ACTION SOCiAlist debacle seen over the Westland affair? Furthermore why were the resignations of Heseltine and Brittan, and the discrediting of Thatcher, only the culminadramatically in the Westland affair?
The internal disasters have come thick and fast.
First, immediately following the election, Parkinson resignation.
Then there was the debacle surrounding the bill to GLC metropolitan councils which cost Patrick Jenkin his job. This was followed Lies bay brodda on broadcast fiasco over student grants. More seriously still the endless leaks, retreats advances, over the welfare state review.
All these preceded the treer the Westland affair. tremendous split Oniy at one time, during the miners' strike, has the second Thatcher government given an impression of unity coherence.
The press evel invented a special word for these 'banana skin factor'. Sup- disasters the for unaccountable the Thatcher government had I casulls become prone to irrationa self-imposed misalla takes.
For the more sophisticated press the greek word 'hubris' preceding cessive disaster - • was dragged in.
But really the disasters, scandals, which have accompanied this cover. ment were entirely predictable predicted. Because Thatcher's 'landslide' in June 1983 was a fake. It was not a product of an authentic landslide of support TOI but was • Dally produced by a completely undemocratic electoral system and by the rise of the SDP In fact Thatcher's vote fell by almost 700,000 between 1979 and 1983. Thatcher's 42 per cent of the vote in 1983 was the lowest proportion of vOLt received by a governmet with a safe majority parliament British history.
vote was part of a long term decline of support the pare The signine of significance of the vote for the Tories in 1983 was precisely that i meant that Thatcher had not won mass support for She had not won sup port for demolition of the health service, she had not won mass support she mass unemplovment.
had not won support for her attacks on democratic rights.
The government was disaster prone in many in stances directly because it was not genuinely popular. Thatcher propos ed abols! GLO because the Tories Arguments for The 1979 Thatcher cabinet: where have they all gone now?
not win an election against Livingstone.
Po increased, and attacks increased, and attacks on democratic liberties intensified, because was lu genuine popular support for what Thatcher was doing, and repression was the only solution.
There nothing mysterious in why the second Thatcher government was accident prone. It was because in politics you cannot cheat the real relation of forces. If Thatcher had gained a real popular mandate she have put through her without serious opposition. But inevery stage she met popular opposition to what she proposed - and was forced promise. This is why there is the continual complaint in the serious press that the Thatcher government has "lost its way'.
Only on those issues which were absolutely vital and central to the ruling above all defeating the miners and weakening Thatcher government ap For cohe resa dvision, rest division, reflecting different terests within the ruling class and different on how to confront the working prevailed within the government.
Thatcher herself necessarily had to KCCU these forces together increasingly by ¡allbula tion autocracy precisely the grubby dealings suppression whose details came out Heseltine They were a product of a government without a real popular mandate.
nevertheless, looked powerful? For two reasons. Firstly because of the support given to her on every crucial issue by the most openly by David Uwen Secondly, most importantly, because of the total failure of the Labour leadership under Neil Kinnock, and of the TUC, to take the offensive against her.
Above all around the miners • but also around the fight in local government possibility deliver devastating. blows against Thatcher. But both cases Neil Kinnock's leadership directly aided her. It is Kinnock and the TUC, with the that have given Thatcher government its impression of support and Dowe The disasters which have progressively befallen the Thatcher government are not mysterious or due skins'. The disasters were written into second Thatcher government's lack of authentic mass support revealed in 1983 After ! perio of gradua a1101l1 down around individual issues, and an enforced and ge nuine unity when 'CO fronted with the miners, the real situation of the government has exploded. That is what lies behind the violence of the crisis within the Tory party provoked by Westland 'By far the best book that has been published about electoral politics for a very long time' - Tony Benn "The best short handbook on the Conservative Party that currently exists' Andrew Gamble, Marxism Today "Essential for any activists bookshelf' -Available from The Other Bookshop, PO Box 50, London N1 2XP, £2.95. Cheques payable to IMRS
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HOW COULD a government elected in 1983 with one of the largest majorities in parliament in British history be brought within three years to the point of
tion of a series of internal political disasters which have affected this government since it was elected? What was the base of the genuinely authoritarian and anti-democratic — even by capitalist standards - character of this government which came out so
Heside resign in so. Brittan.
The facts behind the Tory crisis