It was about changing mindset, in that sense Thatcher was a true Tory radical, perhaps the greatest Tory radical because she fundamentally changed society and all but destroyed the post WW2 social consensus. As this thread was about why people Tory about, I am surprised nobody has picked up on that. But hey ho, ideology and Tories do not go well together normally. Look at Johnson and he is an ideological vacuum, this lack of ideological fervour is in my opinion what fuelled brexit. They needed something to believe in beyond their normal belief that they are the natural party of Government.
Thatcher as much as I despise her had a clear vision of how she saw society, it was helped along by newly highly charged radicals like Keith Joesph who had become obsessed with Hayek. It is rumoured that all the Tory cabinet of the first Thatcher government were given copies of Hayek's "Road to serfdom" and "Constitution of Liberty" which became bible's for the modern Neo-Liberals and the laissez faire right.
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Took this from wiki as it is easier to copy and paste than me spend hours explaining it
"The Road to Serfdom was to be the popular edition of the second volume of Hayek's treatise entitled "The Abuse and Decline of Reason",
[5] and the title was inspired by the writings of the 19th century French classical liberal thinker
Alexis de Tocqueville on the "road to servitude".
[6] In the book, Hayek "[warns] of the danger of
tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic
decision-making through
central planning."
[7] He further argues that the abandonment of
individualism and
classical liberalism inevitably leads to a loss of
freedom, the creation of an oppressive society, the tyranny of a
dictator, and the
serfdom of the individual. Hayek challenged the view among British Marxists that
fascism (including
Nazism) was a
capitalist reaction against
socialism. He argued that fascism, Nazism and socialism had common roots in central economic planning and empowering the state over the individual.
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Everything Thatcher did was done in order to promote free market policies, first she had to destroy the Unions to create the conditions she required. Then the selling off of assets followed, this was to encourage free markets as the belief in free markets was total and they were utterly convinced that free markets solved all ills.
In terms of Council housing it smacked of central planning as Hayek explains, in simple terms State = Bad So Thatcher left the market to decide on housing, which hasnt exactly been a success as we can see from the amount of homeless on the streets, the sky high rents and the lack of affordable housing. Councils were barred from replacing housing stock because they were convinced the free market would take care of the housing issues. In my opinion it is one of the biggest failures of neo-liberalism and its effects will last generations.
Only now is the Overton window starting to swing leftwards on this issue and their has been a nod to the need for social housing. It is a start but much more is needed. Remember social housing as envisaged by the post WW2 Atlee government would mean houses were so good that doctors, binmen and the retired could all live on one street in decent housing guaranteed for life. It was meant to recreate society after the madness and dislocation of WW2.
The problem as ever for the right though, is there is no profit in social housing. In my view that is an incredible myopic view of society because we are still suffering the effects of what Cameron called "broken Britain"