Thinking the Unthinkable

"What Cockett spots, which very few other writers on the 70s spot, is that the roots of what happened on the political right went back a long way. The neo-liberal counter-revolution, and a pro-market anti-trade union attitude, built up from the end of World War Two, if not earlier. You could argue that the counter-revolution happened before the revolution itself. That it developed through the 50s and 60s, with the radical right seen as ridiculous for quite some time, until it found its moment in the 70s. These movements often build slowly; they can take decades to achieve a head of steam and win over enough converts. Cockett really anatomises that. It sounds like an incredibly boring book if you read the subtitle. But it’s very readable. He also shows you the weakness of the left in Britain, even at its supposed zenith in the 70s, and the long-standing strength of the reaction against it. Even when Attlee was building the welfare state, the people who would try to dismantle it were setting up think-tanks. There was never a moment when the reaction against social democracy was not underway. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . I think it does a little. Interestingly, Cockett thinks Thatcher and the advocates of the free market took power in Britain almost too late – that, by 1979, Britain already had such economic problems that the economy couldn’t be transformed. Had they taken power in the 50s or 60s they might have had more impact. He also argues that social democracy in the late 70s had rooted itself so firmly in the civil service and in society as a whole, that Thatcher couldn’t do things like privatise the NHS or the Post Office. I don’t know if I agree. But it’s a very interesting notion that Thatcherism may have happened too late from the point of view of the right. He also says we shouldn’t be impatient about the current state of the debate on the left, because the great response to the Thatcher era is possibly only gestating now. No. I’ve looked quite hard at this when writing articles for the Guardian . These things are always difficult to spot. Unless you had fairly esoteric interests in the 40s, you probably wouldn’t have spotted the free-marketeers getting their thing together in Switzerland. They were bow-tied figures of derision. No, I don’t quite see it yet. I guess we have to be patient."