Thatcherism also incorporated a lot of deregulation and privatisation, which was not supported by the “wets” or the consensus era Conservatives, but which would have been a factor in the philosophies of the “one-nation” Conservatives. Some of the companies that were privatised included British Airways, British Gas, British Telecom, Rolls-Royce and British Petroleum (Green, 2006, p84). She also famously deregulated the financial markets, particularly in the London Stock Exchange, where the Big Bang of 1986 largely increased the amount of trading in the UK and set the economy up as a centre for financial trading, which is one of the main employers and industries in the UK economy today.
However, there were also some areas where Thatcher was not a break from traditional Conservative thought. Her foreign policy was very similar to her predecessors: she was focused on continuing Britain’s role as a major player in foreign affairs. She supported the continued membership of the European Community, just as the last Conservative Prime Minister (Edward Heath) had done, but only as a basis for economic cooperation and free trade. She was opposed however, (as many of the consensus politicians were, including Churchill) to European integration, seeing as a loss to British nationalism. She also continued Britain’s focus on the defense of the nation, as this was one of the main points on her original manifesto in 1979 (Kavanagh, 1997, p83), she tripled the size of the British nuclear deterrent with an upgrade to the newest Trident C4 system (Knight, 2006, p151) and, of course, she did not back down to the Argentinians after they invaded the Falklands, resulting in the victory of Britain in the Falklands War (Green, 2006, pp155-159). This is similar to some consensus-era politicians, like James Callaghan, who also upgraded the British nuclear arsenal from the Polaris programme to the Chevaline programme, and the various Prime Ministers who were involved in the situation in Northern Ireland, including Wilson, who had to move troops there in 1969 (Knight, 2006, pp3-4). This is also similar to the “one-nation” Conservatives, like Benjamin Disraeli, whose support of imperialism led to the Anglo-Afghan war and the Zulu war.
Thatcher was also very well-known for being a strong politician that did not back down easily, as she famously said at a Conservative Party Conference (when she was expected to U-turn over her political ideology), “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning”. This seems to be at odds somewhat with traditional Conservative thought, such as Edward Heath’s U-turn over his free-market policies that were created in the Selsdon Park Hotel when he nationalised British Leyland (Green, 2006, p36), but the initial Conservative thought was not conducive to sudden policy changes, as what they originally stood for was very strong government, particularly when they were the Tory party and (to a lesser extent) as “one-nation” Conservatives.
Overall, I believe that the Thatcherism was not the same kind of Conservatism as the type which was seen in the consensus period, but that Thatcherism did not mark a break from traditional Conservative thought. She was readily accepted by “one-nation” Conservatives, who wanted to “strike a balance between the role of the State and the role of the private individual” (Green, 2006, p46). This leads me to believe that Butskellite Conservatism was the initial break from Conservative thought and that Thatcherism, whilst it was undoubtedly very different from traditional and one-world Conservatism, was a return to this kind of mentality.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]