Parliament and 'morality': Thatcher, Powell and Populism
Titel:
Parliament and 'morality': Thatcher, Powell and Populism
Auteur:
Fry, Geoffrey K.
Verschenen in:
Contemporary British history
Paginering:
Jaargang 12 (1998) nr. 1 pagina's 139-147
Jaar:
1998
Inhoud:
Populism has little or no place in British politics. Only two politicians have been seriously considered to be populists in recent times, and these are, of course, Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher. Though definitions of 'populism' vary, this article argues that, if one takes it as meaning 'the belief that the majority opinion of the people is checked by an elitist minority', neither Powell nor Mrs Thatcher were populists. In Powell's case, he was an intellectual par excellence, and even an opponent of capital punishment. Mrs Thatcher's support for the death penalty misled many into believing she was consistently a social authoritarian. The positions that both politicians took on the permissive society legislation of the 1960s illustrates their attitudes, and, though these matters were complex ones, the conclusion drawn here is that neither politician was remotely a threat to the dominance of the 'liberal' elite.
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