Thatcher refused to recognise the right of citizens to vote for representatives of their choice. The price we all continue to pay for Thatcherite policies is to live in a less cohesive and more antisocial society, in which community life is weaker, people feel less able to trust each other and fewer of those in government have the experience and compassion to represent or understand the vast majority. Back when we called her Maggie, when it seemed she would have her wish and "go on and on" in ruling the country, her opponents would lament some new step towards social ruin with the withering, two-word verdict: "Thatcher's Britain.". The items stored in this section of the site are texts, but many of the most important statements are also available in audio or video form in the separate Multimedia section. Tasteless." Not until well out of office, angry and lacking her old judgment, did she lead the rabidly Eurosceptic renegades. This is an especially pertinent problem given its heartfelt desire for redistribution of wealth. She showed that modern prime ministers can still mark out room for individual manoeuvre. a new dominance from Brussels". One Sunday recently while staying in London, I took a stroll in the gardens of Temple, the insular clod of quads and offices between the Strand and the Embankment. Certainly, in 1983, it did not occur to me to criticise Harold Macmillan or Alec Douglas-Home on the doorstep as a sure-fire vote turner. But the choice captures her perfectly. North sea oil was squandered when it should have seeded new industries. Margaret Thatcher's government defended structured political and religious discrimination and political vetting in the north, legislated for political censorship and institutionalised, to a greater extent than ever before, collusion between British state forces and unionist death squads. This is the area where we need to make progress not just in restoring strong local government, but in understanding that democracy means more than a Westminster vote. A meeting in Downing Street had left the Pakistan leader besotted with the older woman's wisdom and generosity: '"I tell you, she's such a kind person.". Take the larger view. Everyone knows that. The great contradiction in her politics was that someone who yearned for the certainties of small-town shopkeeper economics helped create the amoral yuppiedom of 80s excess and an explosion of cultural resistance that is still an ironic positive legacy of her time in power. Superlatives can be agreed: a remarkable first woman PM; the first winner of three elections in a row; brave; tough; relentless; clever; sleeplessly driven by a self-confident conviction that overawed her enemies. Sunstein worked for a Democratic president, but did not meet the Labour leader or key advisers. It is my view that Thatcher authorised the killings at Gibraltar. April 8, 2013. Or maybe audiences just really, really hated her and wanted to blow off some steam. As leader she was initially hyper-cautious. Her defenders always insisted that sentence had been misunderstood, but it stuck because it seemed to capture something essential about the Thatcherite creed: its embrace of individualism and apparent disdain for the collective. Norman Tebbit, one of Thatcher's acolytes and fellow "Munsters evacuee", said when the National Union of Mineworkers eventually succumbed to the military onslaught and starvation over which she presided: "We didn't just break the strike, we broke the spell." And nor could Thatcher, much to her relief as she allegedly abhorred the word, as doubtless Chanel did, too. to his resignation letter on 1 November, stated in a statement the following morning (22 November), hours before she If the Falklands war was the making of Thatcher, then the poll tax was her achilles heel not least in Scotland. Strident, divisive, and in her own view infallible, and for these reasons hard to mourn. But as weand others (including Alan Krueger, chair of Obama's council of economic advisers) have shown, wider income differences reduce social mobility and make it harder for people with poorer backgrounds to do so. "You see," she announced in her self-satisfied way, "it just goes to show what people can do when they have to. Government policy during the 1980s was little more than a war policy, aimed at defeating or isolating republicanism. She was immensely brisk. Fourthly, policy was aimed at those who, according to the prime minister, wanted to get on in life. Her gender led her into government and the shadow cabinet, despite Edward Heath's aversion to her. She lost seven cabinet ministers on the Europe question, a record that permeated the party for years afterwards. She famously changed the law after Bobby Sands was elected in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. Ingham's rough redraft of my speech with very little success. Maggie was a fully formed comedy character before comedians had even gotten to her. first television interview the following day. The Cameron generation wrongly see in the 1980s a revolution to emulate, starting with an economic crisis just like hers, as a chance to reshape everything. Not all writers were against her. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979, she Thatcher will be especially remembered for her shameful role during the epic hunger strikes of 1980 and 81. This speech was delivered soon after her taking office in 1979. The time was 1973. Ithink on balance, it was for the better, and so, plainly did Thatcher's chief successor, Tony Blair. So look around this kingdom of ours, at a devolved Scotland contemplating independence a state of affairs that owes much to Thatcher's antagonistic relationship with that country. Thatcher was the Prime Minister of Great Britain during Reagan's presidency, and was close with him which After leaving office, MT widened and deepened her criticism of the European Full employment had been ditched in 1976, while Labour had introduced monetary targets and cash limits for Whitehall departments while Denis Healey was at the Treasury. Mrs Thatcher told the assembly: "It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.". Meanwhile, you struggle to identify deep thinkers in party ranks beyond a couple of veteran stalwarts; even the left's thinktanks appear moribund or merely harking back to an idealised past. verbatim and in context. She made her maiden Nissan's arrival in the north-east showed that Britain was no longer the west's industrial pariah. She led Britain further into Europe, while talking us further out. The set text is still Thatcher's declaration quoted in The Audience that "There is no such thing as society". When I was a kid, Thatcher was the headmistress of our country. 4.44 avg rating 39 ratings 2 editions. If they have no bread, let them eat from food banks that's Thatcherism, the legacy we are still to bury before it buries us. Adam Smith's invisible hand ended up raising two fingers to her moral project. When she walked into Downing Street promising harmony instead of discord, only one in seven children was poor and Britain was more equal than at any time in modern history. The last remnants of the postwar consensus were swept away in the ensuing decade a period that saw the crushing of the trade unions, the Big Bang in the City, council house sales, the privatisation of large chunks of industry, the encouragement of inward investment, tax cuts, attempts to roll back the state, a deep manufacturing recession, a boom in North Sea oil production, and support for the creation of a single market in Europe. A couple of days later on the 11th, Margaret Thatcher the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, wrote an eulogy for Ronald Reagan. We were not unique in such a response but she failed to appreciate that Scots are balanced, canny folk insofar as we have a well-developed chip on each shoulder. He'd been a bully, she said, whereas Mrs T was warm and understanding. Governments can rarely claim to have stimulated the arts but Thatcher, always rather impatient with the examined life, drew writers on to new ground. Witness the steady downgrading of local government or the persistent assumption that the private sector will always be better than the public. Mobilising society, by rule of law, against the trade union bosses was undoubtedly an achievement. More subtly, Thatcher bequeathed a kind of instinctive rejection of once-valued forms of collective activity. Yes, QI can report that a newspaper called the Evening News on . The centralised statism that dominated politics for much of the 20th century, given its last pathetic gasp under the profligate government of Gordon Brown, ultimately failed the poor while proving financially unsustainable and unsuited to modern times. But the key point is this: those who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics) aren't silent at all. No such alarms ring in Cameron's ears. Hire a Writer. She made one The leading feminist Natasha Walter called Thatcher "the great unsung heroine of British feminism". History, Sample Essay. Though the Thatcher years could also be called the Saatchi years, reaching a new level of presentational sophistication in the annals of British politics, they weren't about getting the leader liked. "She had been offered the chance to get on and effectively she then refused to offer it to otherpeople. It was thoroughly "wet". I don't know if they ever voted for her, I don't know if they liked her. Sue Gray used to be my boss. Research papers can be complex, so best to give our essay writing service a bit more time on this one. To project the ideas of strength and . In the 2011 biographical drama film "The Iron Lady," Meryl Streep plays the role of Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Jan Leeming, Sue Lawley, Moira Stuart delivering doctrine with sterile sexiness, like a butterscotch-scented beige vapour. Without it, she would have been nothing. She adopts an endearing and sentimental tone using ethos, repetition, and . Scottish and by extension UK politics has been skewed ever since. speech in the House of Commons on 5 February 1960 and gave her But perhaps her greatest legacy was New Labour. I was a professional writer. My dad, I suspect, did. But within a few years, a third of children were poor, a sign of the yawning inequality from which the country never recovered. No one noticed, but she was Blair's first guest at Downing Street in 1997. Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister at the time, gave a eulogy to the grieving American people in honor of the late Ronald Reagan on June 11th, 2004. When I think of this memorial, I think of the words of Rupert Brooke, "that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.". One of the few direct hits scored in the modern era was when Alex Ross and James Herring remixed Nick Clegg's bizarre "I'm sorry" speech and turned it into a hilarious R&B tune. She is an icon of individualism, not of feminism. The relative wealth of the UK 1% had been falling steadily for 50 years when Thatcher took power in 1979; since then it has climbed steeply and is almost back to 1918 levels. You would need to wait six weeks for an engineer. Thatcher answered that question, re-energising the concept of democratic leadership. She said "there is no such thing as society", and set out to prove it by promoting individual greed and competition for everything. Only today are we facing the cost. When Margaret Hilda Thatcher took over as Prime Minister, in May, 1979, I was sixteen. Margaret Thatcher's landmark Bruges speech about the future of Europe was never intended to push the UK towards the exit, the man who wrote it says. In the north of Ireland she had the army and the Diplock courts which reached their peak in the mid 1980s. Not the loss of imperial markets, not lazy management, not the education system, not the decline of the industrial ethic: bitter men standing on platforms and asking for a show of hands to down tools were solely to blame. Two especially forceful and committed leaders on the world stage at the same time: this was critical and key to ending the cold war, permitting the reunification of Germany, the consolidation of the EU and drawing our two nations together in a historic cooperation. Selling off the family silver Harold Macmillan and later Labour called it, as Margaret Thatcher set about reversing the 1945 nationalisations that had put oil, gas, coal, electricity and an airline as well as a house removal company in public hands. Making sure the verdict wasn't purloined by others. first television interview the following day, euphoric Everything was justified as long as it made money andthis, too, isstill with us. She became deaf to all warning. It was a Charles I moment in British history. outlook at the time. The truth is less significant than the alteration to it. Simon Heffer, journalist, historian and friend of Margaret Thatcher, recommends the best books to read to gain an understanding of the United Kingdom's first female prime ministerand explains why she was the most influential British leader of the modern era. But Thatcher was a naturally, perhaps incurably, divisive figure. Her policy decisions entrenched sectarian divisions, handed draconian military powers over to the securocrats, and subverted basic human rights. A week later she spoke (MT gave up public speaking in March 2002.) MT gave her first The late Benazir Bhutto later gave me much the same account. History will judge her, but not a country in Europe was untouched by Thatcher's example. These include, "We have to show them that we're better than they are", and "Women can get into corners that men can't reach!" She failed to replace those jobs with well-paid equivalents. He was a political and historical figure and the need to accurately portray his legacy and prevent misleading hagiography easily outweighed precepts of death etiquette that prevail when a private person dies. From her start in politics, Thatcher often attracted sexist critiques for the way she spoke, with many it dubbing her voice "shrill" and "patronizing." Television critic Clive James even compared . Thatcher's reputation never recovered from the ruthless budgets of 1980 and 1981, or her insensitivity to colleagues. Nelson travelled to South Africa where he helped negotiate a deal that saw the UDA, UVF and Ulster Resistance acquire AK-47 automatic rifles, pistols, grenades, and RPG rocket launchers in late 1987 or early 1988. But she exploited her luck. After the 1987 election, Thatcher cut an increasingly isolated figure. The eulogy is a good illustration of Thatcher's feelings for . Sent Bobby Sands to an Irish hero's grave without a blink. "Fatcha" was an instant punchline back then: simply saying it was enough to get a laugh. To the extent that there was an industrial strategy, it was to sell Britain as a destination for Japanese car companies and to shift the focus of the economy away from manufacturing towards financial services. After material needs have been met, research has repeatedly shown that further rises in material standards contribute less and less to wellbeing. As coal, steel and shipbuilding fell under her wrecking ball, whole communities were destroyed. What saved Thatcher's bacon, and revolutionised her leadership, was Labour's unelectable Michael Foot and the Falklands war. Only in the sense that all the women beneath her were blinded by falling shards. But now the history was what mattered. And then, perversely, would come the throwaway, sign-off remark to the effect of: "At least you know where you stand with Maggie she hates us and we hate her.". But these concrete achievements do not wholly explain why she still looms so large, large enough that not one but two current West End plays The Audience and Billy Elliot grant Thatcher a pivotal, if largely unsympathetic, role, whether seen or unseen. Queen Elizabeth is widely assumed . Reagan's decision to bomb Libya in April 1986 and spoke Before the real Thatcher's election in 1979 she took lessons with a speech coach at the Royal National Theatre, hoping to make her voice more commanding and less "shrill" in broadcasts. Margaret Thatcher might seem to some like an unlikely pioneer of the need for climate action but, in the late 1980s, she made a series of remarkable speeches and interventions on the subject and . The remainder are listed without a text because . You could never call Margaret Mother by mistake. It made minor savings at best and was, as the . to secure international action to repair the damaged ozone layer. Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher's attack was wholesale. I am, it's safe to say, one of Thatcher's children. Margaret Thatcher's 1980 speech was written by playwright Ronnie Miller, and Julia recalls that the night before delivering the speech she had a huge row with him about the content. for the disk. Thatcher became prime minister because she was a woman, not despite it. The news last week that they are instead considering cutting or freezing the minimum wage surely undermines any pretence that the government is acting either coherently or in the public interest. She all but erased his political legacy to stamp her own image on the nation, so Britain before and after Thatcher were two different countries. This is not the Highland way. When she took over in 1979, the bottom of that device would have carried the legend, "Property of the GPO." That said, by the mid-1980s it was clear that the Conservative government's economic policy was based on a handful of core principles. On one visit, our campaign chairman, William J Casey, later director of the CIA, came along, and we had a fruitful meeting at 10 Downing Street. I don't see that. She was among the first Western leaders to The Yale Book of Quotations also states, "Thatcher is said to have used this in a 1965 speech.". be a nation in retreat". still being scolded for the remark.You can read here exactly what she said, Margaret Thatcher Curriculum Vitae. making her big speech the following day as scheduled. She forced us to decide what was truly important. A Labour veteran blamed another legacy of Thatcher: the need for iron discipline after the media onslaught that engulfed her opponents. At a party leaders' meeting in Washington, DC in 1985, Prime Minister Thatcher spent all day in the House of Commons, then boarded Concorde and flew to Washington to participate until late into the evening; she took such policy co-operation very seriously. The British inflation was in 1975 up at 24, 11% [] and with the union's constant claim for higher salaries, nobody expected it to drop to a normal level. Emery Evans . M argaret Thatcher does an awful lot of crying in The Crown. In 1968 she gave a lecture asking What's I think by far her greatest virtue, in retrospect, is how little she cared if people liked her. Look at the trains on the track, the phone in your house, the trio of 1980s teenagers who lead the three main parties. As a result, Labour authorities in eight or so British cities have set up fairness commissions to reduce income differences locally. In a world where most media talking heads come from the top few percent of income earners, unions are not only important in wage bargaining, they also provide some of the few well-informed voices whose job it is to speak on behalf of the less well-paid. In truth, Thatcher is one of the clearest examples of the fact that a successful woman doesn't always mean a step forward for women. That one should not speak ill of the dead is arguably appropriate when a private person dies, but it is wildly inappropriate for the death of a controversial public figure, particularly one who wielded significant influence and political power. On her return to London, she sent me a warm and complimentary letter, a prize in my personal archives. To use a less bizarre analogy: if Thatcher was the headmistress, they were junior teachers, authoritative but warm enough that you could call them "mum" by accident. This site follow the same rules (and shares an editor). The word "free" is used to help the audience Capitalism flourishes on debt, but she insisted that economics were best understood as Mr Micawber's formula in which happiness and misery were separated by a shilling. in his defence during the IranContra affair, told There were big tax cuts for those on the highest incomes, driven by the belief that this would encourage entrepreneurship. at Brighton, insisting that the Conference go on and Yet, as the heated benefits debate showed last week, Labour is trapped by history bereft of fresh ideas and, when tentatively offering proposals, strangled by the most stifling conservatism. Too timid, too in thrall, the 13-year Labour government rarely dared challenge the attitudes she planted in the national psyche. . It was a visit warmly welcomed by President Reagan, with a resplendent state nner on the first evening. One turns with gratitude to Alan Clark's diaries for a fine description of being summoned to No 10 and being subjected to just such an examination. Margaret Thatcher was not known for her sense of humour.
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