Mrs. Thatcher's Strategy

...Then, exactly a month before the Conservative Party conference was to get under way in Blackpool, the Prime Minister either dismissed or shifted around the moderates in her Cabinet, thereby limiting their influence...

...She jettisoned potentially unreliable ballast from her government and promoted deputies prepared to follow her unquestioningly into the choppiest waters...

...Other Conservative MPs were openly worried about losing their seats (and a hefty chunk of their livelihoods) if Thatcher did not do something to revive the economy, and quickly...

...Nevertheless, by this summer several prominent Tories were growing increasingly '' bolshie.'' They started sniping in the press at their leader's performance, deprecating her efforts to stick to a ruinous monetarism...

...Perhaps incompatibly, Tebbit's approach is to "stop inflation first...

...It was time to make amends...

...Her strategy, in short, has been to scatter and disarm enough of her opponents within the Conservative Party to insure that a revolt against her would not be able to gain sufficient momentum to succeed...

...True, inflation was on the decline in the summer, but it was still in two digits and subject tooccasional unsettling hiccups...

...That winter also led to the fall of the Labor government then in power and to Thatcher's elevation to her present position...

...Unseemly, abusive infighting is something Conservatives normally leave to Laborites, who are more concerned about their ideological identities than debating decorum...

...Patrick Jenkin, a less softhearted monetarist, has taken over at Industry, and he won't be spending as freely as his predecessor...

...Ultimately, he recognized that he could not refuse the thankless new post without looking despicably craven...

...The Prime Minister is now counting on public revulsion to prevent a repetition of '78...

...We are about to see whether her obedient, hard-nosed economic manipulators can give the lie to that conclusion...

...Her most significant Cabinet change involved James Prior, the Tories' leading moderate, who was Minister of Employment...

...His approach did not endear him to the Prime Minister...

...Northern Ireland has been the political graveyard of more than one aspiring British statesman...

...Though Prior shares his party's general conviction that reckless union activism has severely damaged Britain's industrial strength, he has been deeply concerned about the adverse social consequences of That cherism...

...Her Conservative predecessors-men like Harold MacMil-lan, Lord Home and Edward Heath?might have bowed to vote-getting conLondon As autumn mists enveloped Britain, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher defiantly set about making the Conservative ship more seaworthy for the rough sailing ahead against a troublesome, albeit strife-ridden, opposition Labor Party, and an aggressive new Social Democratic Party buoyed up by Liberal Party partnership...

...Thatcher realized that dismissing all of them would fan the flames already spreading in Parliament's Tory back benches against her leadership...

...The critical question, though, is whether she can survive the next election if, as seems likely, her policies remain fruitless...

...In an attempt to head off her wrath, Prior foolishly let it be known that Thatcher was planning to appoint him Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and that he would resign rather than accept this exile...

...Thatcher's other important Cabinet changes included dismissing such dedicated Tory moderates as Sir Ian Gilmour, who was Deputy Foreign Secretary, and Lord Soames, the former leader of the House of Lords and a son-in-law of Sir Winston Churchill...

...They simply had not taken the full measure of the formidable lady's resolve, however...

...For the problem, in her view, was not that her policies were wrong, but that she had failed to pursue them vigorously enough...

...Indeed, it was plain before she went off to her summer vacation in the gentle wilds of Cornwall that if she allowed matters to go on drifting, the Conservatives would almost inevitably be cast out into less agreeable political wilderness...

...he had been pouring huge sums into British Leyland Cars and British Steel to keep them viable and their armies of workers busy...

...It is now said that Prior is the ideal man to bring a fresh and humane approach to Ulster's anguish...

...She thus proved that she had meant it a while back when she declared that "the lady is not for turning...

...Meanwhile, the long-promised industrial revitalization failed to show the slightest sign of developing...

...Thatcher has already lost the next election...

...her hope is that the unemployment in the private sector will undermine support for any potential strikes by public service employees...

...Tory apologists, groping for light, found themselves having to contend that at least things weren't getting worse...

...The London Guardian has observed that in British elections "the single most decisive factor has been the handling of the economy....On all the available evidence, on this basis Mrs...

...He insisted on going slowly in restricting such trade union prerogatives as secondary strike privileges, immunity to the law, the closed shop, and related issues...

...Some moderates, notably Agriculture Minister Peter Walker and Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, have retained their portfolios...

...11 is Tebbit' s mission to cut the current 3 million unemployed by a third before the 1984 elections...

...His hesitancy to be deprived of a Cabinet post where he could soften Tory economic proposals came out sounding a bit like a desk general refusing a frontline commission...

...One instance of his sternness came within 24 hours of his appointment: He persuaded Thatcher's new Cabinet to aim for a 4 per cent limit on wage increases in the public services sector for the year ahead...

...To underscore her determination, the Prime Minister demoted Sir Keith Joseph, until recently one of her closest advisers and economic gurus...

...As Minister for Industry, Sir Keith proved to have too much heart to implement the austere economic doctrines he once touted so persuasively to Thatcher...

...Sir Keith has been transferred to the Ministry of Education, where he has fewer funds at his disposal and a reduced role in formulating economic policy...

...To add to Thatcher's troubles, grumbling inside theTory Party became loud Norman Gelb, who regularly reports on British aJJ airs for these pages, is currently writing a book about England...

...Instead of reflating the economy to combat joblessness, she toughened her tight-money stance...

...siderations, but Margaret Thatcher is no compromiser and certainly no milquetoast...

...But that has been said of others before...

...But even within the Conservative Party, her determination to hold firmly to her present course has not quieted profound doubts about her ability to lessen Britain's economic woes and lead the Tories to victory a little more than two years from now...

...In the same period, she must bolster business confidence and stimulatecapital investment...

...Thatcher has only until the next elections early in 1984 to lower Britain's intimidating level of unemployment (hoveringaround 12 percent, and much higher in some regions...

...But whatever happens, she is determined to end the inflationary spiral brought on by automatic big pay increases and continual transfusions of public money into unprofitable industries...

...Since it is, after all, a time-honored tradition for even the most obstinate Prime Ministers to swallow their pride as election day gets closer, the beleaguered Conservatives hoped that this one also would reverse course in order to woo voters...

...Some warned that it would lead to a winter of discontent similar to 1978, when widespread strikes resulted in garbage piling up beside city parks, hospital emergency rooms closing and other public services being seriously disrupted...

...Union leaders, who had been talking of pay hikes in the neighborhood of 20 per cent, immediately condemned Tebbit's benchmark as unacceptable...

...Prior's spot at the Ministry of Employment has been given to ardent monetarist Norman Tebbit, a committed That-cherite known in Labor circles as "the suburban skinhead" because of his scrappiness in parliamentary debates...