Cultural Battles: Margaret Thatcher, the Greater London Council and the British Community Arts Movement

This chapter compares the leadership capital of two long-serving UK prime ministers: Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher, treble election winners who held office for a decade. Mapping their capital over time reveals two very different patterns. Thatcher began with low levels of capital, building to a mid-term high and final fragile dominance, though her capital fell between elections. Blair possessed very high levels from the outset that gradually declined in a more conventional pattern. Both benefited from electoral dominance and a divided opposition, Thatcher’s strength lay in her policy vision while Blair’s stemmed from his popularity and communication skills. The LCI reveals that both prime ministers were successful without being popular, sustained in office by the electoral system. Towards the end of their tenures, both leaders’ continued dominance masked fragility, ousted when unrest in their parties and policy unpopularity eroded their capital.

Download Full-text

Losing the Discursive Battle but Winning the Ideological War: Who Holds Thatcherite Values Now?

Political Studies ◽

10.1177/0032321720986701 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 003232172098670

Author(s):

Stephen Farrall ◽

Emily Gray ◽

Phil Mike Jones ◽

Colin Hay

Keyword(s):

Survey Data ◽

Prime Minister ◽

Public Attitudes ◽

New Right ◽

The Political ◽

Political Leaders ◽

Margaret Thatcher ◽

The Uk

In what ways, if at all, do past ideologies shape the values of subsequent generations of citizens? Are public attitudes in one period shaped by the discourses and constructions of an earlier generation of political leaders? Using Thatcherism – one variant of the political New Right of the 1980s – as the object of our enquiries, this article explores the extent to which an attitudinal legacy is detectable among the citizens of the UK some 40 years after Margaret Thatcher first became Prime Minister. Our article, drawing on survey data collected in early 2019 (n = 5781), finds that younger generations express and seemingly embrace key tenets of her and her governments’ philosophies. Yet at the same time, they are keen to describe her government’s policies as having ‘gone too far’. Our contribution throws further light on the complex and often covert character of attitudinal legacies. One reading of the data suggests that younger generations do not attribute the broadly Thatcherite values that they hold to Thatcher or Thatcherism since they were socialised politically after such values had become normalised.

Download Full-text

Debunking the Myths: Margaret Thatcher, the Foreign Office and Israel, 1979–1990

Diplomacy and Statecraft ◽

10.1080/09592296.2010.529356 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 21 (4) ◽

pp. 690-706

Author(s):

Neill Lochery

Keyword(s):

Margaret Thatcher ◽

Foreign Office

Download Full-text

India, Indira and After

Government and Opposition ◽

10.1111/j.1477-7053.1985.tb01067.x ◽

1985 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 48-52 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

T. J. Nossiter

Keyword(s):

Prime Minister ◽

Greek Tragedy ◽

Soap Opera ◽

Margaret Thatcher ◽

Political Management ◽

Fair Assessment ◽

Western Media

IN THE WESTERN MEDIA RECENT EVENTS IN INDIA HAVE OFTEN been trivialized by comparison with a soap opera called Dynasty. A more appropriate analogy would be the Greek tragedy: the rejection of Mrs Gandhi at the polls in 1977; her sweeping return to power in 1980; the death of her heir apparent, Sanjay, in 1980; the invasion of the Golden Temple in June 1984; and on 31 October her assassination. Greatness, tragedy, hubris and nemesis are all there.A fair assessment of Mrs Indira Gandhi's contribution to her country is far from easy, not least because she was regally enigmatic. Her friendships ranged from Michael Foot to Margaret Thatcher. Her presence was formidable yet both to old and non-political family friends she was a loving sister or aunt. Alone among Indian politicians she drew massive crowds and, Sikhs apart, her death was mourned by her opponents as much as her supporters. Indira had not expected to enter politics but by acting as her widowed father Pandit Nehru's hostess and confidante, and, in the late 1950s, as Congress General Secreta , she gained an invaluable apprenticeship in the techniques of political management and the art of statecraft. When Nehru's immediate successor as Indian Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, died after less than two years in office, Congress chiefs found it easier to nominate Nehru's daughter as their leader than to agree on one of their own number, particularly since they all underestimated her strength of character and purpose.

Download Full-text