Economic Policies, Great Britain - Politics & Government, Economic History, Economic Conditions, Historical Biography - Britain, Economic Systems, British History - General & Miscellaneous
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Overview
In 1980 newly-elected Margaret Thatcher went forth to do battle against "the British Disease" and immediately set off a bitter war in which her allies and adversaries fought for dominion over economy and culture. In this imaginative, informed account Charles Dellheim tells the story of how the Iron Lady tried to refurbish her rusty realm. More than a sketch of the Thatcher years and its protagonist, The Disenchanted Isle places the 1980s in broad historical perspective, connecting Britain's past and present. This history takes us on a journey into the heart of British politics, culture, and business. We watch the rise and fall of the grocer's daughter who overcame modest origins and sexism to become Britain's first female prime minister. We watch Oxford dons consider whether to confer an honorary degree on an alumna few liked; miners strike to protest plans that threatened their jobs and communities; and Jaguar employees struggle to rescue their failing firm. We meet old-style paternalists, free-market street fighters, corporate raiders, socially committed bishops, and left-wing intellectuals. The result is a dramatic, vivid, and colorful story that captures the ambiguities of British history.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Dellheim's highly astute, evenhanded, fast-moving narrative sets Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's capitalist revolution in the context of British postwar history. Preaching self-reliance and entrepreneurial initiative, she reduced taxes, privatized nationalized industry and curtailed trade union power during her 11-year tenure, which ended in 1990. Dellheim, an Arizona State University history professor, argues that these measures were necessary to stem Britain's long economic decline, which he traces to the immediate postwar period, when an expensive welfare state was erected while both labor and management blocked modernization, each more intent on exploiting, rather than reforming, a faulty system. Under Thatcher, living standards rose for many, foreign investments rebounded, inflation was temporarily halted. Yet her policies aggravated old inequalities, further polarizing rich and poor, and this sweeping history blames her failure partly on ``moral arrogance,'' on her ``indifferent or mean-spirited attitude to those who could not help themselves.'' (July)Gilbert Taylor
Treating Thatcher's years in power as history rather than current controversy, Dellheim embeds her program and political convictions into the undulating swell of Britain's rich past. Reaching for his theme as far back as the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, Dellheim builds a framework of Britain's anticapitalist sentiment that culminated in the socialist edifice erected by the Atlee government. This Thatcher sought to dismantle, and Dellheim delivers a sharp and persuasive analysis of Britain's deteriorating fiscal and monetary condition in the decade before she was able to implement her plan in 1979. It entailed squeezing out inflation, breaking the unions, and selling off state-owned industries. The critics' howling, mostly from the intellectual class, was tremendous and not untinged with condescension toward Thatcher's petit bourgeois background and penchant for Victorian homilies. The market: creator of wealth or inflicter of inequality? The 1980s answer to that question as studied by Dellheim becomes fluidly readable and provocative, for his conclusions will please neither Thatcherites nor Thatcher-hates, the self-evident sign of balanced, quality work.Book Details
Published
June 12, 1995
Publisher
New York : W.W. Norton, c1995.
Pages
352
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780393038125