Business and the Conservatives
Identifieur interne : 003C90 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 003C89; suivant : 003C91Business and the Conservatives
Auteurs : Candace HetznerSource :
- Administration & society [ 0095-3997 ] ; 1989-08.
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Abstract
In her efforts to revivify the British economy. Prime minister Margaret Tatcher has been attempting to promote societal values that will support the creation of an "enterprise culture." To do so, she has been doing battle with the consensual economic planning undertaken by business, unions and civil servants known as tripartism and the gentlemanly ethos underpinning such arrangements. Her broadsides against such members of the British gentlemanly culture as the Tory grandees in her own party and members of the higher civil service have been aimed at replacing the British gentleman with a new ideal type more suited to lead her "capitalist revolution."
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DOI: 10.1177/009539978902100201
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<p>
<italic>In her efforts to revivify the British economy. Prime minister Margaret Tatcher has been attempting to promote societal values that will support the creation of an "enterprise culture." To do so, she has been doing battle with the consensual economic planning undertaken by business, unions and civil servants known as tripartism and the gentlemanly ethos underpinning such arrangements. Her broadsides against such members of the British gentlemanly culture as the Tory grandees in her own party and members of the higher civil service have been aimed at replacing the British gentleman with a new ideal type more suited to lead her "capitalist revolution."</italic>
</p>
</abstract><custom-meta-wrap><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>sagemeta-type</meta-name><meta-value>Journal Article</meta-value></custom-meta><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>search-text</meta-name><meta-value> i liher effortis to revivify thle Britisih ecoiomy l' rimte inimster Margarct Tlatiich1er- hias been? attemtptinlg to promote societl etiva/ties tlai itill . i/spport tle creatoiti ofa "eon enterprise cut/ltre. " To do so, shie lias beeni doitig bottle vit/ilte conctseusnal econotnic plalnintg iiit(/ertakeit byx bumstic ss, iitiiOiis f11(1 il ii sel asitr s l ktowit1i as iripartiso (iti( lite geIt/tenailly etlios tiii(/lepiiittitig suiC arra gcement s. flu broadsdi( glit .gti such members of e te Briitish getcInatleman/ Cntrlleti-' as the Toiti graludees il her ott'it ptls a1!d mneltbers of t/ic higlher c ivil s-ervice have beent ai t ep/lacing i/ic Briiis/igent/eman it/i aI mien' i(/da/l tYpe mor-e slited to leadl lher' "c'apitalist reIoli/ltinoit. BUSINESS AND THE CONSER VA TI VE S Ideology, Social Class, a,id Econiomic Clianige CANDACE HETZNER For dltaml Univer5sity And thrift is blessing if men steal it not [ShiIock in Tle,u,le Mec ltialttofIt'eicel. England a commercial country! Yes; as Vcnice was. She may excel other nations in commerce, but yet it is not that in which she most prides herself, in which she most excels. Merchants as sLich are not the first men among us; though it perhaps be open, barely opcn to a merchant to become one of them. Buying and selling is good and necessaryv it is verv necessary, and may, possibly be very good; but it cannot be the noblest work ot man; and let us hope that it may not in our time be esteemed the noblest work of an Englishman [Anthony Trollope, Doctor Tliormtel. The difficult thing for political scientists is that no sooner do they articulate a body of theory and point to some instances of political behavior that seem to support that theory than the polity seems suddenly to say, with apologies to Peter Winch, "The idea of a social science!" and sets about gumming up the works. One of the most discouraging or encouraging, depending on one's views of the mission of the social ADMINISTRATION & SOCItFIY. Vol. 'I No. ', August 198 134-1 5- c 1989 Sagc Publications. Inc. 134 Hetzner lBUSINESS ANT) [HE CONSERVA I IVES 135 sciences and/or social democracy, examples of this kind of civic mischief has been the behavior of the English political system sincc the advent of the Thatcher government in 1979. No sooner had we declared the twilight of party and parliament; the eclipse of ideology: the darkncss of pluralistic stalemate and systemic overload and collapse; and the dawning of advanc- ing corporatism, liberal corporatism, or tripartism, thcn the polity elected a Conservative government headed by Margaret Thatcher. Since she became prime minister, Great Britain has been witnessing the conflagra- tion of Butskellism and tweedle-dum-tweedle-dee parties: Out of the ashes of consensus has arisen an ideological phoenix carrying the param- eters of public debate and policy farther to the economic right, that is, toward more individual freedom and less government intervention. She has accomplished this by wresting control of the party from the Tory paternalists and grandees, shunning tripartist consultation and planning in favor of tapping the intellectual resources of laissez-faire think tanks such as her own Centre for Policy Studies or the Adam Smith Institute or like-minded businesspeople and organizations, making appeals to the public in terms of what she calls "Victorian values," and finally using the programmatic power of her parliamentary majority to make a fundamental break with the economic policies of the past several decades. THE NATURE OF THE MALAISE The British economy has been suffering from both relative and abso- lute decline. Even though the English standard of living and productivity have until recently steadily increased since the 1950s, Great Britain has been slipping relative to her industrialized competitors. As commentators such as Peter Riddell (1985) and Andrew Gamble (1985: 15) have elaborately documented, the rate of growth and output per head have lagged badly behind the country's competitors. For example, in the decade 1962-1972, the British rate of growth was 2.2% comparcd to the United States at 3%, Japan at 9.2%', and France at 4.7%. Real GNP in Great Britain grew by 3.7% from 1979 to 1984 compared to 10.5% OECD real GNP (Gamble, 1985: 15). In 1985, Britons learned that both their output per person per hour as well as their standard of living had fallen below that of the Italians, a people, in the words of R. W. Apple (1985), then the New York Times London correspondent, "whose wine and sunshine they may envy, whose past musical and artistic triumphs they may admire, but whom they have never taken terribly seriously as a nation-state." 136 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / August 1989 The fact that as the twentieth century has progressed, discussion of the decline of the British economy has been coming close to constituting a major industry not only says a lot about the extent of the problem and increasing public concern with respect to it but also bespeaks something about the source of the economic problem as well. What have been called the English "talking classes," that is, those members of various English elites sharing a common culture embracing similarities of values, man- ners, and style reminiscent of the traditional aristocracy and gentry, would rather discuss economic decline than right it.' This is a culture that has inherited the profoundly antibusiness values to which the aristo-gentry has subscribed since the rise of industrialization.' What are these values? Their positive expression lies in the veneration of the gentleman who embraces the pursuit of leisure (if "pursuit" is not too "ungenteelly" active a verb-perhaps "amble toward" would be more appropriate) both in terms of the pastimes that embody it and the kinds ot livelihoods that can sustain it. The twentieth-century English gentleman has cultivated the essentially rural pastimes inherited from the preindustrial upper classes. He is prone to live in the country or to own a country house if forced by necessity to follow a profession in town. Though he may indeed enjoy the intellectual and cultural life of London and even take in the opera or ballet, he is most at home when shooting grouse for Sunday dinner, strolling with his dog down a grassy footpath toward his village Norman keep, uncork- ing a favored claret, or admiring his new chestnut foal. Where he is most decidedly uncomfortable is in the suburb, a no man's land of parvenus experiencing neither the humanism of the city nor the natural harmony of the country. Thus one finds Lord Randolph Churchill in the late nineteenth century referring to the M. P., W. H. Smith, the bookseller, as one of the "bourgeois nonentities," the Lords of suburban villas, the owners of "pineries and vineries" (Hampden-Turner, 1983: 97). Or, in the twentieth century, former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's "I'm always rather depressed by the rootlessness of modern Britain, particularly in the South. To think that within twenty miles there are eight million people leading suburban lives" (Sampson, 1982: 35). Although the English modern gentleman may cultivate the way of life of the landed, preindustrial classes, he has increasingly since the nine- teenth century financed his rural persona from sources other than the land. As primogeniture seriously limited the number of those who might assume the gentlemanly mantle as a result of inheritance of property and as technological advances in agriculture itself placed even more severe limitations on the possible number of gentlemen who could support Hetzner / BUSINESS AND T HE CONSERVATIVES 137 themselves at a level appropriate to their station, the English upper classes have sought other means of livelihood. The clergy, military, and the law had acted as the traditional professional avenues for the second, third, and so on sons under primogeniture. As the nineteenth century proceeded, the higher civil service joined the list, and, as time has gone by, academia, journalism, the arts, and even medicine and banking-though the latter two have had a bit of a struggle-have become incorporated into the gentlemanly ideal. Why these occupations? What is it that they have in common? First of all, they have been ones where money has not directly changed hands, an exchange of shillings for service, with the exception of medicine, where originally the physician accepted money upon attend- ing a patient-hence the slight status problem with being a doctor. Likewise, banking has been in some difficulty over the money at its essence but has been acceptable insofar as bankers invest at some remove from the actual handling of currency. Similarly, accountants have risen in status in this century because they manipulate the symbols of money, not money itself. Often it is said that what the gentlemanly professions really have in common is a lack of specialist or technical expertise, that they represent the cult of the amateur. This observation seems both true and untrue: On the one hand, some of these occupations such as that of cleric or pundit do seem to lend themselves to amateurism, and on the other hand, occupations such as barristers and doctors do seem to require some modicum of specialist expertise. What the amateur characterization most adequately describes is something about the conduct of professions and as well as something even more fundamental about the superfluity or contingent nature of these professions to the actual societal role or function of the gentleman. The description "amateur" refers less to what it is one is required to know to practice these professions than to how one is required to conduct oneself in such practice. Of course, the royal navy man must surely know fore from aft; the doctor, anterior from posterior; the novelist, prologue from epilogue; in short, cach must at least know which end is up. But above all the professional man is required to act like one, which is much more a matter of manner, tone, and style than substance. He must engage in his profession in a way that appears effortless, restrained, civil, moder- ate, and witty. He must be master of the verbal joust, the boni inot, the mot jiuste, gliding toward his audience in mellifluous upper-class resonances- be they aristocratic, Oxbridge, or even nowadays BBC. He cannot appear to be the serious, hardworking technician who must strive to master the 138 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIEI'Y / August 1989 skills of his profession in order to make his way. The case of the English amateur is thus one where "the gentleman doth profess too little." It is this "manner maketh man" aspect of the conduct of th. gentle- manly professional that is connected to the other aspect of the cult of the amateur. The true gentleman, no matter his various money-makinig pro- fessional incarnations, has but one true calling: His real role is to lead, govern, rule, and dominate the mass of less knowing, vulgar elements in society-the agathloi exercising dominion over the loi polloi. This pater- nalistic Iiointo geniteelis is the direct evolutionary descendant of ancient feudal and Elizabethan organicism: One can trace his growth from the ranks and roles of Elizabethan England to the statuses and stations of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the offices and obligations of the present day. Though the basis of his entitlement to rule has changed over time, less birth than merit; nonetheless, his function has not. He is still there to be a protector of the people, a governor of the affairs of state, an embodiment of the civic virtues, and a standard bearer of all that is correct in matters of taste or intellect or conscience. Commenting on the chilling effects of this class and its values on the British economy, Charles Hampden-Turner (1983: 1). a London Business School faculty member recently returned to Great Britain after sixteen years abroad, has written: Armed with a master's and even a doctoral degree from Harvard, why have I not thrown my entire energies into an industrial battle ot Britain'? Why do I beg fellowships from Rocketfellcr and Guggenheim and join that swelling bandl of post-industrial pontiticators. who sit upoln the aching back of industrv? It can hardlN be the lack of incentives. My classmates at [larvard must be earning. on average, somewhere in the region of $90,000 a year, mostly in the serv ice ot large corporations. vet I cannot bring myself to join them. From the standpoint of the values bv which I was brought up, to go "forward" economictillv would be to go "backw ards in self-fulfillment. Could at least a section of this country be experiencing a dilemma similar to milne'? He then goes on to lav bare his personal history and to explain: If there was one abiding theme in mv upbringing--one idea that held all others in thrall-it w;as the necessity for a commandinig social presence. To be a gentleman, or to become one of the man, modernistic transtormations ot a gentlenman, was to conmmnand the attention of others \ ith grace, style. wit, eloquence, self-possession and intinite subtlety. There were many other values, ot course, intefligence. affection, wealth but these were mere Hcizner BUSINESS AND TUIE CONSERVATIVES 139 resources to be pulled centre stage on cue. The purpose of lite WAS that stage itself, a scenario where ultimate ideas and great paissions would plav themselves out around me. And I was curiously dismissive of all those subjects that did not lend themselves easil\ to social fluency: i.e., science, technology, industry and similar subjects known to make people conversationally dull. I expected such people to work BEI-IIND the stage [Hampden-Turner, 1983: 31. Hampden-Turner, as with all others who have written on the topic, does not limit his socialization discussion to the effects of home and hearth but also discusses the role of the public schools and Oxford and Cambridge in further enculturating the gentlemanly ethos into those already possess- ing the values by way or family or by tutoring barbarians not so familially blessed. The steady bias of these institutions, as with the classes that support them, is profoundly humanist, antispecialist, antitechnique, and finally antibusiness. As with all class-based social orders and snobberies, it is important to note who and what is excluded from the elite as included. The English gentleman is thus not, with rare exceptions, a product of state secondary education or redbrick or other new kinds of universities; he is not a non-Conformist in his religion; the hardworking ethos of Calvinism or Wesleyanism is not for him; he is not from nor a resident of the industrial north; he is not an engineer or any other kind of applied scientist, a salesman, a manufacturer. or any other producer of things; he is not a businessman. In short, the English talking classes would rather talk about the plight of the British economy than do anything about it. The culture is simply hostile to the values, professions, and behaviors deemed essential to economic productivity by the standards of most modcrn industrialized countries. Needless to say, the English social order includes more than its elite: It also includes the disdained technicians, manufacturers, and other assorted producers and makers of things and the working classes who have traditionally been as hostile to business as the elite. Despite the fact that Great Britain's current economic woes lie in both the top and bottom strata, this article has, nevertheless, chosen to concentrate on the effects of elite values and behavior for the following reasons. First of all, as an elite it tautologously does dominate and hence its views and values have permeated the culture so that a lot of the strong prejudice against business found in other classes is presumably owed at least in part to the influence of the upper classes. Second, because these elites tend to speak and act authoritatively, these are the people who could effect changes in public 140 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / August 1989 policy that are critical to the revivification of the English economy. For example, these are the people who could reform the educational system in directions that would provide a more literate, numerate, skilled, tech- nologically proficient work force. Third. these people, because of their privileged backgrounds, constitute an important set of intellectual and financial resources for helping to cure the British disease if they were not antipathetic to getting directly involved in the economy. LORDL' DISCONTENTS Quite interesting in this regard has been the recent 1985 House of Lords Report froml tlhe Select Committee omi Overseas Trade (Great Britain, 1985) in terms of the evidence collected, analysis, and prescriptions. The Lords, of course, are almost by definition walking exemplars of the gentlemanly talking classes, whether Conservative or Labour. It should, perhaps, be added at thisjuncture that the natural habitat of /liomo gemiteelis is most often in the Conservative party, but he may also be found in significant numbers among the intellectuals in the lIabour party, such is the hegemony of the aristo-gentry culture. The Committee revealed, to no one's surprise, that a serious prob- lem existed with regard to the United Kingdom's balance of trade in manufactures (Report, Vol. 1: 7). In addition. the Lords pointed out: "Because of relatively poor export perlormance and import penetra- tion, manufacturing has suffered at a time when growth in the economy has also been low . . . a fall in manufacturing output of 141/2 per cent in just two years 1980 and 1981. . . . While GDP has risen over the period 1972-84 taken as a whole, manufacturing output as a percentage of GDP has declined-from 28 per cent of GDP in 1972 to 21 percent in 1983-and the trend appears still downward. It is clear that manu- facturing industry has been declining for the last decade in both absolute and relative terms" (Report, Vol. 1: 4). The Committee thus broadened its original charge "to consider the causes and implications of the deficit in the United Kingdom's balance of trade in manufac- tures; and to make recommendations" (Report, Vol. I: 5). They said that "trade in manufactures and the output of manufacturing industry are indissolubly linked. The Committee therefore took the view that their orders of reference required them to consider the problems of the deficit in the balance of trade in manufactures in the wider context of the problems of manufacturing industry as a whole." Heizner / BUSINESS AND THE CONSERVATIVES 141 An examination of who made up the Committee and who did not, who gave evidence and who did not, and what the Committee concluded and did not is highly instructive with respect to the role of cultural variables in holding back the English economy (though, if this analysis is correct, presumably not always in the ways the lIords would have thought) and is also illustrative of what it is the Thatcher government has been working to combat. When the Committee reported its findings, numerous journal- istic commentators and critics of Thatcher's economic policies expressed surprise at the hostility of the Thatcher government's response to the Committee's findings and contended that the Report said many of the same kinds of things about the country's economic woes as had members of the government. The pundits and critics were, however, only partially correct: Yes, there were substantial points of agreement, but there were also major points of disagreement. All parties, witnesses, Lords, and the government have agreed that Great Britain has been suffering from cultural values inimical to economic growth. Reminiscent of the observation of Ernest Bevin over forty years ago that "the problem with my people is their poverty of desire," Lord Weinstock, chairman of General Electric Company and a man of substantially different background, party affiliation, and worldview from Bevin, nonetheless, had this to say to the Lords: There are other things besides management which need improving. One of the characteristics of the British is that they do not get carried away by idealogies [sic], or by demagogues, but the reflection of that lack of passion carries over into ordinary life. They do not care quite so much. They are not so anxious to have another motorcar, a fourth television set or two holidays in Spain or Italy. They are content with a reasonable standard of living and they are not prepared to go to the extremes of the Japanese who, the saying goes, look tor the last grain of rice in the box [Report, Vol. II: 472]. In particular, those giving evidence emphasized the difficulty of re- cruiting top people to industry and of obtaining technically proficient individuals and more often than not spoke of the problems with schools in these regards. For example, the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry wrote the Lords: "A variety of reasons of a long-term nature have been factors in the relatively faster decline of manufacturing in Britain. Many of these go deep into our history. For example, the gentrification of the descendants of the original entrepreneurs of the industrial revolution 142 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / August 1989 and the bias in the English education system which accompanied it." Norman Tebbitt, then secretary of state tor Trade and Industry and Conservative party chairman, testified: I think it is perhaps above all tor those in indlustrv to carry its flag and to help us to change the culture. Hioow many companies do enough to send not just the chap they can spare but people \vho the\ wonder ifthey can spare into schools to try to talk to school teachers. to begin to influence the view that youngsters at school hax e of what sort of jobs they will be seeking and how they regard various sectors of the economy ? I have a suspicion that even in some of our most famous institutions ot academic exccllence there is a tenldency toward regarding industry as mcrely the thing which is there to actually provide them wvith the money to kcep them in the style to which they are accustomed; it is not to be compared with the sheer excellence of a life in academic contemplation or in administration or far out research either of the ultimate nature of the universe or ultimate nature of man [Report, Vol. IL: 704. Sir Hector Laing, chairman of United Biscuits, sent the Committee a memorandum in which he maintained that "it is important to develop close links with schools and universities, both to break down academic preju- dices against 'filthy lucre'and to give them a better understanding of what the business world needs from them if their graduates are to make a useful contribution to the nation's ability to earn a living in the world" (Report, Vol. IT: 402). And finally many representatives of industry and govern- ment expressed concern over the lack of a highly qualified pool of engineers and technicians. Companies as diverse as Marks and Spencer, British Aerospace, and Plessey claimed that they had difficulty finding technically proficient employees. In the words of Lord Sieff, chairman of Marks and Spencer, "In the schools, engineering, industry and commerce are looked down on by headmasters as not a suitable profession for their pupils. Although to some extent it is the fault of the industrialists, those concerned with engineering, not putting it over sufficiently strongly enough in the schools, it is much more the fault of headmasters and those who teach in the schools who make it appear that this is really rather an inferior job to undertake" (Report, Vol. II: 352). After hearing such testimony the Lords concluded that indeed Great Britain has possessed, at least since the nineteenth century, a cultural climate that has been less than favorable to business (Report, Vol. 1: 56). With this and most of the Lords' conclusions, as well as most of the Lords' recommendations concerning the need for altering cultural values Hetzncr / BUSINESS AND THE CONSERVATIVES 143 through reforming the educational system and the use of informational programs such as Industry Year, the Thatcher government could presum- ably be comfortable. But beginning with at least one of the recommenda- tions in the Lords discussion of cultural values and moving on to the rest of their conclusions, the Thatcher government was bound to be unhappy. The Committee called for "a need for consistency and continuity of government policies, particularly fiscal policies, aimed at ensuring the health and success of manufacturing industries.... Manufacturing deci- sions have to anticipate conditions far beyond the term of any one Parliament" (Report, Vol. 1: 56-57). The Committee then continued with its conclusions on national attitude and said that "all people and all sections of society whether they be politicians, managers or the work- force, industry or financial institutions, or the media or consumers-need to acquire a common understanding about the vital place in the life of the nation of manufacturing and trade which transcends party political ideol- ogy" (Report, Vol. 1: 57). Herein, one suspects. the rub began. For in the earlier Butskellite years, Conservative governments would not likely have taken umbrage: The first quote would either have been simply reinforcing or intended for radical Labour and the second quote would either have been nonsensical, since Conservatives were alleging they had no ideology, or intended for radical Labour. However, the prescnt Conservative governmcnt has marked a significant set of economic policy breaks with the past rooted in an ideology that includes strong elements of antistatism although it contains some strong elements of statism as well, as any member of the Greater London Council can only too readily attest. But these were not the Report's only sources of irritation for the Thatcher government. The Lords went on to criticize the government's handling of macroeconomic policy with respect to such issues as too high interest rates, unstable exchange rates, few tax concessions for industry, and too little government support for or promotion of industry (Report, Vol. I: 61-63). With these criticisms as their opening volley, the assault became even more confrontational as the Lords approvingly quoted the testimony of Sir Hector Laing: "The present government has in effect made a virtue of not having a vision of the future of British industry, and a positive policy of distancing the state from the industrial sector" (Report, Vol. 1: 63). The Lords then proceeded to endorse those witnesses who had recommended increasing consultation among business, government, and trade unions through a reinvigoration or adaptation of the machinery of the National Economic Development Office or its national or regional 144 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / August 1989 councils or some other kind of consultative body capable of thinking through an industrial policy (Report, Vol. 1: 64). Thus in the final analysis the Report was not only an indictment of the government's laissez-faire policies but also of the government's tilt against tripartist consultation and efforts to engage in consensual decision making. The kind of evidence taken by the Committee and the Committee's recommendations would not, of course, have taken the government en- tirely by surprise, for the cast of most of the Committee members as well as most of the witnesses was overwhelmingly opposed to Thatcherite economic policies. The Lords' Committee itself was made up primarily of Tory grandees or wets such as Lord Aldington. or Lord Selsdon, or Labour peers such as Lord Kearton or Lord Beswick. With a few excep- tions, such as Lord Rayner and Lord Sieff, the witnesses were not drawn from the ranks of Thatcher supporters. Nowhere do we see representatives of think tanks or organizations such as the Centre for Policy Studies, the Adam Smith Institute, Aims, the Institute of Directors, industrialists such as Lord James Hanson, or David Wolfson, known to advise the Prime Minister with regard to economic matters. In addition, none of the very top donors (60,000 and over) (Trade Union Coordinating Committee, 1985: 11) to the Conservative Party during the Thatcher years was called upon to testify, for example, Taylor Woodrow, the country's largest construction firm and active supporter of the government's policies. Only six of the thirty major contributors (25,000 to 94,050) (Trade Union Coordinating Committee, 1985: 1 1) were invited. Those who were asked were representatives of nationalized industries, civil servants, the Con- federation of British Industry, the Associated Chambers of Commerce, various unions, a number of firms whose main customers have been government in one guise or another, for example, the Tory Lord Weinstock of GEC, and some industrialists who have traditionally supported the Labour Party, for example, Lord Villiers, or more recently the Social Democrats, for example, John Harvey-Jones. From the Thatcher government's perspective, the very composition of the Committee and its witnesses was symptomatic of the very illness they were seeking to remedy, for the participants in the Lords' investigation were overwhelmingly representatives of the torces of consensus and consultation. According to Mrs. Thatcher and other dries, a good part of government's failure since the war to improve Britain's economic perfor- mance has been the result of the dominance of the consensual-consultative Weltaniscliatuutng or style in policymaking-a mindset and manner that is part and parcel of the gentlemanly persona. Hetzner/ BUSINESS AND TUE CONSERVATIVES 145 On the Thatcher analysis, what was needed to get the economy moving again was a break from the politics of consensus-that combination of excessive democratic participation and compromise. Thatcherism had boldly acknowledged what Jack Hayward pointed out in the early 1970s that Britain had suffered not from tripartism but from "toothless tripar- tism" (Hayward, 1973: 406). Referring to attempts at planning in the 1950s and 1960s, Hayward observed: "It was believed that consensus could be reached by compromise between government, business, and trade unions.... A Conservative government, at its wits end, clutched at planning as one more expedient to evade unpopular policy choices" (p. 407). Thatcherite antitripartist or anticorporatist policy recognized what many corporatist political science accounts of politics in Great Britain have not: That corporatist modes of analysis have inaccurately or inadequately characterized post-World War ll British politics. Thatcher has not, as have a number of scholars, confounded consensual style or the politics of consensus with consensus. Despite the best efforts of the talking classes in the civil service and the upper echelons of business, that is, in the bureaucracies of big business and of large interest group organizations to get industry, government, and the unions to talk their way into prosper- ity, efforts at tripartism have failed. England has continued to be markedly lacking in consensus, whether measured by the inconvenience of the "winter of discontent" or the misery of the miners' strike, the secession of much of the Fabianist strain of the Labour Party into the SDP, or arguments between the CBI and the trade unions. According to Thatcher, what was needed was a true vision of the future, the leadership to effect it, and the ultimate satisfaction of the polity with its results-and then perhaps consensus as the result of policy, not as the precondition of making policy. As the prime minister explained in 1979: "The Old Testament prophets did not say, Brothers I want a consensus. They said: This is my faith. This is what I believe. If you believe it too, then come with me" (Kavanagh, 1985: 8). More recently, in 1986, touting her successes in curbing the trade unions, increasing private ownership of houses and industrial shares, and taming inflation, Thatcher said: "Seven years ago, who would have dared forecast such a transformation of Britain? This didn't come about because of consensus. It happened because we said: this we believe, this we will do. It's called leadership" (Thle Timles, October It), 1985). Nevertheless. Thatcherism had at its core this attack on the Tory establishment and the establishment generally. In a profile of Thatcherite Norman Tebbitt, The Times, attributing his rise to preeminence to being a man lor the hour, explained: 146 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY I August 1989 There was to be a less grand Tory party with room for "us" as well as "them." It would be a party to represent the ordinary citizen who was no part of Whitehall, or the C.B.I., of the T.U.C. This new plain man's party would need the plain man's voice, not just his accent (which led Fleath could supply) but his articulaition. And suddecnly came the man from Epping, elected to parliament in 197(1. From Norman Tebbit his colleagues hcard w ith grow ing delight the genu- inelv querulous phraseology of the great excluded, wanting to know w hat THEY were doing with OUR money. It rang true then and rings true now-the language of the native, shrewd Englishman who will not be put upon. by Socialists, snobs, tyrants or anyone else, and who is convinced that he knows what is right and that most people would agree with him [Tl,e Times, October 10, 1985]. Many of the same qualities might well be attributed to the prime minister herself. Although she has not been so often depicted as "a diamond in the rough" as has Tebbitt-and quite reasonably so, with her Oxford degree, her barrister's status, and her elocution lessons-nonethe- less, her studied bluntness, her appetite for hard work and a desire to boast of it, her roots in Midlands Methodism, and the laissez-faire Liberalism of her small businessman father surely indicate her removal from the ethos of the Tory grandees and paternalists as well as their compatriots outside the party. So clear is her remove from the old shire Tories, in the minds of the British public, that a favorite British situation comedy,"Til Death Do Us Part", regularly makes the nation gutfaw when its working-class Tory leading character delivers lines roughly like "What can Mrs. Thatcher know, daughter of a Grantham grocer'?" The Thatcherites in launching their attack on the old elite have even claimed to represent the broad mass of the British public, to be in touch and in tune with true English values and attitudes-those that can not be heard above the cacophony of upper-class chat. Certainly at least Tebbitt and Thatcher seem adept at gaging the popular pulse; in particular the prime minister excels at it. Nevertheless, attempting to explain the Thatcher phenomenon either as emanating from a trend toward populism in recent years, which has been underpinning Conservative neo-liberalism, or as constituting popu- lism itself, is a mistake. In the first place, it is unclear what populism with a small "p" means. Despite its prodigious use, the word does not exist in the Oxford English Dictionary or any other for that matter. Two move- ments called populist have existed, one in the Unitcd States, espousing such things as regulatory control, easy money, and antagonism to big Hetzner / BUSINESS AND TUiE CONSERVATIVES 147 business, and one in the USSR, espousing collectivism, but neither bears much of a resemblance to Thatcherism. Perhaps all that the label is intended to convey is Samuel Beer's (1982) "collapse of deference" and erosion of regard for the virtues of the civic culture. But it is unfortunately unclear from his account what makes this populism, and because he devotes so much attention to the left in this connection, his account is not terribly helpful in understanding a populism of the right. There may indeed be a kind of peculiarly English populism that could be usefully labeled so, but so far no one has attempted to provide a coherent account of it, as, for example, did Richard Hofstadter ( 1955) for the United States, or has convincingly argued the case for the use of the nomenclature. Perhaps political observers have simply been confusing the wordspopu- lisim and popular Certainly, interviews of Conservative party officials or party activists, wets and dries, Thatcherite insiders and outsiders, reveal no populist explanations for understanding the rise of Thatcherism and neo-liberal- ism. Far and away the most typical wet explanation of Thatcherism involved an historical account of how Thatcher only accidentally assumed the party leadership, and how the disarray of Labour and the Falklands factor catapulted her into the position of prime minister twice. The final judgment in all cases was that although they were out for a bit, the true Tories would return, for, after all, the Thatcher phenomenon was only temporary. For example, these commcnts about Thatcherism from a wet junior minister: I tend to be rather Shavian about these matters. There are many theses about what has happened in the Tory party the populist element overtaking the gentry; laissez-faire liberalism overcoming corporatism and the mid- dleway. . . . It is morc Thatchcr than a policy shift in thc country. I don't think she represents a populist push or Poujadism. The Conservative Party has not undergone a revolution-many of her niinisters are left. center-left. There are really only a few Tebbitts and Lawsons in her image. It's not forcvcr. And it's not reallv a class issue.... What you have, and this is not a racialist comment, is a lot ot Jews-outsiders-the Woltsons and so forth. Though many others of those interviewed who were not in the Thatcher camp did not focus on the role of Jews in this government, the above was not an unusual remark. However, all non-Thatcherites characterized the Thatcherites as "outsiders." Now surely objectively neither Mrs. Thatcher nor her economic guru and in some sense mentor, Sir Keith Joseph, have bcen "johnny-come- 148 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / August 1989 lately's" to the Conservative party. Nonetheless, the outsider character- ization seems a fairly accurate depiction of Thatcherites in two senses: (1) They may be outsiders socially-those from outside the old boy network of Tory patricians-or (2) outsiders ideologically-thosc from outside the party such as libertarians or other proponents of laissez-faire who have only since the advent of Thatcherism become Conservatives. Indeed interviews with many of the most ardent Thatcher dries substantiated much of the accuracy of the "outsiders" description. Frequently, I asked questions about the changing class composition of the party. Normally, they offered, though far less colorfully, some variant of these remarks of a Thatcher insider: Well, of course, Mrs. Thatcher isn't a proper Tory lady, is she? She really doesn't know how to act like one. I go to No. 1() for dinner and there is the Prime Minister at my elbow saying. "Would you like some more cauli- flower'?" and carrying away the empty dishes. She doesn't know a proper Tory lady doesn't touch the dishes. I keep saying that having dinncr with her is like Christ washing the feet of the disciples. In response to a number of questions about how the Thatcher govern- ment fit in the history of the party, several top government advisers and officials demonstrated only the haziest kind of knowledge of the party's history; invariably, over the course of the interview, they eventually made clear that they were newcomers to the party either as politicians or as advisers to government. They are somewhat reminiscent ol' the Fabianists making incursions into the Labour Party. In particular, they so remind one because, with the exception of a few opportunists, they are ideologues and intellectual elitists. In conversations with them, one was left with the overwhelming impression that the public did not matter much at all- whether working-class Tory or the Conservative businessperson they were dedicated to helping. "The blessed Margaret," in the words of one, "had been delivered unto the country bearing the truth and would lead the nation into the twenty-first century when she would be canonized." Some of them were free-enterprise ideologues who were very clearly identifying with the Conservatives only since the advent of Thatcher, although a few were holdovers from the Heathite Selsdon period. Some of them, the equivalents of American neo-Conservativcs, had at somc point in recent years seen the error of their ways and had abandoned socialism and the Labour Party for laissez-faire and Mrs. Thatcher. Of course, still others were that breed of pragmatist and political opportunist who had known a good thing when they saw one and had seized the opportunity to seek their Hetzner I BUSINESS AND THE CONSERVATIVES 149 political fortunes in the tide of Thatcherism. Certainly, none of these individuals has been part of the party faithful, and, in this they differ significantly from the prime minister or Sir Keith Joseph. Although their numbers are not large, their significance is sizable, and in this again there is a resemblance to the Fabians. These Conservative outsiders cngaged in almost endless self-congrat- ulation with regard to the fact that the Conservatives whom John Stuart Mill had once labeled the "stupid party" now had an intellectual blueprint for the future and that the right had a near monopoly on all that was intellectually exciting in Great Britain. Policymaking, in this view, in- volved the good ideas of the Adam Smith Institute, the Centre for Policy Studies, a handful of industrialists, a parliamentary majority, and at best the acquiescence of the Tory voter. "We can do just about anything we want," a minister said. "You and I both know the average hang'em and flag'em Tory is so far to the right of us that we are free to make this economic revolution. And it is a revolution we are making." At least with respect to the economy, this is not a popular revolution, let alone populist. Voting studies over the past decade have revealed a number of different reasons for why the English have been voting as they have in recent years. Most prevalent has been the view that there has been a realignment of the electorate along social class lines (Butler and Stokes, 1974) or partisan fragmentation (Crewe, Sarlvik, and Alt, 1977). The most popular current account of Thatcher's success is that it emanated from members of the upper working class, the skilled, more affluent workers who may own their own homes or want to do so. However, according to Ivor Crewe and Bo Sarlvik, economic issucs have not been and are not likely to be the most salient issues among the Conservative electorate: The better strategy on this account is to head toward authoritarian or racial issues to gain ground (Crewe and Sarlvik, 1980). Furthermore, with the extraordinarily high levels of unemployment resulting at least in part from the government's economic policies, the government does not seem to be making policy in response to populist or popular demands. Hence the electorate would not appear to be driving the engines of Thatcherite economic policy, whether monetarist or laissez-faire. In addition, one cannot really say that what has occurred has been a businessperson's revolt or a business attempt at taking over the economy. First of all, there is a sense in which the most simple-minded Labour and Marxian characterizations of the Conservative party as the party of business have been correct. No matter the protestations of patrician Tories that the Conservative party is a precapitalist party that has never been 150 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / August 1989 actively probusiness, the Conservatives have always represented capital- ist interests, even before the Liberals drifted into their midst. The party has housed, protected, and even nurtured the metamorphosis of landed into financial into even commercial interests. In recent years. many people with business and industrial connections have sat both in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. If this is true, one might ask, how does this square with the antibusiness values of /ioino geniteelis con servatis discussed earlicr? The answer is that the simple-minded identification of business and the Conservative is just that. Just because a number of Tory grandecs sit on the boards of a number of different companies does not make these people businesspeople even if they own a lot of stock. British firms have two main reasons for bringing Conservative politicians into their ranks: (1 ) for gaining access to govern- ment, and (2) for putting forward a positive image, for example, a Lord for the board. This does not mean that these people are actively engaged in the functions of business or are possessed of any understanding, sympathy, or identification with business. How often one hears patrician Tories say that they are businessmen, that is, they sit on the board of some company. Usually, this serves as a prelude for the person to begin a discussion of how business does not really like Mrs. Thatcher, followed by "I know this because I am a businessman." Nevertheless, there is a fair amount of truth in the statement that a lot of the business community has not been supportive of the Thatcher government and hence has obviously not been part of any business revolt against creeping socialism and incursions of the state into the economy. Many of the most active tripartists-the Confederation of British Indus- tries (CBI), the Associated Chambers of Commerce, and businesses heavily reliant on government contracts-have made no secret of their dissatisfaction. The Chambers have been somewhat surprising in this connection since they have always been peopled with smaller and me- dium-sized firms. Though never very powerful, when compared to the direct access of the largest firms or compared to the old Federation of British Industries (FBI) or CBI; nevertheless, they have been excluded from much important conversation with the government. One economic adviser to Thatcher said, "The government meets regularly with the C.B.I. because it has to, with people from Aims, the Institute of Directors, and top business people like Wolfson but not the Chambers."' People at the Chambers confirm that they do not have direct access "because we are wet"- "wet" in this definition was "a right winger who believes in a Hetzner / BUSINESS AND Tl IE CONSERVATIVES 151 caring society"-but that they do have excellent indirect contact. An explanation for their exclusion or alicnation must await further explora- tion, but their policy positions most often look quite like those of the CBI. And the CBI, on both the accounts of Thatcherites and of representatives of the CBI, have been on the outs with the current government. Most instructive with regard to just how active a role these business groups (and others) have been playing in the formulation of economic policy was this comment of a treasury civil servant: Inside we have not paid much attention to the lobbying groups. By and large officials of this government are positively suspicious of the C.B.I. and the Chambers of Commercc; they' re both wet. More often than not a minister says, "Here is what we would like to do. Who can we turn to forjustifica- tion? Who said this? 1 can't remember: find out who said.' Hence one gets corroboration of business alienation from Thatcherism from both government and business. Nonetheless, in interviewing business people, one finds many who have grumbled and groused over government policies but still have averred support for Thatcher. Some who complained bitterly of too little government spending on infrastructure and too little subsidization could also say without embarrassment that they were by and large in favor of the Thatcher government's tilt toward nonintervention and laissez-faire. "Of course, we lobby for government to spend more. We're not stupid. We want to make a profit. But the government is still doing the right thing." Thus the Thatcher government is surely not without its supporters in the business community, and almost all of business supports low inflation, privatization, and reduction of regulatory or paperwork burdens. In the final analysis, however, this is a revolution for business, if not always of it, but of a particular kind. The Thatcher government wants to promote entrepreneurship, innovation, the creation of new enterprises, and thus growth and productivity. To do this, the government must find a way to inculcate the values of what the prime minister calls the "enterprise culture." These are values antithetic to the gentlemanly ethos: an appetite for hard work, respect for technical know-how, a willingness to take risks, a lack of embarrassment at money making, and so forth. She has been attempting this in a number of ways: trying to reduce dependence on the welfare state, returning business to the private sector, extending home ownership, widening share ownership, creating enterprise zones, attempt- 152 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / August 1989 ing to link pay to profits, business expansion schemes, and deregulation. Most of these are firmly rooted in the intellectual constructs of laissez- faire and, where they are not, the government argues that they are temporary measures serving as seed corn for later prospcrity. The govern- ment has argued, in the words of John Moore, at the time minister in charge of privatization, now Social Security Secretary, that they are attempting to create "an army of capitalists" (Moore. 1984). This is rather revolution- ary talk from a political party that three times over its history has found reason to produce Conservative pamphlets cntitlcd "Why We Must Work" or some variant thereon. One of the keys to fostering this kind of change was ousting its opponents-both the leadership of the party and government and the leadership of the tripartists in economic policymaking. Thatcher's goal has been to crush gentlemanly consensus and with it the societal ideal type of the gentleman. J. P. Nettl (1965) in an extraordinarily insightful and provocative article, "Consensus Elite Domination: The Case of Business," said of this consensus and its ideal type: The famous British consensus is not a sort of social or political ectoplasm which emanates from, and hovers over, the consentient, but a social institution with its own structure, procedures, attitudes, beliefs. Nor is it equally shared. Instead, like a magnet, it sucks in members from the periphery away froom their own self interested groupings. In doing so it emasculates these groups, while preserving theiroutward shell of autonomy and independence. Pressure group politics are therefore less "real" than they seem their very success in Britain, which has thrilled (American) political commentators searching for limited and orderiv struggle as the highest form of organized democracy, may indeed depend on this element of shadow boxing. . . . The consensus has its peculiar and particular exponent, both vehicle ot'consensus attitudes and ideal type the higher civil service [Nettl, 1965: 22]. Nettl then went on to argue that business in Great Britain has been lacking in a firm sense of identity and purpose and that big business at least has, therefore, been dominated or colonized by Whitehall. Whether or not the upper-echelon civil servant has been the ideal type for British society or simply one of a number of professional groups belonging to the gentlemanly class is probably open to debate, but what is not is the way that the gentlemanly consensual ethos has dominated the business community in Great Britain. Thatcher clearly feels this and, in fact, a lot of her reported hostility to the civil service is a reflection of such Hetzner / BUSINESS AND THE CONSERVATIVES 153 feeling. Hence she has brought in her outsiders-Jewish entrepreneurs, neo-Conservatives, libertarians, and middle-class MPs in an attempt to create a new ideal type for the enterprise culture. NOTES 1. For a good discussion of these elites and their culture, see Woodruff (1961) and Wilkinson ( 1964). 2. For insightful accounts ol the antibusiness values, see Hampden-Turner ( 1983), Mant (1979), and Wiener ( 1 985). 3. For a discussion of the role of education in the shaping and reintorcing of the values of the culture, see Hletzner ( 1985), Rothblatt ( 1 968). and Shiis ( 1 955). REFERENCES APPLE, R. W. (1985) "Embattled Britain." The Times (October '1)). BEER, S. H. (1982) Britaini Against Itself. New York: W. W. Nortoll. BUTLER, D. and D. STOKES ( 1974) Political Change in Britain: The Evolution oF Electoral Choice. London: Macmillani. CREWF, 1. and B. SARLVI K ( 198)) "Popular attitudes and ciectoral strategy," pp. 244-275 in Layton-Henry (ed.) Conservative Partv Politics. London: Macmillan. CREWE, I., B. SARLVIK, and J. ALT( 1 977) "Partisan dealignmcnt in Britaini 1964-1974." British J. of Pol. Sci. 7: 1 29-191. GAMBLE, A. (1985) Britaini in Decline. London: Macmillan. Great Britain (1985) "Report from the select committee otn overseas tradle" (3 vols.). HLP 238. London: HMSO. HAMPDEN-TURNER, C. (1983) Gentlemen anid Tradesmen. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. HAYWARD, J. (1973) "National aptitudes tor planning in Britain, France and Italy." Government and Opposition. HFETZNER. C. (1985) "Social democracy and bureaucracy: the Labour party and higher civil service reform." Administration and Society 17 (May): 97-1 28. HOFSTADTER, R. (1955) The Age of Reform. New York: Vintage. KAVANAGH. D. (1985) "Margaret Thatcher: the mobilizing style of primc minister." Paper presented at Harvard Universits Center aor European Studies Conferetnce, the Thatcher Government and Political Economy. MANT, A. (1979) The Rise and Fall of the British Manager. London: Pan. MOORE, J. (1984) "A people's capital market." Speech to the Institute olf Directors. NETTL, J. ( 1965) "ConsensuLs or elite doniinationl." Pol. Studies 8: 22-44. RIDDELIt. P. (1985) The Thatcher Government. Oxtord: Basil Blackwell. ROTHBLATT, S. (1968) The Revolution of the Dons. London: Faber & Faber. 154 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIE-FY / August 1989 SAMPSON. A. (1982) The Chanlcing Anatoms of Britain. New York: Random liouse. SHILS. E. (195-5) The intellectuals. Encounter 4 (April): 5-16h. Trade Union Coordinating Cornmittee (I 985). Who Ovns the lories? London: Cooperative Press. WIENER, M. J. (198t5) EngL.lish Culture antd the Decline ot the Inidustrial Spirit. [lam- mondswsorth, Middlesex: Peniguin. WILKINSON, R. (1964) Gentlemany Poecr. Ne% York: Oxtord Univ. Press. WOODRUFF, P. (1961 ) ihe Men Who Ruled lidia. London: Jol(athan Cape. Canidace Het-z1e is Associate Pr-oJkssor oJ' Busiess A1(1niliist-ioll aoiti an Puiblic Ad(liiitisir-attiot at Riager-s Untiversiltv ai Newaik. Sh2e It s pulblishliel ilitttnerou.s at tic{eles ott puiblic l admitnstatioa tandi pupblic policy in the UiCooed Staltes at(id Great Britaiin. Site is ceuirretls at vi ork ott a book ott btisilness-goieril1ttewtirelatiolns iaider- thie governmnemt of Pri ite Minister ,Vlagarei Tliatchlet: </meta-value></custom-meta></custom-meta-wrap></article-meta></front><back><notes>
<p>
<list list-type="order">
<list-item>
<p>1. For a good discussion of these elites and their culture, see Woodruff (1961) and Wilkinson (1964).</p>
</list-item>
<list-item>
<p>2. For insightful accounts of the antibusiness values, see Hampden-Turner (1983), Mant (1979), and Wiener (1985).</p>
</list-item>
<list-item>
<p>3. For a discussion of the role of education in the shaping and reinforcing of the values of the culture, see Hletzner (1985), Rothblatt (1968). and Shiis (1955).</p>
</list-item>
</list>
</p>
</notes><ref-list>
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</ref-list></back></article></istex:document></istex:metadataXml><mods version="3.6"><titleInfo lang="en"><title>Business and the Conservatives</title><subTitle>Ideology, Social Class, and Economic Change</subTitle></titleInfo><titleInfo type="alternative" lang="en" contentType="CDATA"><title>Business and the Conservatives</title><subTitle>Ideology, Social Class, and Economic Change</subTitle></titleInfo><name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Candace</namePart><namePart type="family">Hetzner</namePart><affiliation>Fordham University</affiliation></name><typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource><genre type="research-article" displayLabel="research-article" authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://content-type.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://content-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XTP-1JC4F85T-7">research-article</genre><originInfo><publisher>Sage Publications</publisher><place><placeTerm type="text">Sage CA: Thousand Oaks, CA</placeTerm></place><dateIssued encoding="w3cdtf">1989-08</dateIssued><copyrightDate encoding="w3cdtf">1989</copyrightDate></originInfo><language><languageTerm type="code" authority="iso639-2b">eng</languageTerm><languageTerm type="code" authority="rfc3066">en</languageTerm></language><abstract lang="en">In her efforts to revivify the British economy. Prime minister Margaret Tatcher has been attempting to promote societal values that will support the creation of an "enterprise culture." To do so, she has been doing battle with the consensual economic planning undertaken by business, unions and civil servants known as tripartism and the gentlemanly ethos underpinning such arrangements. Her broadsides against such members of the British gentlemanly culture as the Tory grandees in her own party and members of the higher civil service have been aimed at replacing the British gentleman with a new ideal type more suited to lead her "capitalist revolution."</abstract><relatedItem type="host"><titleInfo><title>Administration & society</title></titleInfo><genre type="journal" authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://publication-type.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://publication-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/JMC-0GLKJH51-B">journal</genre><identifier type="ISSN">0095-3997</identifier><identifier type="eISSN">1552-3039</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID">AAS</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID-hwp">spaas</identifier><part><date>1989</date><detail type="volume"><caption>vol.</caption><number>21</number></detail><detail type="issue"><caption>no.</caption><number>2</number></detail><extent unit="pages"><start>134</start><end>154</end></extent></part></relatedItem><identifier type="istex">7B1DDC143A3F5E10B8515BBF976127023EC84AF3</identifier><identifier type="ark">ark:/67375/M70-J04WFKMG-R</identifier><identifier type="DOI">10.1177/009539978902100201</identifier><identifier type="ArticleID">10.1177_009539978902100201</identifier><recordInfo><recordContentSource authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://loaded-corpus.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://loaded-corpus.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XBH-0J1N7DQT-B">sage</recordContentSource></recordInfo></mods><json:item><extension>json</extension><original>false</original><mimetype>application/json</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/document/7B1DDC143A3F5E10B8515BBF976127023EC84AF3/metadata/json</uri></json:item></metadata><serie></serie></istex></record>Pour manipuler ce document sous Unix (Dilib)
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