Thatcher debates

Question 1

How did Thatcher’s economic policies positively affect Britain?

Answer 1

Her free market policies reversed Britain’s relative economic decline

Question 2

How did Thatcher’s economic policies negatively affect Britain?

Answer 2

• Her policies did little to change Britain’s long-term economic performance.
• Her economic policies weakened British industry.
• She unbalanced Britain’s economy and created massive inequality of wealth

Question 3

How did Thatcher’s Lack of state intervention positively affect Britain?

Answer 3

• The state intervened less in the economy and in people’s lives than had been the case in the previous decades.
• She was willing to put theory into practice. Market forces & individual freedom were allowed to determine whether industries failed or succeeded

Question 4

How did Thatcher’s Lack of state intervention negatively affect Britain?

Answer 4

• She ultimately failed to prevent the state from growing throughout the 1980s
• The cost of welfare and maintaining law and order actually went up.

Question 5

How was the extent of political and social division in Britain already occurring before Thatcher?

Answer 5

Social division was actually the result of longer-term economic and social changes.

Question 6

How did Thatcher affect the the extent of political and social division in Britain?

Answer 6

• There were the deepest social divisions in Britain, at the end of the 1980s, than there had been since the end of WW2.
• There were riots, industrial conflict, protest movements and controversy over Section 28 and the British response to AIDS.
• Thatcher’s economic policies were responsible for the social division in the country.

Question 7

How did other factors (not Thatcher) affect the development of the Tories?

Answer 7

• The transition and shift in UK Politics was not purely down to Thatcher
• A shift away from the left-wing politics and economics actually began during the 1970s
• In terms of the Labour Party, the ideological shift in the Party actually began in 1956 with the publication of Anthony Crosland’s The Future of Socialism

Question 8

How did Thatcher affect the development of her party?

Answer 8

• Thatcherism led to a transformation of the Conservatives & even the Labour Party.
• Her ability to win three successive general elections demonstrated that she was able to create a style & put forward ideas and policies that struck a chord with a lot of Britain
• Electoral success in 1979, 1982 and 1987 forced Labour to go through a series of ideological transformations, most significantly from 1994 onwards under the leadership of Tony Blair who rebranded the Party as “New Labour”