THE TELEGRAPH: As a first-time voter in 1979, Simon Heffer recalls the euphoria that greeted a new dawn for Britain.
We are victims of our upbringing. Anyone coming to political consciousness as I did in the 1970s will understand why Mrs Thatcher happened, whether we support what she did or not. I have always struggled to see what there was not to support. The country in which I spent my teens was a catastrophe. Socialists of all stamps – and I mean Heath as well as Callaghan and Wilson – had impoverished it and stunted the ambition of our people. When I hear those in their 20s or early 30s trot out the received line on the person they call "Thatcher", I think: if you were not there, and you have not taken the trouble to explore in depth what life was like for those of us who were, you cannot properly understand.
The six or seven years before she won her revolutionary victory in May 1979 formed a litany of failure and embarrassment. Once Heath lost control of the economy, after he allowed the money supply to grow at 30 per cent in 1972-73 (with the predictable 27 per cent inflation by 1975), only a revolution was going to solve the problem. Heath went out in March 1974 sounding the note that would resound through Britain for the following five years: that elected government, having forced a confrontation with the largely undemocratic forces of trades unionism, would (pending further developments) always take second place to it. It was that even more than the inflation that brought Britain to its knees two-and-a-half years into Labour's rule. >>> By Simon Heffer | Tuesday, April 28, 2009
