Thatcher's Britain with Nevil Gibson

RICHARD VINEN
Simon & Schuster hardback $55

British politics in the late 1970s, when Margaret Thatcher replaced Edward Heath as leader of the Conservatives, was based on a crude knowledge of economics — as politics was in New Zealand and Australia.

It was inconceivable that the economic debate was primarily about interest rates, the value of the dollar, inflation and commodity prices, unemployment levels, immigration and the housing market. Nor was it possible that most people would accept these were all subject to forces largely beyond the control of governments, politicians or anyone else.

Politicians 30 years ago had little understanding of ideas such as monetarism — which held that curbing money supply could control inflation — and most believed the answer to the stagflation of the time lay in wage and price controls. The latter view was best summed up in this quote by Reginald Maudling in a 1976 paper on Britain’s woes:

“All economic problems are basically political problems, and politics are about power. The sole and overwhelming reason why an incomes policy is needed is to deal with the monopoly power which the unions now possess and, even more importantly, are now fully conscious that they do possess.

“So long as they continue to wield power to destroy individual businesses or indeed, complete industries, and the threat of bringing the entire economy to a halt, any talk of a return to ‘free collective bargaining’ or the … ‘free market’ is meaningless.”

These thoughts were echoed in New Zealand and elsewhere, as politicians and others blamed persistent high inflation and low growth rates on recalcitrant unions and their wage demands.

Historian Richard Vinen takes a refreshing look at the 1980s through the prism of the past, rather than the present day, but with the benefits of hindsight. He concludes that while monetarist ideas later triumphed, and are now largely taken for granted, it is largely forgotten (or ignored) that Thatcher and many other politicians of the time reached this solution for pragmatic reasons rather than any predisposed ideology.

Vinen’s originality and refusal to accept hidebound explanations exposes that much of Thatcherism and its derivatives, such as Rogernomics, were not a coherent set of fixed ideas that were pushed regardless of the consequences. Rather, they were responses to situations where previous policies had demonstrably failed.

Similarly, the Falklands war, which Thatcher’s critics held was an effort to restore the glory of Britain’s imperial past for political gain, was almost an ad hoc adventure. She was, as Vinen says, uncompromising about the goal (expulsion of Argentinian forces) but “pretty much indifferent about the means”. She did not “share the Boys’ Own obsession with particular weapons, units and tactics that still gripped many Conservative MPs”.

Britain’s military success, despite the high cost, was thrust on Thatcher as a ‘rebranding’ of her image. In fact, it had little lasting effect and did not reflect the private enterprise values on which her reputation depended.

ALIBABA
LIU SHIYING & MARTHA AVERY
Collins Business hardback $40

The Chinese version of Trade Me and Google combined had inauspicious origins in 1999, and had equally fast success as it rode the dotcom boom. Within eight years, its most profitable units were listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in the second largest ever IPO (after Google). Today Alibaba, with Chinese and English versions, is gobbling up other internet companies and has annual revenues of nearly US$450 million, two-thirds from its English language-based trading platform. Founder Jack Ma has a classic rags-to-riches story, demonstrating that in China’s turbulent business world it is possible to be a global operator outside of government control.

GLOBALITY
HAROLD SIRKIN, JAMES HEMERLING & ARINDAM BHATTACHARYA
Business Plus hardback $60

The popular view of globalisation is linked to the spread of transnational companies from the core of Western nations and Japan to the rest of the world, in search of cheaper labour and resources. Globality, as defined by the Boston Consulting Group, which produced this book, goes beyond this to a world where everyone is in competition, and where Western business orthodoxy entwines with Eastern business philosophy to create a new mindset. The authors belong to an organisation that matches this reach and they conclude global business is not just about profit and competition, but sustainability and collaboration as well.

CORPORATE RESILIENCY
TOBY BISHOP & FRANK HYDOSKI
Wiley hardback $60

This corporate production, authored by US Deloitte partners, outlines measures companies should take to reduce fraud and corruption. Rather than an exposé, with juicy stories of sharp practices, it is a dry, thorough handbook. ‘Resiliency’ requires planning and risk management by using early-warning systems to place employees beyond temptation or allow a quick recovery from a major loss. The reluctance of companies to admit they are victims of fraud, at least in public, is not challenged; instead, the emphasis is on preparedness rather than prurience, which makes for a far less interesting read.