No Thatcher

Susano

Banned
Well, Brandt's office was infiltrated why he was reaching out to them, talk about a janus faced strategy.
Err, yes, he did step down because of that, but he surely did not have his foreign polciy based upon the plant. Worst he did (and that was bad enogh) wa ssending a lot of insider information to Moscow. The way you present it here is just untrue and conservative propaganda.

This just brings us to the question of why they reformed - an expensive war in Afghanistan, a new arms race, firmer western leaders all come to mind.
Internal party politics, mostly. Afghanistan played a role, yes (but then they started thatw ar out of their own choise, just like the USA with Vietnam), but the USSR government had been oblivious of its financial downwards spiral for decades. That fact surely didnt change just because Reagan and Thatcher entered the scene.

In the end, the West had absolutely NOTHING, nothing whatsoever to do with the downfall of the USSR.
 
Err, yes, he did step down because of that, but he surely did not have his foreign polciy based upon the plant. Worst he did (and that was bad enogh) wa ssending a lot of insider information to Moscow. The way you present it here is just untrue and conservative propaganda..
The point is the naivety it reveals, and that excessive accomodation was not going to be an effective strategy, and the response on the Soviet/East German side was merely tactical.

An aside:At least the SPD did not take Stasi bribes like the Christian Democrats.

Internal party politics, mostly. Afghanistan played a role, yes (but then they started thatw ar out of their own choise, just like the USA with Vietnam), but the USSR government had been oblivious of its financial downwards spiral for decades. That fact surely didnt change just because Reagan and Thatcher entered the scene.

In the end, the West had absolutely NOTHING, nothing whatsoever to do with the downfall of the USSR.

The whole point of the USSR was to compete with the West - economically, technologically, militarily and indeed morally, once it no longer could its rationale was fatally undermined. Unlike other dictatorships it was not content with cosy stagnation. The more the West upped the ante the more internal pressure there was for change.
 

Susano

Banned
The point is the naivety it reveals, and that excessive accomodation was not going to be an effective strategy, and the response on the Soviet/East German side was merely tactical.

An aside:At least the SPD did not take Stasi bribes like the Christian Democrats.
What naivety? And the strategy worked, didnt it? Looking back, pease was remained, and the USSR did eventually fall down.
And it ended the idiotically expensive Hallstein Doctrine.

The whole point of the USSR was to compete with the West - economically, technologically, militarily and indeed morally, once it no longer could its rationale was fatally undermined. Unlike other dictatorships it was not content with cosy stagnation. The more the West upped the ante the more internal pressure there was for change.
You shouldnt take Soviet propaganda for reality. Liek most dictatorships, the uSSR was quiet capable of seperating the fiction it fed to the people and reality... but even if youre right, then the West simply won by having a more competitive sytsem, and ot because of the personal politcial actions of two western leaders!
 
Americans should note that Thatcher 'solved' inflation by creating 3 million unemployed and destroying many businesses (including my father's which had survived for over a hundred years before the Thatcher ERROR.

She was only able to finance this because the Treasury had a huge amount from North Sea Oil.
 
Thankfully back to the topic.

Please avoid further discussion about the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern European Communism, unless you want to start a spinoff thread.
 
Well back to the question in hand. Thatcher aside, how strong was the New Right in the Conservative Party in the late 1970's? Obviously it wasn't all down to our dear old lovable Maggie but she was certainly an imposing figure.

I'm doubting the Wet Tories would be in charge regardless, but would a far less charismatic, "strong-headed", iconic leader step in by default? Would the Falklands have never happened, been let go or lost possibly? If whoever is around and goes after the Unions and a major confrontation takes place similar to OTL, I can see the strikers winning through- it was pretty close call as it was and without the Iron Lady, well I can see Downing Street backing off.

What of Labour? Without the major support and draw of Thatcher, reformism in the Party might be far less encouraged or popular. The SDP-Lib Alliance, although very little chance of winning power themselves might make far larger gains, a possible shaky Lib-Lab Pact in the mid-late 80's?

I dunno, can VJ or someone with greater knowledge mold my dribblings into a actual TL?
 
Americans should note that Thatcher 'solved' inflation by creating 3 million unemployed and destroying many businesses (including my father's which had survived for over a hundred years before the Thatcher ERROR.

She was only able to finance this because the Treasury had a huge amount from North Sea Oil.

Actually unemployment rose throughout the world during this period, and much of what happened would have happened anyway in the early 80s, only under alternative governments with nothing to show for it whatsoever.

North Sea oil and gas revenues had been flowing in for the best part of a decade of course.
 
Well let's narrow it by saying she meets with an accident before becoming PM, say during the '79 election campaign. (And no, I don't wish Thatcher dead.) How might the election have gone and the rest of British politics in the '80s?

Well, that's a rather peculiar one. Obviously, if Mrs T dies around the time of the election, the Tories will be boosted by the sympathy factor; we can assume they win at least by as many seats as in OTL, probably more - Thatcher was not an electoral asset to the Tories at this point and more people favoured Callaghan personally.

As to who would take over - well, at this point it's almost certainly not going to be someone wholly sympathetic to her viewpoint. The only person who was as such in the shadow cabinet was called Keith Joseph. KJ might have a run for the leadership himself, but after his 'eugenics speech' he would almost certainly fail, even if he can gather the support for an actual run. The main candidate of the right would be Geoffrey Howe, who would have better prospects than Joseph but, being largely untested in office, would probably meet the same fate.

In all likelihood it would have been Willie Whitelaw or (if Whitelaw does not contest, which is quite possible) Jim Prior. So the party would be lead from the centre/left. This could have all sorts of consequences.

To what extent this would abort Thatcherism is mixed; some of what we associate with Thatcher was not neccessarily hers and would have been purused by probably any Tory government. For example, council house sales - fulfilling Anthony Eden's very One-Nation idea of a 'property owning Democracy' - was an idea which originated on the left of the party and which she was initially sceptical of. Privatisation would probably still go ahead, but it would only be tentative and incremental. Water, Telecoms, and the other utilities would very likely be still kept close to the bosom of the state.

The handling of the economy would certainly be different (Perhaps with Peter Walker as Chancellor) - it's unlikely that the austere monetarism of the 1979-1982 period would have been undertaken, so economically things would look more like the 1970's than what we associate with the 1980's - managable levels of unemployment, fluctuating inflation, a still significant manufacturing sector. You would not have bust but you would probably not have boom either.

Other things might go differently as well; most of the Tory Party was determined to pass trade union reform after the humiliation of the Heath government, but few had the total resolve of Thatcher and some sort of 'compromise' might be arrived at, or reform might be only incremental. The Unions would probably not be smashed politically as they were by the miners strike.

The Falklands too - would such a government be quite as intent on 'ramping down' the defence budget as OTL's was as part of it's policy of monetarist austerity, leading to the withdrawl of the relevant navy vessels before the invasion? Would it actually put more credance on the subtle hints Argentina was dropping? Butterflies could be significant here. The government would be more pro-European, in approach if not significantly in policy, and perhaps the main campaign cause for the excluded right-wing of the Tory party might remain Northern Irish Unionism rather longer than it did in OTL.

In terms of other parties, the effects are probably beyond estimation, but it seems likely that the SDP-Alliance would not be as significant as it was in OTL, riding as it did on the back of the extreme polarisation of the two main parties in this period; equally, Labour might not be as humiliated as it was at the 1983 election in OTL, and if that goes hand in hand with no miners strike, that could be a very significant check on reform. The tone of the Tories would be very different, and less confrontational, and those figures who we associate with Thatcher - Cecil Parkinson, Norman Tebbit, etc - would not be prominent players early on, if at all.

So politics would progress, but it would not be the total break with the past which we associate with this period in all parties and the economy, and it would still be recognisable as a post-war system in many respects.
 
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No Thatcher..

We don't need to kill off Margaret Thatcher - there's a much neater TL. In the autumn of 1978, James Callaghan, despite some promising polls, decided NOT to call a General Election.

The industrial anarchy of the "Winter of Discontent" paved the way for the collapse of the Callaghan Government in March 1979 and its subsequent defeat leaving Margaret Thatcher in power in May.

Instead, let's have Callaghan call the election for early November 1978. After a difficult campaign, Labour is returned with a majority of 12. The Conservatives, many of whom had little faith in Thatcher, turn on their defeated leader in the spring of 1980 and force a contest.

Thatcher narrowly won the first ballot but Peter Walker polled strongly and received support from Jim Prior and Ian Gilmour. On March 16th 1980, Margaret Thatcher resigned as Conservative leader.

In summary, Callaghan retired in 1982 and Denis Healey became Prime Minister but he lost the 1984 election to Walker's Conservatives who adopted a strongly pro-European line, joining the ERM in 1986.

The Conservatives were re-elected in 1988 but the ERM policy of shadowing the Deutschmark led to high interest rates which undermined the property boom of the early and mid 80s. In May 1992, the Walker Government won a third term but as a minority Government as Labour and the Liberals failed to agree an alternative Government.

In September 1992, the Walker Government collapsed in the aftermath of the ejection from the ERM. The Government lost a Confidence vote in the Commons and in the subsequent election, John Smith won a majority of 70 with the Liberals gaining fifty seats from the shattered Conservatives.

Smith's death in May 1994 paved the way for Gordon Brown to become Prime Minister. Labour won a large second majority in 1996 and a third term in 2000 but ran into huge problems when Brown opted to support the Bush Administration in its plan to invade Iraq.

The Iraq War was vehemently opposed by Liberal leader Paddy Ashdown and when forty-five Labour MPs defected to the Liberals in October 2003, the Brown Government fell.

The 2003 election produced the greatest upheaval since the 1920s with the Liberals emerging as the largest party in the new Parliament. Paddy Ashdown became Prime Minister of a new Liberal-Conservative coalition which swiftly moved to introduce PR.

The first PR election for Westminster in 2007 left the Alliance of Liberals and Social Democrats backed by the Greens as the largest bloc.
 
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