Henry Allingham Dissertation Online Submission

Mrs Thatcher and the Sun: Why did Working Class
Men Vote Tory in the 1980s?
Henry Allingham
B223974
History and Politics

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Abstract
It is astonishing that a great number of working class men voted for Mrs Thatcher’s
Conservative Party when many of her policies produced such destructive outcomes for their
livelihoods, communities and modes of political representation, this study looks to
understand why.
The focus will be on the role of the Sun newspaper, which was the most widely read tabloid
(and newspaper of any kind) in Britain during the 1980s and as such had a direct appeal to a
large working class audience. Through analysis of the discourse of the Sun from 1979-1990
(found in the British Library) it will be apparent that the newspaper exploited, and enhanced,
its populist appeal to create a very narrow and fiercely nationalist definition of what it meant
to be British and to argue that this identity was under threat. The result of this was to create a
climate of fear directed at specific outsider groups threatening the moral fabric of the nation
and to present Mrs Thatcher to their readership as the saviour from these threats, an approach
which brought her huge electoral success.
One great advantage of this study is the revelation of the close professional relationship
between Mrs Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Sun, after the 1981 meeting by the
release of secret memos in 2012, which was long denied by both parties. As such, 1981 forms
a turning point in this work after which the Sun’s political stance radically shifts to the right,
and with it takes popular morality closer to Mrs Thatcher’s politics.
This work will track the mix of nationalism and timely outrage utilised by the Sun that gave it
a populist power that provided Mrs Thatcher with a mandate to govern but also put itself at
the centre of political power, a position it arguably still holds today.

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Contents
Introduction 4
1. Political Enemies as Populist Pariahs 9
2. The Fight for the Nation’s Soul 19
3. Enemies Abroad with Allies at Home 30
Conclusion 47

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Introduction
The Conservative election victories of 1979, 1983 and 1987 saw Mrs Thatcher sweep to
power, and with it a new hegemonic project was thrust upon Britain which would
revolutionise the nation from its public institutions right down the very identity of its citizens.
Mrs Thatcher’s extreme shift away from previously held political truths produced rich
electoral rewards. As Evans argues “Thatcher actually believe in, and drew strength from, a
set of precepts that most sophisticated politicians in the 1970s- not least in her own party-
found unbelievably shallow and crude”,1 and in doing so she won three consecutive elections.
Within these victories is found a remarkable phenomenon. As Waller observes, “the
Conservatives could not have won any general election without a substantial degree of
support from the working class”,2 a degree of support that is astounding given that, according
to a study published by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, inequality in Britain rose more rapidly
during the 1980s than in any decade since.3 This study looks to explore the phenomenon of
why working class men voted for Margaret Thatcher when, for many of them, her policies
not only provided no clear benefit to their lives but in many cases saw the death of industries
that supported their communities.
This idea has previously been explored in a number of essays in the mid-1980s by Stuart
Hall, in which he applied the term ‘authoritarian populism’ to define the Thatcherite appeal
through a combination of popular morality and strong government.4 Hall very astutely
observes that “popular morality is the most practical material-ideological force amongst the
popular classes- the language which… has the power to map out the World of problematic
1 Evans E, 2013, Thatcher and Thatcherism, London: Routledge, Page 5
2 Waller R,1994, ‘ConservativeElectoral Support and Social Class’,in,Seldon A and Ball S, Conservative
Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press,Page 580
3Cribb J, 2013, Income Inequality in the UK, London: Institute for Fiscal Studies
http://www.ifs.org.uk/docs/ER_JC_2013.pdf
4 Jessop B, 1988, Thatcherism: A Tale of Two Nations, Cambridge: Polity Page 70

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social reality in clear and unambiguous moral polarities”.5 While Hall does highlight the
moral absolutes which Thatcherism presented to the electorate (wastefulness vs productivity,
‘the people’ vs criminal ‘thugs’ to name a couple) he fails to highlight why she was so
successful in convincing the British electorate, and working class more specifically, to accept
this. Hall fails to fully appreciate, as Jessop argues in his critique of Hall’s authoritarian
populism theory, “the increased importance of the mass media and the populist ventriloquism
to which it has given rise”,6 which were the key to the success of the Thatcherite approach.
This study looks specifically at the vital role played by the Sun newspaper in mobilising the
male working class portion of the electorate into a Thatcherite direction, the value of which
has been largely understated in previous explorations of the working class support for
Thatcher.
The Sun newspaper forms the central point of this study for a number of reasons. The first is
that by 1979 it was the most widely read tabloid newspaper (and indeed newspaper in
general) in the country with its circulation hitting four million in 1978.7 It was therefore one
of the most powerful ways of reaching a large working class audience, with the introduction
of ‘page three girls’ in 19698 giving it a specific male appeal as it began “presenting itself as
the champion of sexual liberation albeit of a particularly narrow, heterosexual, male-
dominated variety”.9 By 1979 the Sun provided a window into male working class opinion, as
it both forged and reflected it.
A second reason is that, as Conboy argues, “the Sun became increasingly associated with a
right wing populism… following the hegemonic shifts of the Thatcher and then Major
5 Hall S, 1988, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left, London: Verso, Page 143
6 Jessop B, Thatcherism: A Tale of Two Nations, Page 117
7 Conboy M, 2006, Tabloid Britain, London: Routledge, Page 8
8 Ibid
9 Conboy M and Steel J, 2010,‘From “We to Me”’, Journalism Studies, Vol. 11, No 4, Page 502

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years”.10 During the 1980s the Sun’s political stance shifted rapidly to the right and came to
increasingly espouse reactionary views which were either directly in line with Thatcherite
policies or in such a direction that they were to Mrs Thatcher’s political gain. One advantage
that this study has in this area is that it comes after the release of private memos in 2011 that
show that Mrs Thatcher met with Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the Sun, in January 1981 to
discuss his takeover bid of the Sunday Times and the Times newspapers.11 Shortly after this
meeting the cabinet chose not to recommend Mr Murdoch’s bid to the Mergers and
Monopolies Commission.12 This meeting had long been denied by both parties and as such it
highlights a close professional relationship and heavily implies a merging of interests,
particularly as the memo includes an offer from Murdoch to introduce Thatcher “to a group
of ‘New Right’ politicians” and the need to break union power,13 both of which reflected the
Prime Minister’s own political views. In light of this information this study will also look to
track the increasing ferocity and aggression with which the Sun pursued a right-wing
Thatcherite agenda post-1981 to reflect the importance of the professional relationship she
and Mr Murdoch had.
This study will draw on two key ideas to explain the value of the Sun’s coverage of key
stories to Mrs Thatcher’s electoral success among working class men. The first is Billig’s
concept of ‘banal nationalism’ in which small everyday phrases and routines forge a constant
sense of national identity. As Billig himself puts it “the crucial words are often the smallest
‘we’, ‘this’ and ‘here’”,14 all of these combine to give a sense of who ‘we’ are. Through the
10 Conboy M, Tabloid Britain, Page 8
11 Memorandum by InghamB, 1981,‘Minutes for Margaret Thatcher: Rupert Murdoch Lunch’ in Margaret
Thatcher Foundation Archives, Thatcher MSS Digital Collection, http://fc95d419f4478b3b6e5f-
3f71d0fe2b653c4f00f32175760e96e7.r87.cf1.rackcdn.com/FA5DB3D8544A461DACEDF181801765AE.pdf
12 Cabinet Office,1981, ‘Minutes of Cabinet Economic Strategy Committee’ in Margaret Thatcher Foundation
Archives, Thatcher MSS Digital Collection, http://fc95d419f4478b3b6e5f-
3f71d0fe2b653c4f00f32175760e96e7.r87.cf1.rackcdn.com/75EC5A535B604C6FA79BF4E3977C1BF9.pdf
13Memorandum by InghamB, ‘Minute for MargaretThatcher: Rupert Murdoch Lunch’
14 BilligM,1995, Banal Nationalism, London: Sage, Page 94

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use of inclusive terms ‘we’ and ‘here’ an undeniable and ‘banal’ sense of nationhood is
created, a practice often found in the language of the press. The second idea is Smith’s
“outsider figure”, a societal group against which an imagined social space of acceptability
and identity is constructed.15 Within the Thatcherite project “the outsider figure has to
personify some of the greatest threats to social order”,16 against which the policies of
Thatcherism towards, in Smith’s analysis, homosexuals and ethnic minorities are justified.
Often using Billig’s method of discourse analysis this study will track how the Sun was able
to create a very rigid white, heterosexual concept of Britishness defined against certain
“outsider figures”. The value of this was to create both a sense of unity among the working
class readers of the Sun, particularly in times of fierce nationalism, but also to promote the
idea that the “social space” that they occupied was “deeply threatened by the outsider and
yet… ultimately recoverable”.17 Within this narrative Mrs Thatcher was the strong leader,
reminiscent of British heroes of the past, a comparison regularly utilised, to lead the fight to
reclaim the social space. This image was often juxtaposed against her political opponents,
who found themselves allied with the danger of Smith’s outsider figures, a phenomenon that
will be explored in chapters two and three. With the strength of her public image “she [Mrs
Thatcher] resurrected the mythology of a unified national self”,18 as Samuel argues, albeit a
narrow definition of the national self, allowing her to create a patriotic appeal able to
transcend the weakening class alignment of British politics.
The threatening outsider figures within this study can be put within three categories
according to the supposed danger they posed to the nation. The first chapter examines the
15 Smith A M, 1994, New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality: 1968-1990,Cambridge:Cambridge University
Press,Page 31
16 Ibid
17 Ibid,Page 31-32
18 Samuel R, 1990, ‘Mrs Thatcher’s Return to Victorian Values’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 78, Page
18

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political subversives of the trade unions and the Labour Party, at national and local levels, as
the Sun looked to undermine the traditional political allies of working class men. The second
chapter will address, what the Sun considered to be, ‘moral threats’ to their concept of
‘Britishness’, defined as ‘thugs’, ‘scroungers’ and homosexuals. The final chapter will deal
with the foreign threats to the nation of communism, the Falklands Crisis and Irish
republicanism. All of these threats were posed by the Sun as a challenge to its sense of British
working class identity, an identity it had created, which it was the duty of the patriotic male
to uphold by supporting Mrs Thatcher in her nationalist war against these subversives. It was
the successful application of this binary definition of what it meant to be a part of ‘British
society’ by the Sun that replaced “many of the traditional ‘us/them’ discourses of the
working-class”,19 creating a sense of ‘us’ saving the nation from the subversive ‘them’
through endorsement of Thatcherite politics.
19Hall S, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left, Page 141

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Chapter One: Political Enemies as Populist Pariahs
The success of Mrs Thatcher in winning working class male support was not only in
convincing them that she was the nation’s saviour, but that political opponents to the
Thatcherite project were a part of the supposed problem. The Sun newspaper played a vital
role in this operation by highlighting not only how Mrs Thatcher was the protector of British
values from these threats but also how political opponents were represented an alliance of
insidious forces seeking to undermine the fabric of the nation. Within the Sun’s national
narrative it was not a political choice between left and right, Conservative and Labour but a
patriotic choice between Britain’s heroine, the good Mrs Thatcher, and the evil ‘enemy
within’. As Hall puts it the success of Thatcherism lies in “its wide appeal and ‘common
touch’; its inclusive range of reference (for example its ability to condense moral,
philosophical and social themes, not normally thought of as ‘political’ within its political
discourse); it’s proven capacity to penetrate the traditional ideological formations of the
working class”.20 Thatcherism was able to condense the political sphere into an absolute
moral choice for the heart of the nation between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ (with Mrs Thatcher as the
former), with the Sun presenting a populist version of this narrative to its working class
readers. This chapter will examine the efforts of the Sun to directly attack trade unions and
the Labour Party, as the clearest natural allies to working class men and strongest political
opponents to Thatcherism, in an effort to highlight the threat they posed to the nation and to
appeal to the nationalist tendencies of working class men by presenting Mrs Thatcher as the
antidote to the supposedly poisonous ideologies of her political enemies.
20 Hall S, 1988, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left, London: Verso, Page 141

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The Unions
Within the Thatcherite narrative the greatest domestic threat to the nation of any kind was
from trade unions. Seeking votes by attacking trade unions may seem like a foolish strategy
among working class men, however her rhetoric on the issue presented the debate as one of
morality rather than economics, presenting the latter as inseparable from the former in what
Samuel refers to as “moral economy”.21 Through this “moral economy” she was able to argue
that “protectionism, whether on the field of trade unionism… was an invitation to
extravagance and sloth. Competition on the other hand was bracing, putting workers and
employers on their mettle”.22 Thus it came to be that trade unionism was not just wasteful,
but morally wrong, a narrative which the Sun popularized to great effect, appealing to
working class men by framing the moral threat as one to the nation. On Election Day 1979
(May 3rd) The Sun declared to its readers that “Britain’s unions were warned last night that no
one would be above the law under a Tory government”,23 highlighting Thatcher’s credentials
as the heroine to defeat the implicitly criminal trade unions. Arthur Scargill, leader of the
National Union of Mineworkers, was the Sun’s personification of union evil and was referred
to as “the man who would be King of Coal”,24 portraying him as a tyrant of the industry he
was charged with representing. Conboy argues that national heroes and demons “form part of
the style by which national communities are imagined and legitimised”,25 and in Scargill the
Sun found its demon to Mrs Thatcher’s heroine. Thus the Sun was able to forge its own
21 Samuel R, 1990, ‘Mrs Thatcher’s Return to Victorian Values’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 78, Page
17
22 Ibid
23 The Sun,3 May 1979, Page 3
24 The Sun,1 March 1979, Page 6
25 Conboy M, 2004, ‘Heroes and Demons as Historical Bookmarks in the English Popular Press’, in,
Brocklehurst H and Phillips R, History, Nationhood and the Question of Britain,Basingstoke: Palgrave, Page
399

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national identity with Mrs Thatcher’s values as the heroic moral core juxtaposed against the
evil of Scargill’s trade unionism.
Scargill’s role as villain only intensified as the strike loomed. In Williams’ analysis of the
role of the media in the miner’s strike he argues that “readers were left with a view that the
strike was precipitated by the power crazed antics of Arthur Scargill”26 and if one examines
the Sun’s reporting during the strike this becomes evident. In March 1984 the Sun argued that
Scargill forced the miners into striking despite “thousands” rebelling against “Scargill’s bid
to force a pit strike”.27 Here the Sun informs its readership that the union bosses are forcing
the unwilling miners’ into a strike, a glaring example of the overbearing and autocratic union
leadership. The other effect of this is to highlight to its readers that it is not the individual
working class men striking who are the threat to the nation but it is the union bosses, who are
bypassing democratic practice by ‘forcing’ strikes in a bid to strangle the nation, thus
presenting Mrs Thatcher’s government as the heroes taking on the villainous unions. This
interpretation was still alive a decade later, in Mrs Thatcher’s final months in office, as one
story’s headline ran “Secret Ballot as Dockers Declare War on Maggie”.28 It is noteworthy
that the Sun was still looking to present Mrs Thatcher as the nation’s defence against the
subversive unions four years after the symbolic defeat of the miners, which seemed to end
union power in Britain. This persistent loyalty to Mrs Thatcher’s political projects is typical
after her 1981 meeting with Murdoch described by Tunstall as “an obvious political move”.29
For the Sun Margaret Thatcher was the nation’s only defence against attack from the unions,
the hero to defeat the demonic trade union leaders, a title which the Sun remained committed
to reminding its readers of throughout her time in office.
26 Williams G, , 2009, ‘The Media and the Miners’ in, Willaims G (ed), Shafted: The Media, the Miners’ Strike
and the Aftermath, London: Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom Page 38
27 The Sun,7 March 1984
28 The Sun,21 April 1989, Page 2
29 Tunstall J, 1983, The Media in Britain, New York: Columbia University Press, Page 266

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The Labour Party and the ‘Loony Left’
Direct attack on the Labour Party was a consistent theme in the role of the Sun in promoting a
Thatcherite agenda to working class men. This is perhaps unsurprising but what is remarkable
about the Sun’s anti-Labour stance is the transition from measured policy criticism pre-1981,
albeit often through a right wing populist lens, into frenzied fear inducing presentations of the
Labour Party as a fanatical band of extremists focused on destroying the nation.
If one first examines the 1979 election it becomes clear that the Sun had taken an anti-Labour
stance, and was keen to utilise its self-proclaimed position as the authority on working class
opinion to promote this. Unlike in post-1981 campaigns the attacks on Labour were primarily
politically orientated, in contrast to the more personal and even vindictive articles that
appeared in later years. In March 1979, two months before the general election, a cartoon
appeared showing Callaghan as a butcher carving up Britain,30 in reference to his proposals
for devolution. This attack through a nationalist lens is characteristic of the Sun’s approach,
presenting this policy as an attempt to brutally carve up the nation. However it is an assault
focused on a specific policy which failed and was, in Evan’s opinion, a key reason for the
death of the Callaghan government.31 While highly critical it shows the Sun’s anti-Labour
stance was primarily policy focused and had not reached the panic stricken hysteria found
post-1981.
Two days before the votes were cast in 1979 the Sun’s front page depicted Callaghan as
Moses with the headline “would you follow this man into the wilderness?” before claiming

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that “the Labour Party has cynically fought this election on its one and only (wasting) asset-
Bumbling Uncle Jim”.32 This article was followed by a highly critical analysis of Callaghan’s
time as Prime Minister and his previous ministerial positions.33 These anti-Labour articles
clearly portray a Thatcher bias, however there is a degree of truth in the weakness of the
Labour campaign as Clemens’ analysis of the 1979 election argues that “the Conservative
manifesto dealt in a fundamental way with four of the five key issues [inflation, trade union
reform, taxation and law and order] confronting the electorate; the Labour Party manifesto
ignored all but two [employment and inflation]”.34 In 1979 the Sun displayed an unmistakable
Thatcher bias and campaigned for her among the working class through its populist appeal,
declaring itself “proud to have a working class readership”,35 but its aggressive brand of
morality, outrage and occasional personal attacks on the Labour Party had not yet become the
foundation of its political reporting.
If one turns to the post-1981 position of the Sun we see its attacks on Labour Party policy
reaching a fearful hysteria. An examination of the 1983 election coverage by the Sun
highlights this shift, as policy criticism became more and more extreme, with the Labour
Party’s stance of repealing Mrs Thatcher’s ‘right to buy’ policy (allowing council tenants to
buy their council homes with cheap loans) presented as an assault on the British “property
owning democracy” before ending the article with the ominous warning “vote Labour at your
peril”.36 This piece is indicative of the Sun’s post-1981 efforts to appeal to its readers on a
personal level, as it argues that the Labour Party is attacking the property owning liberties of
individual working class men, as well as British democracy as a whole. Here the Sun utilises
its populist appeal to spark fear among its readers to present the Labour Party as a threat to
33 Ibid, Page 2
34 Clemens J, 1983, Polls, Politicsand Populism, London: Gower, Page 19

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democracy in line with the New Right approach of creating, what Gamble describes as, “a
moral and political system whose watchwords were individual responsibility, freedom and
democracy”.37 Another Labour Party policy, of the same year, to reform the House of Lords
was presented by the Sun as an effort to create a political system in which “it would be easy
for the majority to push through extremist legislation on the nod” and would cause “a crisis
which will do nothing for the country, will not put anybody back in work, or help economic
recovery”.38 This attack on Labour policy as an effort to promote extremism is typical of the
Sun’s post-1981 coverage of the Party, as they managed to present efforts to reform arguably
one of Britain’s least democratic institutions to their readers as a fanatical coup which would
undermine economic recovery.
The Sun’s focus on presenting the Labour Party as an unstable and extremist fringe
movement during the 1983 election marked a turning point as the policy became superseded
by fearful cries about the threat of the ‘loony left’. One comment piece by columnist Jon
Akass shortly before the vote headlined “the loony cry you will hear when Labour get
thrashed”39 reflects this approach. It compared the Labour Party’s unity to “partners in a
loveless marriage who stay together for the sake of the children” before claiming that defeat
would see the “loony left” of the party declare that “people voted Tory because the Labour
Party was not left wing enough”.40 This attack presents Labour as a divided party, with the
comparison to a “loveless marriage” invoking images of a bickering dysfunctional group
capable of only superficial teamwork. Furthermore the references to Labour as “loony”
suggests that they are not only incompetent but mentally unwell, with the triumphant tone
suggesting that one must be similarly “loony” to vote for Labour. This rhetoric highlights the
37 Gamble A, 1994, The Free Economy and the Strong State: the Politics of Thatcherism, Basingstoke:
Macmillan, Page 67
39 The Sun, 13 May 1983, Page 6

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extreme attacks on the Labour Party that went well beyond criticism of policy, a furious
ascent that only continued in the following years.
In March 1984 the most glaring example of this transition into an aggressively anti-Labour
journal came as a full page article headlined “Benn on the couch”41 appeared in the Sun.
Tony Benn, a prominent Labour MP and former cabinet minister, came to personify the
‘loony left’ during the 1980s in the eyes of the Sun (as will be explored further in subsequent
chapters). This article, claiming to be the product of a meeting with a “top American
psychiatrist”, declares that “Mr Benn’s problems lie in the fact that he was the middle of
three sons” and that “he thinks of himself as God-like” after opening by describing Benn as
“a Messiah figure hiding behind the mask of a common man”42. The tenuous conclusions of
this article reach their peak when we are told Mr Benn’s humility is “a classic characteristic
of people who are full of their own self-interest”.43 This article highlights the ferocious and
personal nature of the Sun’s attacks after 1981 as it sought to present Labour’s leading figures
as delusional, power crazed and representing only their own interests. The timing of this
article is also worth noting, as it is over three years before the next General Election, so is not
part of an electoral push, reflecting the dedication to consistently undermining key figures on
the left by presenting them as anything from mentally unwell to power-crazed, but always a
danger to the nation.
When the 1987 election came the Sun’s political discourse was entrenched in a mixture of
passionate attacks on Labour policies and disparaging insults directed at the party and its key
figures, as threats to the nation’s stability and moral fibre. In the days before the election an
article headlined “Labour will cut 2m jobs”44 appeared in the Sun implying that the loss of
42 Ibid
43 Ibid
44 The Sun,2 June 1987, Page 2

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jobs was a fact, with it only becoming apparent that this was the claim of Conservative Lord
Young after reading beyond the headline. By the 1987 election it had become difficult to
distinguish Conservative opinion about the Labour Party from the Sun’s own stance, as the
latter appeared a populist presentation of the former. Election Day 1987 the Sun carried the
headline “halfway there” while pleading with its readership “don’t let Kinnock’s crackpots
wreck Maggie’s revolution”.45 Here we find the Sun juxtaposing the “crackpots” of Labour
against the strong leadership of Mrs Thatcher supposedly revolutionising the nation and, in
the Sun’s eyes, moving “forward to a future that works”.46 The approach of this article is
typical of the Sun as Labour is tarnished with the ‘loony left’ label while Mrs Thatcher is
shown as the tough single minded unifier the nation needs.
The Sun’s anti-Labour campaign extended beyond the national party into Labour local
authorities in support of Mrs Thatcher’s centralisation agenda. Motivated in part by her
disdain for “what she saw as its inefficient, wasteful and wrong-headed ways” and its role as
“a valid alternative focus for public politics”,47 as Evans argues, Thatcher looked to diminish
the role of local government. Animosity towards local councils did not have a prominent
place in populist politics and as such attacks on local government were tied to the Labour
Party as part of the ‘loony left’.
The Sun’s crusade on the issue still held all of its usual populist vigour initially arguing that
Labour councils were undermining the cornerstone of British working class male identity-
sport. In March 1979 the Sun labelled the Lothian Regional Council “busybodies” for
refusing to allow Scotland rugby player Ian McGeehan to leave his job to play rugby in
Apartheid South Africa before declaring they should “mind their own business”.48 In April
45 The Sun, 10 June 1987, Page 1
46 Ibid
47 Evans E, 2013, Thatcher and Thatcherism, Page 63

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1982 the Sun story headlined “council axes Boycott job” describes how Labour councilors
“cheered” as they ended cricket player Boycott’s publicity job with the Yorkshire Country
Council after “Boycott returned from his controversial South African cricket tour”.49 Here we
see the Sun’s populist attempt to promote the Thatcherite centralisation agenda by presenting
local government as an assault on the bastion of British male identity that is sport.
The turning point for attack on local government came in 1981, after which they truly became
part of the ‘loony left’. As Labour took control of the Greater London Council in May of
1981 the Sun found a villain to personify the extremist fringe in Ken Livingstone as it
declared “Red Ken crowned king of London”.50 ‘Red Ken’ often found himself on the pages
of the Sun as an ally to all manner of immoral and anti-British forces in society, as the
subsequent chapters will explore. As has been stated, local government reform was not an
issue with huge electoral clout but it became tied to a number of other issues, as will be
explored in the subsequent chapters, as the Sun looked to induce fear of the monster that was
the ‘loony left’. This tactic was vital to the anti-local government agenda, as it looked to tie
the interests of local politics to the vast moral and external threats facing the nation.
By the end of the Thatcher era the Sun’s claim on Election Day 1979 that it was “not a Tory
newspaper”51 no longer rang true. After more than a decade of attacking the Labour Party,
and an assault of the unions that lasted well beyond the demise of their political power, there
was no doubt that the Sun truly was the Thatcherite appeal to the working class. Waller
astutely observes that during Mrs Thatcher’s election victories “Labour seemed increasingly
unable to hold on to a clear majority of votes even among its traditionally strongest groups
such as trade union members in traditional manual industries”,52 a trend that can in part be
50 The Sun, 9 May 1981, Page 4
52
Waller R, 1994, ‘Conservative Electoral Support and Social Class’, in, Seldon A and Ball S, Conservative
Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Page 588-599

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traced back to representations of the Labour Party in the press as a disorganised group of
extremists. This persistent attack on the Labour Party, at both local and national levels, and
trade unions not only highlighted their unsuitability for political life but also the necessity of
the Thatcherite destruction of the latter. While this direct approach certainly generated huge
support among many working class voters it is unlikely that all the “traditional Labour
supporters”53 the Sun appealed to in 1979 would be swayed by such blatant tactics. It is
therefore vital to consider in the following chapters the powerful approach utilised by the Sun
in simultaneously highlighting the moral and foreign dangers threatening Britain and
attaching the political opponents of Thatcherism to these destructive groups as an unholy
alliance of ‘weirdos’ and ‘nutters’ deeply committed to the erosion the very fabric of British
society. In its coverage of the trade unions and Labour Party there can be no doubt that the
Sun turned two institutions vital to providing an accessible route for working class men into
British democracy into an unholy, extremist band of subversives in the eyes of many.

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Chapter Two: The Fight for the Nation’s Soul
Morality was the lens through which Thatcherism was presented to the nation, within
Thatcher’s imagining of Britain it was the duty of the patriot to support her crusade. There
was arguably no area where the Sun’s rhetoric was more divisive and inflammatory than in its
coverage of the internal moral ‘enemies’ to the nation. In his analysis of the Thatcherite
response to the permissiveness of the preceding decades Durham describes Thatcherism as “a
political project which was committed… to a revival of discipline and standards”.54 There
could be no revival without clear, undeniable proof that the moral standards of the nation was
in disastrous decline, proof which the Sun sought to provide its readers through stories of
criminality, ‘scrounging’ and the spread of homosexuality. This chapter will track the
powerful tactic of the Sun of presenting a narrative in which moral fabric of ‘our’ society was
under attack from the three evils of ‘thugs’ (often with a racial component), ‘scroungers’ and
homosexuals as all looked to assault the values of British working men. The only solution to
this problem was Mrs Thatcher and her ‘Victorian values’, with her political rivals presented
by the Sun as incapable of combatting these social toxins, often because of their supposed
role as co-conspirators sowing the seeds for national destruction. Whether the continuity
between Mrs Thatcher and the Sun’s popular morality manifested itself in policy as much as
in rhetoric is an issue that is open to debate. What there is no doubt about, as this chapter will
show, is that it was a political strategy that yielded vast electoral success.
Thugs
If one first looks at the perceived threat from ‘thugs’ then the Sun and Mrs Thatcher’s own
“genius for presenting her own attitudes and beliefs as if they shone out as beacons of
54 Durham M, 1991, Sex and Politics: The Family and Morality in Thatcher Years, London: Macmillan, Page
179

20
common sense”55 becomes apparent. Reports on issues they judged to be the work of ‘thugs’
allowed the Sun to simultaneously highlight the moral decline facing the nation and
strengthen its claim to be the voice of British morality. By highlighting a supposed moral
crisis the Sun legitimised the extreme policy shift of the Thatcherite project in the eyes of its
readers because, as Evans argues, “change as a moral crusade was the leitmotif of her
career”.56 Stories with headlines such as “12 Years for Rape Beast”,57 “Kids Rape Jogger”58
and “Sex Fiend Hunted Bicycle Girls”59 allowed The Sun to voice popular moral outrage on
youth delinquency and sexual assaults through a sensationalised language that appeared to
possess the common touch. The result of this was to highlight the need to support Mrs
Thatcher’s “moral crusade” and to increase the Sun’s claim to a monopoly on working-class
male morality.
The great advantage the Sun secured by taking strong stances on ‘moral’ issues was that it
allowed them to garner their image as a fearless institution willing to speak ‘the truth’ when
others didn’t dare to, an image that resonated with many working class men. The greatest
example of the Sun’s commitment to venting (and arguably creating) populist moral outrage
at the cost of possibly causing extreme offence was in the aftermath of the Hillsborough
disaster in April 1989. The now infamous the Sun headline of April 19th, five days after the
disaster, declared “The Truth” before claiming “Some Fans Picked Pockets of Victims, Some
Fans Urinated on the Brave Cops, Some Fans Beat Up PC Giving the Kiss of Life”60 provides
a perfect example of this. This story allowed the Sun to create an image as the brave face of
moral outrage. Despite the criticism that followed the Sun stubbornly stuck to its claims that
Liverpool fans had acted in an appalling manner in the aftermath of the disaster. In response
55 Evans E, Thatcher and Thatcherism, Page 6
56 Ibid, Page 1
57 The Sun,23 October 1985
59The Sun, 2 October 1979, Page 11

21
to planned boycotts of the newspaper in Liverpool the Sun boldly stated “hopefully telling the
World exactly what went on at Hillsborough will mean that something is done to prevent
such a disaster happening again. If the price to be paid is that some of you stop buying the
Sun, then so be it”.61 Even as the claims The Sun made were proven to be false by video
footage the newspaper remained defiant, headlining their report “Soccer Tragedy Film
‘Clears’ Liverpool Fans”,62 suggesting that perhaps the Liverpool fans weren’t really cleared
by this footage. However by the time this begrudging slight change of stance appeared, a
week after the initial disaster, it was too late. The media, and the Sun in particular, had played
their part in creating a scandal that saw the truth “degraded through propaganda to protect
powerful interests” and served as a shameful example of, according to Scraton, “how public
servants, supposedly legally and politically accountable, can evade the reach of the law”,63
with the Sun’s reporting giving huge credit to the later disproved stories of the police. This
episode shows just how quickly the Sun was willing to attach blame to a feral generation of
morally corrupt ‘thugs’ to legitimise Mrs Thatcher’s own extreme rhetoric and policy in
favour of tough policing. As unsavoury as this reporting might have been it did confirm the
Sun’s self-appointed role as the voice of unashamed British working morality, even in the
face of staunch criticism, highlighting the influence the newspaper had developed over the
previous decade.
The Sun not only sought to detail the moral ruin facing Britain but also looked to highlight
the suitability of Mrs Thatcher in combating it, particularly in contrast to the incompetence of
the Labour Party. In the aftermath of unrest in Tottenham in October 1985 following the
death of a black suspect’s mother during a police raid on her home the Sun’s solution was for
63 Scraton P, 2004, ‘Death on the Terraces: The Context and Injustices of the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster’,
Soccer and Society,Vol. 5, No 2,, Page 198

22
police to be “deployed in full strength wherever trouble threatens… they must be able to
defend themselves with all available weapons- CS and tear gas, water cannon, plastic bullets-
the lot”.64 This call for aggressive policing supported Mrs Thatcher’s own stance which
emphasised ‘strong’ law and order, a source of considerable irony given that the rate of crime
rose steadily during her time in government.65
Where Mrs Thatcher promoted order and authority through strong leadership Labour were
shown to be weak appeasers who would only bring chaos and disorder. During the unrest in
Tottenham The Sun ran a story with the headline “Hurd Raps ‘Race Hate High Priests’:
Labour Men ‘Worse Than NF’”66 reporting on the views of then Home Secretary Douglas
Hurd that some Labour councilors in the area were causing more racial tension than far right
party the National Front by criticising the police. This story strongly suggested the Labour
Party’s incompetence in dealing with “thugs bent on a looting spree”67 (in Tottenham) and
“howling mobs of black youths”68 (in Toxteth). The criticism of a local councilor in these
stories was typical of Thatcherite attacks on local government as Thatcherite discourse meant
that “local government autonomy became equated with subversive black activism”.69
Attacking a local Labour council supported Mrs Thatcher’s efforts to stifle the role of local
government, whilst discrediting the Labour party as extremist and presenting the Tories as the
moral authority on the issue, all through the exploitation of racial tensions. It is a shining
example of what Smith describes as “the concealment of extremism through the promotion of
the sense that there is no alternative”.70 The Labour party were presented as a disorganised
64 The Sun,8 October 1985, Page 6
65 Jansson K,2006, British Crime Survey- Measuring Crime for 25 Years, London: Home Office, Page 8
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs07/bcs25.pdf
69 Smith A M, New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality:1968-1990,Page 35
70 Ibid, Page 36

23
radical fringe, only capable of promoting black criminality and extremism, with Mrs Thatcher
as the only credible option.
If one applies Billig’s discourse analysis to the riots we see that another of Smith’s outsider
figures emerge, as black ‘thugs’ cease to be included in the Sun’s ‘we’. In a report of the
1985 Tottenham riots the reader is told that “they planned it like a war”.71 This is clearly
stating a violent enemy threat but equally as important is the use of the word ‘they’, implying
that these people are not like the ‘us’ of white working-class Britain that the Sun claims to
represent. Through this discourse the Sun was able to create another division in society
threatening ‘the British way of life’ which provided a political space for Thatcher to exploit
as she “responded to popular concerns- including anxieties around race”.72 The Sun was able
to create an “outsider figure” of black criminality born out of the so-called-“black ghettos”73
which threatened the “social space”74 of British society, or at least the white Christian version
of it that the Sun seemed to represent. This allowed Mrs Thatcher to adopt the reactionary
populist position of a strong law and order response, while the left was seen to be defensive
of criminality as it looked at the socio-economic causes of the unrest and potential police
misconduct, strengthening the claim of Thatcherism as “the only possible social order”.75
Scroungers
For Mrs Thatcher and the Sun a great deal of success was found in attacking- what they
deemed to be- wastefulness. As Cannadine argued she was “a Tory who was on the side of
the plebs against the patricians, the producers against the parasites”.76 This presentation was
75 Ibid, Page 36
76 Cannadine D, 2000, Class in Britain, London: Penguin, Page 174

24
part of the “authoritarian populist agenda which seeks to both chime with and influence
predominantly male, white, working class culture”.77 The power of this approach was to
create another threatening group within society, which presented a danger to the material
gains many working men had made in years prior (such as the purchase of their homes under
the ‘right to buy’ Tory policy) through a perceived immoral deception. After the unions had
been symbolically defeated following the miners’ strike idle workers ‘scrounging off the
state’ came to form a new ‘enemy within’. Stories with headlines such as “1m Don’t Want
Job”78 and “Tory Raps Idle Youth” became more and more common as The Sun attacked
“thousands of youngsters who choose to live on the dole”.79 The great threat to the nation was
no longer the militant unions, but those living off the state who were taking without giving.
This created another “outsider figure” against which “the boundaries of a social space are
constructed”,80 the social space in this instance filled by working men and defined against
‘scroungers’. Within this narrative it was, as Ashton argues, “the young people’s fault that
they were unemployed”,81 a narrative that the Sun promoted with vigour. The unemployed
were not to be pitied in the Sun’s Britain but were to be attacked as wasteful enemies to
British productivity, juxtaposed against Mrs Thatcher’s image as the ‘Grocer’s daughter’
from Grantham promoting self-reliance and thrift.82 Attacks on ‘scroungers’ were noticeably
rare in the early years of Thatcher’s government however the increasing attacks following the
defeat of the miners’, and the deal made with Rupert Murdoch, show just how determined the
Sun was to attack arbitrarily created groups in society to justify Mrs Thatcher’s political
77 Conboy M and Steel J, 2010, ‘From “We to Me”’, JournalismStudies,Vol. 11, No 4, Page 505
79The Sun, 7 October 1985, Page 2
81 Ashton D N, 1989, ‘Unemployment’ in, Brown P and Sparks R (eds), Beyond Thatcherism: Social Policy,
Politicsand Society, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, Page 19
82 Samuel R, , 1990, ‘Mrs Thatcher’s Return to Victorian Values’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 78, Page
14

25
stance. The Sun had found a new threat to the nation and Mrs Thatcher’s own proposed
values presented her as the leader with the cure.
It was not only the unemployed who faced attack as ‘scroungers’ but the wealthiest as well. A
comment piece on a city trader convicted of insider trading in July 1987 called for a much
harsher penalty as “a fine of £25000 to him is no deterrent. It’s like a fiver to you or me”.83
The Sun was able to continue its appearance as the voice of the people from among the
people with the use of phrases such as “to you or me” creating a common sense of solidarity
and shared outrage at the audacity of this ‘scrounger’. The great success of the Sun in this
period, both in terms of enhancing Mrs Thatcher’s electoral performance and its own
readership, was in its “style of vernacular address which highlighted the perceived interests of
a newly empowered blue collar reader”,84 it appeared to speak for the working class man in
both style and popular moral outrage. It is therefore no surprise that the wealthy were
attacked for their immoral wastefulness as much as the poor. The Sun’s success was to be
found in defining their working class readership as the champions of the nation, led by the
grocer’s daughter from Grantham back to her Great British standard of bracing hard work.
Homosexuals
The Sun’s outrage at homosexuality during the 1980s may, at a superficial first glance, appear
to be a typical moral crusade of the reactionary tabloid press however upon more detailed
analysis it is the most striking example of the newspapers political transition into a
Thatcherite pamphlet following the Thatcher-Murdoch deal of January 1981. Homophobia
became more vocal among the mainstream media with the AIDs epidemic, as a May 1983
article regularly referring to AIDs as the “gay plague”85 shows. Rayside argues that articles
83 The Sun,July 2nd 1987, Page 6
84 Conboy M and Steel J, JournalismStudies,Page 503

26
such as this afforded the Thatcher government “a political opportunity to play the anti-gay
card once the tabloid press began exploiting AIDs homophobically”.86 While homophobic
pieces regarding the AIDs crisis emerged in the early 1980s, it was not until the summer of
1987 that the Sun’s campaign of homophobia began in earnest. Intrusive pieces into the life,
in particular the sexual activity, of Freddy Mercury87 began to appear and from February until
July the Sun ran a series of stories on Elton John, beginning with claims, which were later
proved false, that he had engaged in sex with male prostitutes88 and focusing on what the Sun
considered a “sordid sex life”.89 During this period there were also stories with headlines
such as “how to spot a gay before he gets you to the altar”90 and “our sex swapping has
turned my man gay”,91 not only suggesting that homosexuality was immoral but that any
permissiveness could result in one becoming homosexual and that homosexuals were
devious. Arguably the most flagrantly homophobic piece came in May 1987 with the Sun’s
comment piece in response to some homosexuals emigrating citing the Sun’s anti-
homosexual articles as a reason carrying the headline “fly away gays- and we will pay!”,
before offering to buy them one way tickets to Norway.92 The Sun once again sought to show
its credentials as the self-appointed voice of working class populist morality with its stance
on homosexuality but this campaign has far greater significance within the wider reach of the
Thatcherite political revolution.
The timing of these articles is no coincidence as the Local Government Act of 1988, with its
controversial clause 28 which prohibited local authorities from “promoting homosexuality by
86 Rayside D M, 1992, ‘Homophobia, Class and Party in England’, Canadian Journal ofPolitical Science, Vol
25, No 1, Page 125
88 The Sun,25 February 1987, Page 1
89 The Sun¸1 July 1987, Page 1

27
teaching or by publishing material [which were deemed to promote homosexuality]”,93 was
passed through Parliament in 1987 and the 1987 Conservative election campaign had a
notable anti-homosexual theme. The Conservative Party released a post during the 1987
campaign with front pages of several books about homosexuality and the caption ‘is this
Labour’s idea of a comprehensive education?’,94 suggesting that the Labour Party would look
to push a pro-homosexual agenda onto British children, an abhorrent idea to the Sun as a self-
appointed bastion of heterosexuality. Furthermore the Local Government Act, which
prohibited “political publicity by local authorities”95 as well as severely reducing the scope
and power of local government,96 was passed with much of the focus resting on clause 28, an
example of the Thatcherite tactic of tying a political cause to a populist moral one to generate
mass support. Their case was furthered by the Sun as it again used its “style of vernacular
address” to highlight “the perceived interests of a newly empowered blue-collar reader”,97 in
this instance resisting the perceived spread of homosexuality by supporting Mrs Thatcher.
This case highlights the tactic employed by both the Sun and Mrs Thatcher of attacking
political enemies of the Thatcherite program, in this case local government, through attacks
on perceived moral enemies, in this instance homosexuals, linking the aims of the former to
the potential threat of ruin to the nation posed by the latter. The 1987 articles regarding
homosexuality are a fine example of the Sun’s fanatical support for Mrs Thatcher’s agenda
following the 1981 deal with Rupert Murdoch, as it blatantly attacked individuals within the
homosexual community and the community at large at a time when her political aspirations
93 Local Government Act of 1988, Clause 28, London: HMSO
94 Conservative Party General Election Poster, 1987, Conservative Party Archive PosterCollection
http://bodley30.bodley.ox.ac.uk:8180/luna/servlet/detail/ODLodl~6~6~51819~105174:1987-
07?qvq=w4s:/when/1987/;lc:ODLodl~6~6&mi=7&trs=33
95 Local Government Act of 1988, Clause 27, London: HMSO
96 Local Government Act of 1988, London: HMSO
97 Conboy M and Steel J, 2010, ‘From “We to Me”’, JournalismStudies, Vol. 11, No 4, Page 503

28
and reforms were heavily invested in public fear over the perceived promotion of
homosexuality.
Mrs Thatcher's revolution was, within the Thatcherite narrative, not only political in nature
but also inherently moral. The Sun embraced this crusade with the reactionary vigour and
populist appeal that it had cultivated during the Thatcher years, campaigning on the issues of
‘thugs’, ‘scroungers’ and homosexuality to create a climate of fear in which any one of these
threats could at any time assault the moral fabric of British working values. These threats, as
presented by the Sun, fit perfectly with Mrs Thatcher’s approach, as has been shown by their
simultaneous adoption of homophobic rhetoric during the 1987 election and their shared
dislike for the supposedly feckless and lazy unemployed, allowing her to secure the moral
high ground in the eyes of many working class men. Gamble argues that the Thatcherite
approach is to “explain the ills of society from permissiveness to industrial militancy, in
terms of the malign influence of state collectivism and the activities of bodies, such as trade
unions, upon which collectivism conferred a privileged status”.98 The validity of this claim is
undoubtable as the moral threats presented in this chapter not only carried the political capital
of highlighting Thatcherism as the solution but also presented the previous approach of social
democracy, in the form of the Labour Party and trade unions, as an inseparable part of the
problem and, as such, an unthinkable alternative. It can therefore be concluded that the value
in attacking supposedly immoral minorities is not only in creating fear of these groups that
was advantageous to specific aspects of the Thatcherite program but also in highlighting the
danger of alternatives to Mrs Thatcher by presenting them as catalysts for the corruption
these groups caused.
98 Gamble A, 1994, The Free Economy and the Strong State: the Politics of Thatcherism, Basingstoke:
Macmillan,Page182

30
Chapter Three: Enemies Abroad with Allies at Home
The role of the Sun as a Thatcherite tool for reaching the working class is particularly
apparent in the newspaper’s coverage of external threats to the nation, as it looked to appeal
to a specific brand of nationalism to validate Mrs Thatcher’s own rhetoric and discredit her
opponents’. This appeal looked to utilise a desire for the post-colonial Britain to recreate its
former Imperial glories as the country had taken second place to the cold war superpowers in
most foreign affairs. The nationalism and nostalgia tactic brought great dividends as the Sun
used the external threats to Britain of Communism, the Falklands Crisis and the IRA to
portray Mrs Thatcher as a strong Churchillian (a direct comparison made regularly, as this
chapter will show) leader willing to defend the nation from these enemies. This chapter will
analyse the value of the Sun’s coverage of Communism, the Falklands Crisis and the IRA in
generating a nationalistic sentiment and fear that favoured Mrs Thatcher’s own beliefs,
policies and enormously enhanced her media image, while simultaneously portraying her
opponents as outside the acceptable view of British nationhood.
Communism
Communism and how to approach defence from Soviet Russia was a key foreign policy issue
in the Thatcher era as the Cold War was only heightened by the heavy handed approach of
President Regan. In Britain the debate in both politics and the media was focused on the issue
of nuclear weapons as a deterrent,99 with both Mrs Thatcher and the Sun taking the firm
belief that this was a vital aspect of national security. The primary way in which the Cold
War debate was presented in the Sun was through national stereotypes with Russia as an
international bully and plucky Britain standing up to Russian aggression. When Russian
planes shot down a Korean commercial passenger jet over Russian airspace in September
99 Thownborrow J, ‘Metaphors of Security and Comparison of representation in defence discourse between post-
cold war France and Britain’, Roehampton Institute London,London: Sage, Vol 4, No 1, Page 100

31
1983 the Sun instantly assumed this was a malicious and intentional attack on civilians, rather
than waiting until full details of the incident, and its causes, had emerged. Thus the first
report in the Sun, the day after the incident, claims that the “eight MIGs flew close enough to
see that their target was not a spy plane, but only a civilian airliner” and that the pilots had
granted themselves “a license to kill”, while the centre of the double page report carried the
words “a baby dies in jumbo outrage”100 in bold. The Sun’s instant assumption that not only
had the Russians been aware they were killing civilians but also the emphasis on the death of
an infant (despite the presence of a US congressman on the flight having greater political
implications) sensationalises the story to portray Russia as a ruthless nation of murderers. In a
comment piece in the same edition one is told that the Russians are “tyrants” who are
“frightened… by the power of truth in the hands of free people” and that “leaving ourselves
at their mercy… as the followers of CND would have us do, would be as insane as for a lamb
to lie down with a wild beast”.101 This is a glaring example of how, as Thownborrow
describes in his analysis of British defence discourse in the 1980s, “pro nuclear defence
policies were frequently justified and defended by metaphoric representations which
constructed and validated these complex international policies by conceptualizing them in
terms of more familiar, culturally specific situations… casting the Soviet Union as the
bullying ‘bear’ and Britain as the small brave ‘bulldog’ standing up to it”.102 Thus we see
opposition to nuclear disarmament is, in the Sun’s narrative, the duty of the plucky Brit in the
fight against the “wild beast”103 of Russia.
As much as the Sun had turned a pro-nuclear and passionately anti-Soviet stance into a
patriotic duty, it also sought to connect the implicitly anti-British opposing views to political
100 The Sun,2 September 1983, Page 4-5
101Ibid, Page 6
102 Thownborrow J, ‘Metaphors of Security and Comparison of representation in defence discourse between
post-cold war France and Britain’, Page 100-101
103 The Sun,2 September 1983, Page 6

32
enemies of Mrs Thatcher. The tragedy mentioned above served as the perfect opportunity to
attack Arthur Scargill as anti-union rhetoric increased ahead of the looming showdown which
would come in the 1984-85 strike. On 5 September a cartoon appeared showing a blind
Scargill stepping on the bones of the victims with the caption “I want to see all the facts”104
and a day later he was attacked in a comment piece for “STILL”105 not having condemned
the Russians. This example highlights the tactic of targeting any political opponent for not
behaving in the same reactionary and fiercely nationalistic way as the Sun, implying that by
not holding the same views as the newspaper they are an enemy of the nation. Attempts to
associate unions with Soviet Russia reached ridiculous levels as a 1983 comment piece
discussing the Mayday bank holiday called it a “communist gloom day” for “the Kremlin and
the TUC”,106 implying that the pair were in cahoots, the enemies without allying with the
enemies within over even the most trivial, in an attempt to undermine the productivity of the
nation.
The Labour Party also found itself under attack by (tenuous) association as it was portrayed
as a Soviet syndicate during election time. This is a fantastic example of the phenomenon
highlighted by Gamble, as the New Right, for which the Sun often seemed to be the print
voice of, saw social democracy as a danger because of its “erosion of the national will and
political authority”107 and possibly even tied to Soviet Russia. Thus the Labour Party was
portrayed as being at best a weak pushover to the Russians and at worst their puppets but
consistently a threat to Britain. In May 1983, under a month before voting, the Sun carried an
article declaring “Kremlin wants win for Labour- Maggie”,108 which presented Mrs
Thatcher’s claims of Soviet support for Labour with only a single sentence of Labour’s
104 The Sun,5 September 1983, Page 6
105 The Sun,6 September, Page 6
107 Gamble A, The Free Economy and the Strong State: the Politics of Thatcherism, Page 65
108 The Sun¸12 May 1983, Page 2

33
rebuttal. In the 1987 election this tactic reached its peak as the Sun claimed that the Labour
Party had become “more extreme than many communist parties in Europe”109 and ran a full
page article with the headline “why I’m backing Kinnock by Stalin”(while Winston
Churchill, Admiral Nelson and Boadicea were all supposedly voting Conservative).110 These
cases show the development of the Sun’s attacks on the Labour Party at election time as the
tactic of portraying Labour as an ally of global communism emerged in the 1983 and 1987
elections. This highlights the fanatical support Mrs Thatcher received from the Sun at election
time, particularly after January 1981, as their anti-Labour tactics focused on association with
the Cold War enemy of Communism rather than poor policy and leadership.
The Falklands Crisis
The Falklands crisis of 1982 was a defining time for Mrs Thatcher as prime minister. Despite
the events occurring thousands of miles away arguably its largest impact was in Britain.
Coming into the Falklands crisis MORI polls estimated that Mrs Thatcher had lost 17% of
her working class support from the 1979 election by the start of 1982111 and had Labour and
the Conservatives tied overall each with 33% approval ratings at the start of April.112 The
following year Mrs Thatcher won a landslide victory in the general election which is in no
small part down to, what Worcester calls, “the Falklands factor”.113 The recovery in this
period among working class men can be attributed to a surge in nationalism during the crisis,
encouraged and exploited by Mrs Thatcher, with the Sun newspaper at the front of the
patriotic populist drive. The Sun’s coverage of the Falklands Crisis secured a strong position
111 WorcesterR, 1991, British Public Opinion: a Guide to the History and Methodology ofPolitical Opinion
Polling,Oxford: Basil Blackwell, Page 81
112 Ibid, Page 83
113 Ibid

34
for both itself and Mrs Thatcher among working class men for many years through a mix of
patriotic populism, reactionary morality and nostalgia to create a sense that the Sun spoke for
working class men and Mrs Thatcher was the leader to restore Britain’s former glories.
The Falklands Crisis presents the most glaring example of the Sun’s desire to, as Conboy puts
it, “both chime with and influence predominantly male, white, working class culture”.114 The
Sun sought to portray itself as “the paper that supports our boys”,115 a title that was ever
present on its front page during the conflict, in an effort to strengthen its growing role as the
herald of populist British working class ‘common sense’. As such they ran light hearted
stories about the vast quantities of beer sent to the soldiers116 and others relating the conflict
to the upcoming football world cup, with headlines such as “We’ll beat them at soccer
too!”117 This populist nationalism, which was crucial in solidifying the Sun’s position at the
heart of male working class culture, was even found in its attempts to portray the Falklands as
British as they declare that the Islanders hid out in pubs “plastered with pictures of the royal
family and Manchester United”.118 Again through the use of football the Sun is able to create
a sense of trust and even solidarity between the newspaper and its readers, and unity with the
inhabitants of the Falklands. As such the conflict strengthened the Sun’s grip on populist
morality and presented Mrs Thatcher as defending a group of people that their readers could
easily identify with. The Islanders were one of ‘us’.
The extreme nationalism from the Sun enormously intensified following the sinking of HMS
Sheffield, one of the first major losses of British life. It was on 6 May, reporting on the loss
of the Sheffield, that the first use of the term ‘Argie’119 to refer to Argentinian forces
114 Conboy M and Steel J, 2010, ‘From “We to Me”’, JournalismStudies, Vol. 11, No 4, 505
115 The Sun, 12 May- 18 June 1982, Page 1
118 The Sun 3 April 1982, Page 5

35
occurred. The use of this slang term represented an effort to dehumanise ‘the enemy’ after the
first major loss of British life. This was followed by stories depicting the brutality of the
‘Argies’ such as “Those Argy broots looted our homes”120 and “Revealed: Argy napalm
bombs”121 (which were never actually used in the conflict). Billig argues that within the
nationalist narrative “it is always the ‘other’ who breaks faith, acts dishonestly and starts
aggressive spirals: ‘our’ actions are justified by circumstance”.122 The Sun’s patriotic zeal
during the Falklands conflict is a perfect example of this, arguing that all Argentinian acts of
war are typical of the dishonest ‘Argy’ while British military acts are to be celebrated, as the
headline “Gotcha!”123 after the sinking of the Argentinian ship ARA General Belgrano
shows. This binary representation of a war between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ allowed Thatcher to
adopt the righteous position of patriotic defender.
The Falklands conflict presents the most overt attempt by the Sun and Mrs Thatcher to create
two separate nations: seen in Jessop’s argument that Thatcherite politics had led to the
“unification of a privileged notion of ‘good citizens’ and ‘hard workers’ against a contained
and subordinate nation”.124 For Jessop this division was one of economic inequality but the
concept of “two nations”125 can be extended into the political sphere to understand the value
of the Falklands phenomenon in creating a new Thatcherite ‘common sense’. During the
conflict a situation arose in the Sun where one was either a patriot supporting Britain’s
involvement in the conflict or was an enemy of the nation for opposing it. This was a cunning
exploitation of the mood among much of the population following the Argentinian invasion
that, as Hobsbawm puts it, “you simply couldn’t accept this, something had to be done”.126
122 Billig M, 1995, Banal Nationalism,London: Sage, Page 82
124 Jessop B, 1988, Thatcherism: A Tale of Two Nations, Cambridge: Polity, Page 87
125 Ibid
126 Hobsbawm E, ‘Falklands Fallout’ in Hall S and Jaques M (eds), The Politics of Thatcherism, London:
Lawrence and Wishart,1983, Page 258

36
As such anyone deemed by the Sun to not be behind ‘our boys’ and suitably militant towards
the Argentinians came under attack, with this group primarily including trade unions and the
Labour Party. Even before the Argentinians became the ‘Argies’ (on 6 May 1982) Tony Benn
had been called a “political termite”127 for favouring diplomacy over military action and
headlines such as “Red Ken [Livingstone] Backs Junta”128 and “Union Boycotts War”129 had
appeared in the Sun. Here we see attacks on the Labour Party at both national and local levels
and on trade unions, an exploitation of the conflict to attack Thatcher’s major political
opponents at the time, as highlighted in chapter one, as anti-British for lack of patriotic zeal.
For the Sun it was a simple choice: support the righteous Mrs Thatcher and the war or join
Tony Benn the “appeaser”130 (who became much of the focus of the Sun’s rage as shown by
six separate comment pieces condemning his supposed lack of patriotism over a five week
period)131 and the others threatening to topple the nation from within.
The World War Two metaphor extended beyond Benn the “appeaser” in an attempt to utilise
patriotic nostalgia. As early as 5 April, days after the crisis began, a cartoon of Winston
Churchill appeared in the Sun, calling for military action to “defend our islands”132 (again
note the use of the inclusive ‘our’- the Falklands are part of ‘our’ nation). One month later
reports of British bombing campaigns were accompanied by the headline “Blitzed!”133 A
week after Churchill first appeared, the Sun claimed the invasion had “succeeded in uniting
this nation more closely than since another dictator by the name of Hitler was stepping on the
stage”,134 suggesting a national unity of purpose akin to combating the threat of Nazi
Germany, and that the Argentinian Junta were comparable Hitler’s Third Reich. Hobsbawm
131 The Sun,7 April- 10 May 1982, Page 6
132 The Sun,5 April, Page 6

37
argued that support for the conflict was a patriotic backlash to the perceived decline
following the loss of Empire and resulted in the British right catching this “popular mood,
and turning it in a right wing”.135 The creation of a sense that Mrs Thatcher’s defence of the
Falklands was the modern equivalent of Churchill’s fight against Hitler was a crucial part of
this. Through this narrative the Sun was able to turn Mrs Thatcher and the Falklands crisis
from a stagnating Prime Minister and an almost irrelevant land dispute into “Britannia come
to life”136 and a righteous conflict reminiscent of Britain’s perceived former glories. The
Falklands was presented as a fight between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ with Mrs Thatcher and the Sun
leading the light.
Irish Republicanism
Thatcher’s policy in Northern Ireland reflects her stance on many of the other issues in this
study: obstinate, aggressive and frighteningly nationalistic. The Sun’s coverage of Irish
republicanism follows a familiar trajectory as its post-1981 coverage is markedly different
from the first eighteen months of Thatcher’s government. The fatal August 1979 bombing of
Lord Mountbatten’s boat was a major victory for the IRA as it “carried with it great anti-
royal, anti-establishment prestige”137 but the resulting coverage from the Sun was remarkably
measured, with an emphasis on grief, such as the double page spread on “one of England’s
greatest sons”138 commemorating the deceased Earl. While there was anger, one headline
carrying the words of the Lords’ secretary “may these bastards rot in hell”,139 the overall
135 Hobsbawm E, The Politicsof Thatcherism, Page 260
137
English R, 2003, Armed Struggle:The History of the IRA, London: Macmillan, Page 220
138 The Sun,28 August 1979, Page 4-5
139 The Sun, 28 August 1979,Page 2-3

38
emphasis was on tragedy and mourning. Even the Sun’s remarkably reactionary opinion
column ‘the Sun says’ criticised support for Irish republicanism in the US140 rather than
calling for violent response. Despite this more measured coverage compared to later attacks,
the Sun did show Mrs Thatcher visiting Northern Ireland two days after the attack wearing a
flak jacket under the headline “into battle”, an undeniable attempt to take advantage of the
tragedy by presenting her as a “fearless premier”141 willing to risk her safety for the nation.
If one now turns to the death of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands in May 1981 the coverage
takes a much more aggressive, darker, even fear-mongering tone. The Sun’s coverage
presented Sands as a “hate-filled” fanatic “whose only weapon was death”,142 intent on
striking not to secure political prisoner rights for he and his fellow compatriots, but to leave a
“legacy of evil” in the form of a violent and “fiery requiem”.143 Of the strikers English argues
that “these were essentially ordinary men, whose zealous conception of their struggle and
circumstances led them to extremity”.144 The Sun, disagrees, as it used the strike to deny Irish
republicans the humanity English affords them, presenting them as insane fanatics possessing
an obsession with death to be feared by all.
The Sun’s coverage of the 1984 Brighton bombing of the Conservative Party conference
looked to build on the fear created by reports of the hunger strikes by presenting Thatcher as
a leader carved in the image of Winston Churchill. The day after the bomb the front page did
not focus on the dead, of which there were five,145 but instead described how moments after
the blast “magnificent Maggie emerged on the landing and asked ‘is there anything I can do
to help’”.146 Stories that followed described her own resolve, and how she even kept her
140 The Sun,29 August 1979, Page 2
141 The Sun,30 August 1979, Page 1
143 The Sun,6 May 1981, Page 2-3
144 English R, Armed Struggle:The History of the IRA, Page 201
145 English R, Armed Struggle:The History of the IRA, Page 248
146 The Sun, 13 October 1984,Page 1

39
sense of humour during the ordeal.147 This editorial direction focused on the bravery of
Thatcher rather than the victims or the causes of the attack, in an effort to highlight her
credentials as a great wartime leader.
The coverage took on a familiar approach as it continued the World War Two metaphors of
the Falklands Crisis. Two days after the IRA’s “evil warning”148 a cartoon appeared with the
caption “business as usual” with a picture of an IRA ‘butcher’ and Mrs Thatcher with a
Churchill shaped shadow,149 while an earlier article of the same edition declared “new IRA
blitz feared”.150 In this one edition of the paper we see how the Sun again looks to draw
comparison between Nazi Germany and the current perceived external threat, in this case
with the use of the word ‘blitz’, while pushing forward an image of Mrs Thatcher as the
modern day Winston Churchill- a nationalist comparison likely to illicit a strong positive
emotional response towards her among the Sun’s readers.
As with the threats of Communism and the Falklands Crisis the Sun utilised the climate of
fear to attack domestic political enemies of Thatcherism. In the aftermath of Bobby Sands’
death an opinion piece argued that the widespread international condemnation for Britain’s
Ireland policy was not down to Mrs Thatcher but to the lack of political unity caused by the
“trendy left view that political murderers are heroes”.151 Following the Brighton bomb an
even more focused attack on a Labour local councilor emerged, further reinforcing the ‘loony
left’ narrative, as he refused to condemn the Brighton bomb as an attack on innocents due to
Mrs Thatcher being targeted. The Sun posed the question “if he [the Labour councilor in
question] had the guts would he plant the bomb or fire the bullet himself?”152 This move to
147 The Sun, 13 October 1984,Page 2-3
148 Ibid, Page 7
150 Ibid, Page 2

40
attacking political opponents of Thatcherism, not found in the coverage of Lord
Mountbatten’s assassination, is indicative of the pro-Thatcher practice of attacking her
opponents through nationalist issues found after 1981.
A comparison of two articles, one immediately after MP Airey Neave was killed in March
1979 and one following the Brighton bombing, brilliantly illustrate this change. In the former
the Sun argues that bringing back hanging for terrorists would be “not only be wrong but
ineffective”153 while the latter, just over five years later, presented the Sun’s own poll in
which eight out of ten agreed with Thatcher that hanging should be brought back for IRA
terrorists.154 Here we see the Sun’s transition into a reactionary populist Thatcherite tool as it
shamelessly turns its back on its previous stance to side with Mrs Thatcher’s own views.
There are few issues on which the Sun’s shift into Thatcher’s personal populist paper can
traced more clearly than its nationalist coverage of Irish republicanism.
There are perhaps few episodes in the history of modern Britain that saw such an almighty
surge of nationalist sentiment than the Falklands Crisis and the following years. This
phenomenon was in no small part down to the Prime Minister herself as “she had but to open
her mouth and patriotic rhetoric would stream forth”.155 The great value of this creation of
patriotic sentiment was, as we have seen, to create a sense of victory with Mrs Thatcher as
the heroine. Foreign affairs, as with the miners’ strike, provided another chance for Thatcher
to be the nation’s hero and in the form of communists, the ‘Argies’ and the Irish the Sun
found Britain’s demons. 156 Within the heroic Mrs Thatcher narrative the Sun presented, she
153 The Sun, 2 April 1979, Page 2
155 Billig M, Banal Nationalism, Page 100
156 Conboy M, 2004, ‘Heroes and Demons as Historical Bookmarks in the English Popular Press’, in,
Brocklehurst H and Phillips R, History, Nationhood and the Question of Britain,Basingstoke: Palgrave, Page
399

41
fought obstinately so that the collective British ‘we’ found glory. The triumphant self-praise
found in the Sun’s coverage of the Falklands Crisis, spurred on in later episodes by outrage at
the actions of Irish republicans and communists, is a prime example of a practice in which,
Billig argues, “speaker and audience can claim to recognise and regain themselves”.157 Thus
we see that the political capital created in the Sun’s coverage of Mrs Thatcher’s foreign
policy was to create a narrative in which the ‘we’, of their patriotic working class readership,
found a reimagined triumphalism in a nostalgic sense that, once again, British identity rested
in the strength to fight off external enemies as a united force behind the brave Margaret
Thatcher.
157 Billig M, Banal Nationalism, 102

42
Conclusion
Britain in the 1980s underwent a political revolution, which shook many of its oldest
institutions to their very core and even challenged what it meant to be British. In the working
class the adversarial notion of ‘us’, the working poor, vs ‘them’, the wealthy establishment,
existed in many quarters from post war until the emergence of Mrs Thatcher in 1979.158 From
this point on the ‘us’ and ‘them’ of British working class identity took a new nationalist
stance defined most accurately as a combination of Cannadine’s “the virtuous many against a
selfish and irresponsible few”159 and Smith’s “outsider figures” against which “the
boundaries of social space are constructed”.160 In Mrs Thatcher and the Sun’s Britain social
space was under threat from dangerous outsider figures at home, in the form of an alliance of
the permissive and extremist ‘loony left’ and their morally corrupt compatriots, and abroad,
in the form of communism, Irish nationalism and the ‘Argy’, with the two forces sharing a
supposed common desire to undermine the nation.
The divisive nature of this approach, presented to a working class audience by the Sun, had,
as has been shown, huge political capital, generating enough patriotic fear to provide Mrs
Thatcher with a mandate in 1979, 1983 and again in 1987. Cannadine again provides insight
into this approach as he argues “the task of politicians is the creation and manipulation of
social identities”.161 What separates Thatcherism in this regard, and underpins its success, is
the exploitation of the popular press to this end, the huge value of which has been neglected
by the analysis of commentators and historians such as Jessop, Hall and Smith. Mrs Thatcher
158
Cannadine D, 2000, Class in Britain, London: Penguin, Page 147
159
Ibid, Page 169
160
Smith A M, 1994, New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality:1968-1990,Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press,Page 31
161 Cannadine D, Class in Britain,Page 169

43
realised the vast electoral power of the popular press as a tool for rerouting working class
morality in her favour and in Rupert Murdoch she had an ally of similar political position and
ambition with enormous influence over the British print media who could assist her in this
task. The success of Thatcherism in securing working class support for new right politics was
built upon the foundations of the Sun’s redirecting of populist morality closer to Mrs
Thatcher’s own positions by presenting “popular anxieties”162 as a united front of threats to
the nation, a practice which it intensified throughout the 1980s with early 1981 marking a
clear turning point. In the short term this approach resulted in eleven years of Mrs Thatcher in
Downing Street, a Thatcherite hegemony which created a new ‘common sense’ and a new
generation of working class Tories that were “upwardly mobile, robust patriots to a man,
strong believers in law and order”,163 Thatcherites by almost any definition.
Beyond Thatcherism
As we look at Thatcher’s legacy beyond her time in office it is very telling that she is
supposed to have declared “New Labour” her greatest achievement.164 Whether a media myth
or another of her many sharp responses this reveals a great deal. The success of Thatcherism
was its “subtle deployment of naturalisation strategies which ultimately reduce opposition
discourse to unintelligibility”165- a new common sense underlined by an unquestionable
belief that there was simply no other way. This ‘new common sense’ was partially created, at
least in its mass marketed populist form, by the Sun and as such its unflinching support of the
new way continued beyond Mrs Thatcher’s decade as it found another champion in Mr Blair.
164 McSmith A, Chu B, Garner R, ‘Mrs Thatcher’s Legacy: Spilt Milk, New Labour and the Big Bang- She
Changed Everything’, The Independent, 8 April 2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/margaret-
thatchers-legacy-spilt-milk-new-labour-and-the-big-bang-she-changed-everything-8564541.html

44
That the first Labour government in eighteen years did not mark a decisive shift back towards
the pre-Thatcher social democracy was a cause for considerable frustration among those of
the ‘old’ left. Hall articulated these frustrations very clearly in 2003 as he argued that “New
Labour has adapted to new-liberal terrain” with its “transformation of social democracy into a
particular variant of free market neo-liberalism”.166 Hall’s disappointment with the Blair
government was common among much of the left but should not have been a surprise, at least
not in regards economics and business.
One consistency between Thatcher and Blair that Hall fails to acknowledge is what Evans
terms Blair’s “sometimes excruciatingly populist style” and the New Labour practices of “‘on
message’ statements from Labour MPs, the closing down of vigorous political debate and the
insidious pervasive culture of spin”.167 This touches on the legacy of Mrs Thatcher and the
media as New Labour sought to emulate her relationship with the Sun, recognising the
awesome power that they had cultivated during her time in office. Speaking to the Leveson
inquiry into the British press in 2012 Blair described his relationship with Murdoch as “one
in which you feel this- this pretty intense power and the need to try to deal with that”.168 This
quote provides insight into just how vital the power of Mr Murdoch’s press, of which the Sun
was the flagship, had become by the 21st century. There can be no doubt that this “intense
power” was born out of the 1980s as the fiery popular morality of the Sun seemed to both
direct and intensify the course of public debate through the lens of fierce nationalism, as this
study has shown. Mrs Thatcher’s hugely profitable relationship with Mr Murdoch and the
Sun can be seen as the key reason for Mr Blair’s own desire to emulate her practices, as he
166Hall S, 6 August 2003, ‘New Labour Has Picked Up Where Thatcherism Left Off’, The Guardian, ,
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/aug/06/society.labour
167
Evans E, 2013, Thatcherand Thatcherism, London: Routledge, Page 142
168 Lord Justice Leveson, 2012, An Inquiry into the Culture,Practices and Ethics of the Press, Vol III, London:
the Stationary Office, Page 1146

45
admired “not her policies, but her thirst for power”,169 a power which the Sun granted in its
decisive delivery of working class support.
Debate around Thatcherism in regards to New Labour has tended to focus on the latter as a
more human extension of the former. While there is a notable degree of political consensus
between the two political programs the greatest continuation of Thatcherism under Blair is in
the shameless worship of the tabloid press, most notably the Sun. When asked about the role
of the Sun in the 1997 Labour election victory at the Leveson inquiry Alastair Campbell, New
Labour’s Director of Communications and Strategy, said “we very deliberately set out to get
our voice and our arguments heard in papers normally hostile to us, and this had the positive
political impact we sought”.170 It is no surprise that New Labour’s chief ‘spin doctor’ placed
it so delicately but what we find here is an admission of their recognition of the need to
appease the awesome beast of popular morality that the Sun had by then become. The legacy
of Mrs Thatcher and the media can best be understood by the Sun’s proud declaration after
John Major’s 1992 election victory- “it’s the Sun wot won it”.171 Every party championed by
the Sun at the general election has found itself in government after polling day since Mrs
Thatcher’s 1981 meeting with Murdoch. Through a careful mix of populism, reactionary
outrage and timely controversy the Sun has placed itself in the driving seat of British working
class political opinion and morality, providing Rupert Murdoch with the ultimate political
weapon to wield. The legacy of Mrs Thatcher continues to be felt beyond her own passing as
the Sun’s stranglehold on the ambitions of Britain’s political elite only grew tighter. It only
seems fitting to return as this project started with Hall, who talked of Thatcherism as a “crisis
of hegemony”.172 What can only be understood as one looks back almost a decade beyond the
169 Evans E, Thatcher and Thatcherism, Page 140
170 Lord Justice Leveson,
172
Hall S, 1988, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left, London: Verso, Page 126

46
fall of the accidental child of Thatcherism, New Labour, is that this “crisis of hegemony” has
extended beyond Thatcher as the Sun continues its frightening dominance of British political
debate and fortunes, with politicians on both sides of the aisle lining up to pay tribute to the
media master who controls their fate.
11961 words

47
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