A little noticed anniversary passed largely un-noticed this past Sunday, that is the thirtieth anniversary of the election of Margaret Thatcher as UK Prime Minister.

This event more than any other ushered in the age of the New Right and the (apparent) overthrow of Keynesian Social Democracy in the Western industrialised world. It presaged the triump of another laissez-faire politician, Ronald Reagan (who became Thatcher's close friend and ally), in the United States by 18 months and hence, the (now almost) penultimate triumph of free market economics over state interventionism.

The first woman prime minister of the United Kingdom presided over a tumultuous decade where she and her Conservative Government decided to confront the edifice of the Keynesian economic system and its attendant welfare state that had been a part of the British post-war political settlement. With this, Thatcher and her advisors confronted head on the spectre of double-digit inflation with high interest rate driven monetarism, the so-called 'inflexibility' of the labour market with laws that stripped ordinary workers and unions of many of their hard won rights, began the process of privatising or contracting out government services and reeled back public spending, particularly on the social services.

This was all done in the name of advancing the cause of the minimalist state in order to let the free market reign supreme. Private enterprise and capital was held up (in the land where Adam Smith first disseminated his theories on how the market should work) instead as the primary driver of economic growth. The Chicago School monetarist policy prescriptions of Milton Friedman were held up as the way forward in terms of doing this in a non-inflationary manner. This policy meant (due to the imposition of high interest rates combined with the lowering of trade tariffs) the sacrifice of up to three million workers jobs by the end of 1983, many of these lossess coming from within the industrial heartlands of Britain, namely, Northern England, Wales and Scotland. In these parts of the UK, you can probably still not mention Thatcher's name without garnering some sought of intense reaction from the locals.

Meanwhile, a new class of bourgeoisie emerged from the Tory bastions of Southern England, the yuppy. These mainly young, university educated, upwardly mobile people from lower middle class backgrounds began to dominate the worlds of business and finance from the early years of Thatcherism. These new young Thatcherite men and women (and they were men mainly) worked on the floors of the London money markets and stock exchanges during the day and flaunted their wealth at a growing array of nightclubs which played the music of the 'New Romantic' bands such as ABC, Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet at night. These creatures became the bedrock that helped to sustain Thatcherism both electorally and financially.

In terms of social policy, the Thatcher years saw the extension of this individual freedom to own property and wealth 'trickle down' to some very lucky, skilled professional workers who were able to purchase their own council-owned housing for the first time. These workers, the plumbers, electricians, builders and engineers, became known amongst political scientists as the 'C2' voting block of emerging blue-collar workers who would have previously voted Labour but were captured into the Conservative Party orbit by the chance to both own their own property and by the socially conservative policies of the Thatcher Government.

Speaking of social conservatism, the Thatcher years saw both the rise of the individual freedom to create wealth and the decline of social freedom. This was exemplified in the Thatcher Government's passage of laws which forbade the teaching of homosexuality in schools (the notorious Section 28), further effective restrictions on non-white immigration into Britain and attacks on the rights of women, disabled people and other minority groups to participate in British society.

Therefore, Margaret Thatcher developed a policy prescription that very much fitted with her upbringing as an English grocer's daughter - that is one which focused on the importance of retaining the nuclear family as the central unit of society whilst allowing that same family the right to create opportunities and build up wealth for themselves in a free marketplace. The consequences of this were that anyone or anything that didn't fit into the Thatcherite societal schema, for example, single-parent families, would be forced to bear the brunt of their 'choices' to have children out of wedlock through tighter welfare benefit criterion.

When it came to foreign policy, Thatcher was the ultimate anti-Communist, pledged to rolling back the Soviet Union. This she did alongside her friend, President Reagan. The Conservatives built up Britain's defences at the same time as the US engaged in its own military build-up in an attempt to bankrupt the Soviet Union which was, at that time, going through economic difficulties. Paralell with this was a renewed emphasis on the nuclear deterrent as the primary means of defending Britian and the West from Soviet attack. This led her to push through the publicly unpopular policy of stationing US Pershing and Cruise nuclear-tipped missiles on British soil. Also during her long term in office, she fought a very popular war to free the Falkland Islands from Argentinian occupation in 1982 (after Argentina invaded them in order to lay claim to what they call the 'Las Malvinas' islands). If there is one contradiction that should be noted here in terms of her foreign policy stance, she was very nationalist when it came to defending the interests of Britain from the EEC bureaucrats and politicians in Brussels.

It was the so-called 'Falklands Factor' which assisted Thatcher to her second, overwhelming landslide electoral triumph in June 1983. But the main contributor to her win was a sadly divided left who had splintered into two competing party factions. The Liberal Party - Social Democratic Party Alliance (known as 'The Alliance') was founded after a group of Labour MPs, led by former Callaghan Labour Government foreign secretary David Owen, broke off to form the British SDP in response to what they saw as the 'extremist' response to Thatcherism by the UK Labour Party.

The Labour Party, under the leadership of former journalist Michael Foot, moved markedly to the left during the early years of Thatcher's rule as they embraced policies calling for wide-scale nationalisation, progressive taxation, expanded health and welfare provision, enhanced rights for women, disabled people, gay, lesbian and bi-sexual people and other minorities, as well as a foreign policy predicated on unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from the European Economic Community (EEC).

These policies were supposedly viewed as too 'radical' by the British electorate in the 1983 poll (when one Labour MP Gerald Kaufman thoughtlessly called it 'the longest suicide note in history') as the splintered vote between the Liberal-SDP Alliance and Labour caused the Tories to win seats they had never held before (including that of Tony Benn, one of my political heroes.) This division also impacted on the outcomes of the 1987 and (to a lesser extent) 1992 elections in that the Tories, under first-past-the-post gained an unfair advantage in that while the combined left parties polled over 50% of the popular vote, the Tories still hovered around 40%.

This thinking created a shift within UK Labour thinking and under Kinnock the road towards the creation of the 'New Labour' brand was taken. By the time of Tony Blair's accession to the Labour leadership in 1994, it was ready to go one step further and embrace Thatcherism lock, stock and barrel in terms of adopting similar economic, social and foreign policy stances to those held by the Tories in order to win back the C2s.

This re-creation of the UK Labour Party in the Thatcherite mould was, strangely enough, probably looking to be one of her biggest long-term legacies until the financial crisis of 2007/08 blew the free market straw house she and her government had so carefully constructed away. Now New Labour, under Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) Alistair Darling have again raised taxes on the wealthiest, begun nationalising and re-regulating the financial sector and introduced Keynesian fiscal stimulus packages in what is a complete reversal of nearly 30 years of accepted economic orthodoxy.

Still, Thatcher, now in her declining years, will not be remembered fondly by many of us on the international left. To others who believe in the free market creed, she will long be the Britannia-like shield carrier who strove to carry forward the defence of free market liberty and freedom.

It is ironic to note though that even though she still lives, her legacy has already died.....thank goodness for that!