n [ U ]
the political and economic policies of Margaret Thatcher when she was Britain’s Prime Minister . It is therefore especially associated with the 1980s in Britain. Some British people think that Thatcherism was good for the British economy because of the emphasis it placed on private enterprise (= the idea that business and industry should be controlled by private individuals or companies, not by the state), privatization, a reduction in inflation and government spending, and the idea that people should help themselves rather than relying on the state to help them. An opposite view is that Thatcherism led to the loss of Britain’s traditional industries, a greater gap between the rich and the poor, more people without jobs, and a period in which many British people came to care less about each other than about making money.