This is a summary of a paper prepared for a conference on the White Paper of 2003, sponsored by The Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley, and OxCHEPS, New College, Oxford, in Oxford, 28-30 September 2004. It offers reflection on the history of the relationship between British higher education and various British governments since World War II, and most particularly since 1980, the beginning of the Thatcher revolution, and puts current events into an historical as well as a comparative perspective.