2012/05/10 by Florence Sutcliffe‐Braithwaite · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Political and Economic history of UK and US #Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism #Social Policy and Reform Studies
paper · doi:10.1017/s0018246x12000118
openalex publication_date 2012/05/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/19
ABSTRACT After 1945, neo-liberal thinkers and think-tanks in the US and UK outlined different state welfare systems for the poor, such as Milton Friedman's negative income tax. These were underpinned by a rational, economistic conception of human nature. Between 1975 and 1979, Thatcher's Conservative party abandoned attempts to develop comprehensive, state-led, paternalistic schemes to tackle poverty. Thatcherites focused instead on creating what they saw as a rational tax/benefit system which would provide a safety-net for the poor, but encourage effort and thrift. They attempted to marginalize the importance of state welfare for the middle classes, to re-invigorate the ‘bourgeois virtues’ which had flourished in Victorian Britain. A family-centred, moralistic individualism underpinned Thatcherite policies; this individualism was not precisely congruent with that of neo-liberal theorists. Its roots lay in personal sources (particularly Methodism), as well as home-grown discourses on poverty and a Hayekian fear of the state. Though Thatcherites took ideas from diverse sources, their political project had a single guiding purpose: the moral (and, secondarily, economic) rejuvenation of Britain. Thatcherism was, thus, an ‘ideology’ in the sense used by Michael Freeden.