Margaret Thatcher's achievement in becoming Britain's first woman Prime Minister is writ large with irony. Thursday's general election brought no cheer to feminists: Britain's only avowed lesbian MP lost her seat, as did Labour's most important woman politician, popular cabinet minister Shirley Williams. The new House of Commons contains the smallest contingent of women since 1950. As for Mrs. Thatcher herself, some regard her views on the role of women in society as being just about on a par with the Ayatollah Khomeini.

In fact all those First Lady headlines distract from the real meaning of the Conservative victory at the polls: the new Thatcher government professes the most right-wing program seen in British politics since World War II. The Conservative majority of 43 seats in the new House of Commons was culled from a Britain increasingly divided into 'two nations.'

In London, the Midlands, and the South of England, there were dramatic swings to the Conservatives, who wooed prosperous skilled workers and the middle class with promises of tax-cuts and curbs on the power of unions. In the industrial North, where many people fear what 'market economy'-style politics may mean for jobs and social services, the drift to the Conservatives was much more negligible. And in Scotland, where the nationalist challenge collapsed, there was actually a swing to Labour--with Teddy Taylor, the Conservative spokesman on Scotland, losing his seat. The scathing portrayal of Mrs. Thatcher by one Northern critic as the "Right Honourable Member for Complacent Southern Suburbia" underlines the festering hostility that she will face from the folks north of the river Trent.

Mrs. Thatcher is uncomfortably aware that many find her tones grating and self-righteous, and that her slick and expensive American-style campaign was compared unfavorably with the traditional and sober approach of Jim Callaghan--who disdained, as he put it, "to be packaged like cornflakes." She also knows that in a one-on-one, Presidential-style contest with Callaghan, she might have lost hands down: the same polls which showed large Tory leads also put Callaghan way ahead in personal popularity. The striking fact, however, is that with a 75 per cent voter turnout, and a national voting swing of 5 per cent--the highest in decades--the electorate went decisively for Tory policies, scorning the middle-ground consensus on which both major parties had traditionally operated, and which had been considered indispensable both in winning elections and governing Britain.

Thatcher won because she and her party--like the New Right in the U.S.--managed to shift the consensus from the middle of the road. A revealing poll on issues in the British newspaper Observer showed a majority (and even a majority of Labour supporters) favouring Tory proposals on tax cuts, on getting tougher with the unions and strikers, and on reducing government involvement in the economy. Labour might have staked out a clear alternative to this on the Left with proposals for industrial democracy, more public ownership, and social service and welfare reform--all elements that have traditionally given the Labour Party its fervor and crusading appeal. Instead, by virtue both of his temperament and the restrictions of heading a minority government, Callaghan watered down such proposals or dropped them altogether for fear of alienating the 'middle ground.' He thus handed the Conservatives the ideological initiative.

When the patience of many workers, dismayed at having traded three years of wage restraint for the sterility of the Callaghan program, erupted into the disastrous strikes this past winter, the one fig-leaf covering the Labour government--their claim to be able to 'manage' the unions--had disappeared. There was little left to fight for, and long before election day, the Labour faithful were demoralized by the party's failure to present a radical alternative to the Tory challenge.

The first fruits of Mrs. Thatcher's victory may be headaches in Africa for President Carter. Many rank-and-file Tories want her to recognize the new Muzorewa regime in Rhodesia, and both she and her colleagues have in the past been almost scornful of the Anglo-American efforts to woo the Patriotic Front. Dire warnings from British civil servants and others of the disastrous consequences for the British image and trade in Africa may yet dissuade her: the last thing anyone wants is a row at the Commonwealth prime ministers' conference in July, which the Queen is scheduled to attend. The new Tory Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, has been notably cautious on the subject of Rhodesian recognition in recent statements. Even the slightest hint of British softening, however, could put Carter in a terrible position by encouraging recognition moves in Congress and threatening to leave his African policy in ruins.

But should he try to apply persuasion or pressure, Carter may get a frosty response from the Thatcher administration. Gone will be the cosy rapport Carter shared with Jim Callaghan, who was very much an Atlanticist and who was even accused at times of being slavishly indulgent to U.S. interests. Gone too will be the close relationship with David Owen, Labour's outgoing Foreign Secretary, and his friend the British Ambassador to Washington, Peter Jay, who as Callaghan's son-in-law can expect his replacement to be one of the first acts of the Conservative government.

Instead Carter will have to deal with Mrs. Thatcher--dubbed the 'Iron Maiden' by the Soviets--who has been openly skeptical of the value of detente and a SALT II agreement. And though the Conservative commitment to increased NATO defense spending may please the Pentagon, a Tory Britain acting more Europe-conscious and less, as the French allege, "as a stalking-horse for American interests," may well be rated a minus by the State Department.

There is also little prospect of America affecting any change in British policies towards Northern Ireland. The ignorant bumblings and clumsy advice offered by Tip O'Neill on his recent visit were completely counter-productive, and the Conservatives will be even less receptive than Labour was to suggestions that they coerce the majority in Ulster into either sharing power or joining a united Ireland. Mrs. Thatcher's resolve to give no quarter to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) terrorists will be stiffened by a personal note: one of her closest political friends and advisers, Airey Neave, was killed by an IRA bomb at the start of the election campaign.

The British can brace themselves for the possibility of bitterness and conflict on a scale hitherto unknown if the Tories carry through on their campaign rhetoric. The United Kingdom's energy self-sufficiency--thanks to North Sea oil--and the Labour government's achievement in paying off Britain's international debts will provide a base for the much-vaunted cuts in income taxes. Many argue that such revenues should be used directly to improve the quality of social services for ordinary people and to finance the modernization of British industry that is so desperately needed.

Even Conservative apologists like Peregrine Worsthorne in the Daily Telegraph and the editors of the influential Economist have publicly cast doubt on whether British business will be adept enough in responding to the 'Spirit of Proposition 13" to produce the necessary growth on its own. There are fears of a repeat of 1971-72, when similar incentives from the Conservative government of Edward Heath merely produced property speculation, a record low in productive investment and an inflationary consumer boom. The Tories have claimed they will provide some of the money by allowing private investment in state-run industries--but this ignores the fact that most state enterprises were taken over by both parties in the past not because of socialist zeal but because private enterprise had failed to run them profitably. They are hardly a good risk for capitalist investors now.

That leaves only drastic cuts in social and welfare programs to finance the tax-cuts--and here we come to an uncanny similarity between the position of Mrs. Thatcher and that of Gov. Edward J. King in Massachusetts--except that in Britain there will be no liberal state legislature to mitigate savage reductions in help for the elderly, poor, sick and disadvantaged.

Tory proposals to get tough with the unions are another potential minefield. Admittedly, British trade unions are inflexible and old-fashioned. So is British management. It is at least arguable that management's perpetuation of a "Them and Us" syndrome through a whole host of class-based divisions--ranging from the most trivial policies like separate eating places for management and labor, to a refusal to allow any German-style worker-director or incentive-involvement schemes--is largely responsible for Britain's appalling labor relations, and not the so-called leftist shop stewards that the Tory press loves to attack. If the Tories go for the easy option of making the unions scapegoats, they risk a confrontation besides which the miners' strike of 1974 (which brought down the Health government) and the disruptions of last winter will seem like tea-parties.

There is an ugliness in the political climate in Britain today which bodes ill for Mrs. Thatcher's reign. When her advisers speak of the alarming rate of low-class births, and others discuss the need to strictly control colored immigration, but do not offer any plan to combat the mounting unemployment of young blacks in the decaying inner cities, and when Thatcher herself subscribes to the rhetoric of Hayek and Milton Friedman, she cannot be totally surprised if some fear the worst consequences in a country used to 'fair play,' a sense of decency and give-and-take, instead of the tooth-and-claw competition of the unfettered market economy. Of course, it is always possible--as many believe and as some progressive Conservatives hope--that the realities of power may temper Mrs. Thatcher and convince her to follow the consensus politics of the past. If she will not, or if she cannot, the divisions of North vs. South, inner-city vs. suburbia, haves vs. have-nots, exacerbated by racial and class tensions, may turn the Tory dawn into a nightmare in which the weakest go to the wall and where violent confrontation--even on the streets--may belie Britain's reputation as a haven of political decency and stability.

[Gordon Marsden is a Kennedy Fellow from England studying politics and international relations at Harvard.]