Religious influences on the Thatcherite enterprise culture

Abstract

During the 1980s, the government of Great Britain, led by Margaret Thatcher, promoted a political and economic ideology known in the demotic as the Thatcherite Enterprise Culture. This set of beliefs and actions included an encouragement of hard work, thrift, self-responsibility, and self-employment, as well as legislating for the support of small firms, privatisation, free markets and a strong - but minimal - central state. Behind the Enterprise Culture lay a religious paradigm, explicitly called upon by its chief creators, including Margaret Thatcher. The thesis builds an ideal-type of the Thatcherite Enterprise Culture, following a Weberian methodology, to form the major object of study. The work aims to discover whether the ideal-type under analysis is theologically coherent, and whether it can justifiably claim to be a continuation of Christian thought in this area. This thesis examines the development of Western European philosophy and theology as it relates to the key aspects of the Thatcherite Enterprise Culture, beginning with the Ancient Greeks and concluding with the Victorian Age of Enterprise. The historical review demonstrates that the Thatcherite Enterprise Culture is generally discontiguous with the tradition of religious thought, and in some instances is essentially in direct contradiction with important aspects of the tradition, such as the significance of the Incarnation. A review of the theological works of the Thatcherite Enterprise Culture and its critics adds to the findings of the historical examination, indicating further flaws and contradictions within Enterprise Theology. Critics of Enterprise Theology are found to be much more consistent with mainstream Christian Theology.