THATCHER’S PROGRESS During the quarter of a century after the Second World War, the United Kingdom designated thirty-two new towns across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Why, even before selling council houses or denationalising public industries, did Margaret Thatcher’s government begin to privatise these new towns? By examining the most ambitious of these projects, Milton Keynes, Guy Ortolano recasts our understanding of British social democracy, arguing that the new towns comprised the spatial dimension of the welfare state. Following the Prime Minister’s progress on a tour through Milton Keynes on 25 September 1979, Ortolano alights at successive stops to examine the broader histories of urban planning, modernist architecture, community development, international consulting, and municipal housing. Thatcher’s journey reveals a dynamic social democracy during its decade of crisis, while also showing how public sector actors begrudgingly accommodated the alternative priorities of market liberalism. GUY ORTOLANO is an Associate Professor of History at New York University. He serves as an editor of Twentieth Century British History, and is also the author of The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature, and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain (Cambridge, 2009). MODERN BRI TI SH HI STORI ES Series Editors: Deborah Cohen, Northwestern University Margot Finn, University College London Peter Mandler, University of Cambridge ‘Modern British Histories’ publishes original research monographs drawn from the full spectrum of a large and lively community of modern historians of Britain. Its goal is to keep metropolitan and national histories of Britain fresh and vital in an intellectual atmosphere increasingly attuned to, and enriched by, the transnational, the international and the comparative. It will include books that focus on British histories within the UK and that tackle the subject of Britain and the world inside and outside the boundaries of formal empire from 1750 to the present. An indicative – not exclusive – list of approaches and topics that the series welcomes includes material culture studies, modern intellectual history, gender, race and class histories, histories of modern science and histories of British capitalism within a global framework. Open and wide-ranging, the series will publish books by authoritative scholars, at all stages of their career, with something genuinely new to say. A complete list of titles in the series can be found at: www.cambridge.org/modernbritishhistories Thatcher’s progress: The Prime Minister’s journey through Milton Keynes, 25 September 1979. THATCHER’S PROGRESS From Social Democracy to Market Liberalism through an English New Town Guy Ortolano New York University University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108482660 DOI: 10.1017/9781108697262 © Guy Ortolano 2019 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2019 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ortolano, Guy, author. Title: Thatcher’s progress : from social democracy to market liberalism through an English new town / Guy Ortolano, New York University. Description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018059146 | ISBN 9781108482660 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Milton Keynes (England) – History. | New towns – England – Case studies. | City planning – England – Case studies. | Great Britain – Economic policy – 1979–1997. Classification: LCC HT169.57.G72 M556 2019 | DDC 307.76/80942–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018059146 ISBN 978-1-108-48266-0 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. For Jenny Truly, if I had been mindful of that country from whence I came out, I might have had opportunity to have returned; but now I desire a better country …. John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress