Notes Introduction 1. These events are covered in greater detail in the literature. For examples of the historiography of British economic decline, see: N.F.R Crafts, Britain’s Relative Economic Performance (London: IEA, 2002); N.F.R. Crafts and N. Woodward (eds), The British Economy Since 1945 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991); and, A. Gamble, Britain in Decline: Economic Policy, Political Strategy and the British State (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994). For further explanation of the Carter administration’s eco- nomic experience, see: G.A. Haas, Jimmy Carter and the Politics of Frustration ( Jefferson, N.C. and London: McFarland, 1992), 83–97. For (contemporary) accounts of stagflation see: A. S. Binder, Economic Policy and the Great Stagflation (New York: Academic, 1979), and M. Bruno and J. Sachs, Economics of Worldwide Stagflation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985). 2. R. Coopey and N. Woodward, ‘The British economy in the 1970s: an overview,’ in R. Coopey and N. Woodward (eds), Britain in the 1970s: The Troubled Economy (London: UCL Press, 1996), 1. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 2–8. 5. See A.W. Coats and D.C. Colander, ‘An introduction to the spread of eco- nomic ideas,’ in D. Colander and A.W. Coats (eds), The Spread of Economic Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 1–19; A.W. Coats, ‘Economic ideas and economists in government: accomplishments and frustrations,’ in Colander and Coats, Economic Ideas, 109–19; W. J. Barber, ‘The spread of eco- nomic ideas between academic and government: a two-way street,’ in Colander and Coats, Economic Ideas, 119–26; A.W.B. Coats, ‘Introduction,’ in A.W.B. Coats (ed.), The Development of Economics in Western Europe since 1945 (London: Routledge, 2000), 1–19; R.E. Backhouse, ‘Economics in mid-Atlantic: British economics, 1945–95,’ in Coats (ed.), Development of Economics, 20–41; D. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 19–23. 6. It is beyond the scope of this study to examine the exhaustive historiography on British decline. However, key works include: D.H. Aldcroft, ‘The Entrepreneur and the British Economy, 1870–1914,’ The Economic History Review, 17:1 (1964), 113–35; D.N. McCloskey, ‘Did Victorian Britain Fail?’, The Economic History Review, 23:3 (1970), 446–60; B. Elbaum and W. Lazonick, ‘An Institutional Perspective on British Decline’, in B. Elbaum and W. Lazonick (eds), The Decline of the British Economy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 1–17; A. Gamble, Britain in Decline; N.F.R. Crafts, ‘The golden age of economic growth in Western Europe, 1950–1973’, The Economic History Review, 48:3 (1995), 429–47; A. Gamble, ‘Theories and Explanation of British Decline,’ in R. English and M. Kenny (eds), Rethinking British Decline (Baingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 1–22; S. Broadberry and N.F.R. Crafts, ‘UK productivity performance from 1950 to 1979: a restatement of the Broadberry- Crafts view’, The Economic History Review, 56:4 (2003), 718–35; and, A. Booth, ‘The Broadberry-Crafts view and the evidence: a reply,’ The Economic History Review, 56:4 (2003), 736–42. For the distinction between ‘decline’ and ‘declinism’, as utilised 186 Notes 187 by politicians, see: I. Budge, ‘Relative Decline as a Political Issue: Ideological Motivations of the Politico-Economic Debate in Post-War Britain,’ Contemporary Record, 7:1 (1993), 1–23; J. Tomlinson, ‘Inventing “Decline”: The Falling behind of the British Economy in the Postwar Years’, The Economic History Review, 49:4 (1996), 731–57; B. Supple, ‘Fear of failing: economic history and the decline of Britain,’ in P. Clarke and C. Trebilcock (eds), Understanding Decline: Perceptions and realities of British economic performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 9–13; D. Cannadine, ‘Apocalypse when? British politicians and British “decline’ in the twentieth century’, in Clarke and Trebilcock (eds), Understanding Decline, 261–84; and, J. Tomlinson, ‘Thrice Denied: “Declinism” as a Recurrent Theme in British History in the Long Twentieth Century,’ Twentieth Century British History, 20:2 (2009), 227–51. 7. J. Tomlinson, ‘Not “Decline and Revival”: An Alternative Narrative on British Post-War Productivity’, in R. Coopey and P. Lyth (eds), Business in Britain in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 153. 8. Richard English and Michael Kenny (eds), Rethinking British Decline, 25. See also C. Barnett The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Power (London: Macmillan, 1986); and, M. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 9. American decline is a relatively new feature in American historiography. See, for instance, P. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of The Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (London: Fontana, 1989); and, M.A. Bernstein and D.E. Adler (eds), Understanding American Economic Decline (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 10. T. Hames and R. Feasey, ‘Anglo-American think tanks under Reagan and Thatcher’, in A. Adonis and T. Hames (eds), A Conservative Revolution? The Thatcher-Reagan Decade in Perspective (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 220–23. 11. G. Smith, Reagan and Thatcher (London: Bodley Head, 1990), 11. 12. L. Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York and London: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 89. 13. Ibid, 90–91. 14. G. Wills, Reagan’s America: Innocents At Home (London: Heinemann, 1988), 277. 15. Ibid, 288. 16. M. Thatcher, The Path To Power (London: HarperCollins, 1995), 372. 17. R. Reagan, An American Life (London: Hutchinson, 1990), 204. 18. Ibid. 19. Ronald Reagan’s letter to Margaret Thatcher (fall of Saigon), 30 April 1975, www. margaretthatcher.org, document 110357, 20 August 2007. 20. Ibid. 21. Thatcher, Path, 372. 22. Margaret Thatcher interviewed by Geoffrey Smith about Ronald Reagan, Monday 8 January 1990, accessed via www.margaretthatcher.org document 109324, 20 July 2009. Geoffrey Smith interviewed Thatcher for his book Reagan and Thatcher. 23. M. Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: HarperCollins, 1993), 157. 24. Ibid. 25. Smith, Reagan and Thatcher, 11. 26. Ibid. 23. 27. Letter/Cable, Amembassy London to SecState Washdc, ‘Thatchr visit: Thatcher and Carrington on current issues,’ January 1981, James ‘Bud’ Nance Files, Box 188 Notes 90741, Nance Chron January 1981 (3 of 3), document 78288, Ronald Reagan Library [sic]. 28. Margaret Thatcher, speech at the Pilgrim’s Dinner, 29 January 1981, Savoy Hotel in London, accessed via www.margaretthatcher.org, document 104557, 6 November 2009. 29. Letter from Ronald Reagan to Margaret Thatcher, 2 February 1981, accessed via www.margaretthatcher.org, document 109257, 6 November 2009. 30. J. Baylis, Anglo-American Defence Relations 1939–1980: The Special Relationship (London: Macmillan, 1989). 31. A.P. Dobson, The Politics of the Anglo-American Economic Relationship 1940–1987 (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1988), 229. 32. D. Watt, ‘Introduction: The Anglo-American Relationship’, in W.R. Louis and H. Bull (eds), The Special Relationship: Anglo-American Relations Since 1945 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 1. 33. R. Ovendale, Anglo-American Relations in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), 17. 34. Ibid. 158–62. 35. A.P. Dobson, Anglo-American Relations in the Twentieth Century: Of friendship, con- flict and the rise and decline of superpowers (London: Routledge, 1995), 168. 36. Ibid. 5. 37. Ibid. 162. 38. J. Dumbrell, A Special Relationship: Anglo-American Relations from the Cold War to Iraq (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 5. 39. J. Colman, A ‘Special Relationship’? Harold Wilson, Lyndon B. Johnson and Anglo- American relations ‘at the Summit, 1964–68 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 3. 40. See Smith, Reagan and Thatcher; N. Wapshott, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage (London: Sentinel, 2007); J. O’Sullivan, The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing Inc., 2006); J. Campbell, Margaret Thatcher Volume Two: The Iron Lady (London: Vintage, 2008), 253–301; E.H.H. Green, Thatcher (London: Hodder Arnold, 2006), 155–67. 41. C. Emsley (ed.), Essays in Comparative History: Economy, Politics and Society in Britain and America 1850–1920 (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1984), xii. 42. Ibid. xii–xiii. While traditionally representative of the working class, the Labour Party also had continuing support among an ‘intellectual’ middle class and was formed by a coalition of the Independent Labour Party, trade unions and the Fabians. For more on the development of the Labour Party see, for instance: R. Taylor, ‘Out of the bowels of the Movement: The Trade Unions and the Origins of the Labour Party 1900–18’, in B. Brivati and R. Heffernan (eds), The Labour Party: A Centenary History (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 8–49. 43. A. H. Birch, The British System of Government (London: Routledge, 1998), 8–9. 44. P. Leyland, The Constitution of the United Kingdom: A Contextual Analysis (Oxford: Hart, 2007), 117–21. 45. M. Tushnet, The Constitution of the United States of America: A Contextual Analysis (Oxford: Hart, 2009), 43–5. 46. Ibid. 107–8. 47. Ibid. 96–8. For a comparison of government machinery, including the civil service, between American and Britain, see R.E. Neustadt, ‘White House and Whitehall,’ in A. King (ed.), The British Prime Minister (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1985), 155–74. Notes 189 48. Tushnet, Constitution, 79–80. 49. Ibid. 109. 50. A. Wildavsky, ‘The Two Presidencies,’ in A. Wildavsky (ed.), Perspectives on the Presidency (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975), 448. (Originally from A. Wildavsky, ‘The Two Presidencies’, Trans-Action, 2:4 (1966), 7–14.) 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 451. 53. The ‘two presidencies’ theory is further examined in D.A. Peppers, ‘The Two Presidencies: Eight Years later,’ in Wildavsky, Perspectives, 462–71; H.G. Zeidenstein, ‘The Two Presidencies Thesis is Alive and Well and Has Been Living in the U.S. Senate since 1973’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, 11:4 (1981), 511–25; P.E. Peterson, ‘The President’s Dominance in Foreign Policy Making’, Political Science Quarterly, 109:2 (1994), 215–34; and, B.