However, there were those that had adopted more Liberal attitudes in the Conservative Party before Thatcher. Enoch Powell, a Conservative Minister of Health under Macmillan, was in opposition as Shadow Defence Secretary for much of his career, where he put forward the idea that the Conservative Party should take on a more laissez-faire approach, under the grounds that economies are much too unpredictable, so any intervention by the Government in any market (including social provision) would create unintended consequences. However, Powell’s economic ideas were completely overshadowed by his extreme nationalism. His infamous “rivers of blood” speech created outrage in the Conservative Party, as he claimed that there were too many black immigrants in the UK. Edward Heath, the Leader of the Opposition, sacked him from his position the next day but he was supported by a good percentage of the public and Thatcher, who wanted to smooth the issue over. (Kavanagh, 1997, pp72-74). Other notable Conservatives who encouraged free-market approaches to dealing with the economy included Nigel Birch who promoted Liberalism as the best way to deal with “the ever-increasing aggression of an authoritarian state” (Birch, 1949, p34) and that the Conservative Party had only ever supported government intervention as a means to counter laissez-faire economics. Even Alec Douglas-Home claimed in 1979 that he did not “think

[that] she’s changed the traditional Conservative approach” (Murray, 1980, p138). However, these people were not sufficiently positioned (with the possible exception of Douglas-Home) to make the same kind of change to Conservatism thought. Thatcher, however, did represent a break from the norm.

There were many changes that Thatcher made that were completely at odds to the previous Conservative principles and methods of operation. Coupled with the reversion to the more laissez-faire approach to economic management mentioned above, she also was a great proponent of the use of monetarist principles. Milton Friedman (the creator, or at least the popularizer, of monetarism) had just received the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1975 and, after the increase in stagflation and the “winter of discontent”, it was clear to the public that the interventionist, Keynesian economics that was used in the consensus era between 1945 and 1979 was not working correctly. This demand management had worked in the boom under Macmillan, but Thatcher’s proposal of a switch to a increasingly popular economic system based around a very simple equation, mv=pt (where m is the money supply, v is the velocity of money, p is the price level and t is output, which meant that price levels could be reduced by the simple application of a reduction in the money supply i.e. an increase in interest rates) looked very good in comparison to previous thought, which had led James Callaghan’s government to require a £2.45 billion loan from the IMF (Green, 2006, pp57-61).

Thatcher also attempted to break links with the trade unions, whereas the consensus era Conservatives actively worked alongside the trade unions. After the trade unions grew in power between the 1930’s to the 1950’s (due to increased links with the Labour Party, who increasingly involved them in policy creation), the Conservatives also had to acknowledge them as an important force at the time. When they tried to reduce the power of the unions due to their pressure on inflation (due to high wage increases) in 1971, this was highly opposed by the trade unions and it was subsequently repealed when the Labour Party returned to power 3 years later (Kavanagh, 1997, p41). However, Thatcher’s focus on dealing with the problems of stagflation meant that unions could not play the same role in her Government: she preferred them to be closer to their original role – campaigning for the rights of workers in a specific sector (Green, 2006, p152). Despite the efforts of many notable union leaders, including the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, Arthur Scargill, Thatcher’s government imposed three main Acts that reduced the power of trade unions severely. The 1980 Employment Act made it illegal to picket anywhere that was not the union member’s place of work, made closed-shop unions only lawful after a ballot had shown that over 80% of the workers were in favour and reduced social security to the families of strikers; the 1982 Employment Act allowed employers to sue and/or take out injuctions against unions and redefined industrial action; and the 1984 Employment Act instructed unions that they could only take part in industrial action or become involved in political matters (such as supporting a party or assisting with legislation) if they undertook a secret ballot (Green, 2006, p119).