A “U-turn” is when the Government reverses a previously stated policy. It could well be argued that the particular decision in this week’s news doesn’t exactly qualify. Today’s “U-turn” boils down to Boris Johnson’s government deciding that the spike in the rate of COVID cases in the Bolton and Trafford areas of Great Manchester was concerning enough to rescind its previously announced decision to ease restrictions that had been put in place in July. To add to the tenuous invocation of “U-turn” in this instance, the local governments of Bolton and Trafford had asked that the restrictions remain in place.
So why does the British press love to cry “U-turn” with the same fervency that the American press rushes to add the suffix “-gate” to any scandal? Interestingly, the British media’s use of the term also originates in the early seventies. Ted Heath, Leader of the Conservative Party, came to power in 1970 when the United Kingdom, like much of the Western world, was experiencing rising inflation. While economists and politicians argued over the best way to tackle inflation, one idea that was going ground was the controlling of wages and prices, either through voluntary or statutory means. Harold Wilson’s Government (1964-1970) had tried varying intensities of wage and price controls without much success. The MPs on the right of the Conservative party (Enoch Powell, Sir Keith Joseph, Margaret Thatcher, etc.) rejected this approach, arguing for public spending restraint as the key to bringing down inflation.
In the run up to the 1970 General Election, the right wing Conservatives had largely won the argument within their party. The Conservative Manifesto read: “The main causes of rising prices are Labour’s damaging policies of high taxation and devaluation. Labour’s compulsory wage control was a failure and we will not repeat it.” In The Path to Power, the volume of her memoirs that deals with her career before becoming Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher recounts how the Heath Government began with a concerted effort to cut public spending and rein in the power of the trade unions, as they had promised in their election manifesto. So far so good. Then, 1972 dawned with a trio of challenges: Upper Clyde Shipbuilders ran into serious financial trouble, the National Union of Mineworkers went on strike to demand higher wages, and UK unemployment topped one million. The pressure of these and subsequent events led Ted Heath’s Government to abandon its stated policies as the year wore on, culminating in November when the Government froze wages and prices.
These reversals of the Government’s stated economic approach, especially the imposition of wage and price controls, came to be labeled “U-turns” by commentators and critics who saw these new policies as diametrically opposed to the Government’s previous direction. The Conservative party had come to power proclaiming the failure of Labour’s attempt to control wages only to impose such controls themselves less than two years later. “U-turn” is an apt and evocative phrase to describe such behavior.
After this point (with the exception of the UK joining the European Community) Heath’s Government was seen by its external and internal critics as careening from U-turn to U-turn as it abandoned any principles it had ever held in the face of rising inflation and a sustained confrontation with the UK’s trade unions. Ted Heath called an election in February 1974 in a bid to win the public’s backing, but he narrowly lost the election to Labour and lost again in an October rematch, sealing his fate. Margaret Thatcher was elected Leader of the Conservative Party in February of 1975.
Margaret Thatcher herself added to the mythology of “The U-turn.” During her first term, when her policies were starting to bite and all the indicators pointed toward a worsening economic situation, the memory of the Heath Government was invoked. For the press, this example was proof that she would also abandon her policies in the face of a worsening economic situation. For her, however, Ted Heath’s example was a cautionary tale: that way lies ruin. In her speech to the 1980 Conservative Party Conference, she uttered the immortal lines: “For those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the ‘U-turn,’ I only have one thing to say. ‘You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.’”
Margaret Thatcher, a member of Ted Heath’s Government, was confirming the popular view that the U-turns had doomed Heath’s Government. And by publicly and defiantly rejecting the notion of a U-turn by her Government in the face of economic events, she performed a rhetorical U-turn of her own. U-turns were synonymous with weakness and her rejection of them made her synonymous with strength. In this way, she strengthened the talismanic power of the “U-turn.”
When the British press accuses the government of the day of performing a U-turn, it is invoking the specter of Ted Heath and failure. This is in the same vein as when the American press attaches the suffix “-gate” to a scandal, invoking the specter of the scandal that brought down Richard Nixon. In both cases, endless misapplication was gone someway toward taking some of the power out of the metaphor. Ted Heath’s Government imposing wage controls after pledging not to do so in an election is very different from Boris Johnson’s Government delaying the easing of restrictions in the face of compelling data. But the image that the word conjures up is just too tempting for the press to forego, however dubious its application to any given situation.
