Terrence Casey - Forging the Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher, the 1970s, and the Origins of Neoliberalism
Forging the Iron Lady by Terrence Casey is a detailed analytical account of the causes of Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power, and the ideological project known as Thatcherism. Thatcher was a truly transformative politician committed and dedicated to her ideas. When discussing Thatcher, there is typically a focus on her trade union reforms and the attention is immediately drawn to the Miners’ Strike, 1984 to 1985. What I would like to draw attention to is one episode that Casey highlights, and which is germane to my Doctoral research. The Grunwick Strike which lasted for a total of 591 days, from 1976 to 1978 is often an overlooked episode. While occurring when Thatcher was Leader of the Opposition, it reveals the complicated relationship that the Conservative Party in general and Thatcher in particular had with East African Asians. My forthcoming essay in the Elgar Companion to Margaret Thatcher edited by Philip Norton and Matt Beech speaks to this under researched aspect of British politics.
The Grunwick Strike was also known as ‘strikers in saris.’ The workforce was made up of East African Asian women and this is important because they – along with their families – were expelled from Kenya and Uganda and came to Britain. When the East African Asians arrived, men and women within families worked wherever they could find employment. This was difficult given the level of racial discrimination. The location of the Grunwick factory is significant because it is situated in Brent, a borough of London, which drew national media attention. Mrs. Jayaben Desai led the strike as managers degraded the workers and showed them little respect.
As the strike gained national attention, it was a minority of workers who were on strike, the majority chose to continue working and not to strike. Thatcher sent her Parliamentary Private Secretary Adam Butler and Jim Prior’s aid Barney Hayhoe onto the workers bus to “report back firsthand, describing to her the fear and courage of those involved.” (p.283). The outcome of the strike in 1978, whilst not a success for the workers at Grunwick, provided Thatcher and her team with an idea. Casey writes, “If neither the management nor the majority workers at Grunwick wanted a union, why should they be forced to recognise one? Rewarding strikers who tried to shut down the company through blacking and mass protest, made no sense.” (p.283) When Thatcher gained power, her government banned secondary picketing. In the case of Grunwick a film processing laboratory, the strikers targeted Royal Mail because there was a close working relationship between the organisations. This shows the complexities of the 1970s and the extent of polarisation and mistrust between employers and trade unions.
Trade union reform was one of the central planks of Thatcher’s premiership. The Grunwick Strike demonstrated that if there is a high-profile protest, enough people will come and take part – but perhaps not all for the right reasons. For Thatcher, this episode contributed to her thinking in Opposition, for the need to introduce legislative reforms in the field of industrial relations. She could relate to the fact that some workers did not want to go on strike and did not want to be coerced into joining a union.
To summarise the strike, Casey notes, “Grunwick presented the Conservatives with an opportunity to advocate for a tougher approach to the trade union question. In the end, though, nothing changed, and they stuck to the conciliatory policy Prior had been pushing for three years.” (p.284) It was not the case that the measures were too tough. Instead, it was one of those actions which had a larger impact on society. It is often taken for granted that strikers will necessarily receive sympathy for their cause. The history of industrial relations shows workers are not to be understood as a homogenous group.
Forging the Iron Lady is a very well-researched book. Casey’s book is a piece of rigorous scholarship in the field of post-war history and political economy. Evidence of this lies in the 59 pages of references. He has consulted the Thatcher Papers at the Churchill Archive, Cambridge, the Conservative Party Archives at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the Cabinet Papers at the National Archives and surveyed a vast range of academic scholarship. In addition, he uses semi-structured elite interviews with some of Thatcher’s advisors. In the centenary of Thatcher's birth, Casey’s work should be on the reading list of every student and scholar of politics to understand how British society has been shaped.