Taking Sides: Tradition vs. the Free Market

I don't think there's a good way to answer in those categories.

This is one of those times when I wish I were Tom Frank.

80s teen so t.fore Thatch was IMPORTANT -EVERYDAY SHE GAVE ME SOMETHING TO RAIL AGAINST - disliked tory trad. patricians too - but they would not have given us NEXT, budweiser, ben elton, heaven17, hairgel, retro-art deco, cappucino, ^shout to the top^, chinos

was thatcherism a better thing for brit culture than old-style tory would have been ?

im asking this as a north east working class ex-dole poll tax marching leftie/middly

"was thatcherism a better thing for brit culture than old-style tory would have been?"

Yes. The only elements of Thatcherism I think were good things are, without fail, the ones that pissed off High Tories. The elements of it High Tories liked, I hate.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I'm more of a free marketeer than a traditionalist, however I may sometimes have come over in the past.

IIRC about a third of Britain's manufacturing industry was wiped in the early '80s. Doubtless there were a few dinosaurs amongst them but by no means all. Other European countries also embraced a higher degree of 'market-orientated' economics at the time but none did it as wrecklessly, without consideration for the damage to the nation's social fabric. Britain was often regarded as something of an experimental zone. That is no commendation.

(Ian Gilmour's Conservative History 'Whatever Happened to the Tories' is good on this btw) Thatcherism involved class-conflict, emasculating the Trade Unions whose 'irresponsible' Winter of Discontent actions never came remotely close to the damage Thatcher's economic policies caused. And it didn't work. Britain's economic performance never came close to matching its competitors, whilst inflicting woe on its public services and inner-cities. The pre-79 Tories, for all their many faults, were not as callous or clumsy.

To clarify, Stevo - I was referring to the *cultural* aftereffects of Britain's opening up to the unregulated free market being positive, not the economic element. I totally agree with everything you say here.