cover image The Disenchanted Isle: Mrs. Thatcher's Capitalist Revolution

The Disenchanted Isle: Mrs. Thatcher's Capitalist Revolution

Charles Dellheim. W. W. Norton & Company, $25 (416pp) ISBN 978-0-393-03812-5

Dellheim's highly astute, evenhanded, fast-moving narrative sets Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's capitalist revolution in the context of British postwar history. Preaching self-reliance and entrepreneurial initiative, she reduced taxes, privatized nationalized industry and curtailed trade union power during her 11-year tenure, which ended in 1990. Dellheim, an Arizona State University history professor, argues that these measures were necessary to stem Britain's long economic decline, which he traces to the immediate postwar period, when an expensive welfare state was erected while both labor and management blocked modernization, each more intent on exploiting, rather than reforming, a faulty system. Under Thatcher, living standards rose for many, foreign investments rebounded, inflation was temporarily halted. Yet her policies aggravated old inequalities, further polarizing rich and poor, and this sweeping history blames her failure partly on ``moral arrogance,'' on her ``indifferent or mean-spirited attitude to those who could not help themselves.'' (July)