From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization Through Ten Extraordinary Lives by Jeffrey E. Garten

Author:Jeffrey E. Garten
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-02-29T22:00:00+00:00

“You Haven’t Got a Hope”

The first blow to Heath came not from Thatcher but from Keith Joseph, who made a decisive break in a speech saying the British government should drop the priority it had placed for decades on fighting unemployment. Haunted by the Depression era with its long lines of desperate job seekers, every postwar government, whether Labour or Conservative, had followed the prescriptions of economist John Maynard Keynes, who argued that in hard times the government should work to stimulate growth and create jobs, even if it had to borrow heavily to do so. Joseph rejected Keynes, saying that government spending would only drive up the public deficit, drawing down the pool of capital available for loans and pushing up interest rates for private business—and business was the real source of new jobs, he said. Worse, government bailouts would backfire by propping up inefficient businesses, which would lower productivity and therefore stimulate inflation, undermining economic growth, and making it even more difficult for slumping businesses to pay back their loans. The new approach, said Joseph, would be to fight inflation by controlling the money supply and lowering government borrowing and deficits, freeing up capital to fund private-sector growth. A more competitive private sector would flourish and generate jobs in this dynamic new economic environment, created by conservative policy, he promised.

When Joseph decided to challenge Heath for the party leadership, Thatcher agreed to manage his campaign, reinforcing and elevating her open opposition to her boss. A few weeks later Joseph delivered a speech about birthrates among adolescent mothers. It was so politically incorrect that the public reaction forced him to withdraw from the election. Thatcher told her husband that she was thinking of stepping in to directly dislodge Heath herself, to which Denis replied: “You must be out of your mind. You haven’t got a hope.” On November 25, 1974, Thatcher nevertheless visited Heath to say she would challenge him.

Like Denis Thatcher, many Conservatives thought Thatcher had no chance and began working to block her candidacy. They dredged up an old interview—in which Thatcher said she kept stores of canned food in case of emergencies and advised other housewives to do the same—and twisted the context to imply that Thatcher was hoarding food. The media piled on, reporting false accusations that Thatcher was buying up large quantities of sugar, which was in short supply at the time. It was a vicious campaign reminiscent of the “Milk Snatcher” scandal, and it died out only when it was discovered that the store at which Thatcher was allegedly buying all the sugar did not even exist. Thatcher later recalled being bitterly upset, sometimes near tears or shaking with anger, but said she had told a friend: “I saw how they destroyed Keith [Joseph]. Well, they are not going to destroy me.’”

In early January 1975, she launched her campaign against Heath with a pitch pared to the essentials. She said the British people had come to believe that “too many Conservatives have become

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