Race and the development of Immigration policy during the 20th century

In February 2002 the British government introduced a white paper entitled "Secure Borders, Safe Haven: Integration With Diversity In Modern Britain". On the subject of issues of Citizenship and Nationality, emphasis was placed on an aim to 'integrate ethnic minorities into mainstream British culture, but celebrate Britain's cultural diversity'. However it is worth considering the extent to which post-1945 policy and legislation on British citizenship and rights of abode in the UK were influenced by issues of race and racial exclusion. In order to assess this however, there must first be a clarification of the terms British citizenship and right of abode. A citizen of a state is defined as a person owing loyalty that state and entitled to protection and privileges within it. One such privilege being a right of abode within that state's territory, which is in essence having the freedom from immigration control and the ability to enter at any time. All British citizens are 'British nationals', however not all British nationals are British citizens, the latter being distinguishable from mere nationals from their having such a right of abode.

Prior to, and in the immediate aftermath of the second world war, the term 'British Subject' was used to described any person who owed allegiance to the British Crown, and was applied indiscriminately to anyone born where the monarch reigned, be it within the United Kingdom, in one of its colonies or in a self-governing dominion. Those who fell outside of this distinction were termed 'aliens' and their entry within the empire was subject to immigration controls. The philosophy of 'Civis Britannicus Sum', meant that it had long been assumed all subjects of the British empire had the equal right of abode in the UK. The passing of the British Nationality Act 1948 (henceforth referred to as the BNA 1948), had merely reaffirmed this pre-existing equality and did 'in no active sense…contribute to the flow of British subjects into the United Kingdom, nor was it seen at the time as likely to do so' (1).

The BNA 1948 reaffirmed the status of 'British Subject' on all those born within the empire and Commonwealth territories, but allowed for the creation of two sub-divisions within this term. The first was Citizenship of the UK and colonies (henceforth referred to as CUKC) which was created for Britain and those imperial territories yet to gain independence. The other being that of Commonwealth citizenship enacted by the self-governing Dominions, such as Canada, who began to create their own form of national citizenship and control over who entered their territories. Such dominions had however wished to retain a common empire-wide status. On gaining independence from the empire, inhabitants of the former colonial territory usually lost their CUKC status, but if that territory on independence joined the British commonwealth, they had gained commonwealth citizenship and thus retained their status as a British subject.

The notion of an equal right of abode had however been based more on theory than in practice. There had long been an informal policy of restricting the settlement of Asian and Black British subjects in the United Kingdom (often aided by the governments and colonial authorities of such territories) that had continued until the supposed ending of the 'open door' policy with the passing of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 (henceforth referred to as the CIA 1962). There had not been discrimination towards such subjects at the point of entry to Britain, but on leaving they were required to possess a valid passport properly endorsed by the UK or colonial authorities, which in many cases was limited to those who were of European origin, or who possessed money and/or educational qualifications.

One example of this policy being put into practice is Spencer's quoting of a commonwealth Relations Office Official in 1954 and his satisfaction with 'the restrictions imposed by the Pakistanis on the issue of Pakistani passports which…operates to the advantage of the United Kingdom in keeping down the number of undesirable Pakistanis who came to this country' (2). British Home secretary R.A. Butler had also cited one reason for enacting the CIA 1962 being that 'the passport control system which had kept down the rate of immigration from the Indian sub-continent had now broken down completely' (3).

Britain had experienced a chronic labour shortage and fears of a diminishing population in the immediate post-war period, but issues of race had not been absent in seeking a solution to this. A 1949 Royal Commission on Population had advocated the solution was to encourage the migration only by those of 'good human stock…(who are) not prevented by their race or religion from intermarrying with the host population and becoming merged in it' (4). The British government had thus sought to solve such a problem through the European Volunteer Workers scheme, as many within the ministry of labour believed that 'displaced persons from Europe were preferable' (5), to non-white workers from its own empire and there had been 'very little opposition, either in the country or in parliament to those schemes' (6).

The demands to enact legislation to limit the rights of abode for non-white British subjects in the early post-war period, had little to do with numbers and was not 'of the need to restrict immigration in general - (as) far larger migrations of Europeans from Eire and the old commonwealth arrived without comment' (7). It also had little to do with the needs of the British economy, as the Treasury noted by the early 1960s Asian and Black immigrants 'added more to the value of the gross national product than they consumed or remitted abroad…found employment without creating unemployment for the natives and…(by) easing labour bottlenecks, contributed to the productive capacity of the economy' (8).

The central tenet behind enacting the CIA 1962 was therefore the racial objective to limit the settlement of non-white British subjects within the UK. However Britain's political and moral leadership within the newly multi-racial commonwealth, had held great importance to its standing as a world power in the early post-war years, therefore an overt colour bar had to be avoided. This importance was equalled by Britain's reluctance to place restrictions on 'old' commonwealth citizens, many of whom held familial connections in the UK, or restrictions upon citizens of the Irish republic due to the practical difficulties involved, and Ireland's providing of a large source of 'assimilable' migrant labour (who remained exempt from restriction under the CIA 1962).

When the British government passed the CIA 1962, commonwealth citizens seeking entry for settlement, had a right of entry if they came to study, visit for a limited period supporting themselves financially without working, or were a dependent accompanying or rejoining a resident of the UK. Those who did not fit in any of the above had to be issued with one of three categories of employment voucher by the Ministry of Labour, which had the appearance of being racially neutral, but in practice they had an entirely different effect.
Category A vouchers were applied for by an intending employer, on behalf of a named worker who already had employment awaiting them in the UK. However 'the whole process could take a long time and was a source of irritation to employers, most of whom refused to have anything to do with it' (9). Those on whose behalf employers did carried out this process mostly 'would be white immigrants from the Old Commonwealth' (10). Category B vouchers were for migrants who possessed special skills that were in short supply in the UK, however 'the ability of the new commonwealth to supply such highly skilled persons was its own limiting factor' (11). Category C on the other hand were the unskilled without an offer of employment and whose numbers the government limited, and gradually phased out entirely by 1965.

The declining influence of the Commonwealth to Britain's world standing by the late 1960s had meant that the British government lacked its earlier inhibitions toward a seemingly overt racial narrowing of citizenship and rights of abode. The Labour government, influenced by the defeat of their Shadow Home Secretary by an overtly racial anti-immigration campaign by Peter Griffiths at Smethwick in the 1964 election, had perceived a need to counter-balance the enacting of legislation aimed at improving race relations and integration, with tighter controls on the entry of non-white migration.

It is noticeable from this period onwards that the defining of British citizenship had began to transform from one based around the place of one's birth to a quasi-biological definition. This is highlighted by the 'Kenyan Asian crisis' that had developed in the late 1960s. British subjects of non-African origin who had settled in Kenya, were given the option of retaining their CUKC status, rather than attaining the local citizenship when Kenya gained independence in 1963. Under the British Nationality Act 1964, anyone with a UK born father or grandfather (who were almost certain to be white) could regain their CUKC status, if they previously had needed to conditionally renounce it to obtain citizenship of another commonwealth country.

Those Asians who had retained CUKC status were not subject to the CIA 1962 as their passports, issued by the British High Commission, were considered as issued by the UK government. Their CUKC status had given them a right of abode in the United Kingdom, and 'it had been understood at the time of independence negotiations that this citizenship was to be their protection' (12) from any possible discrimination by Kenyan government policies. Many had exercised this right in February 1968, which thus provoked the passing of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 (henceforth referred to as CIA 1968) within three days.
This act had subjected all holders of UK-issued passports to immigration control unless they, a parent or grandparent had been born, adopted or naturalised in the UK. The provisions of the BNA 1964 and the CIA 1968, had the combined effect of privileging white, over non-white commonwealth citizens, and also privileged whites who had renounced British citizenship over non-whites who had retained theirs.

The Immigration Act 1971 developed further the biological distinction within citizenship by 'inventing a quasi-nationality, for immigration purposes only' (13), with the requirement of 'patriality' for rights of abode in the United Kingdom. Those who were deemed 'patrial' included CUKCs who were born or naturalised in the UK, or who have a parent or grandparent who is so; as well as Commonwealth citizens with a parent born in the UK, or commonwealth citizens who have settled in UK for five years and applied to register for UK citizenship. On the other hand non-'patrials' who were either a CUKC or commonwealth citizens were restricted by immigration control, on exactly the same basis as aliens from any other part of the world.
The Immigration Act 1971 had scrapped employment vouchers, which conferred rights of permanent residency and to bring family members, and had simultaneously become part of UK law as Britain entered the EEC on 1st January 1973. Employment vouchers were subsequently replaced with tightly controlled work permits, which conferred upon non-patrial commonwealth citizens 'a status which was closely akin to that enjoyed by guest workers in…other European states' (14), who could be 'deported almost at will if…(their) presence is not conductive to 'the public good'' (15). The cumulative effect of the passing of the Immigration Act 1971 and the European Communities Act 1972 was that they 'increased the number of people entitled to enter Britain but as these comprised almost entirely of people of 'European extraction'…this caused no political difficulty' (16).

From the enactment of the CIA 1968, the common citizenship of CUKC had been decoupled from that of the right of abode in the UK, the purpose of the British Nationality Act 1981 (henceforth referred to as BNA 1981), was an attempt to re-integrate the two, but also a continuation of the process of narrowing the scope of citizenship shared by most of the UK's inhabitants. The BNA 1981 discontinued the recognition of commonwealth citizens as British subjects, and the status of CUKC was replaced by that of British Citizen.

The BNA 1981 completed the removal of the central notion of 'jus soli' (based around place of birth) and increased the element of 'jus sanguinis' (based around familial connection) within British citizenship. Any person born in the UK after 1st January 1983 could only to be regarded as a British citizen if at the time of their birth at least one of their parents is a British citizen or ordinarily resident in the UK for more than five years without restriction. In contrast commonwealth citizens, who were not born in the UK, but had 'patriality' under the Immigration Act 1971 were now considered to be British citizens. Two other categories of British nationals were created from those eliminated from CUKC status under the BNA 1981, that of British Dependent Territory Citizenship (henecforth referred to as BDTC) and British Overseas Citizenship (henceforth referred to as BOC). Being mere British nationals as opposed to British citizens, neither BDTCs or BOCs had rights of abode in the UK.

BOCs were those who held CUKC and did not acquire citizenship of a former colonial territory on independence, an example being East African Asians. Those among the BDTC category were inhabitants of the few remaining territories under British rule, the vast majority of which comprised of non-white populations. Two exceptional dependent territories, whose inhabitants were entitled to full citizenship rights, were that of the Falkland Islands, (partly as a justification for the 1982 war) under the British Nationality (Falkland Islands) Act 1983, and Gibraltar whose inhabitants under s5 BNA 1981 were entitled to register as British citizens, because they are a 'United Kingdom national for European Community purposes'.

Gibraltarians and the Falkland Islanders were also predominantly of European origin. One reason cited as motivating the creation of the BDTC category was the impending handover of Hong Kong to communist China and 'fears that many Hong Kong CUKCs would want to enter the UK rather than live under Chinese control' (17), and thus the BNA 1981 had legislated to prevent these CUKCs from attaining a right of abode in the UK. It is a striking observation from these new categories which the BNA 1981 created, that 'virtually all the existing British nationals who were non-European and who were outside the United Kingdom were to receive a practically valueless form of nationality' (18) .

It can quite clearly be seen therefore, that the development of British citizenship and rights of abode in the UK during the late twentieth century has been greatly influenced by issues of race, and the definition of British citizenship itself significantly narrowed on the grounds of race. By the turn of the century however due to increased fears over the number of asylum claims, public and political anxieties had less emphasis on non-white economic migration. A 1998 DTI White paper, titled 'Our Competitive Future: Building the Knowledge Driven Economy' had also signalled a change in perspective, emphasising the necessity of attracting 'bright people with scarce skills to work for UK businesses and set up businesses of their own which create jobs….this requires a positive attitude to immigration' (19).

The suggestions of the DTI white paper had in no doubt been greatly influenced by the noted economic benefits to Canada and Australia in the last 30 years, by the removal of immigration colour bar policies in favour of a flexible points system 'to admit well-educated and skilled newcomers of any racial origin' (20). Two pieces of legislation have to some degree attempted to redress the stance of racial narrowing in British citizenship law, and implement to a certain degree the Canadian and Australian models. One is the British Overseas Territories Act 2002 which had renamed BDTCs with the less paternalistic British Overseas Territory Citizens (henceforth referred to as BOTCs), who in their near entirety were granted full British citizenship with rights of abode. The other being the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (henceforth referred to as NIAA 2002).

Under s12(2) NIAA 2002, the position of BOCs, along with British Protected Persons and British Subjects Without Citizenship, were allowed to register for full British citizenship if they neither held, nor voluntarily relinquished or lost, any other form of citizenship or nationality through an action or inaction on their behalf by the 4th July 2002. This provision was described by Beverley Hughes, a Home Office minister at the time, as 'righting a historical wrong which has left a number of overseas citizens without any right of abode, either in the UK or elsewhere' (21). S6(2) NIAA 2002, had also removed the s19D Race Relations Act 1976 exception of nationality decisions to the unlawfulness of a public authority performing discriminatory acts on the grounds of nationality, ethnic or national origins. It had thus brought such decision making within the scope of the act.

Chapter Two of the Home Office white paper 'Secure Borders, Safe Haven: Integration With Diversity In Modern Britain' had noted an intention to further the BNA 1981 requirement of sufficient knowledge of the English (or any other British) language, and 'to require applicants for naturalisation to demonstrate that they have achieved a certain standard….applicants would need to produce certificates showing they had passed a test' (22). This was also a requirement that would extend to 'spouses of applicants who are…not at present subject to the language requirement' (23). Under s1 NIAA 2002 a further requirement of 'sufficient knowledge about life in the United Kingdom' is added to this BNA 1981 provision, as well as s3's provision for public ceremonies to award citizenship and an updating of the oath and pledge sworn on attaining citizenship.

The 'Secure Borders, Safe Haven….' white paper, that had influenced much of the content of NIAA 2002 was published in February 2002, and was greatly influenced by the findings of the Home Office Independent Review Team's report into the race riots that broke out across Northern England in the summer of 2001, published a few weeks earlier. This report had noted that 'the team was particularly struck by the depth of polarisation in our towns and cities….(which) operate on the basis of a series of parallel lives' (24) and had recommended that 'the rights - and in particular - the responsibilities of citizenship need to be more clearly established….This should then be formalised into a form of statement of allegiance' (25)

Although the s1 NIAA 2002 provisions were considered to be a racial inclusive remedy to social disturbances that were claimed to have been caused by the social exclusion of non-white groups in society, Habib Rahman, the chief executive of the JCWI, had criticised it as being 'the intellectual residue of the same racist debate brought to the fore by Enoch Powell' (26). The JCWI had also stated that 'the issue of social exclusion does not relate in any strong way to the concept of citizenship, since there are many people who are British citizens who are excluded and equally many non-citizens who are integrated into British society' (27).

The s1(1) NIAA 2002 requirement of 'sufficient knowledge about life in the United Kingdom' also 'raises connotations of ethnicity rather than nationality' (28) and can be said to suggest a cultural deficiency on the part of ethnic minority groups within the UK, and in this respect can be seen as a continuation of the post-war discourses of 'new racism'. 'New racism' is considered to be a perspective that has arisen since the post war discrediting of biological inferiority and superiority between 'racial' groups, and sees 'culture' often as a new euphemism for 'race' in the discourse of social exclusion. New Racism has been described as implying the existence of a 'unified white nation state who participate in a shared British culture, history and identity and who have a common sense of belonging….that there is a need to protect the British nation and the national culture from those who are presumed to pose a threat to its existence' (29) and that 'Black groups whether born in Britain or not are not viewed as part of the nation state and as such their alien cultures are thought to pose a threat to its existence' (30).

Both Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968, and Margaret Thatcher's 'swamping' remarks in 1978 have been seen by many to be 'new racist' stances because of a 'racialization' of cultural aspects of Britain's non-white populations. Powell's statements were cited as influencing much of the content of the Immigration Act 1971 and it was under Thatcher's premiership that the BNA 1981 had been introduced. The effect of both had been a racial narrowing of citizenship and rights of abode in Britain.

It can be seen therefore that issues of race and racial exclusion were undoubtedly the biggest factor in legislation and policy developments regarding citizenship law and the right of abode in the UK during the second half of the twentieth century. The central focus of such policy and legislation since the turn of the century has slightly shifted to the needs of the British economy, in attracting investment and skilled workers, as well as filling labour shortages at the unskilled end of the employment market at wage levels that satisfy employers. It is for these reasons, therefore that the British government has needed to place less emphasis on the racial character of potential British citizens.

There has however been an increased emphasis on their cultural characteristics, be it in their existing educational qualities, or their abilities to adapted to the values of British society. This could be viewed as a potential positive in laying a basis for the corresponding social responsibilities that come with the rights of British citizenship, after all predominantly Anglo-Saxon such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand who have had 'multiculturalism' as an official poilcy for longer than Britain have long since had such citizenship tests. On the other hand it could also be seen as a negative development in citizenship law that merely replaces the cultural characteristics of non-white groups for racial ones in discourses of social exclusion, after all such nations previously mentioned have their own problems with racism and racial exclusion. Only the passage of time can give us a clearer picture.


NOTES
(1) Ian R. G. Spencer, British Immigration Policy Since 1939: The Making Of Multi-Racial Britain (1997), p.53
(2) Ian R.G. Spencer, British Immigration Policy Since 1939: The Making Of Multi-Racial Britain (1997), p.27
(3) Ian R.G. Spencer, British Immigration Policy Since 1939: The Making Of Multi Racial Britain (1997) p.122
(4) Ann Dummett and Andrew Nicol, Subjects, Citizens, Aliens and Others: Nationality and Immigration Law (1990), p.174
(5) Ian R.G. Spencer, British Immigration Policy Since 1939: The Making Of Multi-Racial Britain (1997) p.40
(6) Paul Foot, Immigration And Race In British Politics, (1965) p.119
(7) Ian R.G. Spencer, British Immigration Policy Since 1939: The Making Of Multi-Racial Britain (1997) p.82
(8) Ian R.G. Spencer, British Immigration Policy Since 1939: The Making Of Multi-Racial Britain (1997) p.115
(9), (11) Clifford Hill, Immigration and Integration: A Study of the Settlement of Coloured Minorities in Britain (1970) p.12
(10) Ian R.G. Spencer, British Immigration Policy Since 1939: The Making Of Multi-Racial Britain (1997), p.116
(12) Ann Dummett and Andrew Nicol, Subjects, Citizens, Aliens and Others: Nationality and Immigration Law (1990), p.199
(13) Ann Dummett and Andrew Nicol, Subjects, Citizens, Aliens and Others: Nationality and Immigration Law (1990), p.217
(14) Ian R.G. Spencer, British Immigration Policy Since 1939: The Making Of Multi-Racial Britain (1997), p.144
(15) Robert Moore and Tina Wallace, Slamming The Door: The Administration of Immigration Control, (1975), p.5
(16) Ian R.G. Spencer, British Immigration Policy Since 1939: The Making Of Multi-Racial Britain (1997), p.144
(17) Gina Clayton, Textbook On Immigration and Asylum (1st edn), (2004) p.43
(18) Ann Dummett and Andrew Nicol, Subjects, Citizens, Aliens and Others: Nationality and Immigration Law (1990), p.245
(19) Duran Seddon, JCWI: Immigration, Nationality and Refugee Law Handbook: 2006 Edition (2006), p.414
(20) Ann Dummett and Andrew Nicol, Subjects, Citizens, Aliens and Others: Nationality and Immigration Law (1990), p.231
(21) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2088560.stm, 08/05/2006.
(22), (23) http://www.archive2.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm53/5387/cm5387.pdf, 08/05/2006
(24), (25) http://www.irr.org.uk/pdf/independent_review_team.pdf, 08/05/2006
(26), (27) http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp2002/rp02-025.pdf, 08/05/2006
(28) Gina Clayton Textbook On Immigration and Asylum: First Edition, Oxford University Press, (2004) p.52
(29), (30) http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/rec/antirac.html, 09/05/2005

The Holocaust and the Modern Age

In 1989 Zygmunt Bauman, professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds had caused an enormous stir within the world of Social Sciences with the publication of 'Modernity and the Holocaust. Bauman himself a Polish Jew, who along with his family had fled the Nazis in 1939 to the Soviet occupied area to avoid the persecution that followed. In 'Modernity and the Holocaust' the essence of Bauman's claim was a challenge to the post-war premise that the Nazis were a phenomena of counter-modernity that had managed to overcome or reverse the 'civilizing' process of modernity. An example of this particular counter-modern view of the Nazis was endorsed by Ernst Nolte who stated that 'fascism has at its command forces which are born of the emancipation process (of Modernity) and then turn against their own origin…and in its radical form is the most complete and effective denial of that society' (Nolte 1963:567).

Bauman, in contrast had asserted that rather than an aberration of modernity, the holocaust was an event which could not have taken place without the social structure and technological advancement of post-enlightenment modernity and was 'done in the modern - rational, planned, scientifically informed, expert, efficiently managed, co-ordinated way' (Bauman 1989:88-9).

Bauman's claim is that the Holocaust 'could merely have uncovered another face of the same modern society whose other, more familiar, face we so admire. And that the two faces are perfectly, comfortably attached to the same body' (Bauman 1969:7). In supporting his view, Bauman directly attributes certain elements of modernity with aiding German society on the path to the Holocaust. These include the political formation of modern Europe into various nation-states, the evolution of the bureaucratic apparatus and forms of organisation which had governed the modern nation-state, and the modern ethos of the pursuit of societal progress, through scientific knowledge and rational thinking. I will now endeavour to evaluate the contribution that each of these processes had made to the rise of Nazism and the perpetration of the holocaust.

In his analysis of the contribution bureaucracy made to the holocaust, Bauman explains that 'though engaged in mass murder on a gigantic scale, this vast bureaucratic apparatus showed concern for correct bureaucratic procedure, for the niceties of precise definition, for the minutiae of bureaucratic regulation, and the compliance with the law' (Bauman 1969:14). Bauman claims that the essence of the modern hierarchical bureaucracy is the right to command and the duty to obey, with the aim of solving difficult problems in a moral vacuum. He also points to a 'free floating' responsibility, which floats upwards from the person carrying out the act to the person who gave the order, distancing responsibility from each participant, who can point to another, higher in the chain of command, being responsible for the actions in question. Bauman claims that human morality is often shaped through what the individual sees with their own eyes, and that there is a biological morality of 'animal pity' to human suffering, which the modern, rational hierarchical Bureaucracy detaches its servants from. Bauman claims that in such an organization, those above their sub-ordinates 'in addition to giving orders and punishing for insubordination…also pass moral judgements - the only moral judgement that counts for the individual's self-appreciation' (Bauman 1989:159).

To support this point Bauman cites Stanley Milgram's study of obedience to authority, conducted by a scientific researcher, who orders participants to administer electric shock punishment to victims for failure to answer questions correctly. Such participants are unaware that no such punishment is being administered to the 'victims'. Milgram's finding was that 65% had administered the maximum voltage to the 'victims', his explanation for this finding is that 'the subordinate person feels shame or pride depending on how adequately he has performed the actions called for by authority…(Freudian) superego shifts from an evaluation of the goodness or badness of the acts to an assessment of how well or poorly one is functioning in the authority system' (Bauman 1989:160).

Milgram had identified that compliance with authority could be reduced with an increase in the obviousness of the victim's plight. An example is that where the victim could not be heard or seen, there was 66% compliance, and when heard but not seen a compliance rate of 62%, however when the victim was only one metre away from the participant, compliance had dropped to 40%. Bauman links Milgram's theory of the distancing of 'victims' to a belief that such rational modern bureaucracies dehumanise to a certain extent, its human subjects as 'soldiers are told to shoot targets…employees of big companies are encouraged to destroy competition. Officers of welfare agencies operate discretionary awards at one time, personal credits at another'. The human subjects behind such decisions are 'better not perceived and not remembered' (Bauman 1989:103).

Bauman also points to the modern division of labour, as creating a mental distance within the industrial production process. This division of labour is typified by those carrying out a part of the process, having little, if any, awareness of what the corresponding part does. Each function in the process is, in itself, devoid of meaning until the production process is completed, thus psychologically distancing most of its participants from the final outcome and bringing 'more than the suspension of moral inhibition, it quashes the moral significance of the act…moral dilemmas recede from sight, while the occasions for more scrutiny and conscious moral choice become increasingly rare' (Bauman 1989:25). Bauman cites Kren and Rappoport's example of chemical plant workers producing napalm and the link between them and infants burned by such a substance, stating that 'it is chemical plants that produce napalm, not any of their individual workers' (Bauman 1989:100).

Bauman's view of the moral unconsciousness of Nazi bureaucrats, in their contribution to, and participation in the holocaust, is refuted by a number of sources. Christopher Browning, in his study of Nazi bureaucrats involved in dealing with 'Jewish' affairs prior to the final solution, disagrees with Bauman's view that they were mentally distanced from the suffering of their human subjects. Browning states that they 'lived in an environment already permeated by mass murder…(which) included wholesale killing and dying before their very eyes….these men had articulated positions and developed career interests that inseparably and inexorably led to a similar murderous solution to the Jewish question' (Browning 1992:143).

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen also refutes Bauman's claim that the Nazi bureaucracy's attitude to Jewish suffering was blinded by a rational approach to problem solving. Goldhagen claims that all the institutions involved in the holocaust, from the start to the finish of the process, shared the crucial common feature of a belief that their Jewish subjects were 'evil, powerful and dangerous', a view which 'structured the character of the institutions of killing as much as architectural plans did their physical plants' (Goldhagen 1997:168). Raul Hilberg also disagrees with that these bureaucrats had merely shown concern for correct procedure and legal compliance, claiming that the holocaust 'was not so much a product of laws and commands as it was a matter of spirit, of shared comprehension, of consonance and synchronization' (Browning 1992:125).

Bauman also claims that the rationality of the modern age had even filtered down to Jewish populations subjected to Nazism, which had enabled the Nazis to co-opt even the victims of their own genocide. The Jewish councils (Judenrate) in order to minimize the overall death toll, had listed and rounded up other Jews, as they were forced into a choice of 'death or survival' by the Nazis. Bauman also highlights that Judenrate leaders, like the industrialist Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, responsible for the Lodz ghetto, had a flawed assumption of Nazi rationality, which lead to their attempting to prove the Jews to be too economically useful for extermination. Such leaders had however aided the Nazis, because as a result 'almost everything was done to achieve maximum results with minimum costs and efforts' (Bauman 1989:149).

Laying the blame for Judenrate co-operation with the Nazis at the feet of modernity and the idea of rational thinking, however overlooks some of the essentially pre-modern features of the Judenrate as an organisation and their original reactions to dealing with the threat that Nazism posed to the Jewish population. The concept of the Judenrat 'was based upon centuries-old practices which were instituted in Germany during the Middle Ages' (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/judenrat.html, 29/03/2006), and like the Jewish population as a whole, was to a certain extent influenced by pre-modern received wisdom in dealing with past persecution. Laura A. Buck notes that 'for centuries, the Jews had learned that in order to survive they had to refrain from resistance. Through all the attacks against them they lost many people, but always emerged again like a rock from a receding tidal wave, they always survived….but the Nazis were a force unlike anything before' (http://dscholarship.lib.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1049&context=undergrad, 29/03/2006).

It also needs to be emphasized that, although in most cases the Judenrate ultimately failed to keep much of their populations from deportation to the death camps, their rational thinking had kept many from their deaths for as long as possible. As Laura A. Buck notes 'reports show that the councils who obeyed German orders and did not create problems, kept their ghetto population alive longer….Ghettos that revolted were liquidated immediately. The Germans arrested, killed and replaced any Judenrate who did not obey orders'. (http://dscholarship.lib.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1049&context=undergrad, 29/03/2006). This shows that the Nazis would have been just as willing to carry out the holocaust by indiscriminate slaughter, if the 'orderly' genocide that Bauman claims the Judenrate provided, wasn't forthcoming. As the only real attainable goal for the Judenrate was to preserve as many Jewish lives, for as long as possible, their rational thinking could be considered to a certain degree a success.

Bauman clearly contradicts his own view, stating that 'the range of choices was not set by them….(the Judenrate) deployed their reason and their skill of rational judgement to choices which had been made available to them' (Bauman 1989:149). He also states that 'one can hardly charge Chaim Rumkowski….with making an irrational response to the German threat. He had surely underestimated the German's murderous irrationality, and over-estimated their inherent business-rationality' (Bauman 1989:137). Therefore he acknowledges that the Nazis held the real power over life or death in this situation, and in exercising it were motivated by murderous irrationality rather than enlightened rational thought. Thus Bauman's equating modern rationality with culpability in such a situation is hard to fathom.

In citing the modern nation-state's central role in creating the conditions that lead to the holocaust, Bauman claims that in its carrying out of the 'civilising' process of modernity, rather than eradicating violence from every day life, it has given itself a monopoly of its exercising, through state apparatus such as the police or armed forces. He claims that 'somewhere in the wings physical violence is stored - in quantities that put it effectively out of the control of ordinary members of society and endow it with irresistible power to suppress unauthorised outbursts of violence' (Bauman 1989: 107). Bauman's claim is that this has brought a mellowing of manners and daily security for its citizens, but also a paradox, in that they are less likely to challenge state authority, allowing it the opportunity to carry out actions like the holocaust.

In assessing whether Bauman's claim of the nation-state's monopoly in exercising force, is as true in practice as it is in theory, account needs to be taken of Goldhagen's claims that German soldiers had often perpetrated acts against the wishes of their superiors. He claims that members of the Police Battalions that played a central role in implementing the 'Final Solution' had often photographed much of their actions against Jews, in defiance of orders of prohibition. Also one member of a police battalion had testified that they were 'monthly instructed that, in accordance with a Himmler order, nobody can order us to shoot anyone' (Goldhagen 1997:380).

Goldhagen states that rather than being unthinking robotic automatons 'Germans of all ranks, even the most Nazified, disobeyed orders that they opposed…Generals who willingly contributed to the extermination of Soviet Jews conspired against Hitler. Army soldiers, on their own, participated in the killing of Jews without orders to do so, or in disobedience of orders to keep their distance from massacres' (Goldhagen 1997:382). Goldhagen's conclusion is that they formed their own opinions about the rules they were supposed to adhere to, and often could exercise a choice in whether or not to follow them, and above all 'the evidence that no German was ever killed or incarcerated for having refused to kill Jews was conclusive' (Goldhagen 1997:381).

Goldhagen also claims that those who worked as Nazi concentration camp guards were barely concerned with correct procedure handed down by their superior officers. According to Goldhagen, such camps were 'a site of the freest self-expression' (Goldhagen 1997:172) and that 'every German guard was an unquestioned, untrammelled, absolute lord over the camp's inmates…(and) could indulge any urge by degrading, torturing, or killing a camp prisoner at whim, without fearing or suffering repercussions' (Goldhagen 1997:174). Bauman also claims that the nation-state's role in the path to the holocaust, came from its very notion being grounded in the inter-twining of a culturally homogenous population with a defined territory of maintained boundaries, excluding those alien from such a group. Bauman asserts that the pre-modern era, prior to the formation of nation-states, was characterised by divisions of several castes and orders, in which 'the Jews were just one estate or caste among many….the Jews were set apart, but the state of being set apart in no way made them unique' (Bauman 1989:35).

Bauman notes that 'there was no shortage of prophecies that once the newly fashioned legal equality was extended to Jews, their distinctiveness would fast evaporate, and the Jews…would soon dissolve in the now culturally and legally uniform society' (Bauman 1989:44). Goldhagen supports this view, claiming that German Liberals, who supported legal emancipation, had wanted to eradicate 'Jewishness' from German society, rather than eradicating the Jews. A major influence on German Liberal thought toward the Jews was Wilhelm Von Dohm, who believed that 'Jewishness stood in opposition to desirable…"human" qualities, and for a Jew to be laudable, his Jewishness must be denied' (Goldhaven 1997:57). Famous examples of Jews who had converted to Protestantism to pursue a position of standing in Germany include the Journalist and Professor of Literature at Dresden University, Victor Klemperer and the composer Felix Mendelssohn.

Bauman had noted however that the reality was that the Jews of Europe, instead of being intertwined with the rest of the nation, had found themselves as the 'foreigner within' each nation-state throughout the continent as 'the boundaries of the nation were too narrow to define them' (Bauman 1989:52). The upshot of this, according to Bauman is that anti-Semitism had changed from one based around pre-modern 'hetrophobia', the mere reaction of fear to the presence of groups who are a cultural 'other', to the 'biological' otherness of racism. And the 'solution' of such a problem according to Bauman, eventually lay in the use of modern science.

According to Bauman, Jews had been transferred from redeemable sinners to carriers of an eradicable vice who 'cannot repent. They have not sinned, they just lived according to their nature' (Bauman 1989:72). The logical extension to this biological racism, according to Bauman was 'the conviction that a certain category of human beings cannot be incorporated into the rational order, whatever the effort' (Bauman 1989:65). Bauman's claim is that modernity had brought a 'garden' culture, in which man can manipulate nature to perfection removing the unsightly, like the 'weeding of a garden' and that the Jewish victims of the Nazis were removed because they did not fit the 'rose garden' image of modern society that the Nazis held.

Bauman highlights that this was one of several instances where the Nazis had borrowed much of the pro-active attitude to problem-solving from the modern sciences, particularly the advances of the medical profession, where 'one can train and shape 'healthy' parts of the body, but not cancerous growth. The latter can be 'improved' only by being destroyed' (Bauman 1989:65). Adolf Hitler had specifically linked the 'discovery of the Jewish virus' with the medical advances of the proceeding century by the like of Louis Pasteur. The effort to eliminate the Jews was also clothed in medical terminology, particularly 'Judensauberung' (cleansing of Jews) or the 'gesungdung' (healing) of Europe.

Bauman highlights that science and the Third Reich were very much in close association with each other. Due to science's reliance on large funds 'a government who stretches its helpful hand and offers just that can count on the scientists gratitude and co-operation' (Bauman 1989:109). Bauman cites Robert Procter's study on science and the third reich and his findings that 'widespread opinion sorely underestimates the degree to which political initiatives…were generated by the scientific community itself, rather than imposed from outside….and the extent to which racial policy itself was initiated and managed by the recognised scientists with academically impeccable credentials' (Bauman 1989:109).

However one can view the Nazis enthusiasm for scientific progress, not quite as a full implementation of modernity, but that of a unique form of 'reactionary' modernism. This view is elaborated by Jeffrey Herf, who believed that Germany's particular form of modernism, was at fault for the rise of the Nazis, rather than the very essence of modernity itself. Herf explains that 'there is no such thing as modernity in general. There are only national societies each of which becomes modern in its own fashion' (Herf 1984:1).

Herf explains that pre-1945 German society had experienced an incorporation of the enlightenment only partially and inadequately, thus creating the paradox of an embrace of modern scientific technology, but a wholesale rejection of the political aspects of enlightenment reason, such as the values of universalism, political equality, and the improvement of societal ills. Herf explains that 'the reconciliations of technics and irrationality….were not and are not inherent in modernity, capitalism, or the enlightenment, but rather in a peculiarly authoritarian, illiberal and unenlightened national variant of them' (Herf 1984:219).

Herf points out how Germany's industrial revolution had occurred later than in England or France, though its industrial modernization was a quicker and a more thorough process, due to its authoritarian regime. The result of Germany's authoritarian industrial revolution, according to Herf, was that in Germany 'the bourgeoisie, political liberalism, and the enlightenment remained weak' (Herf 1984:5). One could therefore explain the disappearance of faith in the ability to incorporate Jews into German society, as emanating from the weakness of political liberalism in German society, rather than an enthusiastic embrace of science.

What also needs to be taken into account is that the Nazis' policy of linking of race with science, rather than being a genuine product of the scientific rationality of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was based on the theories of the 'pseudo-science' of eugenics. Eugenic theories had much opposition within highly regarded scientific opinion, as its basis for the construction of 'racial' inferiority was social rather than biological, as 'biology supplied no evidence for the mainline-eugenic assumption that Italians, Poles, Lithuanians or other national groups were biologically uniform' (Kelves 1985:132).

Thomas Hunt Morgan, who had been awarded the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, had noted in 1925 that the definition of 'race' had not been 'in a biological sense, but social or political groups bound together by physical conditions, by religious sentiments, or political organisations' (Kelves 1985:132-33). Above all the essential reason why eugenics was discredited as a science was because, as H.L. Mencken notes 'in none of the books of its masterminds is there a clear definition of the superiority they talk about so copiously' (Kelves 1985:147). Kenan Malik also disagrees with Bauman's view that modern racism arises from rationality, as the 'belief in reason, espousal of the scientific method and a universalistic conviction do not of themselves imply a racial viewpoint' (Malik 1996:41).

Malik divorces racism and enlightenment theories, explaining that the 'belief in the unity of humanity and the equality of man was held by virtually all Enlightenment thinkers. Human beings were naturally equal; inequality was created by society…The certainty that there existed a universal human nature and a common human psyche led to a greater willingness to accept unfamiliar values and to a more tolerant and humanistic attitude to non-European peoples' (Malik 1996:49).

Malik argues that modern 'scientific' racism has its historical roots in the structure of post-industrial revolution capitalist society and the relationships of economic inequalities that result from the pursuit of profit. This had occurred during the nineteenth century, rather than in the early eighteenth century where enlightenment theories had their origin. Malik's claim is that capitalist society creates a clash with theories of enlightenment-endorsed equality, and brought difficulties in attaining such an equality. Malik asserts that as a result of conflating capitalism with the enlightenment 'the specific problems created by capitalist social relations become de-historicized….racial theory, colonialism or the holocaust are not investigated in their specificity, as products of distinctive tendencies within capitalist society, but are all lumped together as the general consequences of 'modernity' (Malik 1996:246).

In conclusion therefore, Bauman fails to comprehensively establish a link between Modernity and responsibility for the holocaust, or the Nazis rise to power in Germany. He overstates the power of the hierarchical bureaucratic organisation in the modern era and underestimates the ability of those within such organizations to evaluate the moral content of their actions. He fails to recognise that obedience to such authority does to a great extent 'depend upon the existence of a propitious social and political context' (Goldhagen 1997:383) and underestimates the ideological element of the Nazis rule through a tendency to 'bracket off, or at least to leave radically under-theorised, the specifically non rational' (http://www.allannoble.net/zygmunt_bauman_the_absence_of_the_non-rational.htm, 30/03/2006).

It can be seen to a certain degree that the Nazis exercised a modern rational approach to carrying out the final solution, applying the highly efficient processes of a modern nation-state to pursuing racial purity, however Bauman overestimates the power of force that the modern nation-state could exercise over its own citizens. As Goldhagen's study shows, it was proven that throughout the holocaust many of its officers had perpetrated inhuman acts against others which had not been within the authority conferred upon them by the power of the state.
Despite the fact that there was a degree of organisational and scientific rationality on the path to the final solution, the overall philosophy which led to the holocaust was undoubtedly irrational.

Bauman fails to recognise that the degree of enthusiasm for scientific modernity that the Nazis had was grossly asymmetrical with their feelings on political modernity, and their linking of science and race was inaccurate as a scientific theory and discredited by highly regarded scientific opinion of its time. Therefore it is conclusive that Germany while under Nazi rule was an insufficiently modern society, with many features, especially socio-politically, that were specifically counter-modern and Bauman's claim that modernity was specifically responsible for the holocaust is one that is inaccurate.

THE EXTENT (IF ANY) TO WHICH ‘THATCHERISM’ WAS A SUCCESS

After the recent controversy of Gordon Brown's invitation to Margaret Thatcher for tea at Number Ten, it is worth considering what success if any the Iron Lady's policies have actually had. In considering the extent to which Thatcherism was/is a success the doctrine of ‘Thatcherism’ must be defined.

There is a major link between Thatcherism and theories of the New Right in that the term ‘Thatcherism’ can be seen as a popular euphemism for New Right theories. The term is christened after the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher who advocated such policies, in America such politics is termed ‘Reaganomics’ after the U.S. president who did likewise. The explicit association of New Right theories with Margaret Thatcher is because her government had broke with the post-war consensus of Keynesian economics, to an advocating of an economy free of constraints from the state and agencies of the state, for example the discouraging of high taxation, tariffs, trade barriers whilst also advocating moral conservatism. Thatcherism is explicitly defined by Nigel Lawson, a chancellor of the exchequer under Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, who claimed to have established the term in a speech to the treasury in 1981, as ‘a mixture of free markets, financial discipline, firm control over public expenditure, tax cuts, nationalism, Victorian values and privatisation’ (www.lrb.co.uk). Theorists Abbott and Wallace have defined the New Right in similar terms as ‘liberal economic policies with conservative social moral values’ (Haralambos and Holborn 2000:574). In measuring the success of Thatcherism, consideration must be given to three key areas, electoral success, the success of social policy and success of economic policy.

The contradiction between Thatcherism’s radical economic liberalism and conservative Victorian social values has been often been cited as a reason for it’s failure, in that it had the effect of it’s economic policies undermining it’s social policies. As noted by Anthony Giddens who states “individualism and choice are supposed to stop abruptly at the boundaries of the family and national identity, where tradition must stand intact. But nothing is more dissolving of tradition than ‘permanent revolution of market forces’” (Giddens 1998:15) A clear example of this is that the Thatcherite vision of a consumer society, home owning democracy, plus an increased economic cost of child rearing leading to an increasing need for families to have a dual income in order to afford such consumerism. This had undermined the belief in retaining mothers within the home and increased the need for mothers to enter the working environment, in either a full or part-time basis.

Thatcherism’s advocacy of the male breadwinner was also seriously undermined by the elimination of traditional male industries, such as coal mining, dock workers, steel and ship building industries, which the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher refused to subsidise because of a belief in market fundamentalism. The development of the free market had brought a decrease in the industrial manufacturing economy which had been perceived to suit male working qualities, and an increase in service sector industry perceived to be more suitable to female working qualities, this can also be said to be aided by discriminatory policy in which female employees are paid less than their male counterparts for the same work, making increased female employment an attractive policy in lowering wage bills in a free market economy. In the days prior to the social individualism of the 1960’s there had also not been the existence of the birth control pill, therefore creating the opportunity to spend less time child rearing and longer in the workplace.

The Margaret Thatcher instigated a ‘Family Policy Group’, had advocated that mothers of young children be encouraged to remain at home rather than the workplace, removal of financial disincentives against motherhood and that taxation and benefits be orientated towards the family. Thatcherite policy had aimed to return functions of the family which the state had been perceived to remove, such as withdrawal of benefits for unemployed 16-18 year olds, community care for the elderly and disabled rather than state institutional care, freezing of child benefits and cuts in student grants. The aim of recovering ‘family’ functions however, had increased the financial burdens upon it.

Results of studies with regards to marital breakdown have shown the divorce rate to be higher amongst lower income families and the unemployed (Haralambos and Holborn p.570), as financial inequalities deepened and unemployment increased within the U.K. it can be regarded to have put an increased amount of pressure on a larger number of families. Legislation also eased the process of obtaining a divorce, which had not been present during the perceived ‘golden age’ period before the state seized family roles and functions. The pre-Thatcherite Divorce Reform Act 1971 and the 1984 act during Thatcher’s reign and increased secularisation by the 1980’s had increased availability and decreased the stigma of divorce proceedings .
(Haralambos and Holborn 2000:574-6)

The electoral success of Thatcherism can be seen in the three election victories of the Thatcher government and her successor John Major who had continued such economic policy post-1990. Between the elections of October 1974 and May 1979 the Conservative party had increased their share of the vote from 35.8% to 43.9%. Labour’s 1979 share was 36.9%, therefore the Conservatives gained clear daylight over Labour and throughout the 1980’s the Conservative share of the vote remained stable around 42-43%. Another testament to the electoral success of the Conservatives during the 1980s is the reversing of the political belief that high unemployment would make a government unelectable. This was a belief that the Conservatives tapped into in their 1979 election campaign with the slogan ‘Labour isn’t working’ in reference to the rising unemployment figure of the late 1970's.

The Conservatives had retained electoral support despite the figure doubling between 1979-81 and continuing to rise until 1986. Support for the Conservatives however came in areas least effected by rising unemployment, especially so in the South of England. In the 1983 election the Conservatives won 162 seats to Labour’s 27 in the South East, 18 seats in East Anglia to the Labour party’s 1, and 44 seats in the South West to Labour’s 1. The Labour party failed to gain a seat from the Conservatives in the South East of England until the 1992 election, whereas in the 1987 election four of the five seats the Conservatives gained from Labour were in the South (Ipswich, Thurrock, Walthamstow and Battersea). In contrast to this the seats that the Labour party gained between 1979-92 were centred around the North of England, Scotland and Wales, who were most effected by high unemployment. In the North Labour won 26 seats to the Conservatives 8 in the 1983 election, around 6-7% higher share of the vote than the Conservatives in Scotland and Wales, in the 1987 election when the SDP were less of an electoral threat their share increased to 45% in Wales and 42% in Scotland, with the Conservatives decreasing to 29.5% and 24% respectively.
(http://www.election.demon.co.uk/)

The Thatcherite’s use of Nationalist sentiments could also be said to have successfully captured votes from the far right National Front, who in the 1979 election had gained around 130,000 votes. By the 1983 election had shrunk to around 30,000. The Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher had exploited the demise of the National Front by offering a respectable face to anti-immigration, covert and even overt racism after the discrediting of the National Front through Anti-Nazi League activities and prominent NF members having convictions for violent crime. Several Conservative MPs had expressed overt anti-immigration statements as early as the 1960’s, the most notable being that of Enoch Powell and the creation of the Conservative Monday Club in 1961, in response to a disenchantment at the McMillan government’s move towards the centre, which contained 3000 Conservative party members and up to 30 Conservative MPs. The Monday Club constituency aims included voluntary repatriation of immigrants, commitment to capital punishment and opposition to the dismantling of the British empire. Significant alliances between the Monday Club Conservatives and the far right in the 1970’s are exemplified by the Essex branch’s invitation to National Front chairman John Tyndall to address one of it’s meetings. (www.searchlight.com/stories/Toryright)

Margaret Thatcher had aligned the mainstream of the Conservative party with Powellite scepticism of, and white working-class fears of immigration, thus recapturing the ‘Powellite’ far right from the National Front in claiming ‘If we went on as we are by the end of the century there would be 4 million people of the new commonwealth here…..people are rather afraid this country might be swamped by people with a different culture’ (Margaret Thatcher, Daily Mail 31/01/1978). The use of the race card and immigration had been a significant factor in the Conservatives decline in the late 1990’s and specifically the 2001 election under Hague, but the social and economic insecurities of the 1970’s had possibly aided it’s appeal with certain sections of the electorate, in contrast to the economic stability and low unemployment of 1997-2001.

The Nationalist vote was also greatly aided by victory over Argentina in the 1982 Falklands War, which gave an illusion of reasserting Britain’s standing as a world force. The Conservatives also scrapped Labour proposals for devolution in 1979, showing a commitment to retaining the centralisation of power in Westminster and preventing the United Kingdom from fragmenting. Both of these occurrences aided the Conservative success in 1983 and rapid reduction of National Front votes. It must therefore be recognised that the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher were an electoral success during the 1980’s because it clearly identified who it’s potential electorate was (affluent southern voters, Nationalist insecurities) and captured it, whilst isolating the sections of the U.K. to whom Thatcherism would have met fierce resistance (the de-industrialised regions hit by unemployment, Scottish and Welsh devolutionists, Labour strongholds).

Economic policy held central importance with regards to Thatcherism, as it marked a departure of emphasis to the previous 35 years of Keynesian demand creation and full employment and had specifically linked Britain’s 20th century economic decline to diverting from Victorian free market values. The Conservatives had not broken the post-1945 consensus themselves, as this had been forced upon the Labour government between 1974-79 by the IMF in order to secure financial assistance. The Labour government were forced to cut public spending in order to reduce inflation, though the Conservatives had promised to remain with this policy and enforce it with enthusiasm, as opposed to the Labour party’s appeasement IMF demands.

The Conservatives had chosen the priority of reducing inflation over reducing unemployment, both of which were high during between 1974-9, although unemployment soured between 1980-6 to 10.4% of the labour force (OECD, Historical Statistics 1960-90), inflation had more than halved from 14.2% between 1974-9 to 6.2% between 1980-9 (OECD, Economic outlook, June 1993). The privatisation programme had aided the Conservatives’ aim of reducing inflation, by reducing public spending whilst shedding labour costs, though when Margaret Thatcher resigned in 1990 inflation had risen back up to 9.5% (OECD, Economic outlook, June 1993), due to tax cuts, increased spending on credit and Margaret Thatcher’s refusal to enter the ERM (member states experienced no increase during this period). The mistakes of the Thatcher government in this period had brought a 4 year recession, which greatly overburdened and effected the popularity and level of trust of John Major’s government, despite an increase in economic fortunes from 1993 onwards.
(Gamble 1994:190,213,275)

The de-industrialisation programme has had far greater impact outside of the South of England, London after 25 years of economic liberalism has barely been affected by such policy due to it’s attraction as a global financial centre. De-industrialisation outside of the South has lead the British economy to be over-reliant on London, in comparison to other developed nations. London has been described as a ‘city state that dominates a nation state’ (Society Guardian 09/06/2003), in that provincial cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow have much less impact on the UK economy than, for instance German provincial cities like Frankfurt, Munich and Stuttgart have on the German economy.

The trend of the U.K. over-reliance on the capital city had developed in 1980s, where high unemployment was concentrated around the North of England, Scotland and Wales. The growth of service sector employment in the 1970s, within the public sector had spread itself evenly throughout the regions of the U.K., where in the 1980s private service sector was mainly concentrated around the south, with the public sector greatly reduced through privatisation. The North-South divide created by Thatcherite economic policy, in contradiction to it’s Nationalist electoral appeal, had an effect of fragmenting Britain in terms of prosperity of which the free market economic policy which has continued under New Labour has failed to redress.

Unemployment figures for April 2003 showed U.K. unemployment to be at 4.9%, the South-East, South-West and East below that level, between 3.7 and 4%, where the North-East, Scotland, West Midlands and Yorkshire/Humberside were all above that average, the North-East as high as 6.7%. This divide is also present in average gross weekly pay, the national average being £473.80 with only London (£636.90), South-East (£505.60), and the East (£475.90) above this and the lowest again being the North-East (£402.10). The vast increase in overseas investment that occurred in the Thatcher years can also be said to undermine the Nationalist sentiments of Thatcherism, as in aiding the development of globalisation and the decline of state control over the U.K. economy. The decrease in exchange controls has led to a situation of vast amounts of capital flowing in and out of the U.K. economy, therefore leaving the U.K. government needing to pursue economic policy to suit foreign investment, so investment does not flow out of the U.K. This has been one explanation behind the demise of social democratic policies in favour of the ‘third way’ between social democracy and free market policy. (Society Guardian 09/06/2003, www.britishcouncil.org/governance/trends, schulze 1999:100-3,273; http://www.statistics.gov.uk/)

It must be seen therefore, that the two major and seemingly irreversible revolutions of the past 50 years in the U.K., are the revolution of social individualism which began in the 1960s (birth control, feminism, gay liberation, divorce legislation) and the revolution of economic individualism of the 1980s (de-industrialisation, information and service economy, reduction of exchange controls). Thatcherism was at the forefront of the latter, though was very much a counter-revolution of the former, even though the development of economic individualism may well have been aided by the development of social individualism over the previous two decades, then in turn exacerbated social individualism further in proceeding decades. The Conservatives enjoyed a degree of popularity whilst pursuing economic individualism in the 1980s, though when it turned it’s full attention to Social conservativism in the 1990s, dramatically lost support to the Labour party who had more comprehensively encompassed both social and economic liberalism in pursuing the ‘Third Way’. Whilst retaining it’s liberal social policy (lowering the age of consent for male homosexuals, reclassification of soft drugs and aiding single mothers in job seeking)

Labour had increased liberalisation of their economic policy, for example in dropping clause 4 of it’s constitution reduced commitment to public ownership, Tony Blair is quoted as stating ‘It’s not reform that is the enemy of public services, it’s the status quo. You cannot just sling money at any problem in order to solve it’ (Society Guardian 26/11/2001). New Labour have therefore used the influence of Thatcherism with regards to the public sector and increased the involvement of the private sector in it’s running. The Adam Smith institution in 2001 noted ‘A broad consensus is beginning to emerge over the state of Britain’s public services….it is now recognised that money alone is not the solution to public service problems’ (www.adamsmithinstitution.co.uk). This view is also supported by Anthony Giddens who stated ‘third way politics should accept some of the rights criticisms…..but see these problems not as a signal to dismantle but reconstruct’ (Giddens 1998:42)

It is with this in mind that it could be considered that Thatcherism was by the end of the 1990s replaced by ‘Third Way’ politics as the dominant policy in U.K. politics. The remaining legacy of Thatcherism is the continuation of free market economics, though this is mainly due to the increasing limitations on governments to implement macro-economic policy in the wake of globalisation. The remaining popularity of this policy is difficult to judge as no major political party offers an alternative policy and with a low voter turn out Labour had won the 2001 election with less votes than the party had when losing the 1979 election with a Keynesian Social Democratic policy. The popularity of free-market choice has been questioned by The Guardian Newspaper (27/03/2004) which states ‘Polling shows people are living busy and stressful lives and do not want lots of choices, they want their local schools or hospitals to be good, they also don’t see it as realistic that choice will be offered to them’. The article also claims that Labour spin doctors had been in consultation with Barry Schwarz author of ‘Paradox of Choice’ which argues ‘excess of choice creates stress, dissatisfaction and unhappiness’.

The undiluted Thatcherite policy of economic liberalism and social conservativism was still pursued under William Hague in 2001 where the Conservatives had over 5 million votes less than their electoral high point of 1987. William Hague’s successors have aimed to take a more socially liberal stance, for example Iain Duncan Smith’s expulsion of the Monday Club from the party for anti-immigration views and Michael Howard’s denouncing of the BNP and advocation of gay civil unions. The selection of David Cameron and his incorporation of environmentalism within the Conservative party has underlined this further, thus leaving Third way politics in a more influential position than Thatcherism in contemporary U.K. politics.