Thatcher Government Research Articles

Private Sector-led Urban Development Projects. Management, Partnerships and Effects in the Netherlands and the UK

Private Sector-led Urban Development Projects. Management, Partnerships and Effects in the Netherlands and the UK

Private Sector-led Urban Development Projects. Management, Partnerships and Effects in the Netherlands and the UK

Private Sector-led Urban Development Projects. Management, Partnerships and Effects in the Netherlands and the UK

The Making of an Entrepreneurial Science: Biotechnology in Britain, 1975–1995

Monoclonal antibodies played a key role in the development of the biotechnology industry of the 1980s and 1990s. Investments in the sector and commercial returns have rivaled those of recombinant DNA technologies. Although the monoclonal antibody technology was first developed in Britain, the first patents were taken out by American scientists. During the first Thatcher government in Britain, blame for the missed opportunity fell on the scientists involved as well as on the National Research and Development Corporation, which had been put in place after World War II to avoid a repeat of the penicillin story, when patent rights were not sought. Instead of apportioning the blame, this essay suggests that despite past experiences and despite the new channels that were in place, Britain was not in a "patent culture" in the 1970s. It traces the long and painful process that made a commercial attitude among publicly funded British research scientists and in a civil service institution like the Medical Research Council both possible and desirable. In this process the meaning of the term "public science" also changed dramatically.

Social Integration in Post‐Multiculturalism: An Analysis of Social Integration Policy in Post‐war Britain

AbstractSocial integration is one of the most urgent issues in Western countries, where cultural diversity has been recognized to make social unity danger. In the past, social integration used to be tackled by multiculturalism, which was an effort to recognize cultural diversity as a positive aspect of society. However, multiculturalism is losing the moral support of society because multiculturalism itself could not be a social glue among different people; rather it is thought to make society unstable. Thus, a new philosophy and policy is required to manage the issues of social integration in a globalized social environment. In order to create social integration, on one hand, people with different backgrounds need to share the same concept of society. On the other hand, people have to become accustomed to cultural diversity. However, this is not easily accomplished because both measures for social integration seem to be politically contradictory and incompatible. How, and by what reasons, could these two conditions of social integration be satisfied? To answer this question, this paper scrutinizes the changes in social integration policy in post‐war Britain. I divide social integration policy in Britain into three stages focusing on the relationship between social unity and cultural diversity: from after World War II to 1979; Thatcher's and Major's Conservative Governments; and Blair's new Labour Government. The social integration policy and philosophy of the new Labour Government in particular is important because it represents post‐multiculturalism discourse for social integration. The Labour Government tried to establish social integration by introducing an abstract common identity, which both the majority and minority groups could accept and which is compatible with various cultural or religious conventions and teaching, as it were, citizenship and Britishness, as a set of liberal values. Although the Labour Government's policy itself was controversial, it is giving us a reference point for the debate on social integration in a post‐multicultural era.

‘The more things change…?’: the Thatcher years and educational reform in Scotland

The period of the Thatcher Government continues to have special significance for politics and governance in Scotland. In the 11 years of the Thatcher Government, landmark legislation and reforms affected key areas of the Scottish society and economy. Education featured prominently in the Thatcherite agenda in Scotland. In Scotland, the education system’s association with national identity had particular implications for educational policy making and implementation in Scotland under the Thatcher Government. The distinctiveness of the Scottish education system presented particular problems for a government intent on challenging the social democratic consensus. Opposition to the Thatcher Government, especially its perceived attack on the social democratic underpinnings of the welfare state which included the state schooling system, re‐ignited the home rule campaign in Scotland in the late 1980s. The article examines both key legislation, namely the Education (Scotland) Act 1981, the School Board (Scotland) Act 1988 and the Self‐Governing Schools etc. (Scotland) Act 1989, and also key non‐legislative reforms to curriculum and assessment under the Thatcher Government in the area of public (state) schooling. The article argues that these reforms continue to influence the educational policy debates in Scotland today.

Large Datasets, Factor-augmented and Factor-only Vector Autoregressive Models, and the Economic Consequences of Mrs Thatcher

We investigate methods of capturing the salient characteristics of very large datasets in an investigation of UK and US macroeconomic policy, using factor-augmented VAR (FAVAR) models. We also estimate structural factor-only VAR (FOVAR) models and examine the impact of aggregate demand and aggregate supply. In a further empirical application, we find that while there is some evidence of increased macroeconomic flexibility in the USA as well as the UK since the late 1980s, the speed of macroeconomic adjustment is more marked in the UK economy post-1987, possibly reflecting the UK labour market reforms of the Thatcher government in the 1980s.

Necessity as the Mother of Intervention: The Industrial Policy Debate in England

This article seeks to demonstrate two simple points about industrial policy in England. First, industrial policy matters, but if there is to be an effective and fruitful debate about industrial policy, it must not be insular. It must be located within the wider context of the ongoing battle of ideas in the discipline of political economy about the appropriate roles for the state and market in enhancing economic development. Second, the debate about industrial policy must not occur in an historical vacuum, but must learn the lesson of the interventions by the Thatcher, Blair and Brown Governments. These have demonstrated that all British governments have intervened and have picked winners. The Cameron-Clegg coalition government will be no different despite its rhetorical commitment to rolling back radically the frontiers of state spending and intervention

“Profoundly Ungrateful”: The Paradoxes of Thatcherism in Northern Ireland

In the 1980s, the Thatcher governments increased funding for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Northern Ireland. This was partly a consequence of neoliberal policies that subcontracted public services to private bodies; as a result, NGOs became more firmly incorporated into the welfare state. However, increased entanglements of NGOs and state did not create passive state subjects. Instead, NGO activity remained rooted in local communities, animated by a common ethic of welfare as entitlement and changing nationalist and loyalist orientations to the state. When the government attempted to redirect NGO funding, cross‐community opposition emerged, despite long‐standing political polarization between nationalists and loyalists. This article describes how NGOs were driven by a local ethic and how their alliance successfully framed state subsidy as social justice. This example supports a broader argument that NGO practices are not neatly determined by a logic of global, universal neoliberalism but are profoundly shaped by local ethical regimes.

I. Latin America

Latin America was the first region in the world where neoliberal policies were introduced. Chile, my country, was used as a testing ground before Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government implemented them in the United Kingdom. But Latin America was also the first region in the world where these policies came to be rejected as policies that only served to increase poverty, aggravate social inequalities, destroy the environment, and weaken working-class and popular movements in general.…It was in our subcontinent that left and progressive forces first began to rally after the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. After more than two decades of suffering, new hope was born. At first, this took the shape of struggles to resist neoliberal policies, but after a few years, people went on the offensive, conquering arenas of power.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Thatcherism, poverty and social justice

This article examines the approach of the Conservative governments between 1979 and 1997 towards the issues of poverty and social justice. The first section of the article analyses the theoretical underpinnings of the Conservative Party’s approach in these years – namely the New Right, which consisted of both liberal and traditionalist conservative elements that sought to reverse the postwar consensus. The article goes on to examine the policies of the Thatcher governments before arguing that the Major government was actually much more radical in policy terms than the Thatcher administration had been.

Not so Tough on Crime?: Why Weren't the Thatcher Governments More Radical in Reforming the Criminal Justice System?

Despite becoming almost synonymous in the public's imagination with ‘law and order’ and toughness on crime, the Thatcher years (1979-90) would not be characterized by many criminologists as a period of radical reform of the criminal justice system. Thatcherism, it seems, was far less radical in the criminal policy field than it was in housing, the economy or local government finance. This paper explores the reasons for this seeming paradox. Our argument is that Thatcherite thinking came late to this policy realm and only started to inform policy in any consistent and radical way after Thatcher had left office. This we attribute to: (1) the precedence accorded other issue domains more closely associated with the ‘crisis’ to which Thatcherism claimed to provide a response; (2) the power-sharing that Thatcher had to engage in with the more paternalist wing of her party during much of her time in office; and (3) a series of time-lag effects. Crime, being the expression of social and economic forces, did not rise dramatically during the early phase of Thatcherite restructuring. In crime and criminal justice policy, radical Thatcherism post-dated Thatcher. It should be seen as a knock-on effect of the steep rise in unemployment and the social polarization resulting from policy radicalism in other issue domains exacerbated by the slide into recession from 1990.

Revisiting School Knowledge: some sociological perspectives on new school curricula

This article focuses on attempts to understand how the curriculum and pedagogy can help to reduce inequalities in the outcomes of schooling between those from higher and lower socio‐economic backgrounds. In the 1970s, the author was involved with Michael F.D. Young and others in the development of the so‐called ‘new’ sociology of education. Much of this work entailed laying bare the assumptions underlying the school curriculum and demonstrating how the selection of school knowledge was implicated in the reproduction of social inequalities. During the 1980s in England the curriculum was overtly politicised by the Thatcher government but the interests of sociologists of education moved increasingly away from the sociology of school knowledge to focus instead on the sociology of education policy. This paper identifies a recent tendency on the part of sociologists of education to return to the ‘knowledge question’. In particular, it examines Young's own role in this and his attempts to revisit and revise of his earlier position. Contemporary developments in curricular policy in England and Northern Ireland are then outlined and discussed. Finally, the paper considers whether the work of Basil Bernstein, particularly his concepts of classification/framing and recognition/realisation rules, might help us to address one of the prevailing political problems of many modern education systems — the systematic failure of socially disadvantaged pupils to perform well at school.

Towards a new political economy of pensions? The implications for women

This article employs a political economy approach to assess the changing nature of women’s pension provision. Initially it provides an overview of the current context showing that many female pensioners are without access to significant pension entitlements in their own right. Then it examines the history of women’s pensions over the last 30 years with reference to both state and private forms of provision. It considers the pension strategies of Thatcher and New Labour governments and their impact on women’s pension situation. This includes an evaluation of recent New Labour proposals, such as Personal Accounts, a raise in the basic State Pension age and reintroduction of the link to earnings. Finally, the paper concludes that these proposals do not represent the emergence of a new political economy of pensions which better reflects the needs of female pensioners rather they are a response to the challenges of an ageing population.

Political-Economical Changes in United Kingdom and Fiscal Crisis

The very first policy implemented by newly-elected coalition government in UK is to unveil an austerity plan and to drop an axe on public spending. Today the rocketing budget deficit and economic recession are two main problems of UK economy; and the former is mainly due to government intervention to save financial sector from collapse. Yet this article does not claim that the fiscal crisis of the UK state is only a contingent event given rise by a temporary recession. Rather this work evaluates the crisis of public finance as a structural problem. The aim of this article is to depict this dynamic patterns of public finance through analysing medium term political and economic structure of UK. This work chronologically and structurally deals with the public debt, revenue and expenditure dynamics in the era beginning with the Thatcher government and lasting 31 years up to current crisis, with a specific emphasis on the argument that the period is shaped by the neoliberal policies.

The External Realm and Domestic Politics in Territory and Power in the United Kingdom

AbstractThis article addresses Jim Bulpitt's innovative approach to conceptualizing the relationship between the external realm and domestic politics in Territory and Power in the United Kingdom. The first part draws out the argument that Bulpitt made about the relationship between the external world and domestic politics to explain the historical development of the UK's territorial politics. In doing so, it fleshes out Bulpitt's own account. It also adds empirical detail and integrates arguments from his later work on the Thatcher governments into his analysis of where the UK's territorial politics went after the early 1980s. Second, the article demonstrates how Bulpitt's analytical framework about the external–domestic political relationship can help us make sense of another state's territorial politics at a crucial historical moment, namely Weimar Germany and the Bavarian problem between 1919 and 1924.

BRITAIN AND GLOBALISATION SINCE 1850: IV THE CREATION OF THE WASHINGTON CONSENSUS

ABSTRACTIn August 1971, President Nixon ended the convertibility of the dollar into gold, so precipitating a crisis in the Bretton Woods system which was not successfully resolved by the Smithsonian agreement in December 1971. The pound was soon free to float and the role of sterling as a reserve currency was seriously weakened. The members of the European Economic Community attempted to create stability between their own currencies, which left the British government in a dilemma about whether to join the European monetary experiment to complement membership of the Community. The address considers the tensions and difficulties facing the Conservative and Labour governments of the 1970s, and the response of the Thatcher government after 1979. The trade-off in the ‘trilemma’ between the three variables of exchange rates, capital movements and domestic monetary policy changed in a major way.

‘Noises Off’: South Africa and the Lancaster House Settlement 1979–1980

In the existing historiography on the final settlement of the long running Rhodesian UDI crisis, the role of the South African Government has received relatively cursory consideration. The memoirs of key British players hint at the importance of Pretoria's policy towards final Zimbabwean independence, and the imperative need for the new Thatcher government to manage this aspect of the Rhodesian imbroglio. However, these accounts fail to elaborate sufficiently on the policy and behaviour of the Nationalist Party Government under its new hard-line Prime Minister, P.W. Botha, and the extent to which this interacted with the incoming Conservative government's diplomatic initiative to resolve the Rhodesian issue. Newly available archival material in South Africa casts a fascinating light on the attitudes and behaviour of the South African Government, as well as the interaction between Pretoria and London. Although the British archives covering the period of the Lusaka Conference and subsequent Lancaster House Conference remain closed, oral testimony of key British players – both politicians and civil servants – points to the centrality of importance of the role of South Africa – both in terms of British policy making, and South Africa's own highly conscious management of this long running crisis for the RSA. Thus, just as in the period 1964–65 in the run up to UDI when South African policy occupied a key place in the origins of the original confrontation between Salisbury and London, so South Africa as a key regional player occupied a critical position in the final peaceful transition to majority rule in Zimbabwe in April 1980.

Individual Liberty Versus Industrial Order: Conservatives and the Trade Union Closed Shop 1946–90

Although the Conservative Party was always ideologically antipathetic towards compulsory trade union membership, in the guise of the ‘closed shop’, it was not until the 1980s that it finally succeeded in outlawing this aspect of British trade unionism. Hitherto, the Conservatives had sought to secure a balance between two conflicting stances: instinctive and ideological abhorrence at the denial of individual liberty which the trade union closed shop represented and pragmatic acceptance that the closed shop could actually facilitate industrial order and stability, and that for this very reason, was often tacitly endorsed by many employers. Many Conservatives were also concerned that even if they did outlaw the closed shop, it was likely to be driven underground, whereupon even worse abuses might go undetected. Consequently, the post-war period until the election of the Thatcher Government was characterised by ongoing debates in the Conservative Party over how best to secure a balance between both individual liberty and industrial order and between a majority in a trade union supporting a closed shop and a minority opposing it.

Anthony Costello: making climate change part of global health

Anthony Costello: making climate change part of global health

Making sense of doctoral training reforms in the social sciences: Educational development by other means?

Educational reforms are increasingly driven by political and economic forces beyond the university. In this paper I describe how the policy initiatives of the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) have steadily reshaped the length,content and structure of doctoral education in the social sciences. This history of the Council’s willingness to respond to national and international policy concerns about the doctorate dates back to the early years of the Thatcher Government in the 1980s. As well as redefining the doctoral student experience, this interventionist policy environment potentially challenges the institutional autonomy of academics and others involved in educational development. In this article I explore the implications of this for doctoral training provision, and for the meaning of educational development itself. I end by pointing to the possibilities for policy “activism” in responding to these changes.