Thatcher's Britain: The Politics and Social Upheaval of the Thatcher Era.
| Author | McClymont, Gregg |
| Position | Book review |
Richard Vinen
SIMON AND SCHUSTER, 2009
Richard Vinen, a distinguished historian of modern France, wants to demystify Mrs. Thatcher. Never having been 'seriously tempted' to vote Conservative, in fact an opponent of Thatcherism during the 1980s, Vinen nonetheless claims that there is the need for a 'dispassionate' account of her governments, which on their own terms at least, were 'often successful' and certainly not the 'signal disaster' which the left predicted (p. 9).
Vinen employs the tools of traditional political history, in particular chronology, narrative, and biography. Although subtitled 'The Politics and Social Upheaval of the Thatcher Era', the location of the book is very much high political, while Vinen seeks to plot a methodological middle way between biographical approaches to Thatcher and sociological approaches to Thatcherism (p. 5). Vinen is interested particularly in policymaking inside the Cabinet--indeed returning Thatcher's ministers to the centre-stage of Thatcherism is perhaps his most original undertaking. The necessary result of Vinen's process-orientated approach is to shrink Thatcher and diminish Thatcherism's coherence--at least in comparison to cruder interpretations. He insists that the trajectory of the Thatcher governments was shaped more by unforeseen events, by skilful responses to unexpected opportunities (Falklands, SDP, Scargill), and by luck, than it was by Thatcher herself, by an intellectual revolution, or by ruthless class politics. There was a substantial right-wing ideologue in British politics during the post-war period, suggests Vinen, but it was Enoch Powell not Mrs Thatcher (chapter 2). Thatcherism was about power and thus compromise (p. 4). Or put another way: Mrs Thatcher was a Conservative politician and Thatcherism was statecraft.
Vinen is working with established (often secondary) sources, and much of the ground he covers is familiar, especially to those who have read John Campbell's excellent two volume biography of Thatcher. But Vinen aims at a broader audience. This is a work of popular history, and judged as such, a fine one. Vinen writes fluently, he has the knack of explaining clearly some of the more complicated aspects of the Thatcher Governments (see his account of monetarism, chapter 5, for example), and, as a judicious historian, debunks some of the more tenacious myths surrounding Mrs Thatcher. I was particularly struck by Vinen's scepticism of the claims made for Thatcher's...
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