‘An -ism has been named after her’: Charles Moore on Baroness Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher was always the candidate from the outside, both because of her background and because of her sex, and so it was an extraordinary event in the middle of the 1970s that what was considered the stuffiest of the political parties chose her and once that had happened, of course it was transformative. It was transformative, not only for the Conservative party but much more importantly for the country.

Her approach to industrial relations was very controversial. The model that the Tories tended to have at that time was that you had to have some sort of compact with the union leaders in order to hold wages down and prevent inflation and she realised that the conflict with the unions that had been going on so badly in the 1970s had to be faced and won, and it was not part of the job of trade unions to try and run the economic policy of the country.