Britain's Major Shift

...Over the next 11 years this bright, dynamic, articulate, imaginative woman waged a vigorous campaign to put the "Great" back in Britain.Highonher agenda was the dismantling of the welfare state that she felt had relentlessly sapped British initiative...

...JohnMajorisin many ways an atypical choice to lead Britain...

...Known irreverently as "She Who Must Be Obeyed," Thatcher was undeniably almost a caricature of the domineering woman...

...The new Prime Minister quickly demonstrated that he was his own man by bringing Heseltine into his Cabinet, though Thatcher is known to detest him and he formally precipitated her resignation by forcing the Tory leadership contest...

...The phenomenon was a direct result of Thatcher's emphasis on effort and merit, rather than on unearned advantage...

...Despite a reputation for resoluteness, he is admired even by the Opposition in a Parliament whose members are often judged by the enemies they make...

...For despite all of her dramatic actions and the revival of Britain's international standing, the country has the same basic problems it had when she assumed the Prime Minister's office, and well before that...

...The country's influence in world affairs was minimal...

...Thatcher did enable many who never thought it would be possible to own their own homes, and to buy shares as well in the formerly money-losing nationalized industries she methodically privatized...

...Discouraged professionals and educators were going to the United States and other foreign shores to escape the prevailing mood of cynicism and despair, causing a brain drain...

...Grants for vital scientific and engineering research are hard to come by...

...Thatcher'sreign, however, did not produce any substantial change in Britain's fundamental conditions...

...Still, especially for someone who has rather suddenly emerged from the shadows, he seems to be very popular...

...His warm acceptance by the tough Mrs...

...He appears to be persuaded that only through being a more integral part of an increasingly prosperous Europe can Britain reverse its century of economic decline, and the links are bound to extend to foreign policy issues...

...He is a thoroughly unpretentious and devoted father of two teenagers, with an equally unpretentious wife who has written a biography of opera diva Joan Sutherland and delivers meals-on-wheels to the indigent...

...Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to dismiss the Thatcher Revolution as merely a flash in the pan...

...Although the British pioneered the Industrial Revolution, they have never managed to recapture their old ingenuity and initiate the sort of restructuring that would permit them to fully participate in the postindustrial age...

...Unemployment is on the upswing...

...Nor have the bold, thrusting young Thatcherites who rocketed to fabulous wealth in the financial, commercial and real estate markets fared much better...

...No doubt Major will have to abandon his habit of popping out for a fast lunch at McDonald's, but the new Prime Minister is not only metaphorically a man of the people...

...When it was suggested some time ago that her husband might one day become the Prime Minister, she replied, "That doesn't happen to people like us...

...Norman Gelb writes regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...

...Britain's loss of international prestige was similarly reversed by Thatcher...

...It is instructive to note that while campaigning to succeed Thatcher as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party, John Major thought it wise to emphasize his hope of breaking down class barriers: Among his credentials was the fact that long ago, before he became a successful banker, hepersonally experienced what it meant to be an unemployed construction worker...

...The change at Number 10 Downing Street could also have serious consequences for Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev...

...When Thatcher was first elected Prime Minister in 1979 Britain was a dismal, dispirited place...

...The crucial North Sea oil revenues greatly contributed to transitory improvements...

...At home, the economy was in a deep malaise...

...Funds pumped into the National Health Service and the national education system have been inadequate to the task of curing their ills...

...Like their Reaganite counterparts in New York, London's Yuppies are on the run, and the prognosis of the economic pundits is gloomy...

...The economic indicators started climbing...

...So had government expenditures, nourished by the widely held belief that the primary function of the state was to see to the welfare of all citizens, regardless of whether they were capable of doing so for themselves...

...Others erupted in cheers upon hearing that she was leaving to preserve Tory unity...

...Certainly Major's elevation to Britain's leadership has significant international implications...

...She effectively emasculated the members of her Cabinet, although by British tradition they should have had a strong influence on policy formulation...

...And she transformed the mood of the nation...

...She is more likely, though, to be named head of an international organization...

...Britain's wealth and strength were founded on the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire...

...Never before in British history have Conservative politicians sought so determinedly to distance themselves from the stigma of identification with the socially elite...

...The reason was largely the so-called poll tax, a regressive system of local levies that she pushed through Parliament in place of real estate taxes...

...It was a deeply damaging accusation by a widely respected, normally mild man...

...When it became apparent that the Tories would be defeated in the next election if she remained in office, she unexpectedly accepted that her time was up and withdrew with a grace few here believed her capable of...

...But the combination of high inflation and high interest rates has forced a large number of these new recruits to the pleasures of capitalism to sell their homes at a loss, because they could not meet the mortgage payments even after trading in their stocks...

...Respected or resented, admired or hated, Margaret Thatcher became a figure of headline importance here and around the globe...

...Some responded to the news of her resignation as Prime Minister with tears and charges of treason against the Conservatives who forced her out...

...Its objective, she has said, is to make the high-spending municipal governing councils—most of which are in the big cities and Labor-controlled —more accountable to their constituents...

...Moreover, as the Environment Minister Heseltine has been entrusted with the task of doing something about the hated poll tax that Thatcher had refused to tinker with...

...But with the turn of this century, the economy began a steady decline that was accelerated by the ravages of World War II...

...He has put together a strong Cabinet but his own limited experience cannot be underestimated, as was demonstrated by his committing the electoral mistake of not appointing a woman to a senior Cabinet position...

...Dulwich village, the pretty, up-market London suburb to which she and her golfing fanatic husband Denis have now retired, is far too peaceful to keep her long entertained...

...She unhesitatingly dispatched forces to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf to counter the threat posed by Iraq's Saddam Hussein...

...IN THE WAKE OF THATCHERISM Britain's Major Shift by NORMAN GELB London The departure of Margaret Thatcher from Number 10 Downing Street, and her replacement by the man living next door in the Chancellor of the Exchequer's residence, John Major, has been a traumatic experience for the people of Britain...

...Manufacturing industries and the highly touted Civil Service were racked by low productivity and paralyzing strikes...

...Unemployment had soared...

...An ambassadorship, possibly to the United States or to the United Nations, is not out of the question...

...It may be that the very few personal characteristics he shares with Britain's political elite are his love of opera and passion for cricket...

...Soon business flourished...

...As Oxford University historian Norman Stone has observed, she was the only world-class leader Britain has had since Winston Churchill...

...As for Thatcher, it should not be assumed that we have heard the last of her...

...No one is prepared to wager on whether or not Major will be able to steer Britain out of its current difficulties...

...Then "the Blessed Margaret," asone of her erstwhile Cabinet colleagues called her, took charge...

...Earlier this year, when he was briefly the Foreign Secretary, he stumbled embarrassingly on one or two occasions as well...

...The unfairness of the poll tax, and the enormous bureaucratic complications it involves, gave rise to a bitterness that turned Thatcher into a hate figure for many who formerly had no cause to dislike her and intensified the contempt of those who held her in low regard on political grounds...

...bombers based in Britain as part of nato to join in teaching Libya's Muammar Qaddafi a lesson...

...Her own downfall followed hard upon a dramatic speech in Parliament on November 13 by Sir Geoffrey Howe, who had just resigned as Deputy Prime Minister after suffering years of humiliating and sometimes disdainful treatment...

...The fact that asayoungmanhe benefited greatly from National Health Service treatment of severe injuries has led people to expect, perhaps wrongly, that he will be far less dogmatic than Thatcher in downgrading social services despite his firm stand on limiting public expenditure...

...At the same time, Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, in pressing his bid to be Thatcher's heir, did his best to downplay having gone to Eton, once practically a requirement for a Cabinet minister...

...More important, the problem-plagued Soviet people, having seen how painless it is to depose even a strong leader, may be moved to press Gorbachev into retirement...

...For that alone she deserves the thanks of her people...

...Before stepping down, Margaret Thatcher had made it clear that of the three men seeking to succeed her—Major, Hurd and onetime Cabinet minister Michael Heseltine—she strongly preferred the youthful 47-year-old Major, her recently installed Chancellor of the Exchequer, notwithstanding his having had comparatively little experience in high office...

...The free National Health Service and the national education system, too long under the control of irresponsible or socialistminded administrators accountable to no one in her view, were reformed...

...Thatcher's scheme has everyone from age 18 to 65 paying local taxes—not property owners alone, as was previously the case...

...But the Prime Minister would have survived Sir Geoffrey's onslaught if Britons were not fed up with the ideologue she had become...

...The Opposition Labor Party already had a 14 per cent lead over the Tories in the public opinion polls, and she personally could muster a favorable rating of no more than 26 per cent...

...Public spending has been curbed, yet the rail transport system and the once magnificent London subway network are a shambles...

...To maintain Britain's national identity, she proudly resisted the efforts of other European Community leaders eager to move more quickly toward integration...

...Before Thatcher's exit, he was urging closer ties with the country's European Community partners than she would tolerate...

...The stranglehold of the trade unions was broken, and punitively high taxes that discouraged would-be entrepreneurs from creating the wealth Britain needed were cut...

...A close look at the Thatcher Revolution suggests that the history books may not be as attentive to her achievements as today's newspapers...

...For all the wonders of Savile Row (and Thatcher has always been strikingly well-dressed), in his usual attire this "grey man," as he has been called, would be inconspicuous on a crowded early morning commuter train from one of the less affluent London suburbs...

...He was quickly backed by the Tory majority in Parliament...

...The entrepreneurial atmosphere is more marked at present, yet the tradebalance and productivity levels are again dismal...

...One by one, those unwilling to submit to her demands resigned or were simply replaced by more docile individuals...

...Ina virtually unprecedented breach of party loyalty, Sir Geoffrey charged that Thatcher's obstinate rejection of several key European Community policies was gravely undermining Britain's future...

...But both to those who held her in high esteem and to those who thought her abominable, she was and remains a towering figure...

...When Argentina invaded the British Falkland Islands, she sent a task force to oust it...

...What is more, she has laid the groundwork for ridding Britain of its notorious, deeply engrained class prejudices...

...She re-established the BritishAmerican special relationship in the face of a barrage of domestic criticism by allowing U.S...

...But her support, and her quip that she was an excellent backseat driver, inevitably led to the Opposition's suggestion that Major would be "Thatcher's poodle...

...Now that she has quit, the question of how enduring her impact will be has inevitably arisen...

...He speaks lucidly yet quietly, and is not particularly witty in a political climate distinguished by flamboyant oratory and the cut-andthrust of pointed repartee...

...Thatcher contributed to his credibility in the West...

...Some programs were trimmed, others were eliminated altogether...

...Thus the special British-American relationship that Thatcher strengthened will probably be diluted...

...But with few exceptions, the poor in a city have to pay the same amount as the better off...

...The country has been awakened by this grocer's daughter from its mesmerizing, stultifying dream of distributing national wealth without creating it...

...Many small businesses that opened with a Thatcherite flourish a few years ago have gone under, as have some big ones...

...It is hard to imagine the Iron Lady taking orders from anyone...