4 May 1979

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A date that is sure to make Al and a few others cringe...

Cringe is the wrong word... but do note that anything that I say about this period might be a little biased. Just a warning.

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Depends what you mean by a "sea change" doesn't it? Personally I'm not a believer in the existence of a genuine Post-War consensus so...

But the rise of a harder Right (if that's the best way to put it) within the Tory party was, or so thinketh I, inevitable due to demographic changes (related to Post-War affluence), while there was certainly a sea change within economic policy in the late '70's, but o/c that had happend under Labour.

So yes and no

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It wasn't really either; it was mainly a backlash against the public sector unions. It certainly wasn't a mandate for the economic policies of the early '80's (which were responsible for a sudden collapse in manufacturing employment) that's for sure. O/c Thatcherism as we know it (or not) today wasn't really born until well into the early '80's.

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I don't think so. But then I wouldn't, would I?

But Labour in 1979 was a different thing to Labour in 1980...

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The narrow "defeat" of the second and the rout of the third are one reason for the election being held so soon after the Winter of Discontent.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The right of the 'harder right' wasn't immediate if you look closely and scrutinse the policy and policy makers of the '79 - '83 administration (which I hold in general good regard) even if all that is remembered of it is 'right to buy' and a tax raising budget. Mrs Thatcher was still at this time reminiscent of her old timid self of the late 60's and early 70's (where by party standards, on education, abortion and homosexuality she was actually quite liberal) and her first government reflected what she had inherited from Heath.

Fair point, fair point, though I was thinking more of the growth of that group within the party rather than them taking it over (much as the rise of the hard Left within Labour was inevitable for different, though related, social changes. Btw, if the moderates had stayed in charge, who would the Tory version of John Golding have been? More as a curiosity than anything else).