Ed George

[Document presented to a public meeting of Socialist Outlook supporters in June 1996.]

Thatcherism in Wales

Thatcherism emerged in the mid 1970s as a response by sections of the ruling class to the structural deficiencies of British capitalism, which had been exacerbated to breaking point by the long term ‘retreat from empire’ and the end of the post war boom. It also presented itself as a solution to the decline of the Tory Party, whose electoral support had been on a long term declining trend for fifty years and which from 1964 to 1979 had lost four general elections out of five. Thatcherism was a populist attempt to effect a qualitative break from the post-war political consensus to the benefit of capital.

More (html, 55 KB): Picking over the Ruins: Wales after Thatcher