2014/05/22 by Stephen G. Evans · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Cabinet (room) #Criticism #Government (linguistics) #History #Law #Optimal distinctiveness theory #Political and Economic history of UK and US #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Public administration #Sociology #Thatcherism
paper · doi:10.1111/1750-0206.12102
openalex publication_date 2014/05/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
It is argued here that the younger generation of One Nation Conservatives made a concerted effort to conform to the requirements of the free market agenda of the Thatcher governments during the 1980s. This served to distinguish them from the older generation of wets who had preceded them in the cabinet and who had been more inclined to engage in coded criticism of that agenda. The younger One Nation Conservatives knew that they had to conform if they wanted to hold office and the problems which B ritain faced gave them a structural, as well as a personal, motive for conformity. Their willingness to conform made them important members of the second and third Thatcher governments. They provided a renewed radical impetus to government policy in the mid and late 1980s, which culminated in the introduction of the community charge or poll tax, and they possessed the communication skills needed to promote those policies in public. The efforts which the younger generation of One Nation Conservatives made to conform in the sphere of domestic economic policy were undone, after Thatcher had been replaced by M ajor in N ovember 1990, by the issue on which they retained their distinctiveness: Europe. Their continued expression of pro‐ E uropean views became a problem for them after Thatcher had recoiled from the prospect of economic and monetary union in the late 1980s, because it proved to those on the right of the Conservative Party that they were not really ‘one of us’ at all.