The long-term impacts of 'Thatcherism': crime, politics and inequality

Our aim

The aim of our research, led by Professor Stephen Farrall and Dr Emily Gray, is to investigate the impact of radical policies on society by looking at how the social and economic policies that began in Margaret Thatcher’s government affected crime in the UK. We are exploring people's experiences of crime, victimisation and fear of crime at national and regional levels, but also to explore the ways in which this unfolded spatially, and feelings of nostalgia provoked by the changes since the 1980s.

Professor Farrall says: “Our project will chart trends generally as well as exploring the impact of the growing existence and tolerance of economic inequalities since the 1970s on a range of key processes related to crime, such as unemployment or growing levels of economic inequality.”

Our questions

The project outline for The Long-term Impacts of 'Thatcherism': Crime, Politics and Inequality is based on a series of questions. These are:

In what ways do changes in economic and social policies result in changes in patterns of crime, victimisation and anxieties about crime?

How do shifts in social values affect national-level experiences and beliefs about crime and appropriate responses to it, such as support for punitive punishments like the death penalty?

What have been the long-term consequences of almost two decades (1979-1997) of neo-conservative and neo-liberal social and economic policies for the UK’s criminal justice system and the general experience of crime amongst its citizens?

How have these unfolded spatially?

Similarly, how do changes in the crime rates affect the sorts of social and economic policies pursued?

What lessons does the recent past offer us today, when policy announcements about further cuts to public expenditure are commonplace and economic growth uncertain and faltering?

What lessons does the recent past offer us today, when policy announcements about further cuts to public expenditure are commonplace and economic growth uncertain and faltering?

Who holds Thatcherite values today, and who behaves in ways in keeping with Thatcherism?

Looking further

Using the Margaret Thatcher and John Major governments (1979-1997) as our case study, we will investigate the experiences of key socio-demographic groups since the 1970s – and, where possible, earlier than this.

Two theoretical papers have outlined our thinking with regards to the ways in which ‘Thatcherite’ social and economic policies in one policy domain, such as housing, created ‘spill-over’ effects in other policy domains, such as crime. The first of these asks: Why weren’t the Thatcher governments more radical in reforming the Criminal Justice System? (Farrall and Hay 2010). The other develops a ‘cascade’ theory of public policy radicalism (Hay and Farrall, 2011).

And recent publications have demonstrated the appropriateness of the general methodology. These involve an analysis of the economy, crime rates, politics and public opinion in post-war Britain (Farrall and Jennings 2012) and an analysis of recorded property crime in England and Wales 1961–2006 (Jennings, Farrall, Bevan 2012).

Generation Right

As part of our dissemination to a wider audience, we have worked with producer/director Michelle Coomber of Medina Films to produce an award-winning 40-minute documentary, Generation Right, that explores the profound legacy of Margaret Thatcher's rule, featuring interviews with cabinet ministers from the period and long-term reflections from Danny Dorling, Colin Hay and David Aaronovitch.

Teaching Aids

We are also working on a series of teaching aids, principally a short film and documents to support this, which can be used for those teaching and learning at A level and at undergraduate level in subjects such as politics, sociology and the history of modern Britain.

Our study

In this interdisciplinary research, we aim to understand the long-term trajectory of crime rates alongside relevant political, social and economic developments and interventions - paying attention to both neo-liberal and neo-conservative strands of thinking. We will use national-level, repeated cross-sectional data and individual longitudinal data.  

We intend to develop an approach to making long-term assessments of dramatic and sweeping policy changes which could be adopted by other researchers. Another aspect of the study is to explore the life-course of 'Thatcher's Children' – those born in the 60s and early 70s who grew up during the Thatcher era.

Dr Gray says: “We will be able to throw light on to the long-term impact of shifts in social and economic policies on experiences of crime and associated phenomena.

“Such an examination will be crucial in a wider understanding of what might happen when one dramatically breaks with a previous political consensus - in this case, Keynesianism - and embraces a new, radically different one - in this case, thinking inspired by ‘New Right’ political philosophies.”

You can follow our Thatcher's Legacy Twitter feed to keep up to date with our progress.

Our funding

The project has been awarded a total of £935,000 of funding by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). A time series project ran from October 2013 to December 2015 and was awarded £324,000. A cohort studies project that began in April 2017 and is due to end in March 2020 was awarded £611,000.