Britain in the 20th Century: Thatcherism, 1979-1990 - Professor Vernon Bogdanor

Margaret Thatcher sought to solve the deep-seated problems of the British state outside the parameters of the postwar settlement. The main ideological victims of the collapse of the postwar settlement were One Nation Conservatism, the paternalistic ethos of Churchill and Macmillan, and the belief in government intervention, the idea that governments could fine-tune the economy to secure full employment.
Margaret Thatcher's governments encouraged the spread of ownership so that Britain could become a property-owning democracy and a capital-owning democracy. Thatcherism seemed for a time to be in accordance with the trends of social change and by the end of the 20th century, Britain was a far more fluid and individualistic society than it had been in the immediate postwar years.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
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Пікірлер: 79

  • @GreshamCollege
    @GreshamCollege11 жыл бұрын

    It's our pleasure!

  • @CaitlinOtway
    @CaitlinOtway11 жыл бұрын

    fantastic, thanks so much for such great lectures!

  • @johnkeller6063
    @johnkeller60634 жыл бұрын

    These videos are great

  • @arjanv45
    @arjanv454 жыл бұрын

    Excellent lecture. Very good nuances to Thatcherism at the end.

  • @josephpanzarella1417
    @josephpanzarella14173 жыл бұрын

    Does anyone know why in The UK Argentina is called "The Argentine"? Everyone else calls it "Argentina" which is its name.

  • @jonathanmontgomery5178
    @jonathanmontgomery51783 жыл бұрын

    Wow at 24:00 - are these words describing 70s Britain or America in 2020?

  • @paulgavin3603
    @paulgavin36036 жыл бұрын

    I am amazed that so many presumably intelligent people think socialists are selfless

  • @fuzzlemacfuzz

    @fuzzlemacfuzz

    3 жыл бұрын

    @Paul Gavin the Nordic countries would disagree with you there

  • @gary-9340

    @gary-9340

    3 жыл бұрын

    Andy McQuoid The Nordic countries aren’t socialist

  • @ThePostalGril

    @ThePostalGril

    3 жыл бұрын

    socialists are the opposite of selfless. they want to steal my taxes to pay themselves. did you mean selfish?

  • @josephlancaster7997
    @josephlancaster79973 жыл бұрын

    Not " the beginning "of the end. But THE END...for good !! Or is that ..for evil ? That is...the triumph thereof...

  • @monsignor2943
    @monsignor29433 жыл бұрын

    To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the 'U-turn', I have only one thing to say: 'You turn [U-turn] if you want to. The lady's not for turning!'

  • @Potomacstud
    @Potomacstud11 жыл бұрын

    It works initially until they decided to do away with the redistribution of wealth altogether , that was when the shit hit the ceiling

  • @robertfeinberg748
    @robertfeinberg7483 жыл бұрын

    Thatcher's critique of the socialism in the Conservative party has been echoed by Ted Cruz's critique of the leadership of Mitch McConnell, who is about to be defeated. Cruz made his case in a floor speech in 2015 when he laid out the case that McConnell had represented Obama rather than Republicans.

  • @splinterbyrd
    @splinterbyrd3 жыл бұрын

    Thatcher took ailing back an ailing backward economy and turned it into one of the strongest economic powerhouses in the world. Unfortunately that economy was southeast Asia's.

  • @cant1rac
    @cant1rac11 жыл бұрын

    A country needs an effective means of making steel, the closure of ravenscraig, depleted this countries ablity, to produce for its self & an increased dependancy on imports with the fluctuation of international pricing there are points where the dommestic market is more expensive than the import price, prices fluctuate, Russia subsidised knowing in ten years it costs would go down it was wrong to destroy the uk's ablity to produce effectively the resources it needs for industry & manufacturing

  • @watchingyou245
    @watchingyou2454 жыл бұрын

    Vernon Bogdanor . How chippy can you get?

  • @cant1rac
    @cant1rac11 жыл бұрын

    she took a country that was too heavily dependant on industry and manufacturing with over powerful unions. took it to an equally heavily dependant and worse service industry and finacial district, with lower wages & degraded working rights the uk economy is deeply unbalanced but in the opposite direction. many false reason are given for a decline in our car industry, but no country in the world had a catastrophic collapse anything like britian, volkeswagen group, general motors are still strong

  • @bigg5582

    @bigg5582

    5 жыл бұрын

    Don't forget Tories errors on mass immigration.. just as bad as labour

  • @waynem2895

    @waynem2895

    5 жыл бұрын

    @@bigg5582 did the unions help the decline in the uk car industry? If not what did they do to help?

  • @navillus15
    @navillus159 жыл бұрын

    These video lectures are incredibly good, save the fact that they all seem to suffer from the twee audiences who treat the speaker as though he were a stand-up comic or something... It's NOT THAT FUNNY!! Actual comedies would surely make them explode...?!

  • @bankzie
    @bankzie8 жыл бұрын

    this guy loves thatcher

  • @RobbyHouseIV

    @RobbyHouseIV

    7 жыл бұрын

    I know I do!

  • @tubularbill

    @tubularbill

    5 жыл бұрын

    And I do too!

  • @th8257

    @th8257

    4 жыл бұрын

    He's actually a well known supporter of the Labour Party.

  • @jtgd

    @jtgd

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@mahakalavanilla6263 So you're going to ignore successful lefties because they don't fit your narrative ? Your mind gymnastics is astonishing

  • @paulkennelly4376
    @paulkennelly43765 жыл бұрын

    the beginning of the end of GREAT britain

  • @robdewey317

    @robdewey317

    5 жыл бұрын

    Yeah right. Ass

  • @allegra0

    @allegra0

    5 жыл бұрын

    The end started in the 1960s

  • @bananajoe090
    @bananajoe09011 жыл бұрын

    Thatcher didn't believe in the wide distribution of private property.

  • @1915july

    @1915july

    6 жыл бұрын

    Definitely the weakest of Prof Bogdanor's lectures . No mention of press deregulation enabling Murdoch & co to galvanise the worst instincts of the masses . Or the displacement of DG /BBC replaced by her stooge Marmaduke Hussey guilty of distorted editing of News broadcasts particularly during the miners strike. No mention of a paramilitary organised police force to be physically involved on the picket lines ; or the countanancing of forged police testimony on Hillsborough . No mention of using the convenient arrival of North Sea oil to fund unemployment and desimmate British industry . Little reference to the consequences of deregulation and the Big Bang in '87,92 and leading ultimately the gangster practices of the global economy towards the 2008 crash. Worst ; the recruitment of Lord Donaldson { Master of Rolls} to sequestrate the funds and property of the miners and subsequently Seaman's resistance whilst imposing restraint on N/A support for striking families { so much for taking back our laws } and more . "Nothing succeeds like failure " said Wilde. Thatcher was the luckiest and ultimately worst PM since WW2 ,the effects still apparent today only to be subsequently usurped by Cameron.

  • @waynem2895

    @waynem2895

    5 жыл бұрын

    @@1915july you raise good points. The talk is biased towards politics and economics.

  • @williamfrancis5367

    @williamfrancis5367

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@1915july. None of that explains why 43% of the country voted Conservative 1979-1987, which is the crux of the lecture. Hatred of Thatcher is justified but it blinds you to why people voted for her.

  • @williamfrancis5367

    @williamfrancis5367

    3 жыл бұрын

    Would do you call the council house sales and privatisations if not a broadening distribution of property? Inequality increased yes but inequality reduction was never the point. The aim of a popular capitalism was to increase the number of people with assets, as an alternative to nationalisation.

  • @RonJohn63
    @RonJohn639 жыл бұрын

    49:48 "this was the idea: to diffuse the ownership of property and capital". *WOW* Do people understand how *progressive* it is for an aristocratic country to peacefully transfer all that wealth from the few to the many?

  • @arcadianism

    @arcadianism

    8 жыл бұрын

    +RonJohn63 It would have been if that was what happened. What actually happened was a mass migration of wealth from the upper class to the upper middle class and the pauperization of everyone else.

  • @RonJohn63

    @RonJohn63

    8 жыл бұрын

    arcadianism _and the pauperization of everyone else._ I wonder how different things would have been if the unions hadn't been chock full of hard line socialists.

  • @arcadianism

    @arcadianism

    8 жыл бұрын

    Like Baron Frank Chapple of Hoxton head of the EETPU? Or like Joe Gormley head of the NUM who was an MI5 informant?

  • @RonJohn63

    @RonJohn63

    8 жыл бұрын

    arcadianism Arthur Scargill and his ilk.

  • @patavinity7673

    @patavinity7673

    8 жыл бұрын

    +RonJohn63 "aristocratic" Lol, no

  • @StephenHP62
    @StephenHP627 жыл бұрын

    A disappointingly uncritical account of the politics of Margaret Thatcher. On the basis of Prof. Bogdanor's account, one would never know why Mrs. Thatcher was hated by millions of people and remains a polarizing figure to this day. A full and balanced account needs to acknowledge that fact and to try to explain it.

  • @angelsaltamontes7336

    @angelsaltamontes7336

    5 жыл бұрын

    Mrs. Thatcher is hated by people who tend not only to hate a lot, but to want to share that they hate. We are going to hell in this dynamic. Those folk DON'T CARE A SNIT about whatever OTHERS hate, or anything those others feel. Those folk are vile narcissists, & mean people to boot. Funny THEY were the ones who at one time intro'd, sanctimoniously, the snarky phrase "Mean People Suck". -----Mrs. Thatcher was a great and gracious lady who SAVED BRITAIN against a claque of Usual Suspects who fully intended to wreck AND steal it.

  • @MrRedcarpet02

    @MrRedcarpet02

    4 жыл бұрын

    He necer mentioned she had a secret deindustrialization policy. Very undemocratic. True he pointed out the 1979 manifesto was sikent on privatization, but not just that!

  • @williamfrancis5367

    @williamfrancis5367

    3 жыл бұрын

    Yet Thatcher still won three elections. It's more important therefore to ask why she was liked.

  • @williamfrancis5367

    @williamfrancis5367

    3 жыл бұрын

    @@MrRedcarpet02. Very secret? Thatcher was the most committed monetarist of the age and was fallen the early Heath line about letting lame-duck industries fail. Deindustrialisation was the implication, but no means the intent (stated or otherwise). Also; "The British people strongly oppose Labour's plans to nationalise yet more firms and industries such as building, banking, insurance, pharmaceuticals and road haulage. More nationalisation would further impoverish us and further undermine our freedom. We will offer to sell back to private ownership the recently nationalised aerospace and shipbuilding concerns, giving their employees the opportunity to purchase shares. We aim to sell shares in the National Freight Corporation to the general public in order to achieve substantial private investment in it. We will also relax the Traffic Commissioner licensing regulations to enable new bus and other services to develop-particularly in rural areas-and we will encourage new private operators. Even where Labour have not nationalised they interfere too much. We shall therefore amend the '975 Industry Act and restrict the powers of the National Enterprise Board solely to the administration of the Government's temporary shareholdings, to be sold off as circumstances permit. We want to see those industries that remain nationalised running more successfully and we will therefore interfere less with their management and set them a clearer financial discipline in which to work."- Conservative manifesto 1979.

  • @thomasboyd1642
    @thomasboyd16426 жыл бұрын

    Thanks for this. I like Mrs Thatcher and she was at right place at correct time. Her policy agenda is still in place. Privatisation, control of the trade unions. The right to buy your council housing in England 1980 Act housing. Also she won Falkland conflict or war 1982. She won 1983 general election with 397 MP's conservatives. Dennis Thatcher was a great help to Mrs Thatcher she mild to present conservative government today.

  • @ian_b

    @ian_b

    4 жыл бұрын

    @Ian Brown She did what needed to be done. The post-war consensus ran the economy into a hole.

  • @MrRedcarpet02

    @MrRedcarpet02

    4 жыл бұрын

    Why support privatisations that failed? Higher charges, lower service quiality

  • @Denis-tg6jw

    @Denis-tg6jw

    3 жыл бұрын

    She didn't win the Falklands war. Soldiers died and had parts of their bodies blown off so that she could win an election that she would otherwise have lost. Callaghan's government had promptly sent a naval force to warn off Argentina in 1976. Thatcher did nothing, but she sure knew how to make the best of a bad thing.

  • @cruella180
    @cruella18011 жыл бұрын

    party time soon

  • @daverogers816
    @daverogers8165 жыл бұрын

    A great woman

  • @bonadesign
    @bonadesign3 жыл бұрын

    37.55 "nuclear powered ship HMS Endurance". Not true. This vessel was launched in Denmark in 1956 and was powered by 1 diesel engine. Intellectuals like Bogdanor do not inhabit the real world and are prone to filling students' heads with fantasy. His lectures may have some entertainment value on youtube but are inherently lacking in accuracy.

  • @mohanankvs8732
    @mohanankvs87323 жыл бұрын

    Margaret Thatcher was one of the greatest leader ever Britain produced ; her leadership was attained a world lever level achievement fame and name of world leader recignitiinion

  • @mynameisaichlinn
    @mynameisaichlinn10 жыл бұрын

    dong dong the witch is dead

  • @nersestatintsyan5687
    @nersestatintsyan56879 жыл бұрын

    All those anti thatcher people are retarded how does it feel living in a welfare state today Britain with our pound purchasing power going down everyone knows that the 80s the economy in the UL was booming you Never had it so good was the slowgon

  • @FurryAminal
    @FurryAminal9 жыл бұрын

    Awful woman, she unleashed the crass that finished the ruin that the unions began.

  • @Potomacstud
    @Potomacstud11 жыл бұрын

    Simply put , Thatcherism is Akin to Darth Vader taking over Uk ,