Rolling Back the State
This chapter begins with the economic crisis of the 1970s, OPEC 1 and Labour’s responses, and the broader ideological challenge presented to social democracy by the economic problems of the mid 1970s. The chapter’s second section looks at the broad growth of anti-state notions amongst a variety of elements in 1970s Britain, including academics, journalists, and think tanks, and how these notions related to the Conservative Party’s developing positions. The third section looks in a more focused fashion at the development of the ‘rolling back the state’ policy agenda as applied to public spending after 1979. The fourth section looks more broadly at the successes and failures of the attempt to roll back the state down to the end of the Conservative government in 1997. The final section looks at how far the state-shrinking agenda reflected or shaped public opinion.