Historian responds to Thatcher’s legacy

Richard Toye | 05 May 2009

"Of the two main parties that fought the 1979 general election, one took a tough line with the unions in a bid to keep down inflation, and the other promised inflationary public sector wage increases in an attempt to buy social peace. It was Callaghan's Labour Party that was tough and divisive, and Thatcher's Tories that reached out in an effort to build national consensus. In 1979, Thatcher presented herself - against her instincts - as a unifier in the 'One Nation' tradition, and this was the key to her victory. Later, the Thatcher government created a myth about its own origins, helping to justify the genuinely tough action it took after being elected."

"Today, David Cameron and Gordon Brown both subscribe to that myth. Cameron wants to claim that problems under Labour today are a reversion to the 'bad old days' of Callaghan. For Brown, the 1970s crisis provided a key justification for the birth of New Labour, of which he was joint architect. His faulty understanding of the past has contributed to our present troubles. If Cameron is to avoid similar mistakes in the future, he must jettison historical clichés and learn the true lessons of Thatcher's rise."

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• Toye, Richard
• Power and politics

About the author

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Richard Toye is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Exeter and the author of Gordon Brown and the credit crunch in historical perspective. In 2007 he won the Times Higher Education Young Academic Author of the Year Award for his book Lloyd George and Churchill: Rivals for Greatness. He is currently completing a book on Winston Churchill and the British Empire.

R.Toye@exeter.ac.uk