It is more than 30 years since Margaret Thatcher entered Number 10 as Prime Minister. As she walked through the door, the new Premier adapted the prayer of St Francis of Assisi:
Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.
Where there is error, may we bring truth.
Where there is doubt, may we bring faith.
And where there is despair, may we bring hope.
Few could have envisaged then that she would not only dominate her party for a generation, but that she would transform the nation and, through a unique alliance and personal friendship with Ronald Reagan, alter the course of the world.
The Thatcher revolution was as much about personality as it was about policy. She administered the right medicine to cure the ‘sick man of Europe’, and refused to preside passively over a nation in terminal decline. For her, Britain was inseparable from its historic greatness, and so she sought to inculcate a notion of ‘Great Britain’ where it had ceased to exist – in people’s hearts and minds, but also throughout the continent of Europe and around the world. She was of the mould of Boudicca, Elizabeth I, Victoria – a woman who eclipsed ten thousand men in her grasp of statecraft and the administration of power.
She endured internal carping from the ‘wets’; constant attrition from those who sought a United States of Europe; trauma from months and years of strike action; demoralisation from economic downturn, inflation and recession; the unbearable yoke of war; she even survived an assassination attempt. But she persevered as her conviction obliged her to; she endured as her vocation demanded.
Margaret Thatcher began a revolution – not one of those bloody continental affairs of the eighteenth century, but a typically British and pragmatic one on a par with that of the nineteenth. Her transformation of British industry and her preparedness for the technological revolution was eventually to place the United Kingdom ahead of the rest of Europe. And so Thatcherism was born: a creed of economic and personal liberty which is her legacy. It was an expression of Conservatism every bit as defining as that of Peel, Disraeli and Churchill.
But Margaret Thatcher did not only leave her stamp on her own party: she also transformed the Opposition, for many of her reforms were retained by Tony Blair’s New Labour with his ‘Third Way’ fusion of mutual exclusives. The tragedy is that Labour reverted to type under Gordon Brown: with their instinct for centralisation and bureaucratic control; their financial incontinence; their loathing of liberty and personal responsibility; their envy of the rich and successful who once again faced punitive levels of taxation. And, true to type, Labour brought the nation to the edge of bankruptcy. The life blood of British identity has again been poured out as a sacrifice to a utopian Socialism which stifles, strangles, oppresses and deceives.
As a Conservative Prime Minister once again occupies Downing Street, it is wholly appropriate that the Great Lady should grace him with her presence. In a speech just before the General Election, David Cameron invoked her spirit when he reminded us that it has been an historic Conservative quest to take on vested interests:
That idea lies behind the progress of our country.
It was only when people stood up to a despotic King that our rights first came enshrined in Magna Carta.
And it was only when Parliament stood up to planters, merchants and ship owners that the slave trade was abolished.
And it’s an idea that is written in the history of our party too.
Peel, took on landowners, repealed the corn laws and brought cheap food to everyone.
Disraeli, took on some of the richest in the land, introduced factory reforms and protected people from exploitation.
And Margaret Thatcher’s government was defined by taking the side of the people against the powerful, the vested interest...
...those whose survival depended on keeping things as they were.
Take her union reforms.
She recognised that as long there was a closed shop and no proper ballots, power would lie with the big union barons.
They would continue to hold governments to ransom, to drag this country down, and to bully their members.
So she took them on.
She broke the stranglehold of the union barons and gave every worker an equal right and equal say.
Vested interests broken - people empowered.
The same is true for council house sales.
Before her reforms, the system predominantly favoured one set of people...
...local authority bureaucrats who controlled huge budgets and wielded huge power because they decided who could live where.
So Margaret Thatcher took them on.
She gave people the right to buy their own homes, invest in their future and take control of their lives.
Vested interests broken - people empowered.
And then there's the denationalisation of industry.
We saw that the growth of state power and state patronage, of state employment and state subsidies, gave massive power to a few people at the centre.
The big bosses, the union leaders, the politicians and civil servants who were in control of multi-million pound industries.
So Margaret Thatcher took them on.
She stripped companies like British Telecom of their monopolies...
...broke up failing monoliths like British Leyland...
...gave people choice, the opportunity to buy shares and created a truly popular capitalism based on enterprise and aspiration.
Vested interests broken - people empowered.
One vested interest after another was taken on and defeated.
Unions were given back to their members.
People were given greater power and control over their lives.
Business was set free to grow and create wealth.
Real change happened.
Only time will tell if David Cameron manages to reach the political heights of a Disraeli or a Thatcher.
Or whether he will be another Heath.
But one thing is certain: the United Kingdom is once again in the grip of a crisis of economy and identity every bit as deep-seated and urgent as it was in 1979. Only fundamental reform will address the issues; the country, once again, awaits conviction and political greatness.
