Mrs. Thatcher's Next Move
Cosgrave, Patrick
countries academics and writers cannot publish their opinions freely. That ,q government agency may be incompetent or misuse information given it, even if true, is hardly a serious argument....
...Thatcher feels that she has no choice but to press as hard as she can now against a still somewhat punchdrunk government with a tenuous majority in the House of Commons, in order to force an early resort to the polls...
...He would almost certainly thus stand a better chance of being exonerated by his colleagues...
...The refusal of trade unionists to follow their bosses in a proposed week-long boycott of South Africa recently is one of many indications that rising unemployment has weakened the hold of those bosses over their members...
...Thatcher's new Shadow Cabinet...
...Thatcher...
...Heath: the gravamen against him was not that he had done wrong, or betrayed his election pledges, or caused a gigantic inflation--all of which she asserted--but that he had lost three out of four elections fought as Leader...
...There has been what seems to me an irreversible decay in Labour support in the country, compounded of dreams frustrated and ideals betrayed...
...Patrick Cosgrave Mrs...
...Thatcher was deeply convinced that Workington presaged the mandate she will ultimately receive from the country as a whole for her brand of Tory radicalism...
...The question being asked, publicly and privately, within and without the Tory party, is whether, confronted with all the manifold problems of government, she could get away with it...
...1 asked two acquaintances...
...Finally, there are friends of Mrs...
...nothing is necessarily beyond her...
...Nor is hers merely the understandable impatience which any politician out of office feels...
...For good or ill, her sense of mission rules her politics: she does believe she can save Britain from imminent financial ruin...
...The unions look like agreeing to a further year of restraint, and whatever one's conviction about the irrelevance-perhaps even the harm--of incomes policies, they do enjoy popularity with the voter...
...From the right--though he was formally outside the party--Mr...
...Thatcher has established her own individual and dominating personality...
...Indeed--and this is Mr...
...Thatcher's commitment to a radical policy-Friedmanite in economics, libertarian on other matters--has become more rather than less emphatic as time has gone by...
...Not long before Christmas it seemed to be on its knees: inflation had started to rise again...
...By and large Mr...
...The fear of Mrs...
...And the appeal of a fresh and historic start which Mrs...
...Thatcher has resolutely set her face...
...Heath--so his successor believes-cut far too little in his first budget in Octover 1970 and, by late 1971, was being advised on all sides that the two years that would be required for a draconian Friedmanite policy to work would leave insufficient elbow room in which to plan and win the next general election...
...Thatcher...
...Moreover, Mrs...
...Those who think such generalizations apply to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare do not usually censure their colleagues for consulting with ttEW, even for pay...
...She believes she can save Britain...
...Powell has become so extravagant in his criticisms that the accusations of disappointed self-seeking which have been made against him now carry conviction...
...Thatcher toured last fall...
...But, within the party at least, things have become very much brighter...
...The hiccups have been few...
...There was a huge switch of Labour voters to Tory--again something virtually unknown in Britain, where very small numbers of voters change from one party to another, and where discontent with sitting governments is normally expressed at by-elections by abstention...
...Heath's case by bad planning, and in Mr...
...she does believe that the men coming up in the Labour party are so left-inclined as to be totalitarian...
...Fraser's Liberal government in Australia, where Mrs...
...From the left of the party the discontent and bitterness of Mr...
...Rules could be devised to treat professors and journalists in the same way that the law treats minors and the mentally retarded--i.e., as legally and morally incompetent to make certain decisions for themselves...
...Thatcher's radicalism is impossibly simpliste, that Britain is so far down the road to a humane collectivism that it is impossible, even undesirable, to turn back...
...Edward Heath confronted her...
...He was in Jerusalem when his departmental colleagues voted to censure him...
...she does believe that the spirit of diplomacy which reached a climax at Helsinki is profoundly dangerous to the West...
...Tempting as this line of reasoning may be, the AAUP would probably agree that it goes slightly too far...
...Professor Seizer has said that he will fight any attempt to discipline him, and the university has said that he will have all the benefits of due process...
...And in all sectors of the community, there is at least some support for Mrs...
...The Platonic vision of an ideal state was one whose guardians would be men specially trained in the arts and theory of political science, a description which fits Selzer's critics...
...Certainly, Mrs...
...Inflation is the germ most corrosive of a body politic: ours makes us steadily less competitive abroad, and markets lost may never be regained...
...Enoch Powell denounced her with increased stridency, and even more vigorously than he had done her predecessor...
...It is unquestionably a risky policy, and many hearts go faint at its prospect...
...My suggestion is not pure fantasy...
...Would she not, like Mr...
...His subsequent criticisms of the new leadership have been scorned...
...The huge public expenditure cuts which she will hope to make within weeks of taking office will certainly create some anguish, but there is a wide conviction that they are necessary...
...Some of those who were ministers in, or supporters of, the Heath government during its last and fatal confrontation with the miners in February 1974 believe that any Conservative governmerit not prepared to be as conciliatory as is Mr...
...Nor do I think her task will be quite as formidable as it may seem today...
...From both comparisons Mrs...
...There is no denying that the first two or three years will be tough, and that withdrawal symptoms could be ghastly...
...The first is with the Heath government--which took office in 1970 with a program somewhat similar to her own...
...But she has come so far, and she has done so many things that a few years ago would have seemed impossible either for a woman or for a politician of the radical right...
...Running--even completely dominating--a party in opposition is Patmck Cosgrave, political columnist for the London Spectator, is wr#ing a biography of Mrs...
...But who will guard against the guardians...
...the price exacted by the unions for the continuance of socalled voluntary wage restraint was a continuing large budget deficit and the further enactment of expensive socialist legislation...
...Thatcher and her advisers is not, therefore, that the government will get Britain out of the wood, but that they may be able, with suitable international support (greatly increased by the conviction of many foreigners that the Tories ~annot handle the unions) to induce a mood of optimism sufficient to win a general election...
...Thatcher's almost religious conviction that--within the overall scheme of a balanced budget-tax cuts, involving a great withdrawal of the state from public activities, will recreate prosperity...
...She is, as one of her biographers wrote, "the encapsulation of many dreams...
...The present situation of the~ Labour government is a peculiar one...
...To these tactical questions others are adaed...
...The result would almost certainly have improved Selzer's chances to escape censure because college faculties are more tolerant of the exercise of freedom in sexual than in political matters...
...But the views that Mrs...
...Finally, it might be maintained that members of certain institut i o n s - e . g . , universities and the press--should be so far above suspicion of "clandestine" associations that the circumstances under which they may have off-duty talks with intelligence agencies should be determined for them...
...A great many people within and 18 The Ahernative: An American Spectator April 1977 without the party believe that Mrs...
...Fraser's winning a second term...
...Heath finally bent the knee, albeit grudgingly...
...Asked to assume that he had both had the affair and provided information, both individuals felt the existence of the affair would make the case "harder to decide...
...It follows that, like Machiavelli's Prince, she wilt give the people all the bad news within days of taking office, and dole out the good news only very slowly...
...The other comparison is with Mr...
...The number voting was as high as during general elections-something unprecedented in British by-elections...
...Britons are beginning to realize that unpredictable future costs make planning ahead impossible, further depressing industry...
...The pound has strengthened...
...And, in a series of speeches at home and abroad, Mrs...
...My own conviction is that she need not be too anxious...
...Thatcher had so freely and definitely expressed seemed to have sanction from a most remarkable by-election result in a predominantly Labour constituency--that of Workington...
...There are tactical considerations, too, for her impatience...
...And I do not believe that the British electorate will return a government locked into inflation at 15 percent, whatever the behavior of those economic symbols which academics try to read...
...she does believe that the Labour party's devolution proposals are profoundly dangerous to the United Kingdom...
...So far he appears to have made a tactical mistake in sticking to the issues and appealing to reason...
...The Callaghan plan now is to try to wait things out until 1978 when, it is believed, the revenues from North Sea oil will begin to reduce both external debts and the budget deficit...
...Thatcher is bound to make at the polls will be a great one...
...Heath, bend principle to convenience for the sake of holding onto office...
...At the party's Brighton conference last year Mr...
...Its measures have caused short-term hardships, however, and given that an Australian parliamentary term lasts only three years, doubts are already being raised about the likelihood of Mr...
...international creditors seemed at last to be losing patience...
...Margaret Thatcher is completely in control of the Conservative party...
...and so do I. [] The Alternative: An American Spectator April 1977 19...
...But it applies as well t ~ college faculties...
...The International Monetary Fund came through with a loan on much better terms than had been expected...
...Thatcher's Next Move Margaret Thatcher thinks she can save Britain...
...of course a very different matter from running a country, especially a country in such serious straits as Britain is at present...
...Thatcher's radicalism, and that she ought not to want power yet...
...The consequence of this possibility is that, principle and ambition quite aside, Mrs...
...In Mr...
...That is probably true, not because the two points have the slightest logical connection, but because the existence of a "clandestine relationship" of a sexual kind would have forced Selzer's critics to make sharper distinctions about the rights of a group to protect its image and the right of an individual to keep certain matters private...
...His best move would be to pretend to having had a homosexual affair with the CIA agent after that meeting in the Manhattan-bar...
...Thatcher--even devoted admirers.--who are convinced that the force of the economic storm which brought the pound almost to $1.50 last year has not yet abated, that it would be better by far for Labour and the country to take a further battering which would make the people more susceptible to Mrs...
...Now the Labour government' s prospects are looking a good deal brighter...
...Thatcher deduces that she will need every moment of her five-year term to balance the economy, and that only in a second term can she set about the reconstruction of British society ond the redirection of British history...
...For most of the first year of her leadership, her .authority seemed tenuous...
...both political liberals with Ph.D.'s to suppose that Seizer had had an affair with the CIA agent...
...Powell's point--would she want to get away with it...
...It was not always possible to predict such a consummation with certainty...
...the triumphs many...
...Fraser's government has kept its commitment to a balanced budget, a greatly reduced role for the state in society, and taxation cuts...
...Callaghan's will be destroyed by the trade unions: there are one or two such defeatists even within Mrs...
...and the psychological stuffing seemed to have been knocked out of the government's ministers...
...The question has become a cliche in discussing the CIA...
...The classical comment on Plato's Republic was, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes...
...and she does believe that she can restore Britain to its traditional commitment to the ethic and the philosophy of individual freedom...
...Will she soon have her chance ? At least one thing in British politics is now clear: Mrs...
...Against all these arguments and fears Mrs...
...Fraser's because of the strait jacket of the Australian system, are sketched the serious dangers that time poses for a radical, demociatic government of the right...
...There was quite a shock throughout still collectivist Britain when at the end of 1976 a new set of Shadow Cabinet appointments moved up the men of the right, and moved out the men of the left...
...So far as I can see, the situation of Britain will grow steadily worse, despite the euphoria created by the IMF and a new year...
...The price of all this, given the inability of the government substantially to reduce public spending, is an inflation rate almost certain to continue at 15 percent throughout the current year...
...Both replied that if he had only had the affair, there would be no grounds for censure...
...Two comparisons fascinate Mrs...
...And she herself often seemed to feel that she had been chosen less for herself than because the party wanted to get rid of Mr...
Vol. 10 • April 1977 • No. 7
