Invisible Hands: 6. There Is No Alternative

Summary

The History Podcast: Invisible Hands Episode 6: There Is No Alternative Release Date: April 30, 2025
Host: David Dimbleby
Produced by: Joe Barrett
Executive Producers & Story Editors: Joe Sykes and Dasha Licitsina
Sound Design: Peregrine Andrews
Engineered by: Jai Williams
Commissioning Editor at Radio 4: Dan Clark

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Introduction to the Episode

In the sixth installment of "Invisible Hands," hosted by David Dimbleby, the podcast delves into the intricate web of the free market revolution in Britain. Titled "There Is No Alternative," this episode examines how the principles of free market capitalism, championed during Margaret Thatcher's tenure, have shaped modern Britain and the unintended consequences that have emerged over the decades.

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The Free Market Revolution in Britain

Origins and Vision

The episode begins by tracing the roots of Britain's free market revolution, emphasizing the transformative ideas that emerged during Margaret Thatcher's leadership. Dimbleby recounts the narrative of a World War II fighter pilot witnessing his brother's tragic death, symbolizing the personal sacrifices that underpinned broader economic philosophies.

Key Proponents

• Margaret Thatcher: The former Prime Minister is portrayed as the principal architect of the free market revolution. Thatcher's vision was to transition Britain into a nation of shareholders, fostering individual freedom, private initiative, and free trade.

  Keith Joseph: "We've trebled the number of shareholders in Britain and privatised 20 major industries over the past decade." [07:01]

• Keith Joseph: A staunch advocate for capitalism, Joseph underscores the moral imperative of popular capitalism as a means to enfranchise the many in Britain's economic life.

  Keith Joseph: "Popular capitalism is a crusade. A crusade to enfranchise the many in the economic life of Britain." [01:18]

• Anthony Fish and James Goldsmith: These figures are highlighted for their roles in promoting free market ideologies. Goldsmith, in particular, is noted for his critical perspective on the resulting societal destabilization.

  James Goldsmith: "We have profoundly destabilized our communities. We've created ghettos and underclasses. All this in a period of maximum prosperity." [02:06]

International Influence

The free market principles extended beyond Britain, championed by leaders like Ronald Reagan in the United States, and influenced economic policies worldwide, from Jamaica to Japan and Malaysia to Mexico.

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The Privatization of Water Companies

The 1989 Privatization

A significant focus of the episode is the privatization of Britain's water industry in 1989, the final major act of Thatcher's premiership. Thatcher aimed to modernize and create an efficient infrastructure by transferring public assets into private hands.

David Dimbleby: "On 12 December 1989, 10 brand new water companies were launched on the stock market in just over two hours." [08:10]

Thames Water and Macquarie Bank

Thames Water, Britain's largest water company, became a central case study. In 2006, Australian investment bank Macquarie acquired Thames Water for approximately £8 billion. Jill Plimmer of the Financial Times highlights Macquarie's primary objective:

Jill Plimmer: "What it needs to do is make money for its investors." [10:32]

Macquarie's strategy focused on maximizing returns rather than investing in infrastructure, leading to significant financial maneuvering:

David Dimbleby: "They paid a £656 million dividend in a year in which its profits were only £241 million." [12:08]

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Mismanagement and Environmental Fallout

Financial Exploitation

Macquarie's acquisition led to heavy indebtedness for Thames Water, as the bank leveraged complex corporate structures to facilitate large investor payouts. This approach prioritized shareholder returns over sustainable business practices.

Regulatory Oversight

The regulator, OFWAT, is criticized for its lax oversight, primarily concerned with keeping consumer prices low rather than ensuring environmental and infrastructural integrity.

Jill Plimmer: "OFWAT just turned a blind eye to it. It saw its job as keeping prices down and that was about it." [13:38]

Environmental Disasters

The financial exploitation culminated in severe environmental degradation. Sewage was repeatedly dumped into natural water bodies, leading to widespread pollution:

Clive Lewis: "A fifth of total usage is estimated to leak from the water system every day." [14:16]

Thames Water faced the UK's largest-ever river pollution fines, with £20 million imposed for breaching environmental laws. Despite profits, the neglect of infrastructure resulted in catastrophic environmental and public health consequences.

David Dimbleby: "They used much of it to pay back their investors. The judge... was trying to get a message across to the shareholders that the environment is to be treasured and protected and not poisoned." [15:04]

Customers experienced deteriorating water quality and unreliable supply, leading to public outrage and calls for accountability.

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Political Backlash and Renationalization

Shift in Public Opinion

The environmental and service failures of privatized water companies ignited a significant political backlash against free market policies. Both left and right-leaning factions began advocating for the renationalization of essential services.

Clive Lewis: "35 years after Thatcher privatised water, people both on the left and on the right are talking about renationalising it." [17:34]

Government Intervention

Faced with mounting crises, the government contemplated measures that Thatcher would have deemed unthinkable, such as temporary nationalization or special administration, potentially burdening taxpayers with substantial debts.

Clive Lewis: "Fears arising tonight that it might have to go into a government orchestrated special administration, potentially putting the taxpayer on the hook for billions of pounds." [17:37]

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The Influence of Trump and Global Trade Wars

Populism and Protectionism

The episode draws parallels between the backlash against free markets in the UK and the rise of populism in the United States, epitomized by Donald Trump's trade policies. Trump's imposition of tariffs sparked global trade tensions, reflecting a broader discontent with globalization and free market dynamics.

James Goldsmith: "Foreign leaders have stolen our jobs, foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories..." [25:20]

Economic Consequences

Trump's tariffs faced immediate pushback from financial markets, demonstrating the resilience and dominance of free market forces even against protectionist policies.

David Dimbleby: "The strongman leader got spooked... by the markets themselves." [27:36]

Critique of Free Markets

Gillian Tett of the Financial Times provides a critical analysis of Trump's approach, highlighting the lack of economic expertise and the resultant volatility caused by such protectionist measures.

Gillian Tett: "Trump is not an economist... he's driven primarily by power, the need to control it and wield it." [23:06]

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Current State and Future Prospects

Persistent Free Market Dominance

Despite mounting criticisms and visible failures, free market capitalism remains entrenched globally. The episode questions whether there truly is no alternative to this economic system or if alternative models can emerge in response to its shortcomings.

David Dimbleby: "Once a radical fringe idea dreamt up by the likes of our chicken farmer... Today the free markets seem all powerful all over the globe..." [27:26]

Challenges Ahead

The narrative concludes by pondering the sustainability of free market principles in the face of environmental disasters, economic inequality, and political instability. It suggests that while Thatcher proclaimed there is no alternative, the evolving global landscape may demand significant reforms or the emergence of new economic paradigms.

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Conclusion

"Invisible Hands: There Is No Alternative" offers a comprehensive exploration of Britain's free market revolution, highlighting the complex interplay between privatization, regulatory oversight, environmental stewardship, and political accountability. Through the lens of Thames Water's privatization and subsequent mismanagement, the episode underscores the profound and often unintended consequences of unfettered free market policies. As global economic dynamics continue to evolve, the podcast aptly questions the future trajectory of capitalism and whether alternatives are indeed feasible.

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Notable Quotes:

• Keith Joseph [01:18]: "Popular capitalism is a crusade. A crusade to enfranchise the many in the economic life of Britain."

• James Goldsmith [02:06]: "We have profoundly destabilized our communities. We've created ghettos and underclasses. All this in a period of maximum prosperity."

• Jill Plimmer [10:32]: "What it needs to do is make money for its investors."

• Clive Lewis [17:37]: "Fears arising tonight that it might have to go into a government orchestrated special administration, potentially putting the taxpayer on the hook for billions of pounds."

• Gillian Tett [23:06]: "Trump is not an economist. He's not an economic philosopher. He's not an economic policymaker. He's driven primarily by power, the need to control it and wield it."

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This detailed summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions presented in the episode, structured to guide listeners through the complex narrative of the free market revolution and its far-reaching impacts.

Transcript

[David Dimbleby]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.

[Paul McGann]

Titanic Ship of Dreams, the new podcast from the award winning Noiser Network. Join me, Paul McGann, as we explore life and death on Titanic. I'll delve into my own family story following my great uncle Jimmy as he tries to escape the engine room. We'll hear the harrowing tales of the victims and the testimonies of the lucky survivors.

[Jill Plimmer]

I saw that ship sink and I saw that ship break in half.

[Paul McGann]

Titanic Ship of Dreams Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Gillian Tett]

BBC Sounds Music Radio.

[David Dimbleby]

Podcasts in this series, I've been asking a question. How did the free market revolution happen in Britain? I began by telling the story of a World War II fighter pilot watching his brother crash to his death. His ideas spread to student unions and think tanks. The government generally makes a mess. It's trying to do far too much and it's doing it very badly. It found its voice in the new leader of the Conservative Party who would go on to revolutionize the country.

[Keith Joseph]

Popular capitalism is a crusade. A crusade to enfranchise the many in the economic life of Britain.

[David Dimbleby]

It was championed in America by Ronald Reagan. Our economic system, based on individual freedom, private initiative and free trade has produced more human progress than any other in history. And it traveled across the world from.

[Keith Joseph]

Jamaica to Japan, from Malaysia to Mexico, from Sri Lanka to Singapore.

[David Dimbleby]

But today, in 2025, the world looks very different to the one envisioned by Anthony Fish, Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher. It looks much more like the one that was imagined by the tycoon James Goldsmith.

[James Goldsmith]

We have profoundly destabilized our communities. We've created ghettos and underclasses. All this in a period of maximum prosperity.

[David Dimbleby]

So the question is why? What happened to that dream of free market capitalism?

[Clive Lewis]

I think it's a changing world order.

[David Dimbleby]

I think the world is changing before us as a new era. I'm David Dimbleby and from the history podcast and BBC Radio 4, this is invisible Hands. The story of the free market revolution. A hidden force that changed Britain forever. And the invisible hands that shaped it. Episode 6 There is no alternative for the past few weeks, there is one thing that everyone's been talking about.

[James Goldsmith]

My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day. Waiting for a long time.

[David Dimbleby]

Donald Trump and his tariffs.

[Unknown Speaker]

Are we now witnessing an all out trade war that is escalating at dizzying speed?

[David Dimbleby]

We might not know what's happening day to day, but one thing seems clear amidst this chaos. The political consensus. For the past 50 years or so, free market capitalism has been thrown into crisis. But why? Is there some flaw in the free market revolution that's led us to this point? I'm not going to start this final episode with Donald Trump. We will, of course, come back to him later. I want to start closer to home with the story of what happened to just one water company in the United Kingdom. It's a story about how the dream of free market capitalism, Thatcher's vision of a nation of shareholders, turned out in reality. And maybe that will help us understand how we got to where we are today, not just here in the United Kingdom, but on the other side of the Atlantic as well. For me, it's a story that begins in 1960, when I was 21 years old. We're off on a holiday journey and this time you need no passport. People were just starting to go on foreign holidays after the war. Currency restrictions, which had been very tight, were being eased. And so our family made a series of films for television, a kind of travel guide. They were called Passport to Portugal or Passport to Norway or Passport to Brittany. But we did one which was called no Passport and that was A Holiday in the Lake District. For their holiday journey, my elder sons, David and Jonathan, have been touring the Lake District. Let's see what they found. My brother and I were sent there and spent a week exploring. And apologies for the accent. Well, coming from the south, I suppose we naturally started at the southern end, here at Grange Over Sands, a pleasant seaside resort which they call the gateway to the lakes. Jonathan went water skiing on the crystal clear water of Lake Windermere, which has its own railway station, Lakeside, run by British Railways. You can get off the train here and go straight aboard the good ship Teal, which is also owned by British Railways. It was an idyllic time. It was an idyllic place. I think it's all come together to a jolly good holiday. What do you think, Jothy? Oh, it was great fun.

[Keith Joseph]

Thanks, David.

[David Dimbleby]

Do you remember that time when you.

[Clive Lewis]

Fell off the rock?

[David Dimbleby]

We are a fine one, Tom. But now, more than 60 years later, the area has been transformed.

[Unknown Speaker]

Campaigners are saying that repeated dumping of sewage into the waterways is causing serious ecological damage to the lake.

[David Dimbleby]

Windermere is the jewel in the rural crown of England and the place is just being degraded and willfully destroyed today in 2025. Dirty water, leaking pipes, sewage, a fact of life all over the country. From Lake Windermere, it's England's largest lake.

[Unknown Speaker]

At more than 10 miles long. Last summer, the north half turned bright.

[David Dimbleby]

Green to the south coast, the River Test in Hampshire, a Rare chalk stream, famed for its pure water. But this is raw, untreated human waste pouring into it from a sewage plant. So what happened to our water system? Let's just go back to 1989, Margaret Thatcher's last year as Prime Minister, and she's on a roll.

[Keith Joseph]

We've trebled the number of shareholders in Britain and privatised 20 major industries over the past decade.

[David Dimbleby]

She'd pushed through one privatisation after another. Gas, telecoms, steel.

[Keith Joseph]

That's good, but not good enough.

[David Dimbleby]

But she isn't done.

[Keith Joseph]

I know with every fibre of my being that it would be fatal for us just to stand where we are now.

[David Dimbleby]

And there's one industry that she's always wanted to privatize water, for the sake.

[Keith Joseph]

Of the environment, the consumer, the industry and its employees.

[David Dimbleby]

Just like when they sold off BT and British Gas, the Government paid for a lavish advertising campaign. It's no good turning on the waterworks after Wednesday.

[Paul McGann]

Register by then or you'll miss out.

[David Dimbleby]

On the extras you could get if you become an H2 owner. Not quite such a catchy slogan as Tell Sid, perhaps. But it did work as a campaign, and people bought shares in big numbers.

[Unknown Speaker]

Almost 3 million small investors applied for watershares and the sale was 4.7 times oversubscribed.

[David Dimbleby]

On 12 December 1989, 10 brand new water companies were launched on the stock.

[Unknown Speaker]

Market in just over two hours. Dealings in water shares begin and investors are likely to make a healthy profit. The sale has been the most successful flotation of a public company since that of British Gas in 1986.

[David Dimbleby]

Over the next decade, things just kept getting better and better. Britain was thriving. London had become a financial hub in a globalised world. And this meant that those water shares had gone up and up in value, and so people sold them for a profit. It wasn't what Thatcher had intended. She wanted to make a nation of shareholders. But at the first chance of making a quick buck, her shareholders sold.

[Clive Lewis]

Many people watching are also investors. And they'll have seen the market rise in London because so many foreign firms are sniffing at British companies.

[David Dimbleby]

So what happened to those shares in the water companies? They were about to be snapped up, snapped up by invisible hands. In 2006, Britain's biggest water company, Thames Water, which had been privatised, of course, was up for sale again. And a new breed of buyer was interested.

[Clive Lewis]

Australians. We drink their beer. Now they want our water.

[David Dimbleby]

Not a company used to running a big industry, but a bank. A bank in Australia called Macquarie. A bank you've probably never heard of, but this bank is big.

[Jill Plimmer]

Macquarie is a big Australian investment bank and asset manager, certainly the biggest investor in Britain.

[David Dimbleby]

That's Jill Plimmer, who's a journalist at the Financial Times, and she says Macquarie already owned a bunch of stuff in the UK and around the world, from technology companies to airports. And Macquarie has only one objective.

[Jill Plimmer]

What it needs to do is make money for its investors.

[David Dimbleby]

Macquarie aren't experts at running utility companies, they're experts at making money.

[Jill Plimmer]

And that's what they're all about, delivering a return to their investors.

[David Dimbleby]

And that's why they were interested in Thames Water.

[Clive Lewis]

Now in Thames, it's got a profitable business. Last year it made £346 million. That was up by almost a third.

[David Dimbleby]

The key to Thames Water is it controls the entire water supply for London and much of the southeast. A place where millions and millions of people live and all of them need water. And they've only one place to get it from Thames Water. They have no choice, because in spite of being privatized, it retained a monopoly.

[Jill Plimmer]

You know, it's not like a shop where you might lose customers, you know, a new fashion might come in. It's totally guaranteed.

[David Dimbleby]

So for a bank like Macquarie that needs to guarantee a return for its clients, it's a no brainer.

[Jill Plimmer]

What can go wrong for you as an investor? Not much.

[David Dimbleby]

So Macquarie buys Thames water for around 8 billion pounds. They use a bit of their own money, but they also use other people's racking up debt and that's debt that ends up on Thames Waters books, which of course they need to pay back.

[Jill Plimmer]

And one of the first things it did was to pay a 656 million pound dividend in a year in which its profits were only 241 million.

[David Dimbleby]

So they make this huge payout to their investors, more than twice the profit that Thames Water is actually making. The way they did it was complicated, but it's important. Macquarie restructured, to use the jargon word, Thames Water. They sliced it up into a web of companies, companies stacked inside each other rather like Russian dolls. So one company owns another, which owns another, which owns another. And that makes it easier for them to borrow money because every single company, every single doll, if you like, can borrow money separately. And it becomes easier to move money around and to pay out their investors. It's known as the millionaire's factory. Such are the reputed riches of many of Macquarie's key executives. What Macquarie had worked out is a way of turning Thames Water from a dull utility company into A cash machine. Over the next decade, they paid almost 3 billion pounds to their shareholders. And the regulator Ofwat didn't seem particularly alarmed.

[Jill Plimmer]

OFWAT just turned a blind eye to it. It saw its job as keeping prices down and that was about it.

[David Dimbleby]

And for a while, the customers bills did stay reasonable and the taps kept running with water. But then something strange started happening. All across the Southeast, people began noticing problems with the water. Sewage had poured out of a treatment works a mile away. Water pipes were leaking as much as 3 billion litres.

[Clive Lewis]

A fifth of total usage is estimated to leak from the water system every day.

[David Dimbleby]

There was sewage seeping into the water system.

[Clive Lewis]

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The river was visibly polluted, bank to bank with sewage. It was gray, it was lifeless. There were dead fish floating along it year on year.

[David Dimbleby]

What started as a trickle of problems became a flood.

[Unknown Speaker]

Campaigners say wildlife is at risk, while those at home have seen their water supply halt or bacteria at unacceptable levels in the taps.

[David Dimbleby]

It is appalling what was going on, but we weren't aware of it. And then in 2017, the Environment Agency investigated Thames Water and found out that they had pumped billions and billions of liters of untreated sewage into the River Thames. And its contributories.

[Unknown Speaker]

The UK's biggest ever find for river pollution is expected to be imposed on Thames Water today.

[David Dimbleby]

They prosecuted Thames Water and won the case with a record fine of 20 million pounds. The company's admitted to breaching more than a dozen environmental laws. Stretches of water in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire heavily polluted, killing many fish. So why? Why was this water company, which had made healthy profits year on year, failing so badly? The answer is because that money that they'd borrowed, the millions and millions of pounds, they hadn't been using it to repair leaky pipes and outdated sewage systems. Instead, they'd used much of it to pay back their investors. The judge who handed down that record fine said he was trying to get a message across to the shareholders that the environment is to be treasured and protected and not poisoned. Macquarie says the debt they'd wrapped up was reasonable and that they'd doubled the value of Thames Water's assets and that they'd invested in major reconstruction projects. But after that fine, they walked away from the business, leaving Thames water with almost 10 billion pounds of debt. And Thames Water's customers were angry.

[Unknown Speaker]

I live on the River Thames and I see on a daily basis human excrement go past my property.

[Jill Plimmer]

They are intending to put bills up.

[David Dimbleby]

For everyone by 60%.

[Unknown Speaker]

They keep on saying that they're going to do something about it. And year after year passes and it still seems to be the same problems.

[Paul McGann]

Titanic Ship of Dreams, the new podcast from the award winning Noiser Network. Join me, Paul McGann, as we explore life and death on Titanic. I'll delve into my own family story following my great uncle Jimmy as he tries to escape the engine room. We'll hear the harrowing tales of the victims and the testimonies of the lucky survivors.

[Jill Plimmer]

I saw that ship sink and I saw that ship break in half.

[Paul McGann]

Titanic Ship of dreams. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[David Dimbleby]

Today, things at Thames Water have become so bad that the government is talking about something Margaret Thatcher would have thought inconceivable. Is Thames Water going to be nationalised?

[Clive Lewis]

The government is preparing potentially for some.

[David Dimbleby]

Form of temporary nationalization.

[Clive Lewis]

Fears arising tonight that it might have to go into a government orchestrated special administration, potentially putting the taxpayer on the hook for billions of pounds.

[David Dimbleby]

35 years after Thatcher privatised water, people both on the left and on the right are talking about renationalising it.

[Paul McGann]

Reform UK will take back control of our British water, our British power, our critical British infrastructure, back into British hands.

[Clive Lewis]

Around 50 years ago. Margaret Thatcher's revolution tore up the rule book on political and economic management.

[David Dimbleby]

This is Labour MP Clive Lewis speaking in Parliament in March 2025.

[Clive Lewis]

We often say that society stands on the shoulders of giants. But giants, Madam Deputy speaker, also cast long shadows. And Thatcherism's shadow looms dark over our water system today.

[David Dimbleby]

When Margaret Thatcher privatised water in 1989, she promised it would create an efficient and modern infrastructure. There'd be clean, safe waterways. She promised everyone would have a stake in how their services were run. We'd be a nation of shareholders. And yet the people who own our most basic services aren't individuals or even traditional utility companies. They're the banks, pension funds and private equity firms. For example, United Utilities, which runs the Lake District's water, where we started the story on Lake Windermere. They're owned by a mix of global investment firms. Last year, the company was found to have pumped untreated sewage into Lake windermere for over 6,000 hours, the equivalent of 17 hours a day. So these utilities, like water Margaret Thatcher thought would be under our control as individual shareholders. It hasn't worked out like that at all. They've been bought up by these great conglomerates and we the people, we effectively have no choice. It's virtually the opposite of what Margaret Thatcher wanted. We have no control and this whole story really comes back to control. In 1945, the argument was over who was best to control the economy, the government or the free market.

[James Goldsmith]

There can be no return to the past. There must be a partnership between industry and the state. We must have a planned economy.

[David Dimbleby]

And for years, government won that argument. And then in the 1970s, the system began to fall apart, and bodies are literally piling up. In Liverpool alone, 300 have been stored, possibly for a mass emergency burial at sea. The government appeared to have lost control to powerful trade unions, to rampant inflation. Question is, what can we do now to stop the likes of civilization going out all together? And so, with Margaret Thatcher in 1979, after years of argument and work by men like our former chicken farmer, Anthony Fisher, and by the politician Keith Joseph, the free market became the watchword. Government would get out of the way.

[Keith Joseph]

You know, the great surges of progress on prosperity in this country didn't come directly from government action. They came from free men working in a free society.

[David Dimbleby]

And we would become part of a global system where anyone from anywhere could own anything.

[Keith Joseph]

And that means action to free markets, action to widen choice, action to reduce.

[David Dimbleby]

Government intervention, and where jobs would go up offshore to places where things could be made for less money. Effectively, we lost control of our economy. And this is the key point, because just like the water industry being owned by faceless foreign conglomerates and not feeling they're accountable to the people, this process of globalization has produced a political backlash.

[James Goldsmith]

When you get to a system whereby you have to say to your own salesforce, goodbye, we can't use you anymore. You're too expensive. So we're going offshore. That is like making a profit on the deck of a Titanic.

[David Dimbleby]

Of course, James Goldsmith wasn't alone in spotting the damage done by the untrammeled free market. Over the last 20 years, there have been flashpoints, moments when the system seemed under threat. There was the global financial crisis, Britain's big banks under sustained attack on the markets.

[Clive Lewis]

As we go on air, there are.

[David Dimbleby]

Crisis talks about how to stabilize the banking system. There was Brexit, and the answer is we're out. And populism has been on the rise across the west, helping lead to the election of Donald Trump not once, but twice.

[James Goldsmith]

In a few moments, I will sign a historic executive order instituting reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world.

[Gillian Tett]

Trump is not an economist. He's not an economic philosopher. He's not an economic policymaker. He's driven primarily by power, the need to control it and wield it.

[David Dimbleby]

This is Gillian Tett, she's a senior journalist at the Financial Times. She's an economist. She's also an anthropologist, and so a student of human behavior. She thought a lot about free market capitalism and how it got to where it is today.

[Gillian Tett]

Very broadly speaking, the goal of the Trump team is to make America great again. And he believes very strongly that if he wants to defend the national interest by sucking business and economic activity to America out of other countries in a way that damages them, he will accept.

[David Dimbleby]

That he's trying to take back control. This is part of a wider global movement against the free market system driven by voters who feel disenfranchised, they feel they've no control over their own lives. They feel the free market revolution was helping some people get richer, but that wasn't shared equally, and that it was.

[Gillian Tett]

Sowing the seeds of his own demise by itself, stirring up increasing populist anger against the global elites who were doing well while other people were not.

[David Dimbleby]

What actually went. Why did it go wrong?

[Gillian Tett]

Well, it went wrong, I think, primarily because there wasn't enough attention paid to creating, if you like, a good pitch on which the people are going to play and good umpires. And there was also a lack of awareness about the degree to which the fact that some people are going to get wealthier than others might create the potency for a backlash. And as time passed, increasingly, the free market was not seen as fair.

[David Dimbleby]

By whom?

[Gillian Tett]

By voters? By people who were losing out.

[David Dimbleby]

And now that feeling of unfairness has resulted in a crisis, and it's coming from the very center of power, from the President of the United States.

[James Goldsmith]

Foreign leaders have stolen our jobs, foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories, and foreign scavengers have torn apart our once beautiful American dream.

[David Dimbleby]

And in Britain, it can feel that we're trapped. You see, we had our free market revolution and had free market capitalism, and the idea was we would now be strong and independent and able to make our own way in the world. And suddenly it seems as though actually none of that is true. We're at the mercy of what happens across the Atlantic.

[Gillian Tett]

Unfortunately, we are a small to medium sized player in terms of our political weight on the world stage. That just is the reality. And what we face right now is a choice between being the proverbial frog in a pot of cold water that's being heated up so slowly that the frog never jumps out for it, or acting as if we were a frog dropped into a pan of boiling water and jumping out rapidly and trying to save itself by radically reforming.

[David Dimbleby]

But is radical reform possible? In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher was famous for saying there is no alternative. She was arguing that the victory of the ideas of Fisher and Joseph would the global economic order were now set in stone. It would be liberal free market capitalism forever. But now there does seem to be a growing feeling that things may need to change, that things aren't perhaps going quite so well. Like it or not, Trump has proposed an alternative, a global tariff system that would take us back to the 19th century. An end to free markets. But here's the problem. No sooner had he imposed his tariffs to protect American industry than the free market reared its head.

[James Goldsmith]

And nervous investors, very nervous investors, are weighing in on President Trump's historic new global tariffs. The early assessment, deep concerns.

[David Dimbleby]

And Trump had to pause his tariffs. The headlines this morning, financial markets in Asia have soared after Donald Trump suspended his most punitive tariffs for all countries apart from China. So the strongman leader got spooked. And by what? By the markets themselves. Once a radical fringe idea dreamt up by the likes of our chicken farmer. Today the free markets seem all powerful all over the globe, even over the President of America. It's as if the genie has been let out of the bottle and can't be put back in. So is there really no alternative, as Thatcher claimed? Or is there someone out there, a pair of invisible hands, someone with an idea, someone willing to work in the background for years to do the dirty business of politics, to win over doubters, convince the unconvincable to slowly, surely, remake the intellectual landscape and then one fine day, conquer our world. Invisible Hands is a samizdat audio production for BBC Radio 4 and the History podcast. It's hosted by me, David Dimbleby. The producer is Joe Barrett. The executive producers and story editors are Joe Sykes and Dasha Licitsina. Sound design by Peregrine Andrews. The series engineered by Jai Williams and the commissioning editor at Radio 4 is Dan Clark. And our thanks to Phil Tinline, Peggy Sutton and Leo Schick.

[Ben Lewis]

A billionaire Christian family is building a huge collection of artifacts for their Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC.

[James Goldsmith]

During that time, there were 30,000 items, probably.

[Ben Lewis]

But a scholar turned super sleuth starts asking questions.

[David Dimbleby]

The magnitude of what I found out is incredible.

[Ben Lewis]

I'm Ben Lewis. I investigate the darker side of the arts and antiquities world. But nothing prepared me for this story.

[David Dimbleby]

Something truly, truly wrong was going on.

[Ben Lewis]

Looters, forgeries and a scandal of biblical proportions. From BBC Radio 4, intrigue. Word of God. Listen first on BBC Sounds.

[Paul McGann]

Titanic Ship of Dreams, the new podcast from the award winning Noiser Network. Join me, Paul McGann, as we explore life and death on Titanic. I'll delve into my own family story following my great uncle Jimmy as he tries to escape the engine room. We'll hear the harrowing tales of the victims and the testimony of the lucky survivors.

[Jill Plimmer]

I saw that ship sink and I saw that ship break in half.

[Paul McGann]

Titanic ship of dreams. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.