A good beginning
Now that Parliament has finished for the summer, and Much of the autumn too, we can sit back and consider the first term of Mrs Thatcher's first administration. The Prime Minister herself has found no holiday respite from the cares and complications of office in Lusaka, and judgment Upon her own performance must be withheld until we see how she emerges from her African test. Her previous overseas sallies have been competent enough: she charmed Europe's Strasbourgeoisie with a Common Market walkabout and managed to impress the Japanese at the Tokyo economic summit. She got no change from either gathering, but she was not expected to; she seems to have given nothing much away, and to have served notice that she intends to pursue the British interest. There is nothing new In such an intention, although it will be a novel experience if in her foreign policy she manages to carry it out. It is not yet clear whether she, or Lord Carrington and Sir Ian Gilmour, are to determine that policy, and whether her fierce Instincts or their much milder inclinations will prevail. She may not have the desire, or the strength and the determination, to be radical abroad as well as at home.
Certainly in domestic policy Mrs Thatcher's first administration has got off to its promised radical start. There has been remarkably little shilly-shallying at home. Pew governments have been so eager and so swift to redeem their election pledges. The manifesto upon which Mrs Thatcher's Tory Party won the election has become the blueprint in which the lines of her economic and industrial strategy are clearly drawn. It has been pleasantly and surprisingly easy to anticipate ministerial pronouncements by referring to the appropriate passages in the manifesto. Sir Geoffrey Howe's budget set the tone as well as the scene. It :A'a, not as cautious as many had feared, and the Chancellor s gloomy reading of the British economy has intelligently darkened as he digs into the books and broods over each new crop of statistics. After him, in his turn, each c, conomic minister has stepped forward: regional cuts here, Industrial cuts there; local government economies; health 11111111.1k service stringencies; social security benefit scrutinies.
It has been most invigorating to hear and most gratifying to observe the squeals of pain from those not yet hurt by the cuts. For none has yet been hurt. The cuts have not been cut. They are intentional, no more; and, when examined, the intentions are more to stop spending from increasing than to reduce spending. The frontiers of the state have not yet been rolled back. The government is using all its energies to prevent those frontiers from rolling inexorably forwards, and it is the expenditure of these energies, not their effects, that our report upon Mrs Thatcher's first administration's first term very favourably remarks. 'Shows great understanding', we also note, of Mr David Howell's apparent determination not to do anything in particular about the shortage of petrol; 'most promising', of Mr John Nott's stylish advocacy of competition; and 'stalwart', of Mr John Bifien's and Mr Nigel Lawson's threatened axe-wielding. Sir Keith Joseph is entitled to be pleased with his devotees, and they relieved with him, for he has not let them down. Not yet.
He may never do so. The Thatcher administration may fulfil its promise. We hope it does. Great resolution will be required. Even Mr Jim Prior's halting steps towards trade union reform are encountering most determined opposition, not least from amongst its trade union beneficiaries. Already the public service unions are up in arms against what they see as a sea of cuts. The Labour Party, although in turmoil itself, retains the power to turn most effectively upon its adversary. The public's opinion is wary and lacks enthusiasm. What Mrs Thatcher's first administration is about is change. She is trying to stop things in order to allow other things to start. She and her ministers are like a captain in charge of a great tanker which takes up miles of ocean to respond to the helm. They try to shift the ship's direction. We do not know, any of us, whether the ship will respond. We do not even know how firm and constant the steering will be. What we note, at the end of term, is firm purpose evii.ent at home, and signs of infirmity developing abroad. A good beginning, all in all.
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