POLITICS
Time to tell the truth about those famous Thatcher majorities
BRUCE ANDERSON
For many years, the advocates of propor- tional representation have been complaining about the British electoral system; for almost as many years, no one has been lis- tening. Proportional representation must be the dullest political issue in recent history. But the advocates of PR do have one strong point in their favour, though they have been very bad at making it. Since the war at least, the entire analysis of British pol- itics has been distorted. Myths have replaced facts: winning electoral percentages have been anthropomorphised, as if they repre- sented the will of the British people speaking with a single voice and as if the triumph was inevitable, however slender its margin.
The problem goes back to Labour's 1945 victory. Folklorist historians have claimed that at the end of the war the British people decided on a new socialist dispensation. The implication is that Mr Attlee muffed his chance; that if he had made a proper use of his mandate, Labour would not have lost in 1951, and Britain would have achieved socialism.
This is nonsense, as a cursory examination of the statistics will show. In 1945, Mr Attlee won only 8 per cent more of the votes than Mr Churchill. That was hardly an over- whelming figure, and if the total potential electorate is taken into consideration, the gap is even less impressive. Attlee won the support of just over a third of the electoral roll, while Churchill fell below 30 per cent. But one third is not a new dispensation, any more than the British people turned their back on a New Jerusalem in 1951. All that happened was that a swing became a round- about.
Let us move on to 1964: Wilson versus Home. Yet again, the British people are supposed to have made a watershed choice, rejecting the outmoded in favour of the newfangled. In fact, Labour's share of the vote was only 0.3 per cent higher than it had been in 1959, when the Tories won by 100 seats. Home lost because around one tenth of the Tories' 1959 percentage switched to the Liberals. Even while voting was taking place, the Chinese were exploding an atom bomb while the Politburo was sacking Mr Khrushchev. Had these events occurred ear- lier, the resulting uncertainty might just have tipped the margin in Sir Alec's favour, in which case subsequent British political histo- ry would have been different. The shifts on the swingometer are explained not by tidal forces, but by nails and horseshoes.
The myths are not all left-wing. In 1979, Mrs Thatcher achieved her greatest electoral triumph in percentage terms: her vote was half a per cent higher than Alec Douglas- Home's 1964 figure. From then on, it was downhill; in 1983, her vote was 1 per cent below Sir Alec's. This not only resulted in the Tories' largest post-war majority; it was also the most inexplicable post-war result.
In 1964, most people thought that Harold Wilson was much cleverer than Sir Alec another myth — and that he represented intellectual fashion (which proves that fash- ion has nothing to do with intellect). In 1983, at least as regards her main opponent, Michael Foot, those balances had been entirely reversed in Margaret Thatcher's favour. Not only was dear old Footy a more implausible premier than even the satirists had thought Home to be: Mrs Thatcher was fighting on much more favourable demo- graphic territory than the Tories had enjoyed in 1964. The number of home-own- ers was growing, and with them, the size of the middle class. Labour had always depend- ed on manual workers and municipal hous- ing tenants for its votes; as their numbers fell, the Tories should have seized the chance to build a new coalition at least as dominant as the Roosevelt Democrats. They did not do so; they merely won 42,4 per cent of the vote. In all the circum- stances, and irrespective of the outcome in terms of seats, that was an appallingly bad result.
This leads on to another myth: that Mrs Thatcher secured a significant increase in working-class Tory support; the so-called Cgs. There is only one problem with that thesis: an earlier absence of evidence. It is true that there was a change in the nature of Tory working-class support. As the old fash- ioned deferential working-class Tories — Disraeli's angels in marble — died out, they were being replaced by new aspirational It's creepy, have you noticed that you never see a turkey with a zimmer frame.' Tory voters: Essex man. This explains why the Tories were winning seats in Hertford- shire, London and Essex, while losing ground in Glasgow, Manchester, and Birm- ingham. But Mrs Thatcher did not secure a substantial net increase in Tory working- class support; she merely recovered some of Ted Heath's losses.
There is one inexorable conclusion from the election results of the 1980s: that despite her majorities and her triumphs, Margaret Thatcher was an unpopular Prime Minister. Throughout her period in office, the Tories consistently underperformed, scraping along at 42 per cent when they should have been much nearer 50 per cent. This is not intend- ed as a criticism of the Lady: on the con- trary. In all their disputes, she was right and the populace was wrong. Their disapproval of her was as unwise as a desperately ill patient blaming his ailments on his doctor's diagnosis. But the British patient did try to reject Dr Thatcher's remedies; Thatcherism only had shallow roots in public opinion.
There is a simple explanation for this. The middle classes were happy to support those aspects of Thatcherism — tax-cuts, privatisa- tion share-issues at bargain prices — which helped them to become effortlessly better- off. They were not nearly as keen on her more basic message: that in the long run, effortlessness and better-offness were incompatible; prosperity could only be achieved in the market-place.
Mrs Thatcher accelerated the transition from status to contract: from a society in which people's economic standing is deter- mined by who they are, to one in which it depends on what they do. Many traditional Tories found this deeply unsettling. They were happy for the lower orders to be on contract; happy, indeed to buy the goods and services which they required on a con- tract basis. But their own contribution to society was far too valuable to be assessed in such a vulgar way.
That reaction would have defeated Mrs Thatcher, but for one thing: the incompe- tence of the Opposition throughout her period. This no longer applies, which is why Mr Major is in trouble. But we will never understand the Tories' problems in the early 1990s unless we recognise the good fortune that they enjoyed throughout the Eighties.
Bruce Anderson is now political columnist of The Spectator.
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