There Is No Alternative

Mortified, the translator stammered, then rendered Thatcher’s comments thus: “Prime Minister Thatcher says that she has never been wholly supportive of the ideas of Karl Marx.”²⁵ One trusts that the visitor nonetheless guessed from her expression where he stood.

Hatred of communism, hatred of Marxism, hatred of socialism—and an unflinching willingness to express that hatred in the clearest imaginable terms—was the core of Thatcherism. It was absolutely sincere. It was absolutely personal. If American Cold Warriors deplored the tyranny imposed by communist regimes overseas—in faraway countries of which, frankly, they knew little if not nothing—Thatcher was affronted by the effects of Marxist dogma on her own country, an entirely different order of outrage.

The key theme of the election campaign that brought Thatcher to power in 1979 was the decline and humiliation wreaked upon Britain by socialism. In virtually every strategy document and public pronouncement from this campaign, we see the very deliberate association of socialism with wickedness and decay. “This election,” the 1979 Conservative Manifesto announced,

is about the future of Britain—a great country which seems to have lost its way. It is a country rich in natural resources, in coal, oil, gas and fertile farmlands. It is rich, too, in human resources, with professional and managerial skills of the highest caliber, with great industries and firms whose workers can be the equal of any in the world. We are the inheritors of a long tradition of parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. Yet today, this country is faced with its most serious problems since the Second World War. What has happened to our country, to the values we used to share, to the success and prosperity we once took for granted? . . .

Our country’s relative decline is not inevitable.

We in the Conservative Party think we can reverse it, not because we think we have all the answers but because we think we have the one answer that matters most. We want to work with the grain of human nature, helping people to help themselves—and others. This is the way to restore that self-reliance and self-confidence which are the basis of personal responsibility and national success.²⁶

The Thatcher papers are housed in Churchill College, Cambridge. ²⁷ They are curated by Andrew Riley, a man whose welcoming warmth and enthusiasm for all things Thatcher calls to mind Willy Wonka’s pride in his chocolate factory. I, Andrew Riley, will conduct you around the archives myself, showing you everything that there is to see, and afterwards, when it is time to leave, you will be escorted home by a collection of large CD-ROMs. These CD-ROMs, I can promise you, will be loaded with archival documents to last you and your entire household for many years!

Andrew whisks me off for several cups of strong coffee, then takes me up the modern stairs and down the modern hall to tour the paper collection. To enter the manuscript room he spins a huge steel dial—something manufactured by a military contractor, I suspect—and puts his whole weight against the heavy, reinforced door. The manuscript room feels like the interior of a spaceship: sterile, climate-controlled, not a mote of dust, unnaturally silent but for the mechanical hum of the air conditioner. Like an accordion, the shelves whoosh apart and re-whoosh shut at the twirl of a Meccano wheel. Hyperactive motion sensors control sliding glass partitions leading to an elevated overpass; they open if you even breathe too close to them, suggesting that they have a will of their own. Andrew shows me the stacks that contain the documents that are yet classified and will remain so for another generation. “Oh, can I just take a peek?” I ask.

Whoosh-whoosh, the shelves glide shut. “Nope! Not for you.”

“Oh, come on. I won’t tell anyone. It will be our little secret.”

“No, no, no! But come on, I have something even better to show you, “ he says cheerfully, ushering me along. I leave the forbidden section, looking reluctantly over my shoulder. The stacks go on for rows and rows; the archive contains over a million documents, 2,500 boxes, 300 meters of shelves, tens of thousands of photographs, a vast collection of press cuttings, audio tapes, video tapes. Andrew shows me what I’m allowed to look at, explains how the catalog system works, then, spinning smartly, beckons me to the back of the room. “Look!” he says, bouncing on his heels with excitement, pointing to a gunmetal-grey box on a raised platform.

The box appears to be made of something bombproof.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Come closer!”

I approach. The strange vessel appears to be emitting an aura. Andrew leans over, shielding from my glance the trick he uses to open it. It flips open noiselessly. He stands aside. “Ta-da!”

There it is: her handbag.

The thing is almost alive and pulsating. I half expect it to whiz up and begin soaring about the room. Thatcher famously opened a ministerial meeting by thumping that handbag on the table and announcing, “I haven’t much time today, only enough time to explode and have my way.”

“Smell it,” says Andrew. He is flushed with sly delight.

“Can I? Really?”

“Go on.”

I lean over and sniff, gingerly. There is a faint odor of talcum and lily. I look at him, surprised. “It smells—”

“My grandmother wore a perfume that smelled just like that.”

He’s right. The handbag smells like a nice old lady.

I’m taken aback. I had been expecting it to smell like napalm and gunpowder.

Many of the documents are useless and mind-numbingly boring. “Tourism is an important growth industry in Wales,” that sort of thing. We’ll skip those. The good stuff is in the pre-election strategy documents, the documents that show us just what Thatcher and those around her proposed to do and how their minds worked. This one, for example:

Britain under Jim Callaghan is far from an ideal society. Yet already the normal rosy hues that proceed [sic] an election are being painted by the Labour Government. Even the IMF are springing to their aid. We must counteract this propaganda. We shall do this by painting what we believe to be the true picture of “Jim’s Britain.” This is a very ugly society and we believe the following words characterize it: selfish, cruel, irresponsible, evil, unjust, unfair, dishonest, secret, frightened, cowardly, lacking nerve, stupid, illogical, dull, unthinking, unreasonable, erratic, simplistic, hostile, hateful, ignorant, confused, poor, hesitant, short-sighted, blind, apathetic, bored, tired, pessimistic, unfulfilled. In other words we have an immature society where individuals deny responsibility to each other. Both they and their country seem to have lost faith in themselves. There is no appearance of personal growth, no fulfillment of satisfaction for self, children or indeed the whole family. No sense of pride, no sense of patriotism.

Thatcher was particularly gifted at spotting opportunities subliminally and overtly to convey that she was above all a thrifty housewife who did the family shopping, knew how much groceries cost, and understood how deeply rising prices affected the ordinary British family. (Contrast this with the elder George Bush, who was reportedly baffled by the sight of a supermarket scanner.) Her policies, she intimated repeatedly, were nothing more than common-sense household economics writ large. (Courtesy of the family of Srdja Djukanovic)

We shall contrast Jim’s Britain with the normative model of Britain’s ideal society that Tory values will create. By contrast this society would evidence concern for others, law and order, justice, fairness, honesty, integrity, openness, courage, a preparedness to take risks for fair rewards, enterprise, invention, intelligence, thoughtfulness, freedom, good sense, concern, knowledge, underlying convictions, mature restraint, self-confidence, loyalty, responsibility for others, self-respect, pride, vision, vibrancy, patriotism, inspiration and interest. Above all, a willingness to support one’s country, the best for oneself and one’s family. An optimism, a sense of fulfillment, a desire to reach maturity so that one is at peace with oneself and the world, and in a natural state of grace.²⁸

A natural state of grace. Clear enough?

This passage comes from the draft of a critical document, the 1977 “Stepping Stones” report, written by the future head of her policy unit, John Hoskyns. “Stepping Stones” was the blueprint for the Thatcher Revolution.

In 1977, Hoskyns collaborated with Thatcher’s adviser Norman Strauss on a plan for the Tory Party’s communication strategy. Hoskyns sent Thatcher the following memorandum summarizing their recommendations:

The objective is to persuade the electorate that they must consciously and finally reject socialism at the next election . . . Before voters will do this they must feel:

a) A deep moral disgust with the Labour-Trades Union alliance and its results—the “sick society.” (Disappointment with the material results is not enough.)

b) A strong desire for something better—the “healthy society.” (The hope of better material results is not enough.)²⁹

To this end, the author advises, Thatcher’s speeches should

Show how the Labour-Trades Union alliance “power at any price” has corrupted the union movement and impoverished and polluted British society.³⁰

Later, in a review of the “Stepping Stones” plan, he notes:

Relative decline makes little impact on ordinary people until it has gone so far that it is almost too late . . . We therefore suggested that the key to changing attitudes would be people’s emotional feelings, especially anger or disgust at socialism and union behavior.³¹

Note again: The point is not that socialism has made people worse off, materially. It is that Britain is corrupt, immoral, disgusting, and polluted. It must be returned to a state of grace. This is a much more ambitious program, and there is no doubt that it was, indeed, Thatcher’s program.

Nothing less.

“Stepping Stones” is an essential artifact, the document that best expresses a core precept of Thatcherism: British decline was a punishment for the sin of socialism. Conservative policy was developed around the strategy set out by Hoskyns in this paper, which not only helped Thatcher achieve victory, but led directly to almost every key Thatcherite reform.

Thatcher’s inner circle was famously divided between the wets and the dries. The wets resisted the radicalism of her program. The dries were true believers. Hoskyns was drier than a Churchill martini; indeed, he resigned from government service in 1982, exasperated, having decided that Thatcher herself was a bit damp.

Hoskyns joined the military at the age of seventeen, one week after VE day, and served in the army for a decade, helping to quell the Mau Mau rebellion. He went on to be an extremely successful software entrepreneur. Like many of the men close to Thatcher, he was an outsider; not only was he not educated at Oxford or Cambridge, he did not have a university education at all.

At the time Thatcher came to power, very few prominent figures in government had any kind of background in business. Many still don’t. “You get a tendency to think,” Hoskyns says to me over lunch, “that ‘business is a sort of unskilled labor for people who aren’t as clever as I am,’ you know, ‘I got a First in PPE and therefore I’m naturally going to be in the cabinet, and I’m going to be running the world, even though I’ve never done anything.’ I mean, David Cameron is a classic example of this.”³² It maddened Hoskyns that the men determining British economic policy had no idea what managers and entrepreneurs actually did, what it really took, day by day, to create wealth.

Parenthetically, Bernard Ingham’s reaction when I described Hoskyns’s views was priceless:

CB: He was extremely critical of the civil service, and felt that it was stacked by people who knew nothing about business, nothing about economics, had no experience of running a company, and felt this was one of the great liabilities that Thatcher confronted—what do you say to that?

BI: It is in my view a load of bunkum! They aren’t there to run a business, they’re there to run the government machine! That’s rather like the press telling me that the government didn’t know anything, and this sort of thing, and I said, “You dare!” I mean, I exploded, in a very early encounter, I said, [shouting and banging table] “You dare to tell me that you know how to run any bloody business when you people were playing Mickey Mouse on a Friday night on Fleet Street!” I mean, people made up identities in order that they could be paid! I said, “Get stuffed!” I said. “Go away!” I mean, I got so angry with them. [Calming down slightly] But no, I don’t think you have to be a businessman to know how to run Britain, especially in those days, when businessmen had made a complete hash of managing their businesses. They couldn’t manage them without the government! I mean, the number of times that I was—I just—I was reduced to groaning , quietly, in meetings, when these businessmen came in, stormed upon her, said what a brilliant Prime Minister she was, but we need more incentives! And I cheered when she said, “You realize that ‘incentives’ means more taxation, do you?” I mean, they were totally insecure, totally insecure in their ideology, and they were pure opportunists! . . . In any case, how many businessmen have got any experience in government? Bah! . . . Maybe life is a bit more complicated than Mr. Hoskyns thinks!

Back to Hoskyns, who in fairness would actually be described as the Thatcherite who best appreciated the complexity of life. In the 1970s, contemplating the intensely hostile business environment in which he was obliged to operate, he began thinking obsessively about the etiology and dimensions of the British sickness. “It was,” he writes, “like one of those puzzles from a Christmas cracker that you can neither solve nor leave alone.”³³ His analysis of this sickness, which he details in his memoirs, is one of the most comprehensive extant.

One could start the discussion at almost any point: trade union obstruction, inflationary expectations, the tendency of the best talent to keep away from the manufacturing industry, fiscal distortions, high interest rates, an overvalued pound, stop-go economic management, the low status of engineers, poor industrial design, the anti-enterprise culture, illiterate teenagers . . . Almost everything turned out to be a precondition for almost everything else, and trying to solve one problem in isolation would probably make the other problems more intractable.³⁴

In his efforts to delineate the constituent parts of the sickness, Hoskyns produced what has come to be called the wiring diagram, a labyrinthine pictorial description of the British Disease (overleaf).

This is not, I think you will agree, the work of a man who fails to see that life is complicated.

Having constructed the diagram, Hoskyns concluded that Britain’s postwar settlement had produced an entirely dysfunctional economy and society. It would have to be completely rewired. In other words, Britain needed a revolution. For a revolution, you need fervor. In “Stepping Stones,” he supplied the vocabulary with which to rouse that fervor.

Events continue to reveal the true morality of collectivism.

But the real point—that socialism is less moral than capitalism, rather than as immoral—has not been made.³⁵[Emphasis in original]

Reproduced with John Hoskyns’s kind permission.

A VIEW OF THE UK ECONOMIC PROBLEM
As of 1 October 1974. John Hoskyns

How was that point to be made, precisely? He proposed that the electorate might be divided among “Doers,” “Thinkers,” and “Feelers.” Thatcher’s message, he held, should be tailored to appeal to all three groups, but to all, one message would be repeated over and over: Shame.

TRIGGERING THE DOERS

We believe this should concentrate on people’s place of work . . . This is the behavior we wish to cause people to question. Are people really not ashamed that they enter into strike action which, they all know, has no concern whatsoever for their fellow humans, let alone workers? They must be ashamed but they do it because they are frightened and bewildered and because no political party has identified a society which can give them hope for the future and reason to behave as the science tells them they ought . . .

They know that there are massive hidden economies, i.e., fiddles and thefts that go on at work. Yet no one has made them feel ashamed of this, no one has pointed out that it would be far better if morality and integrity were reintroduced into society so that all could hold their heads up with pride . . . ³⁶ [My emphasis]

Thatcher, he advised, must demand that the electorate not merely change its government, but reject socialism root and branch.

To achieve this it is necessary to instill into the emotional majority (the “Feelers”) . . . a sense of shame and disgust with the corrupting effects of socialism and union power—class war, dishonesty, tax fiddling, intimidation, shoddy work³⁷ . . . [My emphasis]

Thatcher with Conservative politician Neil Thorne at the Ilford Conservative Club, presenting her case during the 1979 general election campaign. The journalist John Biffen once described the prime minister as “a tigress surrounded by hamsters.” (Courtesy of Graham Wiltshire)

The Labour Party, argued Hoskyns, must be identified clearly with this shame:

To regain the initiative, we therefore have to explain to the Feelers that Labour really does stand for Clause 4 Socialism, and the dictatorship of unsackable union leaders; a partnership which has led to a “Sick Society” which is materially impoverished, dishonest, stupid, arbitrary, unfair, and finally frightened; so that it is pitied, as childish and backward, rather than respected by other countries.³⁸ [My emphasis]

Above all, the voters must be made to understand the meaning of socialism:

Spell out Clause 4, printed on every party members’ card . . . This is what they’re determined to get, in the end. . . . The union-Labour link is unique to Britain; so socialism always has the real power, whatever people thought they had voted for. That is why we are now the most socialist, as well as the poorest country in the Western world except for Italy . . .

Socialism—and the Labour Party—must be shown to be inextricably linked with the overweening power of the trade unions:

In order to attack an adversary, one must first identify his weak points or Critical Links. For the Labour Party this is obviously their relationship with the unions . . . We must both attempt to defeat the Labour Government in its own right, and also the unions in their own right. If we succeed in bringing down one, we bring down both.³⁹

But the message must not, he repeated, be confined to promising people that they will be better off, economically, under the Tories. “Morality in the end counts for more than personalities; an appropriate value system counts for more than ‘correct’ economic policy.” ⁴⁰ My emphasis, again.

Stern stuff.

I meet John Hoskyns for lunch at the Travellers Club, the oldest of the gentlemen’s clubs on Pall Mall. You might think, from the documents above, that Hoskyns would be rather a grim and self-righteous personality, but nothing could be farther from the truth. He is jolly and charming, quick to laugh, and touching—grandfatherly, almost—in his concern that I enjoy my meal and order the richest items on the menu. I order the Dover Sole, and to please him, the buttery mashed potatoes. Then we discuss the famous wiring diagram.

John Hoskyns: What the diagram really said is that if you’re going to change anything, you’ve got to change everything. Not because that sounds like a good, Hurrah! sort of thing to say, and we want to be revolutionaries, and we want to do big things, but because actually, in terms of logic, the causal connections are such that you cannot say, “Let’s just do that,” because—you can’t! Because actually, there are five other things that are causing that.

[Waitress interrupts]

Waitress: Would you like to look at the dessert cart?

JH: What would you like? A large slice of chocolate cake?

CB: I’ll have a look—

Waitress: We have a strawberry cheesecake, chocolate truffle cake, and then we have a trifle, and strawberries in red wine with orange—

CB: I’ll try a trifle.

JH: There we are! . . . I think the wiring diagram satisfied me, and I know I had to explain to Keith [Joseph], “This is not a magic gadget which tells us how to do it. What it does is it says, ‘At last, we have an imperfect but very rough and ready picture of the problem, well, really, of the answer to the question, why is this country such a mess?’” And the answer goes right back to the end of the war, the challenges of the peace, and the policy responses to those challenges . . . which with hindsight, very easy to make that mistake at the time, probably if one had been in his forties or fifties as a politician in those days, one would have done the same thing. One would have gone with the New Jerusalem. The Thatcher remedy started, I do think, with the wiring diagram. Then, the next step is you say, “Only a revolution will do any good.” And you don’t have revolutions for fun, they’re very uncomfortable, very unpleasant, a lot of people get hurt, and—You shall have a war. It’s going to be very unpleasant, and we’re going to be hated, and the better the things we do, the more hated we will be. I remember all these thoughts were in my mind when I was working for her, and I thought, “We’re not likely to bring it off. But if we do, she will be a historic figure.”

CB: When you first met her, did you sense any particular political charisma? Or was that something that only emerged later?

JH: [Long silence] I didn’t particularly. I think that grew as time went on. I was interested, having already met her through Alfred Sherman [initially one of Thatcher’s political advisors], a tough, rude, multilingual, seven-languages or something, brilliant East End Jew, built like a sort of 5’2” gorilla—lovely man, very funny man, too—absolutely fearless, tremendous mental energy—and I thought, if she can realize what he’s got to offer, compared with some of these Beta-minus, Beta-plus intellects in the Party machine, and doesn’t safely settle for another public schoolboy, but takes this fellow instead, well then—and that Keith and Margaret, those two people, could forge such an unlikely bond, and both listen to this completely from-outer-space brainbox, it did make me think, when I came to meet her, “She’s not your ordinary, world-weary, pompous, self-important, thinking-inside-the-box, slightly defeatist, pragmatic, cautious, Tory politician.” You know, she’s not. She’s actually realizing that something terrible has got to be done.

Something terrible had got to be done. The battle would be bloody, and they would be hated. Hoskyns knew it, Sherman knew it, Joseph knew it, Thatcher knew it. So did everyone who managed her ascent to power. Even the wringing-wet Chris Patten, then director of the Conservative Party’s research department, uneasily sensed it. He drafted a paper titled “Implementing Our Strategy” in 1977, outlining the themes to be stressed in the coming election campaign.

Labour’s record is appalling. What has happened is their own fault. They cannot blame us, or world factors. They virtually doubled prices, more than doubled unemployment, doubled the tax burden and doubled public spending? Why? Because when they came in they gave us a double dose of Socialism.⁴¹

Nigel Lawson, who was later to become the most famous member of Thatcher’s cabinet as her chancellor, reviewed this memo and heartily concurred with this sentiment, writing in response that “A well thought-out scare campaign is a must.”⁴² The words are underlined in Thatcher’s hand, I believe.

Lawson appended to this note an earlier memo he had written titled “Thoughts on the Coming Battle”:

The Socialists have avowedly adopted the most extreme Left propaganda and posture in their Party’s history. This central fact, and its detailed implications, should be the ever-present theme of our propaganda war . . .

Linguistics. The semantic battle is an important aspect of the overall battle. We need what newspapers call a “house style,” circulated to all concerned, to ensure that Socialist policies are always referred to by words with unfavorable emotive overtones, and our policies by words with favorable emotive overtones.⁴³

The minutes of a 1977 meeting of Thatcher’s Strategy and Tactics Committee emphasized, again, the semantic linking of socialism, guilt, and sin:

SECRET

NOTES ON THEMES

Destruction of our opponents:

Guilty men. Hypocrisy of individuals, damaging failure as Government. Label them with failure. Link failure/decline of Britain inextricably with Socialism. . . .

“Doubled” theme—spending, unemployment, but particularly prices. Doubled Socialism/nationalization. Juxtapose doubled nationalization and doubled prices. . . .

Labour and the Trade Unions will turn us into an Eastern European state. What’s moral about locking up your enemies? . . .

Free Enterprise. Moral case for freedom. Choice, dignity, responsibility, worth of the individual.

Let the individual control his own life. Right to property.

Open up debate on what sort of society we want in the late 20th century. The right approach to society/social policy . . .

The courage and the real concern to do what is right. [My emphasis]⁴⁴

Shortly afterwards, Alan Howarth, a member of the inner sanctum of the Conservative Research Department, wrote a paper for Thatcher’s benefit titled “Some Suggestions for Strategic Themes.” He hoped, he wrote to her, that it might serve as “raw material” for “the philosophical case that you have been contemplating making.” ⁴⁵ The paper is much in the same vein, and I suspect that it did indeed provide raw material—or at least rhetorical inspiration—for Thatcher’s case.

Labour’s failure. Fantastic economic mismanagement. Prices doubled in three years, production at level of five years ago, unemployment more than doubled, colossal debt. A humiliated and impoverished Britain. . . .

The Guilt of the Socialists. They are guilty of fraud. Remember “Back to work with Labour” and look at the unemployment. Look at the social services, the dereliction of Labour controlled cities and the crime and violence. [Underlined in original]

It is the Socialists who are guilty, not the British people (or world economic factors).

Their Guilty Men. Their hypocrisy.⁴⁶

An interesting aside: In 1993, Howarth defected to the Labour Party. It seems he changed his mind.

This culminates in Thatcher’s own voice, rallying her troops in 1976. The speech anticipates and embodies all of these themes:

I want to speak to you today about the rebirth of a nation: our nation—the British nation.

. . . Economically, Britain is on its knees. It is not unpatriotic to say this. It is no secret. It is known by people of all ages. By those old enough to remember the sacrifices of the war and who now ask what ever happened to the fruits of victory; by the young, born since the war, who have seen too much national failure; by those who leave this country in increasing numbers for other lands. For them, hope has withered and faith has gone sour. And for we who remain it is close to midnight.

. . . the world over, free enterprise has proved itself more efficient, and better able to produce a good standard of living than either socialism or communism. [But] . . . The Labour Party is now committed to a program which is frankly and unashamedly Marxist.

. . . let’s not mince words. The dividing line between the Labour Party program and communism is becoming harder and harder to detect. Indeed, in many respects Labour’s program is more extreme than those of many communist parties of Western Europe.

. . . Between the pair of them, Sir Harold [Wilson] and Mr. Callaghan and their wretched governments have impoverished and all but bankrupted Britain. Socialism has failed our nation. Away with it, before it does the final damage.

. . . We can overcome our doubts, we can rediscover our confidence; we can regain the respect of the rest of the world. The policies which are needed are dictated by common sense.

. . . Of course we’re not going to solve our problems just by cuts, just by restraint. Sometimes I think I have had enough of hearing of restraint. It was not restraint that brought us the achievements of Elizabethan England; it was not restraint that started the Industrial Revolution; it was not restraint that led Lord Nuffield to start building cars in a bicycle shop in Oxford. It wasn’t restraint that inspired us to explore for oil in the North Sea and bring it ashore. It was incentive—positive, vital, driving, individual incentive. The incentive that was once the dynamo of this country but which today our youth are denied. Incentive that has been snuffed out by the socialist state.

. . . Common-sense policies must, and will, prevail if we fight hard enough.

. . . I call the Conservative Party now to a crusade. Not only the Conservative Party. I appeal to all those men and women of goodwill who do not want a Marxist future for themselves or their children or their children’s children. This is not just a fight about national solvency. It is a fight about the very foundations of the social order. It is a crusade not merely to put a temporary brake on socialism, but to stop its onward march once and for all.

. . . As I look to our great history and then at our dismal present, I draw strength from the great and brave things this nation has achieved. I seem to see clearly, as a bright new day, the future that we can and must win back. As was said before another famous battle: “It is true that we are in great danger; the greater therefore should our courage be.”⁴⁷

The last line is from Shakespeare, whose achievements, as she points out, were not the product of restraint. The words are spoken by Henry V on the eve of the victorious Battle of Agincourt.

Shakespeare, the Crusades, great and brave things, the fruits of victory and common sense—all of this, she claimed, was her rightful inheritance. They were Britain’s rightful inheritance. But the Marxists were scheming to cut her children out of the will.

They would not succeed.

It is all like this, in the archives. Guilt, shame, decay, decline, immorality, wickedness, a once-great nation brought to its knees, double-doses of socialism. These words are counterpoised against descriptions of Thatcher as a woman of old-fashioned virtue and common sense who will do what is proud, patriotic, self-respecting, honorable, and right.

Do you find the language of these documents shocking? I confess that I do. I completely agree that socialism is corrupting. I hate communism, too—I loathe it. But to see these overwrought sentiments emerging from a people famed for their reserve, irony, and understatement leads me to suspect that Bernard Ingham was on to something when he remarked that “the British pride themselves on being a wonderfully even-tempered and decent people, but once they embrace a doctrine, they can become quite, quite extreme.”