They recognised the need for cohesion when at any time disaster could strike a family unit or indeed a whole community. cent of cases. The widening of income differences between rich and poor that took place during the 80s (particularly from 1985) is the most rapid ever recorded. As coal, steel and shipbuilding fell under her wrecking ball, whole communities were destroyed. Philip Larkin visited Downing Street where the prime minister quoted approvingly one of his lines to him "Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives." Rishi Sunak 20 July 2022 9:30pm. Seeing as women aren't a minor Brit-flick grateful for even a bad review, that truism doesn't quite hold true here. We Americans will not see you again in our time, but we will never forget you. 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. delivered an outstanding defence of the Government in the Commons. She also put forward the idea of "a vast . Following several small strokes she announced, in March 2002, that her career as a speechmaker had ended. Thatcher never kept a diary, but the archive includes rich details of her role in important domestic and world events. All can agree that Margaret Thatcher changed the heart of British politics more than any politician since Clement Attlee. Moreover, it's hard not to see the roots of the 2008 crash in the unshackling of the City two decades earlier. 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.". can do business together". Thatcher's reputation never recovered from the ruthless budgets of 1980 and 1981, or her insensitivity to colleagues. There's something distinctively creepy - in a Roman sort of way - about this mandated ritual that our political leaders must be heralded and consecrated as saints upon death. "The News" was the pompous conduit through which we suckled at the barren baroness through newscaster wet-nurses, naturally; not direct from the steel teat. After the 1987 election, Thatcher cut an increasingly isolated figure. In January 1976, Thatcher delivered a speech at Kensington Town Hall in London, and spoke about the Iron Curtain the political boundary that separated Europe during World War II. She was the daughter of a prosperous civic leader who merely began life as a "grocer". The Bruges speech was given by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to the College of Europe at the Belfry of Bruges, Belgium, on 20 September 1988.Thatcher was opposed to any moves to transition the European Economic Community (EEC) into a federal Europe that would take powers away from its members. People would denounce them unequivocally, often in graphic terms. 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. You could never call Margaret Mother by mistake. Given the nature of her legacy "survival of the fittest" a phrase that Darwin himself only used twice in On the Origin of Species, compared to hundreds of references to altruism, love and cooperation, it isn't surprising that there are parties tonight in Liverpool, Glasgow and Brixton from where are they to have learned compassion and forgiveness? see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising She, for one, never underestimated her friend from California, then a state of some 24 million. Bernard Ingham, journalist and civil servant. Not until well out of office, angry and lacking her old judgment, did she lead the rabidly Eurosceptic renegades. Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013), the United Kingdom's first female prime minister, served from 1979 until 1990. . . In the early 1980s, the Republican party joined with other moderate and conservative parties in the world to form the International Democrat Union. Statistics now confirm what many people have always recognised: that inequality is divisive and socially corrosive. She continued for some reason to consider me worth talking to. She was a prime minister who happened to be a woman. Behind "omnishambles" headlines, her revolution is being pushed forward on new fronts in schools, health, planning, policing, probation and welfare. 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. Margaret Thatcher Essay: Health Category. Farewelling Baroness Margaret Thatcher in a proper fashion is a difficult task: she left such a deep imprint upon the world that assessing its importance demands volumes analyzing her beliefs and paying proper tribute. Any attempts at revisionism do no favours to her, women or feminism. Secondly, the balance of power in industrial relations was shifted decisively in favour of employers. Britain's relative decline came to an end, although that was more due to slowdowns in countries such as France and Germany than an acceleration in UK productivity growth. Thatcher was suspicious of democracy. If you have a . That speech was a rare instance of a politician saying something tangible. When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms. or copyright prevents reproduction on the site. For she changed the ethos of Britain as well as its landscape. Thatcher came to personify those ready to push anyone aside to gain power in a man's world and strengthen that world with their ambition. "You see," she announced in her self-satisfied way, "it just goes to show what people can do when they have to. While she spoke of his example as a beacon, she knew very well that she was an important component of what is often attributed solely to him, and in the first instance "winning" the cold war. Sir Bernard died after a short illness, his family said. But every prime minister since has bowed to her legacy, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown eager to be snapped with her on their doorstep. "Maggie Thatcher" two fierce trochees set against the gentler iambic pulse of Britain's postwar welfare state. recommended by Simon Heffer. While Labour was now "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich", ambitious feminism wanted to be let in to the boardroom and every corridor of power that and little else is what they mean by changing the world. She considered European Commission president Jacques Delors a campaigner for . The state retained control of some nationalised industries the railways, for example but BT, British Airways, British Steel, British Gas and the British Airports Authority were among the big companies sold off. By delivering a crisp, emphatic victory Thatcher showed the world, and more important herself, what a talent for solitary command could achieve. Thatcher was born as Margaret Hilda Roberts on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, England. Rishi Sunak: 'Our country needs the . In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon. 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. a new dominance from Brussels". If the Falklands war was the making of Thatcher, then the poll tax was her achilles heel not least in Scotland. Reagan's decision to bomb Libya, spoke at The Hague in May 1992. Unquestionably, a major component of what Reagan achieved was mirrored in what Baroness Thatcher herself achieved. The Tories triumphed, of course, and lost only two sitting MPs Hamish Gray and the social-security scrounger-bashing Iain Sproat, who vacated his marginal Aberdeen seat and headed for the Scottish Borders, only to suffer defeat there at the hands of the Alliance. Out!" One also can't forget what happened to the agency that made Thatcher worldfamous: the Conservative party, of which she seemed such an improbable leader. Shoot-to-kill actions by British forces also significantly increased. We have paid for that transformation with a world that is harder-edged, more competitive, and certainly more intently aware of the lure of cash. Keith Joseph was her guru. Just look around. From the invention of the term "sado-monetarism" through to the way her powerful ministers seemed to swoon before her, and the constant negative reiteration by her critics of her femininity, or lack of it, she exerted a glacial hold over the (male) nation's masochistic imagination. Reagan, for one, recognized the importance of Margaret Thatcher's presence as British prime minister, but would caution any discussionpartnerthat Pope John Paul played an equally important role. Out! Thatcher's opposition to a positive role for the state in industrial policy caused her grief even during her time in office, but a cross-party consensus newly shaped by Michael Heseltine's report has given him the last word. And, of course, Nelson provided the intelligence. The day before she died I passed through Greenock on the train. series of famous statements that marked the end of her premiership, replied Larkin's evoked the treacherous mind (of an adversary, of a cabinet colleague) helplessly exposed to her steely regard. Margaret Thatcher's most popular book is The Downing Street Years. More than once the view was advanced that it was a pity the IRA had not succeeded in their ultimate objective when they bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton. She usually knew the limits to public tolerance, gauging how much of the spirit of '45 abided, so even if it was between gritted teeth, she forced herself to say, "The NHS is safe in our hands": she reorganised but did not privatise it. Yet despite the attempts of some columnists to claim otherwise, Thatcher can't really be seen as "a warrior in the sex war", let alone as "the ultimate women's libber". Reagan's decision to bomb Libya in April 1986 and spoke Rather, she was a classic example of a certain kind of conservative woman who believed that all women should pull themselves up just as she had done, conveniently overlooking that not all women are blessed with the privileges that had been available to her, such as a wealthy and supportive husband and domestic help. 100% Success rate. An unclubbable outsider, she allied herself to another outsider, Keith Joseph, and his free-market set. But really, such statements were anything but, first because sweeping statements about genders are the opposite of gender equality and second because they revealed her real attitude towards women, which lay behind her notable lack of female-friendly policies, her utter lack of interest in childcare provision or positive action. making her big speech the following day as scheduled. Few would argue that they have not endured. When Sir Geoffrey Howe resigned in consequence, she replied She was among the first Western leaders to Not even the Falklands war would push it off the tracks or damage it in any way. The milk snatcher reputation absorbed and lived with. Or maybe audiences just really, really hated her and wanted to blow off some steam. Weakening the power of trade unions was not only essential to her project, but several studies suggest that their continued weakness may be an important part of the reason why inequality has not declined in the intervening decades. We still live in the land Margaret built. But she exploited her luck. 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. It got over a deep, instinctive hostility to women at the top of anything, and put her there. When Margaret Thatcher won the general election in 1979, she became Prime Minister of a land in chaos. at Brighton, insisting that the Conference go on and Action. One leading Tory thinker said current academic concepts such as evolutionary psychology and behavioural economics were fundamentally rightwing; another said disruptive digital technology liberated individuals against powerful behemoths which may be true, but some of the most striking online advances harness the collective spirit.