‘Mrs Thatcher’s Praetorian Guard’: The 92 Group and the defence of Thatcherism, 1979-83

Aker, Tim (2024) ‘Mrs Thatcher’s Praetorian Guard’: The 92 Group and the defence of Thatcherism, 1979-83. Doctoral thesis, The University of Buckingham.

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Abstract

Ever since Mrs Thatcher’s departure from office Conservative politicians have rushed to invoke her name, her legacy, and her policies, in one form or another. Being the ‘Thatcherite’ candidate still has value within the party. This research examines Mrs Thatcher’s backbench supporters and their contribution to the development of Thatcherism, the people we look back and call the first ‘Thatcherites’. It concludes that she needed the 92 Group, her so-called ‘Praetorian Guard’, within her first term. Led by George Gardiner, Ian Gow and William Clark, they were indispensable counterweights to those Conservative MPs who could never accept Mrs Thatcher’s leadership or policies. Using archival material, interviews with contemporaries, and private papers, this thesis demonstrates how the activity of leading members of the 92 Group ensured Mrs Thatcher’s survival in her first term. Without these backbench supporters, she would have been forced into a U-turn in 1981, or toppled from power, and Thatcherism, as we know it, wouldn’t exist. Formed in 1964 the 92 Group got its name from 92 Cheyne Walk, the London home of its first chairman Patrick Wall. To most observers it was solely a dining club. Yet archival material demonstrates that it was more than that. It discussed ‘conservative principles’ and how the Conservative party had lost its way at the end of thirteen years of governance. Intellectually it fit within the New Right. It was unhappy at the increased size of the state, planning, high taxation and universal welfare. To some extent it was uneasy with the permissive society. It was unreservedly nationalistic in sentiment, a reaction to the end of Empire and new Commonwealth immigration. In all of these we see the intellectual hand of Enoch Powell and many of the principles that came to be associated with Thatcherism. The Heath years were as symbolic in shaping the 92 as they were the Thatcherites who became Mrs Thatcher’s key economic ministers. The 92 grudgingly sided with Heath, supporting his prices and incomes policies only because they were a weapon to stifle trade union power. This did not stop them complaining in private at the direction of policy away from the 1970 manifesto. Unsurprisingly, they enthusiastically supported Mrs Thatcher for the leadership in 1975, their opportunity to keep the Conservative party ‘conservative’. With Gardiner and Gow joining the 92 in the late 1970s they saved it from atrophy after the Group’s convenor died. This is key as Gardiner became Mrs Thatcher’s staunchest defender in the press and Ian Gow her assiduous Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS). With William Clark elected chairman of the backbench finance committee, they had their positions and roles to defend the Prime Minister. The Group supported her economic policy when it looked as if it was not working. Their pressure forced Jim Prior, the Employment Secretary, to concede to more trade union reforms, against his wishes, reforms that were central to the Thatcher project. The 92 organised to ensure her supporters were elected to the backbench policy committees, a vital barometer of opinion in the party. Such was the strength of its activism and support for the Prime Minister that a leadership challenge to Mrs Thatcher was averted in 1981. This is not to say the 92 were the brains trust of Thatcherism. From 1985 the No Turning Back group became the intellectual guard of Thatcherism. They published sophisticated papers developing Thatcherism by calling for the introduction of market mechanisms into public services. Mrs Thatcher recognised their talent and appointed several of them within her administration. Yet had the battles of the early 1980s not been won by the 92, historians must ask whether what followed would have been possible.

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