Notes

• The main role of the state is to create order, security, and authority.
• Without order, there can be no liberty.
• The state precedes society (key contrast with liberalism - organicism).
• Conservatives refer a state that emerges gradually, an organicist and pragmatic response to humanities needs.
• The state will be hierarchy (links back to feudal system).

Note

Burke sees hierarchy as a factor of social cohesiveness.

• Conservatives make change to ensure order and social cohesiveness.

See Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick

Both Rand and Nozick believe that this will generate a strong state since people will not be reliant on the state for, i.e., money.

Thatcherism

Margaret Thatcher’s Thatcherism was a response to the 1970s She was in office 1979-90. Thatcherism is a form of new-right thinking.

Spending

Quote

“They’ve got the usual socialist disease. They’ve run out of other people’s money.”

• Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher believed in reduced spending. This quote represents that she saw government money as the tax payer’s money.

This can be seen with the a concept that she came up with: The British Inheritance.

Quote

“A man’s right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master…”

• Margaret Thatcher

This concept was the foundation for a large set of her politics.

Order

Believed in

Beliefs/Traits

• Raising productivity
• Creating jobs
• Reducing inflation (Monetarism)
• Reducing the size of the state (rolling back frontiers)
• Reducing the power of trade unions
• Privatisation of nationalised industries
• Increasing the wealth of the middle class
• Believed in a strong Britannia (Patriotism/Nationalism)
  • As seen with the Falkland war
• Individualism (hostility to “dependency culture”)
• Believed that the West could win the Cold War
  • Despite, i.e., the loss in Vietnam
• Believed in a strong government, but not a small government in all aspects
  • However she did believe in a small government, i.e., sold off a lot of nationalised companies
  • But she did not believe that the government should be small in the sense of order - hence a large focus on funding
• Anti-trade unionism
  • Suspicious of collectivism
• Pro-individualism
  • Saw tax as a restriction on individuals
  • Initially sold off nationalised companies to public individuals
    • However most public individuals sold off these shares, these companies are now mostly owned by private companies

Comparing One Nation and New Right

Example

In 1971, Rolls Royce was going to go bankrupt. It was one of the largest aeroplane/jet engine manufactures in the UK, the UK military depended on it, as well as 80,000 workers.

A One Nation conservative would have been pragmatic and helped fund them, although likely taking other precautions. A New Right conservative would have let them go bankrupt.