The Thatcher revolution.

The Thatcher Revolution

MARGARET THATCHER, quite possibly the Woman of the Century, hung the Left out to dry at the annual Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool. She has in mind nothing less than the reshaping of British political and economic life as that has been understood since 1945, by Labour and Tory alike.

She told a cheering audience that "free enterprise and competition' had led to a "national revival' since she became prime minister in 1979. She said that the Conservative Party must now begin to dismantle key socialist bastions in the local councils. "We will free tenants from their dependence on council landlords. We will free parents to choose the schools they want for their children.'

This unprecedented three-term prime minister began by cleaning the Butskellites out of positions of power in her party--the expression amalgamating liberal Conservative Rab Butler and Labour's Hugh Gaitskell. Defeating Ted Heath for leadership, she took on the unions and broke the power of Arthur Scargill's coal miners. She was working with the grain of history and demography, as more and more working-class employees left unskilled jobs for the service and tech sectors. She sold off nationalized firms to private investors, and publicly owned housing to private owners. Individual share-ownership went up. Her modernization is bound to creep elsewhere, into the depressed areas of Wales and Scotland. There will be increased privatization of the National Health Service and the local school systems, and an opening up of television channels. She is not beloved. She is admired and respected.

Under Thatcher, England, which was a socialist pioneer after World War II, certainly appears to be leading the way out of socialism and all of its assumptions. The Thatcher revolution rolls on, and, yes, on into the twenty-first century.