Editing Thatcherism (section)

=== Thatcherism before Thatcher ===
Several commentators have traced the origins of Thatcherism in post-war British politics. The historian Ewen Green claimed there was resentment of the inflation, taxation and the constraints imposed by the labour movement, which was associated with the so-called [[Butskellism|Buttskellite consensus]] in the decades before Thatcher came to prominence. Although the Conservative leadership accommodated itself to the [[Clement Attlee]] government's post-war reforms, there was continuous right-wing opposition in the lower ranks of the party, in right-wing pressure groups like the Middle Class Alliance and the People's League for the Defence of Freedom and later in think tanks like the [[Centre for Policy Studies]]. For example, in the [[1945 United Kingdom general election|1945 general election]], the Conservative Party chairman [[Ralph Assheton, 1st Baron Clitheroe|Ralph Assheton]] had wanted 12,000 abridged copies of ''[[The Road to Serfdom]]'' (a book by the anti-socialist economist Friedrich Hayek later closely associated with Thatcherism),{{sfn|Vinen|2009|p=7}} taking up one-and-a-half tons of the party's paper ration, distributed as election propaganda.{{sfn|Green|2004|pp=214–239}}

The historian Christopher Cooper traced the formation of the [[monetarist]] economics at the heart of Thatcherism back to the resignation of the Conservative chancellor of the Exchequer, [[Peter Thorneycroft]], in 1958.{{sfn|Cooper|2011|pp=227–250}}

As early as 1950, Thatcher accepted the consensus of the day about the welfare state, claiming the credit belonged to the Conservatives in a speech to the [[Conservative Association]] annual general meeting. Biographer [[Charles Moore, Baron Moore of Etchingham|Charles Moore]] states:{{blockquote|Neither at the beginning of her career nor when she was prime minister, did Margaret Thatcher ever reject the wartime foundations of the welfare state, whether in health, social policy or education. In this she was less radical than her critics or some of her admirers supposed. Her concern was to focus more on abuse of the system, on bureaucracy and union militancy, and on the growth of what later came to be called the dependency culture, rather than on the system itself.{{sfn|Moore|2013|p=87}}}}

Historian [[Richard Vinen]] is sceptical about there being Thatcherism before Thatcher.{{sfn|Vinen|2009|p=6}}{{explain|date=August 2020}}