But to assess her legacy, one has to recollect the state of the country when she came to office 40 years ago in May 1979.
Our friends in other countries were sorry for us. Our industrial relations measured by our strike record were the worst in the industrialised world. Heath’s half-baked Industrial Relations Act had criminalised some categories of industrial action, allowing some trade union extremists to pose as martyrs by deliberately flouting the law and being sentenced to imprisonment.
In an attempt to control inflation, Heath sought an incomes policy agreement with the Trades Union Congress at the “beer and sandwiches” meetings in Downing Street. It failed.
Heath had gone down to defeat in 1974 at the hands of the Labour party led by Harold Wilson who, in failing health, resigned two years later, leaving Jim Callaghan in office but hardly in power.
Strikes in local government the following winter left streets piled high with uncollected refuse and even municipal cemetery gates padlocked against funeral corteges, while IRA/Sinn Féin terrorists were making Ulster near ungovernable.
Thatcher had succeeded Heath as Conservative leader after a successful campaign masterminded by Airey Neave (of Colditz fame). Neave, who was expected to become Northern Ireland secretary in a Thatcher government, was later murdered by a terrorist car bomb as he left the members’ car park of the House of Commons.
Things looked very different by the time Thatcher was brought down in 1990, only three years after her third general election victory at which the Conservative party had polled more votes than at her first victory eight years earlier.
On a visit to India as secretary of state for trade and industry in January 1984, Indira Gandhi told me that she had concluded that she would remodel her economic policy on Thatcherism. Sadly she was murdered before she could make that change.
So what had changed during Thatcher’s time to make her legacy?
First, there was the challenge posed by the Argentinian president General Galtieri and the invasion of the Falkland Islands. Despite the formidable difficulties of retaking the islands, Thatcher was determined that both the British subjects and the islands should be liberated.
Second, there was Arthur Scargill’s attempt to close down the coal mines and thereby the power stations and bring about a general strike in order to topple the government.
The Thatcher government met and overcame both challenges. That restoration of the determination and power of government to do so became a large part of the Thatcher legacy.
The transformation from having the worst industrial relations in the industrialised world to the best was a carefully planned step-by-step affair. Workers were given the right to elect their own leaders and to pre-strike secret ballots. Trade unions were made liable in tort and lost their absolute immunity from civil law.
Our industrial relations are now the best in the industrialised world.
Tenants of municipal properties and new towns were given a right to buy their homes and acquire capital to leave to their children.
State-owned industries, often hobbled by lack of capital investment from the Treasury, were freed to grow by privatisation. For example, our telephone service, once a subsidiary of the General Post Office, was liberated to sell telephones rather than rationing them for lack of working capital.
Sadly, some of Thatcher’s legacy has been damaged or even destroyed by her successors, but much (especially her industrial relations reforms) has survived despite the bungling of Brexit.
Lord Tebbit is a Conservative peer
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