Free There is No Alternative by Claire Berlinski

they were.
    BI: It is an attitude of mind toward ordinary people that they are not capable of leading their lives without direction. And Mrs. Thatcher was essentially saying, “Oh yes they are, let’s set them free.” And of course when they were set free, quite a lot of them didn’t do well—of course they didn’t. But quite a lot of them prospered enormously, and have never looked back since they got their hands on their council houses! . . . But she really challenged notions—well, she challenged notions of class!
    She challenged notions of class. This is an absolutely key component of Thatcherism, and critical to understanding the emotions she inspired and still inspires in Britain.
    BI: So, does that explain British society?
    CB: Well . . . yes and no.
    BI: Well, tell me where you are desperately uninformed. What do you think is missing?
    There is not much that is missing at all, if you are looking for an account of the way Thatcher and her supporters saw themselves and what they told the world.
    There are, of course, other perspectives.

    Sir Bernard escorts me from the Morning Room and back to the streets of London, holding the doors open for me with a courtly flourish. The city is sparkling; the restaurants are full; the sushi
carousels are turning; the Chablis is flowing; the boutiques are selling bath salts made of organic lavender and crystallized kelp. “She stopped the rot in the old colonial power,” Sir Bernard offers as his parting thought. “She stopped the country from going to the dogs. And it was not in the best interests of the world that Britain should go to the dogs, because it had so much more to contribute to the world.”
    I say good-bye, and I thank him for his time. I mean it sincerely. Anyone who has not spent a morning with Sir Bernard has missed one of life’s great experiences.
    As I head for the Tube, a man of about thirty passes me, walking purposefully, pecking at a Blackberry while simultaneously barking orders down his cell phone. “Still struggling with the flat refurb . . . yeah, brilliant . . . no, need the car at the airport . . . that’s utter bollocks . . . Hong Kong that weekend, client meeting.” From his accent, I cannot precisely discern his class background, but clearly his parents did not live in a castle or hunt foxes.
    A great many Britons found—and still find—such sights unnecessary, mad, and an odious challenge to the natural order of men.

3
    â€œI Hate Communists”
    Economics are the method; the object is to change the soul.
    â€”MARGARET THATCHER, 1981
    In the mid-1980s, the prime minister was urged by her foreign office, against her better judgment, to receive a notorious Congolese communist at 10 Downing Street. No sooner had the hapless Marxist seated himself in her drawing room than she fixed him with an acid glare. She introduced herself with these words: “I hate communists.”
    Mortified, the translator stammered, then rendered Thatcher’s comments thus: “Prime Minister Thatcher says that she has never been wholly supportive of the ideas of Karl Marx.” 25 One trusts that the visitor nonetheless guessed from her expression where he stood.
    Hatred of communism, hatred of Marxism, hatred of socialism—and an unflinching willingness to express that hatred in the clearest imaginable terms—was the core of Thatcherism. It was absolutely
sincere. It was absolutely personal. If American Cold Warriors deplored the tyranny imposed by communist regimes overseas—in faraway countries of which, frankly, they knew little if not nothing—Thatcher was affronted by the effects of Marxist dogma on her own country, an entirely different order of outrage.
    The key theme of the election campaign that brought Thatcher to power in 1979 was the decline and humiliation wreaked upon Britain by socialism. In virtually every strategy document and public pronouncement from this