Britain: Embattled but Unbowed

As Britain reels from recession and political turmoil, Thatcher soldiers on

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month, they heard themes, even phrases, that have become familiar litanies of Thatcher's government. Understandably, Thatcher expects to get on well with Reagan when she arrives at the White House as the first NATO leader to call on the new President. Says she: "We share the view that democracy works best when government doesn't take over too much."

Even with their similar perspectives, there may be marked differences in approach and degree. Thatcher, a self-styled "conviction politician," obdurately refuses to veer from the course she has set for her government. Her British critics, many of them in her own party, including former Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath, are sounding transatlantic alarms and warning Reagan not to follow Thatcher's economic course. One of Thatcher's own Cabinet ministers has expressed second thoughts. Said he: "If we have any advice to give to President Reagan, it is, 'Don't pack your first budget with too many campaign promises.' "

Hard-edged and superconfident, Thatcher swept into office 21 months ago with a handsome 43-seat parliamentary majority from an electorate that had soured on the Labor government of James Callaghan and was fed up with Britain's intractable unions in the bitter winter of 1979. Labor's image as the only party capable of dealing with the powerful trade unions was sorely damaged when strikes and industrial strife spread across the country. Touting the "monetarist" theories of Milton Friedman, the conservative American economist, Thatcher won big with pledges to cut government spending, reduce income taxes, revitalize industry and create a new climate for business.

With a survival-of-the-fittest philosophy, she warned that outdated, unprofitable industries would be allowed to die—but for the sake of new and vital ones. She promised Britons that she would get government off their backs and give them freedom to make their own choices. She called for a renewal of the British spirit she had known as a girl growing up over her father's grocery store in her Lincolnshire birthplace of Grantham.

In the international arena, she pledged to strengthen Britain's military defense and stand up to the Russians. Actually, her first successes were scored in foreign policy. She attacked her European Community colleagues over the inequity of Britain's $2.5 billion share of the E.C. budget, and ultimately succeeded in getting it pared by two-thirds. In the summer of 1979, she traveled to southern Africa and, under the tutelage of her able Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, changed her position and cleared the way for peace negotiations that ultimately transformed Britain's former colony of Rhodesia into independent Zimbabwe. She was the most outspoken backer of President Carter's hard line against the Soviets following their invasion of Afghanistan and his efforts to boycott the Olympics.

Her highest priority, however, was economic—specifically to "wring inflation out of the economy." She warned candidly, "Things will get worse before they get better," a prediction that proved accurate in the extreme. She stressed that, above all, if the government practiced discipline and the Friedman doctrine of strict control of the money supply, Britain could recapture its old place "in the first division

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