How SuperMac got it right!

[Patrick]

Good to know that (arguably) greater minds foresaw the damage that Thatcher would cause....

Papers released by the National Archives today, reveal that six weeks before Thatcher made her "the lady's not for turning" conference speech she was warned by the former Tory prime minister, Harold Macmillan, that her brand of "divisive politics" was not only undesirable but would prove ineffective.

When Thatcher spoke in Brighton, unemployment had hit 2 million and was rising, interest rates were to peak at 17%, inflation had peaked at 22%, and the British economy was heading for the bottom of its worst slump since the war.

The Confederation of British Industry had promised Downing Street a "bare knuckle fight" over the future of industry.

Macmillan was the embodiment of "one nation Toryism". In a private memo he reminded her that consensus politics "although sneered at by some" was "the essence of Tory democracy".

"Divisive politics in a democratic system are not likely to be applied for sufficient length of time to become effective, even if such methods were desirable," he wrote.

His memo, dated 20 August 1980, followed a weekend he spent at Chequers earlier that month with Thatcher, and went on to warn her that the deflationary monetarist policies she was following were "threatening not merely an alarming increase in unemployment … but in due course it threatens a serious blow to the balance of payments through the collapse of parts of certain important industries". Four years later "Supermac" would publicly attack Thatcher for "selling off the family silver".

[Weyland]

Dec 30, 2010 11:33:19 GMT Patrick said:

Good to know that (arguably) greater minds foresaw the damage that Thatcher would cause....

My response was to emigrate. Didn't help. When I came back Blair was devoting himself to perpetuating her vile legacy, and excelling her on the war front(s). (I foresaw the damage he would do as well, way back in 1994 when I tore up my Labour Party card. That didn't help either.)

Run for the hills!