Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [388]
I found all this misguided and hypocritical. If socialism had produced economic success those same critics would have been celebrating in the streets. But socialism had failed. And it was the poorer, weaker members of society who had suffered worst as a result of that failure. More than that, however, socialism, in spite of the high-minded rhetoric in which its arguments were framed, had played on the worst aspects of human nature. It had literally demoralized communities and families, offering dependency in place of independence as well as subjecting traditional values to sustained derision. It was a cynical ploy for the Left to start talking as if they were old-fashioned Tories, fighting to preserve decency amid social disintegration.
But nor could the arguments be ignored. Some Conservatives were always tempted to appease the Left’s social arguments — just as before I became leader they had appeased their economic arguments — on the grounds that we ourselves were very nearly as socialist in practice. These were the people who thought that the answer to every criticism was for the state to spend and intervene more. I could not accept this. There was a case for the state to intervene in specific instances — for example to protect children in real danger from malign parents. The state must uphold the law and ensure that criminals were punished — an area in which I was deeply uneasy, for our streets were becoming more not less violent, in spite of large increases in police numbers and prison places. But the root cause of our contemporary social problems — to the extent that these did not reflect the timeless influence and bottomless resources of old-fashioned human wickedness — was that the state had been doing too much. A Conservative social policy had to recognize this. Society was made up of individuals and communities. If individuals were discouraged and communities disorientated by the state stepping in to take decisions which should properly be made by people, families and neighbourhoods then society’s problems would grow not diminish.
This belief was what lay behind my remarks in an interview with a woman’s magazine — which caused a storm of abuse at the time — about there being ‘no such thing as society’. But they never quoted the rest. I went on to say:
There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then to look after our neighbour.
My meaning, clear at the time but subsequently distorted beyond recognition, was that society was not an abstraction, separate from the men and women who composed it, but a living structure of individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations. I expected great things from society in this sense because I believed that as economic wealth grew, individuals and voluntary groups should assume more responsibility for their neighbours’ misfortunes. The error to which I was objecting was the confusion of society with the state as the helper of first resort. Whenever I heard people complain that ‘society’ should not permit some particular misfortune, I would retort, ‘And what are you doing about it, then?’ Society for me was not an excuse, it was a source of obligation.
I was an individualist in the sense that I believed that individuals are ultimately accountable for their actions and must behave like it. But I always refused to accept that there was some kind of conflict between this kind of individualism and social responsibility. I was reinforced in this view by the writings of conservative thinkers in the United States on the growth of an ‘underclass’ and the development of a dependency culture. If irresponsible behaviour does not involve penalty of some kind, irresponsibility will for a large number of people become