Her parents were Alfred Roberts (1892–1970), from Northamptonshire, and Beatrice Ethel (née Stephenson, 1888–1960), from Lincolnshire.
Her main support came from the parliamentary 1922 Committee and The Spectator, but Thatcher's time in office gave her the reputation of a pragmatist rather than that of an ideologue.
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was a British who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990.
Her tenure constituted a realignment towards neoliberal policies in the United Kingdom, with debate over the complicated legacy attributed to Thatcherism persisting into the 21st century. ==Early life and education== {| align=center | |} === Family and childhood === Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on 13 October 1925, in Grantham, Lincolnshire.
In 1938, before the Second World War, the Roberts family briefly gave sanctuary to a teenage Jewish girl who had escaped Nazi Germany.
She was [girl and head boy|head girl] in 1942–43.
After another candidate withdrew, Roberts entered Oxford in October 1943. ===Oxford: 1943–1947=== Roberts arrived at Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with Second-Class Honours, in the four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree, specialising in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin.
In her upper sixth year Roberts was accepted for a scholarship to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, a women's college, starting in 1944.
He served as Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950. Margaret Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School, a grammar school.
Roberts's enthusiasm for politics as a girl made him think of her as "unusual" and her parents as "slightly austere" and "very proper". Roberts became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946.
After another candidate withdrew, Roberts entered Oxford in October 1943. ===Oxford: 1943–1947=== Roberts arrived at Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with Second-Class Honours, in the four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree, specialising in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin.
She was influenced at university by political works such as Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944), which condemned economic intervention by government as a precursor to an authoritarian state. ===Post-Oxford career: 1947–1951=== After graduating, Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics.
In 1948 she applied for a job at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), but was rejected after the personnel department assessed her as "headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated".
argues that her understanding of modern scientific research later impacted her views as prime minister. Roberts joined the local Conservative Association and attended the party conference at Llandudno, Wales, in 1948, as a representative of the University Graduate Conservative Association.
Officials of the association were so impressed by her that they asked her to apply, even though she was not on the party's approved list; she was selected in January 1950 (aged 24) and added to the approved list post ante. At a dinner following her formal adoption as Conservative candidate for Dartford in February 1949 she met divorcé Denis Thatcher, a successful and wealthy businessman, who drove her to her Essex train.
He served as Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950. Margaret Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School, a grammar school.
Officials of the association were so impressed by her that they asked her to apply, even though she was not on the party's approved list; she was selected in January 1950 (aged 24) and added to the approved list post ante. At a dinner following her formal adoption as Conservative candidate for Dartford in February 1949 she met divorcé Denis Thatcher, a successful and wealthy businessman, who drove her to her Essex train.
She married at Wesley's Chapel and her children were baptised there, but she and her husband began attending Church of England services and would later convert to Anglicanism. ==Early political career== In the 1950 and 1951 general elections, Roberts was the Conservative candidate for the Labour seat of Dartford.
She married at Wesley's Chapel and her children were baptised there, but she and her husband began attending Church of England services and would later convert to Anglicanism. ==Early political career== In the 1950 and 1951 general elections, Roberts was the Conservative candidate for the Labour seat of Dartford.
During the campaigns, she was supported by her parents and by future husband Denis Thatcher, whom she married in December 1951.
He served as Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950. Margaret Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School, a grammar school.
Denis funded his wife's studies for the bar; she qualified as a barrister in 1953 and specialised in taxation.
Later that same year their twins Carol and Mark were born, delivered prematurely by Caesarean section. ===Member of Parliament: 1959–1970=== In 1954, Thatcher was defeated when she sought selection to be the Conservative party candidate for the Orpington by-election of January 1955.
Later that same year their twins Carol and Mark were born, delivered prematurely by Caesarean section. ===Member of Parliament: 1959–1970=== In 1954, Thatcher was defeated when she sought selection to be the Conservative party candidate for the Orpington by-election of January 1955.
She chose not to stand as a candidate in the 1955 general election, in later years stating: "I really just felt the twins were [...] only two, I really felt that it was too soon.
I couldn't do that." Afterwards, Thatcher began looking for a Conservative safe seat and was selected as the candidate for Finchley in April 1958 (narrowly beating Ian Montagu Fraser).
She was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959.
Later that same year their twins Carol and Mark were born, delivered prematurely by Caesarean section. ===Member of Parliament: 1959–1970=== In 1954, Thatcher was defeated when she sought selection to be the Conservative party candidate for the Orpington by-election of January 1955.
She was elected as MP for the seat after a hard campaign in the 1959 election.
Thatcher was the youngest woman in history to receive such a post, and among the first MPs elected in 1959 to be promoted.
Benefiting from her fortunate result in a lottery for backbenchers to propose new legislation, Thatcher's maiden speech was, unusually, in support of her private member's bill, the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960, requiring local authorities to hold their council meetings in public; the bill was successful and became law.
By chance, Reece met the actor Laurence Olivier, who arranged lessons with the National Theatre's voice coach. Thatcher began attending lunches regularly at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank founded by poultry magnate Antony Fisher; she had been visiting the IEA and reading its publications since the early 1960s.
After the Conservatives lost the 1964 election, she became spokeswoman on Housing and Land, in which position she advocated her party's policy of giving tenants the Right to Buy their council houses.
She moved to the Shadow Treasury team in 1966 and, as Treasury spokeswoman, opposed Labour's mandatory price and income controls, arguing they would unintentionally produce effects that would distort the economy. Jim Prior suggested Thatcher as a Shadow Cabinet member after the Conservatives' 1966 defeat, but party leader Edward Heath and Chief Whip William Whitelaw eventually chose Mervyn Pike as the Conservative Shadow Cabinet's sole woman member.
At the 1966 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher criticised the high-tax policies of the Labour government as being steps "not only towards Socialism, but towards Communism", arguing that lower taxes served as an incentive to hard work.
She supported the retention of capital punishment and voted against the relaxation of divorce laws. ====In the Shadow Cabinet==== In 1967, the United States Embassy chose Thatcher to take part in the International Visitor Leadership Program (then called the Foreign Leader Program), a professional exchange programme that allowed her to spend about six weeks visiting various US cities and political figures as well as institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.
Before the 1970 general election, she was promoted to Shadow Transport spokeswoman and later to Education. In 1968, Enoch Powell delivered his "Rivers of Blood" speech in which he strongly criticised Commonwealth immigration to the United Kingdom and the then-proposed Race Relations Bill.
She argued: "[...] if we build bigger and better roads, they would soon be saturated with more vehicles and we would be no nearer solving the problem." Thatcher made her first visit to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1969 as the Opposition Transport spokeswoman, and in October delivered a speech celebrating her ten years in Parliament.
Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970–1974 government.
Before the 1970 general election, she was promoted to Shadow Transport spokeswoman and later to Education. In 1968, Enoch Powell delivered his "Rivers of Blood" speech in which he strongly criticised Commonwealth immigration to the United Kingdom and the then-proposed Race Relations Bill.
In early 1970, she told The Finchley Press that she would like to see a "reversal of the permissive society". ===Education Secretary: 1970–1974=== The Conservative Party, led by Edward Heath, won the 1970 general election, and Thatcher was appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Science.
She had once suggested the shortlisting of women by default for all public appointments yet had also proposed that those with young children ought to leave the workforce. Thatcher's stance on immigration in the late 1970s was perceived as part of a rising racist public discourse, which terms "new racism".
She is a main character in the fourth season of The Crown, played by Gillian Anderson. ==Titles, awards and honours== Thatcher became a privy councillor (PC) on becoming a secretary of state in 1970.
Her new policy was not meant to stop the development of new comprehensives; she said: "We shall [...] expect plans to be based on educational considerations rather than on the comprehensive principle." Thatcher supported Lord Rothschild's 1971 proposal for market forces to affect government funding of research.
I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit." ===Leader of the Opposition: 1975–1979=== The Heath government continued to experience difficulties with oil embargoes and union demands for wage increases in 1973, subsequently losing the February 1974 general election.
Heath was never reconciled to Thatcher's leadership of the party. Television critic Clive James, writing in The Observer prior to her election as Conservative Party leader, compared her voice of 1973 to "a cat sliding down a blackboard".
I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit." ===Leader of the Opposition: 1975–1979=== The Heath government continued to experience difficulties with oil embargoes and union demands for wage increases in 1973, subsequently losing the February 1974 general election.
Labour formed a minority government and went on to win a narrow majority in the October 1974 general election.
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was a British who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990.
In 1975, she defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition, the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom.
I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit." ===Leader of the Opposition: 1975–1979=== The Heath government continued to experience difficulties with oil embargoes and union demands for wage increases in 1973, subsequently losing the February 1974 general election.
Thatcher's election had a polarising effect on the party; her support was stronger among MPs on the right, and also among those from southern England, and those who had not attended public schools or Oxbridge. Thatcher became Conservative Party leader and Leader of the Opposition on 11 February 1975; she appointed Whitelaw as her deputy.
She toured the United States in 1975 and met President Gerald Ford, visiting again in 1977, when she met President Jimmy Carter.
With the 1975 Portuguese collapse in the continent, South Africa (which had been Rhodesia's chief supporter) realised that their ally was a liability; black rule was inevitable, and the Thatcher government brokered a peaceful solution to end the Rhodesian Bush War in December 1979 via the Lancaster House Agreement.
She was the first woman entitled to full membership rights as an honorary member of the Carlton Club on becoming Leader of the Conservative Party in 1975. As prime minister, Thatcher received two honorary distinctions: Two weeks after her resignation, Thatcher was appointed Member of the Order of Merit (OM) by the Queen.
The Conservatives won a 44-seat majority in the House of Commons, and Thatcher became the first female British prime minister. ===="The 'Iron Lady'"==== In 1976, Thatcher gave her "Britain Awake" foreign policy speech which lambasted the Soviet Union, saying it was "bent on world dominance".
She toured the United States in 1975 and met President Gerald Ford, visiting again in 1977, when she met President Jimmy Carter.
Among other foreign trips, she met Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during a visit to Iran in 1978.
Thatcher reacted to this by branding the Labour government "chickens", and Liberal Party leader David Steel joined in, criticising Labour for "running scared". The Labour government then faced fresh public unease about the direction of the country and a damaging series of strikes during the winter of 1978–79, dubbed the "Winter of Discontent".
In 1978 she criticised Labour's immigration policy to attract voters away from the NF to the Conservatives.
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was a British who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990.
On becoming prime minister after winning the 1979 general election, Thatcher introduced a series of economic policies intended to reverse high inflation and Britain's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an oncoming recession.
Now prime minister, Callaghan surprised many by announcing on 7 September that there would be no general election that year, and he would wait until 1979 before going to the polls.
A general election was called after the Callaghan ministry lost a motion of no confidence in early 1979.
The "Iron" metaphor followed her throughout ever since, and would become a generic sobriquet for other strong-willed female politicians. ==Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: 1979–1990== Thatcher became prime minister on 4 May 1979.
In the 1979 general election, the Conservatives had attracted votes from the NF, whose support almost collapsed.
In a July 1979 meeting with Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington and Home Secretary William Whitelaw, Thatcher objected to the number of Asian immigrants, in the context of limiting the total of Vietnamese boat people allowed to settle in the UK to fewer than 10,000 over two years. ====The Queen==== As prime minister, Thatcher met weekly with Queen Elizabeth II to discuss government business, and their relationship came under scrutiny.
Her strategy of preparing fuel stocks, appointing hardliner Ian MacGregor as NCB leader, and ensuring that police were adequately trained and equipped with riot gear contributed to her triumph over the striking miners. The number of stoppages across the UK peaked at 4,583 in 1979, when more than 29 million working days had been lost.
Thatcher's tenure also witnessed a sharp decline in trade union density, with the percentage of workers belonging to a trade union falling from 57.3% in 1979 to 49.5% in 1985.
In 1979 up until Thatcher's final year in office, trade union membership also fell, from 13.5 million in 1979 to fewer than 10 million. ====Privatisation==== The policy of privatisation has been called "a crucial ingredient of Thatcherism".
Her speeches included one to the Royal Society in 1988, followed by another to the UN General Assembly in 1989. ===Foreign affairs=== Thatcher appointed Lord Carrington, an ennobled member of the party and former Secretary of State for Defence, to run the Foreign Office in 1979.
With the 1975 Portuguese collapse in the continent, South Africa (which had been Rhodesia's chief supporter) realised that their ally was a liability; black rule was inevitable, and the Thatcher government brokered a peaceful solution to end the Rhodesian Bush War in December 1979 via the Lancaster House Agreement.
The result was the new Zimbabwean nation under black rule in 1980. ====Cold War==== Thatcher's first foreign-policy crisis came with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
On 1 November 1990, Howe, by then the last remaining member of Thatcher's original 1979 cabinet, resigned from his position as deputy prime minister, ostensibly over her open hostility to moves towards European Monetary Union.
Unemployment did not fall below its May 1979 level during her tenure, only marginally falling below its April 1979 level in 1990.
One of the earliest satires of Thatcher as prime minister involved satirist John Wells (as writer and performer), actress Janet Brown (voicing Thatcher) and future Spitting Image producer John Lloyd (as co-producer), who in 1979 were teamed up by producer Martin Lewis for the satirical audio album The Iron Lady, which consisted of skits and songs satirising Thatcher's rise to power.
The album was released in September 1979.
Arriving at Downing Street she said, paraphrasing the Prayer of Saint Francis: In office throughout the 1980s, Thatcher was frequently described as the most powerful woman in the world. ===Domestic affairs=== ====Minorities==== Thatcher was Opposition leader and prime minister at a time of increased racial tension in Britain.
At the 1980 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher addressed the issue directly, with a speech written by the playwright Ronald Millar, that notably included the following lines: Thatcher's job approval rating fell to 23% by December 1980, lower than recorded for any previous prime minister.
The result was the new Zimbabwean nation under black rule in 1980. ====Cold War==== Thatcher's first foreign-policy crisis came with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
She condemned the invasion, said it showed the bankruptcy of a détente policy and helped convince some British athletes to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
Personal wealth rose by 80 per cent in real terms during the 1980s, mainly due to rising house prices and increased earnings.
Thatcher was heavily satirised on Spitting Image, and The Independent labelled her "every stand-up's dream". Thatcher was the subject or the inspiration for 1980s protest songs.
The 1981 England riots resulted in the British media discussing the need for a policy U-turn.
Bobby Sands began the 1981 strike, saying that he would fast until death unless prison inmates won concessions over their living conditions.
She delivered her speech as planned, though rewritten from her original draft, in a move that was widely supported across the political spectrum and enhanced her popularity with the public. On 6 November 1981, Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald had established the Anglo-Irish Inter-Governmental Council, a forum for meetings between the two governments.
Her popularity in her first years in office waned amid recession and rising unemployment, until victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her landslide re-election in 1983.
However, Scargill refused to hold a ballot on the strike, having previously lost three ballots on a national strike (in January and October 1982, and March 1983).
It was disclosed in 2017 that Thatcher had suggested threatening Saddam with chemical weapons after the invasion of Kuwait. ====Crisis in the Falklands==== On 2 April 1982, the ruling military junta in Argentina ordered the invasion of the British possessions of the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, triggering the Falklands War.
The "Falklands factor", an economic recovery beginning early in 1982, and a bitterly divided opposition all contributed to Thatcher's second election victory in 1983.
Thatcher frequently referred after the war to the "Falklands spirit"; suggests that this reflected her preference for the streamlined decision-making of her War Cabinet over the painstaking deal-making of peacetime cabinet government. ====Negotiating Hong Kong==== In September 1982 she visited China to discuss with Deng Xiaoping the sovereignty of Hong Kong after 1997.
Thatcher generally supported the welfare state while proposing to rid it of abuses. She promised in 1982 that the highly popular National Health Service was "safe in our hands".
She was chosen as the Woman of the Year 1982, the year in which the Falklands War began under her command and resulted in the British victory. In contrast to her relatively poor average approval rating as prime minister, Thatcher has since ranked highly in retrospective opinion polling and, according to YouGov, she is "see[n] in overall positive terms" by the British public.
It was followed by a 1982 TV special directed by Dick Clement, in which Thatcher was played by Angela Thorne. Since her premiership, Thatcher has been portrayed in a number of television programmes, documentaries, films and plays.
She would be made Lady Thatcher in her own right on her subsequent ennoblement in the House of Lords. In the Falklands, Margaret Thatcher Day has been marked each 10 January since 1992, commemorating her first visit to the Islands in January 1983, six months after the end of the Falklands War in June 1982. Thatcher became a member of the House of Lords in 1992 with a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire.
Her popularity in her first years in office waned amid recession and rising unemployment, until victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her landslide re-election in 1983.
Only 39% of union members voted Labour in the 1983 general election.
However, Scargill refused to hold a ballot on the strike, having previously lost three ballots on a national strike (in January and October 1982, and March 1983).
After the 1983 election the sale of state utilities accelerated; more than £29 billion was raised from the sale of nationalised industries, and another £18 billion from the sale of council houses.
Although Thatcher denied it at the time, it was revealed in 1991 that, while not directly training any Khmer Rouge, from 1983 the Special Air Service (SAS) was sent to secretly train "the armed forces of the Cambodian non-communist resistance" that remained loyal to Prince Norodom Sihanouk and his former prime minister Son Sann in the fight against the Vietnamese-backed puppet regime. Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to respond warmly to reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
A sharp disagreement came in 1983 when Reagan did not consult with her on the invasion of Grenada. During her first year as prime minister she supported NATO's decision to deploy US nuclear cruise and Pershing II missiles in Western Europe, permitting the US to station more than 160 cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common, starting in November 1983 and triggering mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
The "Falklands factor", an economic recovery beginning early in 1982, and a bitterly divided opposition all contributed to Thatcher's second election victory in 1983.
She would be made Lady Thatcher in her own right on her subsequent ennoblement in the House of Lords. In the Falklands, Margaret Thatcher Day has been marked each 10 January since 1992, commemorating her first visit to the Islands in January 1983, six months after the end of the Falklands War in June 1982. Thatcher became a member of the House of Lords in 1992 with a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire.
She survived an assassination attempt by the Provisional IRA in the 1984 Brighton hotel bombing and achieved a political victory against the National Union of Mineworkers in the 1984–85 miners' strike. Thatcher was re-elected for a third term with another landslide in 1987, but her subsequent support for the Community Charge ("poll tax") was widely unpopular, and her increasingly Eurosceptic views on the European Community were not shared by others in her cabinet.
The miners' strike of 1984–85 was the biggest and most devastating confrontation between the unions and the government under Thatcher. In March 1984, the National Coal Board (NCB) proposed to close 20 of the 174 state-owned mines and cut 20,000 jobs out of 187,000.
This led to the strike being declared illegal by the High Court of Justice. Thatcher refused to meet the union's demands and compared the miners' dispute to the Falklands War, declaring in a speech in 1984: "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands.
In 1984, the year of the miners' strike, there were 1,221, resulting in the loss of more than 27 million working days.
Violence in Northern Ireland escalated significantly during the hunger strikes. Thatcher narrowly escaped injury in an IRA assassination attempt at a Brighton hotel early in the morning on 12 October 1984.
She went on a state visit to the Soviet Union in 1984 and met with Gorbachev and Council of Ministers chairman Nikolai Ryzhkov. ====Ties with the US==== Despite opposite personalities, Thatcher bonded quickly with US president Ronald Reagan.
After the two-year negotiations, Thatcher conceded to the PRC government and signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration in Beijing in 1984, agreeing to hand over Hong Kong's sovereignty in 1997. ====Apartheid in South Africa==== Despite saying that she was in favour of "peaceful negotiations" to end apartheid, Thatcher opposed sanctions imposed on South Africa by the Commonwealth and the European Economic Community (EEC).
This included "[c]asting herself as President Botha's candid friend", and inviting him to visit the UK in 1984, in spite of the "inevitable demonstrations" against his government.
We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty." Thatcher's opponents presented her words as indicating contempt for the working class and have been employed in criticism of her ever since. After a year out on strike in March 1985, the NUM leadership conceded without a deal.
Thatcher reflected on the end of the strike in her statement that "if anyone has won" it was "the miners who stayed at work" and all those "that have kept Britain going". The government closed 25 unprofitable coal mines in 1985, and by 1992 a total of 97 mines had been closed; those that remained were privatised in 1994.
Thatcher's tenure also witnessed a sharp decline in trade union density, with the percentage of workers belonging to a trade union falling from 57.3% in 1979 to 49.5% in 1985.
On 15 November 1985, Thatcher and FitzGerald signed the Hillsborough Anglo-Irish Agreement, which marked the first time a British government had given the Republic of Ireland an advisory role in the governance of Northern Ireland.
Thatcher's preference for defence ties with the US was demonstrated in the Westland affair of 1985–86, when she acted with colleagues to allow the struggling helicopter manufacturer Westland to refuse a takeover offer from the Italian firm Agusta in favour of the management's preferred option, a link with Sikorsky Aircraft.
states: Michael Shea, the Queen's press secretary, in 1986 leaked stories of a deep rift to The Sunday Times.
Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine, who had supported the Agusta deal, resigned from the government in protest. In April 1986 she permitted US F-111s to use Royal Air Force bases for the bombing of Libya in retaliation for the alleged Libyan bombing of a Berlin discothèque, citing the right of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
She survived an assassination attempt by the Provisional IRA in the 1984 Brighton hotel bombing and achieved a political victory against the National Union of Mineworkers in the 1984–85 miners' strike. Thatcher was re-elected for a third term with another landslide in 1987, but her subsequent support for the Community Charge ("poll tax") was widely unpopular, and her increasingly Eurosceptic views on the European Community were not shared by others in her cabinet.
Believing that the single market would result in political integration, Thatcher's opposition to further European integration became more pronounced during her premiership and particularly after her third government in 1987.
Her electoral successes were dubbed a "historic hat trick" by the British press in 1987. Thatcher ranked highest among living persons in the 2002 BBC poll 100 Greatest Britons.
Her speeches included one to the Royal Society in 1988, followed by another to the UN General Assembly in 1989. ===Foreign affairs=== Thatcher appointed Lord Carrington, an ennobled member of the party and former Secretary of State for Defence, to run the Foreign Office in 1979.
Following Reagan–Gorbachev summit meetings and reforms enacted by Gorbachev in the USSR, she declared in November 1988 that "We're not in a Cold War now", but rather in a "new relationship much wider than the Cold War ever was".
The new tax was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales the following year, and proved to be among the most unpopular policies of her premiership.
Her speeches included one to the Royal Society in 1988, followed by another to the UN General Assembly in 1989. ===Foreign affairs=== Thatcher appointed Lord Carrington, an ennobled member of the party and former Secretary of State for Defence, to run the Foreign Office in 1979.
Bush, who succeeded Reagan in 1989, she recommended intervention, and put pressure on Bush to deploy troops in the Middle East to drive the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait.
Since Nigel Lawson's resignation as Chancellor in October 1989, polls consistently showed that she was less popular than her party.
A self-described conviction politician, Thatcher always insisted that she did not care about her poll ratings and pointed instead to her unbeaten election record. In December 1989, Thatcher was challenged for the leadership of the Conservative Party by the little-known backbench MP Sir Anthony Meyer.
These ratings, together with Thatcher's combative personality and tendency to override collegiate opinion, contributed to further discontent within her party. In July 1989, Thatcher removed Geoffrey Howe as foreign secretary after he and Lawson had forced her to agree to a plan for Britain to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM).
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was a British who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990.
She resigned as prime minister and party leader in 1990, after a challenge was launched to her leadership.
Public disquiet culminated in a 70,000 to 200,000-strong demonstration in London in March 1990; the demonstration around Trafalgar Square deteriorated into riots, leaving 113 people injured and 340 under arrest.
Stoppages then fell steadily throughout the rest of Thatcher's premiership; in 1990, there were 630 and fewer than 2 million working days lost, and they continued to fall thereafter.
Please never mention the railways to me again." Shortly before her resignation in 1990, she accepted the arguments for privatisation, which her successor John Major implemented in 1994. The privatisation of public assets was combined with financial deregulation to fuel economic growth.
Polls suggested that fewer than one in three British citizens approved of her decision. Thatcher was in the US on a state visit when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990.
She expressed concern that a united Germany would align itself more closely with the Soviet Union and move away from NATO. In March 1990, Thatcher held a Chequers seminar on the subject of German reunification that was attended by members of her cabinet and historians such as Norman Stone, George Urban, Timothy Garton Ash and Gordon A.
Her supporters in the party viewed the result as a success and rejected suggestions that there was discontent within the party. Opinion polls in September 1990 reported that Labour had established a 14% lead over the Conservatives, and by November, the Conservatives had been trailing Labour for 18 months.
Britain joined the ERM in October 1990.
On 1 November 1990, Howe, by then the last remaining member of Thatcher's original 1979 cabinet, resigned from his position as deputy prime minister, ostensibly over her open hostility to moves towards European Monetary Union.
Thatcher had lobbied for Major in the leadership contest against Heseltine, but her support for him waned in later years. ==Later life== === Return to backbenches: 1990–1992 === Thatcher returned to the backbenches as a constituency parliamentarian after leaving the premiership.
Unemployment did not fall below its May 1979 level during her tenure, only marginally falling below its April 1979 level in 1990.
In a 1991 interview for Today, Thatcher stated that she thought Powell had "made a valid argument, if in sometimes regrettable terms". Around this time she gave her first Commons speech as a shadow transport minister and highlighted the need for investment in British Rail.
The Community Charge was abolished in 1991 by her successor, John Major.
Although Thatcher denied it at the time, it was revealed in 1991 that, while not directly training any Khmer Rouge, from 1983 the Special Air Service (SAS) was sent to secretly train "the armed forces of the Cambodian non-communist resistance" that remained loyal to Prince Norodom Sihanouk and his former prime minister Son Sann in the fight against the Vietnamese-backed puppet regime. Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to respond warmly to reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Bush was apprehensive about the plan, prompting Thatcher to remark to him during a telephone conversation: "This was no time to go wobbly!" Thatcher's government supplied military forces to the international coalition in the build-up to the Gulf War, but she had resigned by the time hostilities began on 17 January 1991.
In 1991, she and her husband Denis moved to a house in Chester Square, a residential garden square in central London's Belgravia district. Thatcher was hired by the tobacco company Philip Morris as a "geopolitical consultant" in July 1992, for $250,000 per year and an annual contribution of $250,000 to her foundation.
After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher (of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire) which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords.
Thatcher reflected on the end of the strike in her statement that "if anyone has won" it was "the miners who stayed at work" and all those "that have kept Britain going". The government closed 25 unprofitable coal mines in 1985, and by 1992 a total of 97 mines had been closed; those that remained were privatised in 1994.
Major oversaw an upturn in Conservative support in the 17 months leading to the 1992 general election, and led the party to a fourth successive victory on 9 April 1992.
Aged 66, she retired from the House of Commons at the 1992 general election, saying that leaving the Commons would allow her more freedom to speak her mind. ===Post-Commons: 1992–2003=== On leaving the Commons, Thatcher became the first former British prime minister to set up a foundation; the British wing of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation was dissolved in 2005 due to financial difficulties.
In 1991, she and her husband Denis moved to a house in Chester Square, a residential garden square in central London's Belgravia district. Thatcher was hired by the tobacco company Philip Morris as a "geopolitical consultant" in July 1992, for $250,000 per year and an annual contribution of $250,000 to her foundation.
Pinochet was released in March 2000 on medical grounds by Home Secretary Jack Straw. At the 2001 general election, Thatcher supported the Conservative campaign, as she had done in 1992 and 1997, and in the Conservative leadership election following its defeat, she endorsed Iain Duncan Smith over Kenneth Clarke.
She would be made Lady Thatcher in her own right on her subsequent ennoblement in the House of Lords. In the Falklands, Margaret Thatcher Day has been marked each 10 January since 1992, commemorating her first visit to the Islands in January 1983, six months after the end of the Falklands War in June 1982. Thatcher became a member of the House of Lords in 1992 with a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire.
Thatcher reflected on the end of the strike in her statement that "if anyone has won" it was "the miners who stayed at work" and all those "that have kept Britain going". The government closed 25 unprofitable coal mines in 1985, and by 1992 a total of 97 mines had been closed; those that remained were privatised in 1994.
Please never mention the railways to me again." Shortly before her resignation in 1990, she accepted the arguments for privatisation, which her successor John Major implemented in 1994. The privatisation of public assets was combined with financial deregulation to fuel economic growth.
Blair rebranded the party "New Labour" in 1994 with the aim of increasing its appeal beyond its traditional supporters, and to attract those who had supported Thatcher, such as the "Essex man".
She bought the Trident nuclear missile submarine system from the US to replace Polaris, tripling the UK's nuclear forces at an eventual cost of more than £12 billion (at 1996–97 prices).
Thatcher frequently referred after the war to the "Falklands spirit"; suggests that this reflected her preference for the streamlined decision-making of her War Cabinet over the painstaking deal-making of peacetime cabinet government. ====Negotiating Hong Kong==== In September 1982 she visited China to discuss with Deng Xiaoping the sovereignty of Hong Kong after 1997.
After the two-year negotiations, Thatcher conceded to the PRC government and signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration in Beijing in 1984, agreeing to hand over Hong Kong's sovereignty in 1997. ====Apartheid in South Africa==== Despite saying that she was in favour of "peaceful negotiations" to end apartheid, Thatcher opposed sanctions imposed on South Africa by the Commonwealth and the European Economic Community (EEC).
Pinochet was released in March 2000 on medical grounds by Home Secretary Jack Straw. At the 2001 general election, Thatcher supported the Conservative campaign, as she had done in 1992 and 1997, and in the Conservative leadership election following its defeat, she endorsed Iain Duncan Smith over Kenneth Clarke.
Critics on the left accused her of pandering to racism. Many Thatcherite policies had an influence on the Labour Party, which returned to power in 1997 under Tony Blair.
I think he genuinely has moved." Blair responded in kind: "She was a thoroughly determined person, and that is an admirable quality." In 1998, Thatcher called for the release of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when Spain had him arrested and sought to try him for human rights violations.
In 1999, she visited him while he was under house arrest near London.
In 1999, Time deemed Thatcher one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century.
Pinochet was released in March 2000 on medical grounds by Home Secretary Jack Straw. At the 2001 general election, Thatcher supported the Conservative campaign, as she had done in 1992 and 1997, and in the Conservative leadership election following its defeat, she endorsed Iain Duncan Smith over Kenneth Clarke.
Pinochet was released in March 2000 on medical grounds by Home Secretary Jack Straw. At the 2001 general election, Thatcher supported the Conservative campaign, as she had done in 1992 and 1997, and in the Conservative leadership election following its defeat, she endorsed Iain Duncan Smith over Kenneth Clarke.
In 2002 she encouraged George W.
Bush to aggressively tackle the "unfinished business" of Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and praised Blair for his "strong, bold leadership" in standing with Bush in the Iraq War. She broached the same subject in her Strategies for a Changing World, which was published in April 2002 and dedicated to Ronald Reagan, writing that there would be no peace in the Middle East until Saddam was toppled.
In March 2002 she announced that, on doctors' advice, she would cancel all planned speaking engagements and accept no more. On 26 June 2003, Thatcher's husband Sir Denis died aged 88, and was cremated on 3 July at Mortlake Crematorium in London. ===Final years: 2003–2013=== On 11 June 2004, Thatcher (against doctor's orders) attended the state funeral service for Ronald Reagan.
Her electoral successes were dubbed a "historic hat trick" by the British press in 1987. Thatcher ranked highest among living persons in the 2002 BBC poll 100 Greatest Britons.
In March 2002 she announced that, on doctors' advice, she would cancel all planned speaking engagements and accept no more. On 26 June 2003, Thatcher's husband Sir Denis died aged 88, and was cremated on 3 July at Mortlake Crematorium in London. ===Final years: 2003–2013=== On 11 June 2004, Thatcher (against doctor's orders) attended the state funeral service for Ronald Reagan.
According to the BBC in 2004, Thatcher "managed to destroy the power of the trade unions for almost a generation".
In March 2002 she announced that, on doctors' advice, she would cancel all planned speaking engagements and accept no more. On 26 June 2003, Thatcher's husband Sir Denis died aged 88, and was cremated on 3 July at Mortlake Crematorium in London. ===Final years: 2003–2013=== On 11 June 2004, Thatcher (against doctor's orders) attended the state funeral service for Ronald Reagan.
Aged 66, she retired from the House of Commons at the 1992 general election, saying that leaving the Commons would allow her more freedom to speak her mind. ===Post-Commons: 1992–2003=== On leaving the Commons, Thatcher became the first former British prime minister to set up a foundation; the British wing of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation was dissolved in 2005 due to financial difficulties.
Thatcher flew to California with the Reagan entourage, and attended the memorial service and interment ceremony for the president at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. In 2005, Thatcher criticised how Blair had decided to invade Iraq two years previously.
Earlier that month, Thatcher was named the most competent prime minister of the past 30 years in an Ipsos MORI poll. Thatcher's daughter Carol first revealed that her mother had dementia in 2005, saying "Mum doesn't read much any more because of her memory loss".
Geoffrey Howe, Baron Howe of Aberavon, was also in attendance and said of his former leader: "Her real triumph was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible." In 2006, Thatcher attended the official Washington, D.C.
In February 2007 Thatcher became the first living British prime minister to be honoured with a statue in the Houses of Parliament.
Journalist Michael White, writing in the aftermath of the 2007–08 financial crisis, challenged the view that her reforms were still a net benefit.
In her 2008 memoir, Carol wrote that her mother "could hardly remember the beginning of a sentence by the time she got to the end".
In 2009 she was hospitalised again when she fell and broke her arm.
Thatcher returned to 10 Downing Street in late November 2009 for the unveiling of an official portrait by artist Richard Stone, an unusual honour for a living former prime minister.
The long-term effects of her policies on manufacturing remain contentious. Speaking in Scotland in 2009, Thatcher insisted she had no regrets and was right to introduce the poll tax and withdraw subsidies from "outdated industries, whose markets were in terminal decline", subsidies that created "the culture of dependency, which had done such damage to Britain".
A 2010 review by the IEA states: "it does seem to be the case that once competition and/or effective regulation was introduced, performance improved markedly [...] But I hasten to emphasise again that the literature is not unanimous." Thatcher always resisted privatising British Rail and was said to have told Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley: "Railway privatisation will be the Waterloo of this government.
She last attended a sitting of the House of Lords on 19 July 2010, and on 30 July 2011 it was announced that her office in the Lords had been closed.
Stone was previously commissioned to paint portraits of the Queen and Queen Mother. On 4 July 2011, Thatcher was to attend a ceremony for the unveiling of a statue to Ronald Reagan, outside the US Embassy in London, but was unable to attend due to her frail health.
She last attended a sitting of the House of Lords on 19 July 2010, and on 30 July 2011 it was announced that her office in the Lords had been closed.
She had been staying at a suite in the Ritz Hotel in London since December 2012 after having difficulty with stairs at her Chester Square home in Belgravia.
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was a British who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990.
In 2013, she died of a stroke at the Ritz Hotel, London, at the age of 87. A polarising figure in British politics, Thatcher is nonetheless viewed favourably in historical rankings of British prime ministers.
She later recounted how she was first struck by her mother's dementia when, in conversation, Thatcher confused the Falklands and Yugoslav conflicts; she recalled the pain of needing to tell her mother repeatedly that her husband Denis was dead. ===Death and funeral: 2013=== Baroness Thatcher died on 8 April 2013, at the age of 87, after suffering a stroke.
In contrast to Blair, the Conservative Party leader at the time William Hague attempted to distance himself and the party from Thatcher's economic policies in an attempt to gain public approval. Shortly after Thatcher's death in 2013, Scottish first minister Alex Salmond argued that her policies had the "unintended consequence" of encouraging Scottish devolution.
In 2015 she topped a poll by Scottish Widows, a major financial services company, as the most influential woman of the past 200 years; and in 2016 topped BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour Power List of women judged to have had the biggest impact on female lives over the past 70 years.
In 2015 she topped a poll by Scottish Widows, a major financial services company, as the most influential woman of the past 200 years; and in 2016 topped BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour Power List of women judged to have had the biggest impact on female lives over the past 70 years.
It was disclosed in 2017 that Thatcher had suggested threatening Saddam with chemical weapons after the invasion of Kuwait. ====Crisis in the Falklands==== On 2 April 1982, the ruling military junta in Argentina ordered the invasion of the British possessions of the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, triggering the Falklands War.
In 2020, Time magazine included Thatcher's name on its list of 100 Women of the Year.
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