John Hoskyns - The Stepping Stones Report, 1977

The Stepping Stones Report, 1977

Without any political experience, he dedicated the year of 1977 to analysing what he considered to be wrong with the UK; this was called the Stepping Stones Report. He created this report for the Tory party, working with Norman S. Stauss, then at Unilever. He created a diagram that showed how all these problems were interlinked.

Union power, for example, increases the level of unemployment as they raise wages above market clearing levels, which will eventually cause wages to be unsustainably and inefficiently high. This encouraged politicians to run budget deficits and print money; this causes inflation, which makes unions more militant, as their members suffer under increased inflation, and also, workers will be more inclined to join unions for protection from the rising inflation. Thus, the TU's power increases as they gain members. The report states: 'The one precondition for success will be a complete change in the role of the trade unions movement'.

Thatcher's feelings were already ill towards the TUs, and during her time in power she took many steps to decrease their power, by taking away their legal right not to be arrested for strikes, and placing a ban on 'closed shops'.

Some of her more cunning legislation for curbing TU's power was to introduce 'the right to buy' on council flats; it was cunning in that she knew that many of the conscientious working class (the traditional miner) would want to buy the house that they lived in; with mortgage payments, miners could not afford to go on strike, thus they wouldn't. To cure anything, you had to change everything.

Hoskyns had the idea to release half-baked ideas deliberately so that hasty and overconfident labour responses could be 'demolished'.

The report was never published, although it can be said to have had an effect on Thatcher.

When Margaret Thatcher, who read chemistry at Oxford, saw the diagram, she remarked it looked like a chemical plant.