Never Wobbly

BOOKS

Statism's enemy: principled, charismatic and infuriatingly sure of herself.

By VINCENT CARROLL
The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com
NOVEMBER 18, 2008

Conservatives of a fatalistic bent -- their numbers this month have swollen -- like to depress themselves with the maxim that government programs never perish. Statism's relentless march can be checked at times but rarely beaten back. Just look, they say, at those New Deal relics known as farm programs. And then they see Time magazine's cover this week -- Barack Obama pictured as FDR, with the cover line "The New New Deal" -- and they head for the window ledge.

But even those who think this way must realize that their thesis has holes -- whatever did happen to the Civil Aeronautics Board, anyway? -- and that it ignores the experience of many less developed nations where market reforms have been embraced. But the greatest refutation of their dour outlook can be expressed in a single name: Margaret Thatcher.


'There Is No Alternative'
By Claire Berlinski
(Basic Books, 386 pages, $27.95)

When the Conservative Party came to power in 1979, Claire Berlinski reminds us in " 'There Is No Alternative,' " Britain was "widely regarded -- choose your favorite cliché -- as the Sick Man of Europe, an economic basket case, ungovernable, and a living warning to Americans that the wages of imperial sin is death." Tax rates were not merely high; they were -- at 98% on some "unearned" income -- confiscatory. Unions were not merely powerful; they were seemingly immune to even government challenge. Work stoppages were strangling industry, while inflation was on a tear.

Mrs. Thatcher, the daughter of a lower-middle-class grocer, was poised to administer a large dose of free-market therapy. Ms. Berlinski sets out to tell us why Mrs. Thatcher was able to prevail against long odds and why her saga is still relevant today. The Conservative Party had trumpeted free-market economics before its triumph in 1970, after all, but Ted Heath reversed course in the face of surging unemployment and a chorus of savage criticism. Why didn't Mrs. Thatcher wilt, too?

In part, we learn, because the woman was infuriatingly sure of herself. Her enemies found her condescending, arrogant, moralistic and ruthless. And indeed at times she could be all of those things, even if they were not her essence -- even if she had charisma and judgment, too, and tact when she needed it (with Ronald Reagan, for example). Her confidence is hard to explain -- "preternatural," Ms. Berlinski calls it -- but was rooted in an absolute belief that the socialism undermining her nation's economy was not just wrong but evil because of its corrosive effects on the human spirit. "I hate communists," she once declared to a visiting Congolese Marxist and his startled translator.

Mrs. Thatcher's stubborn certitude was on display repeatedly in her 11 years as prime minister: during the anxious days of the Falklands War (we tend to forget that it was not a "walkover"); at the height of the government's showdown with the National Union of Mineworkers; in the early stage of her government's laissez-faire policies, when they produced higher unemployment; and in the final years of the Cold War, when she showed unswerving public loyalty to Mr. Reagan.

Despite Ms. Berlinski's obvious admiration for her subject, " 'There Is No Alternative' " is a pleasure to read in part because of its unflinching judgments. Yes, the miners' union and its Marxist leader, Arthur Scargill, had to be crushed -- the industry "had become an expensive welfare program." Yet given the miners' appalling working conditions, Ms. Berlinski writes, the wonder is "any of them weren't communists." Nor is it clear, Ms. Berlinski notes, that Mrs. Thatcher succeeded in fostering a moral society through her economic reforms, as she aimed to do. After a rough start, the tax cuts, privatization and restraint on government spending worked as advertised: "The average real income of British families rose 37 percent from 1979 to 1992" as the Sick Man of Europe got up from his bed. Even so, the "ubiquitous British underclass" remained (and remains) "a degraded, disgusting spectacle."

Mrs. Thatcher had none of Mr. Reagan's bonhomie and would not suffer fools gladly. When David Frost, in the tutorial style of ABC's Charles Gibson addressing Gov. Sarah Palin, attempted to pin Mrs. Thatcher down on inconsistencies in the official version of the sinking of the Argentinean ship Belgrano, he elicited the following retort: "Do you think, Mr. Frost, that I spend my days prowling round the pigeonholes of the Ministry of Defense to look at the chart of each and every ship? If you do you must be bonkers."

As an interviewer herself, Ms. Berlinski is subtle and dogged. And while she never interviews Mrs. Thatcher, whose mind has reportedly been clouded by strokes, she does sit down with a number of figures from the Thatcher era -- both loyal insiders and antagonists like former Labour leader Neil Kinnock -- and the exchanges she selects rank among the book's highlights.

Mr. Kinnock's attitude toward Mrs. Thatcher has not mellowed with time. He still detests her, politically and personally. And his grievances are so comprehensive that they prod him into comic byways. "She was in charge! She was in charge!," he declares. "She could have said, 'I'm me. I'm bright. I'm Margaret. I'm a Tory. Get out of my bloody way.' " Ms. Berlinski: "She did say that." Mr. Kinnock: "Well, she . . ." Ms. Berlinski: "I mean, if anybody ever said, 'I'm a Tory, get out of my bloody way,' it's Margaret Thatcher." Mr. Kinnock: "Yeah . . . [long pause] Maybe."
And Mrs. Thatcher's relevance? Socialist habits of mind have not ended, and socialism itself, Ms. Berlinski observes, "is ultimately far wider, more seductive, and more enduring than political Islam." Many societies, she says, "will inevitably arrive at a place much like the one Margaret Thatcher found herself upon her ascent to 10 Downing Street." Or perhaps where America could find itself after a New New Deal.

Mr. Carroll is editorial-page editor of the Rocky Mountain News.