British politics without thatcher in the 80's

The Tories problem in recent years has been the age gap and a lack of ability to win the massive waves of Blair era immigrants.
Do you have evidence to back that up? Given that we are talking about migrants who have only arrived in the past ten years or so (an even shorter time period if you are literally just talking about the years that Blair was PM), then consider that some of these people will have returned home, and others will not have taken British citizenship or be registered to vote, then I'd imagine the proportion of the electorate who are recent migrants is quite small. They may have a wider issue with ethnic minorities, but I don't think its specific to those who arrived in the 'Blair era'.
 
Do you have evidence to back that up? Given that we are talking about migrants who have only arrived in the past ten years or so (an even shorter time period if you are literally just talking about the years that Blair was PM), then consider that some of these people will have returned home, and others will not have taken British citizenship or be registered to vote, then I'd imagine the proportion of the electorate who are recent migrants is quite small. They may have a wider issue with ethnic minorities, but I don't think its specific to those who arrived in the 'Blair era'.
I suppose that is fair. I was more referring to immigrants who arrived post 1980, and just conflated that with Blair. The ethnic minority vote is a big issue for the Tories.

One way to do a bit better with it would be to get a bit more socially conservative and respecting of local control and local religious institutions, leaving French style laicite concerns for UKIP. That brings other electoral risks however.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
While certainly the unions didn’t help, especially in the car industry, the main reason for the problems of firms like BL was bad management and poor products. Contemporary Fords and Vauxhall’s were just as likely to leave you stranded on the hard shoulder and the workforces of Fiat and Renault were just as strike prone. The difference was their cars were better products so that their owners were willing to tolerate the crap build quality and the extra wait for your car because Dagenham was on strike.

BL had the worst of all worlds, crap products, crap quality and crap industrial relations.
And the wrong form of intervention by both Labour and Tories. They focused too much on "who owns what", and too much on subsidizing failed companies rather than led them die and only support those who perform well (unlike Japan and South Korea). Britain also lacked performance-based discipline for firms receiving government support, which at the same time was the core element of East Asian industrial policy.
 
Most of the job losses in coal mining and heavy industry were inevitable due to inefficient and uncompetitive nature of British industry in the period.
I'm not sure I agree that most were inevitable. Certainly British industry in general was needed improvements in efficiency and competitiveness, with a curtailing of union power being a part of that. However it's possible that with reform it could have become competitive again and remained a key part of the British economy. As it was Thatcher ruthlessly crushed all British industry with apparent relish, and left us with an economy almost entirely dependant on services and the power of the city - something that has continually bit us on the arse with recessions, high levels of inflation and high interest rates.
 
I'm not sure I agree that most were inevitable. Certainly British industry in general was needed improvements in efficiency and competitiveness, with a curtailing of union power being a part of that. However it's possible that with reform it could have become competitive again and remained a key part of the British economy. As it was Thatcher ruthlessly crushed all British industry with apparent relish, and left us with an economy almost entirely dependant on services and the power of the city - something that has continually bit us on the arse with recessions, high levels of inflation and high interest rates.
It's down to output per man-hour, even if the output is reasonably high (compared to competitor countries) there were too many expensive, and often unproductive, people around.
 
Plenty of options with this idea given we have no defined POD.

Three possibilities immediately starting in early 1975 - in OTL Heath put himself up for re-election after the 1974 election defeats and was forced to resign after finishing behind Margaret Thatcher in the first leadership ballot. She won 130 to his 119 (16 for Hugh Fraser) and he considered his position so weakened as to stand down. His allies had not time to mount a coherent challenge and Thatcher swept the second ballot.

So, a first POD is simply Heath does better in the first ballot - if he wins 130 to Thatcher's 119 would he have gone to a second ballot (analogous to the 1990 result) or would she have withdrawn and he been re-elected unopposed. If Heath wins, the "Thatcherites" withdraw to the back benches but Heath wins in 1979 (don't forget his 1970 election manifesto was far more radical than Thatcher's in 1979 and basically goes "on and on" (I think I've done a TL about this somewhere else).

Another possibility is even if Heath wins more votes than Thatcher on the first ballot, he considers his position so undermined as to resign but offers his full support to Whitelaw who wins the second ballot. Heath remains in the Shadow Cabinet as FS under Whitelaw who becomes Prime Minister in 1979.

A third option is to have Keith Joseph run (as was the original intention) rather than Thatcher. He wins and becomes Prime Minister in 1979 with Thatcher as his Chancellor. I suspect eventually the Joseph-Thatcher relationship would have broken down leading to a new succession battle.
 

chrislondon

Banned
I feel a lot of the posts on this thread have been distorted by the the lies the Tories use to cover up what they did to Britain under Thatcher.
Her years saw massive quantities of public wealth sold off for a fraction of its value to buy popularity. More still sold off privately for bribes either personal or to party funds. All whilst our oil wealth was wasted paying people to rot on the dole to undermine her political opponents.
Britain faced three great disasters in the 20th century, WW1; WW2 and Thatcher.
As far as unions are concerned the problem was we had an Anglo-American business culture that thought if unions had a role at all it was reactive, facing a union culture that wanted a consultative planning role of the sort normal in both continental Europe and east Asia. Thatcher settled this by crushing the unions to an almost American level. As the States and Britain have suffered far more by de-industrialization than either continental Europe or east Asia I think this was an economic mistake as well as a moral and political evil/disaster.
 
One of the things that has recently struck me is how unconservative(in the British sense)Thatcher was. What does this mean for conservatism in Britain then? Someone earlier mentioned perhaps more "High Toryism" but that kind of politics requires the type of politician that was perhaps dead by the 80's anyway. With that said its hard to imagine the conservative pay being made up of entirely of one nation tories and the europhile economically and socially liberal Ken Clarke/Heseltine types. So with no libertarians/thatcherites could the Conservative party be more socially conservative whilst rejecting economic liberalism(again in the British sense-basically hitchenite)?

The way I see the Tory party has 2 main wings at the moment-a one nation pro(ish) Europe wing and a Thatcherite pro Brexit wing. Of course there are exceptions to this rule and a few smaller groupings that are slowly dying out-in social,traditional,moral conservatives and a few anachronistic high tories left. Also the most socially conservative are almost oxymoronically the most economically libertarian-eh Jacob Rees Mogg or John Redwood.

So with no thatcher a whole wing of the Tory party has been lost-there may still be a libertarian wing that may arise without Thacther,but assuming it doesn't which is far more interesting,what would the factions be in the TTL tory party be and what would be its primary ideology be?

List of Tory factions in my view
- Libertarians-(socially liberal,economically extremely liberal) eg Dan Hannan
- Thatcherites (socially slightly more conservative than libertarians but pretty liberal,economically liberal ) eg John Redwood
-Liberals(pro Europe,economically moderate) eg Ken Clarke
-One nation tories(socially liberal,embrace modernity,slightly more economically liberal than the liberal wing) eg David Cameron.
Minor wings
Social conservatives(speaks for itself,generally more economically left wing too-abandoning the party in droves) eg Peter Hitchens
High Tories(pratically died out-someone like Peter Tapsell could be described as such)

The point is without Thacther the party will have a completely different makeup and other than supporting the union and monarchy will have likely have little in common with the Tory party of OTL.(maybe a bit hyperbolic with hindsight).
 
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One of the things that has recently struck me is how unconservative(in the British sense)Thatcher was. What does this mean for conservatism in Britain then? Someone earlier mentioned perhaps more "High Toryism" but that kind of politics requires the type of politician that was perhaps dead by the 80's anyway. With that said its hard to imagine the conservative pay being made up of entirely of one nation tories and the europhile economically and socially liberal Ken Clarke/Heseltine types. So with no libertarians/thatcherites could the Conservative party be more socially conservative whilst rejecting economic liberalism(again in the British sense-basically hitchenite)?

The way I see the Tory party has 2 main wings at the moment-a one nation pro(ish) Europe wing and a Thatcherite pro Brexit wing. Of course there are exceptions to this rule and a few smaller groupings that are slowly dying out-in social,traditional,moral conservatives and a few anachronistic high tories left. Also the most socially conservative are almost oxymoronically the most economically libertarian-eh Jacob Rees Mogg or John Redwood.

So with no thatcher a whole wing of the Tory party has been lost-there may still be a libertarian wing that may arise without Thacther,but assuming it doesn't which is far more interesting,what would the factions be in the TTL tory party be and what would be its primary ideology be?

List of Tory factions in my view
- Libertarians-(socially liberal,economically extremely liberal) eg Dan Hannan
- Thatcherites (socially slightly more conservative than libertarians but pretty liberal,economically liberal ) eg John Redwood
-Liberals(pro Europe,economically moderate) eg Ken Clarke
-One nation tories(socially liberal,embrace modernity,slightly more economically liberal than the liberal wing) eg David Cameron.
Minor wings
Social conservatives(speaks for itself,generally more economically left wing too-abandoning the party in droves) eg Peter Hitchens
High Tories(pratically died out-someone like Peter Tapsell could be described as such)

The point is without Thacther the party will have a completely different makeup and other than supporting the union and monarchy will have likely have little in common with the Tory party of OTL.(maybe a bit hyperbolic with hindsight).
I don't know that the Thatcherite wing of the Tory Party would not exist without her becoming PM (though their might be less of them who are outright Brexiteers) it's just that the balance of power would be altered within the Tory Party to their disadvantage. The 'liberal' wing you have identified would be stronger too. But all the factions would still probably exist within the Tory Party, as they are the main right wing party, and so a lot of people from that side of politics will see it as their natural home, regardless of who is running the show. A bit like how the CDU has a Thatcherite wing despite being led by Merkel.
 
I was quite leftist in those days, being young & immature, but even i was shocked when i moved to South Wales & came across the culture in the steel industry.
Maybe 10,000 men were employed to do the work that maybe 4,000 could have done.
Thousands of men would clock on for work then turn round & go home or go to the pub. Pubs were supposed to close at 11pm but never did & the police never dared to enforce this, knowing that it wasn't possible. Nobody dared to challenge this situation out of fear of the union's power until Thatcher came along.
 
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