Thatcherism

Thatcherism describes the politics, economic, social policy, and political style of the British Conservative politician Margaret Thatcher, who was leader of her party from 1975 to 1990.
Thatcher became Prime Minister of the UK in 1979.

Mrs Thatcher based many of her economic policies on the ideas of Milton Friedman, the 'godfather' of monetarism. In contrast to previous government policy, monetarism placed a priority on controlling inflation over controlling unemployment. According to monetarist theory, inflation is the result of there being too much money in the economy. Thus the government should control the money supply to control inflation.

'Thatcherite economics' was based on :
A belief in freeing up markets
De-regulation to encourage enterprise and efficiency
Reducing the influence of government
Reducing the strength of the trade unions
Cutting personal taxation and shifting the burden to indirect taxation
Increasing incentives to enterprise and improvement
Increasing public involvement in business - shareholding for example
Increasing public property ownership - through the sales of council housing
A focus on monetary policy to control inflation and economic growth

It is hard for those who have not lived through this period to understand the impact these policies had. The years after the end of the Second World War had seen government take an increasing hand in the economy ; Keynesian demand management was the order of the day.

State owned utilities such as gas, electricity, telecommunications and water along with other nationalised industries like steel and coal, were all seen as being inefficient and victims of state control.

Mrs Thatcher intended to bring competition to these industries, to make people appreciate the necessity of operating in real world markets, as a vital plank of her policy as well as bringing people into contact with share ownership and thus having greater understanding of how businesses work.