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She and her successors John Major and Tony Blair presided over a quarter century of unprecedented prosperity. 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. Chvez is gone, but the voters are likely to re-elect Chavismo on 14 April. 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. But within a few years, a third of children were poor, a sign of the yawning inequality from which the country never recovered. The late Benazir Bhutto later gave me much the same account. Thatcher's infamous failure to recognise the existence of society was a double failure. Texts for listed statements are available on the site in almost 70 per cent of cases. But perhaps her greatest legacy was New Labour. Without it, she would have been nothing. Whathappened at the hands of this woman's indifference to sentiment andgood sense in the early 1980s brought unnecessary calamity to the lives of several million people who losttheir jobs. I'd become a delinquent, living on heroin and benefit fraud. I know from my own indulgence in selfish behaviour that it's much easier to get what you want if you remove from consideration the effect your actions will have on others. Neither shift of ownership and power would have happened without a leader prepared to take risks with her life. Died: 24 February 2023, aged 90 Sir Bernard Ingham was Margaret Thatcher writ large. an interviewer "there is no such thing as society", "We have not 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!" Lecturing me about the comprehensive schools, of which she created more than any minister before or since. 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. Which raises the question: why isn't this happening now? Barack Obama, interestingly, said in his statement that she had "broken the glass ceiling for other women". By then, 1990, I was 15, adolescent and instinctively anti-establishment enough to regard her disdainfully. Endeavouring to persuade the British into an attitude of hostility to the group with which she spent 11 years deepening their connection must take a high place in any catalogue of anti-statesmanship. 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. "They did their thing with no chance of making any money, so they stood up in crappy pubs and said, 'I hate Maggie'. No sign they learned from her that markets don't move in to fill the gaps when the state is rolled back not then, not now. North sea oil was squandered when it should have seeded new industries. From the valleys of Wales to the far reaches of Scotland, miners were, by and large, socialists by nature but this was tempered by strong Christian beliefs. The government's job was to keep inflation low, not to boost growth through demand management. Public Statements of Margaret Thatcher on CD-ROM, 1945-90, edited Christopher The latest pit to close, Maltby in Yorkshire, still has a death and general purpose fund to help fellow miners and their families in times of hardship. Whatever else may be true of her, Thatcher engaged in incredibly consequential acts that affected millions of people around the world. She made her remarks It isn't sad for anyone else. It was not interested in a resolution. As a physician, she has been a vocal advocate for a single-payer healthcare system that would . defended Ronald Witness the steady downgrading of local government or the persistent assumption that the private sector will always be better than the public. deeply felt eulogy, filmed in advance and relayed by video link to screens in the National Cathedral in Washington. The most widely used measure of income differences shows inequality increasing by more than a third during her period in office. 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. Yet the Daily Mail has morefemale bylines than any other UK paper and is not exactly a totem of gender equality andfemale-friendliness. She added layers of her own to this intimacy, directing the creation of a single European market that surrendered important national powers to the collective. Those abandoned places are also landmarks in Thatcher's Britain. Respected, viewed with awe, a conviction politician, but if liking came into it, that was an accident. It was part of her conspicuous virtue, her indifference to familiar political conventions. Cameron's crew crudely imagine she intended it. 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. Secondly, the balance of power in industrial relations was shifted decisively in favour of employers. Narrowly judged, the Thatcher economic revolution was a success. When John Lennon was told of Elvis Presley's death, he famously responded: "Elvis died when he joined the army," meaning of course, that his combat clothing and clipped hair signalled the demise of the thrusting, Dionysian revolution of which he was the immaculate emblem. The Crown Season 4 brings with it a whole lot of change for Queen Elizabeth II's family and, more importantly, the United Kingdom. This is one small sign of how the left seems paralysed by a lack of intellectual curiosity and confidence. It was a watershed moment in Irish politics. talked of "Victorian Values". The "crime" he was accused of was to reclaim the oil revenue from local and foreign thieves, and use it to tackle poverty. She was immensely brisk. While "one nation" Conservatives condone some forms of redistribution, their libertarian . 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. Collins (Oxford University Press, 1998-2000). Reagan had sought to meet with then Prime Minister James Callaghan, but the request was rejected, and bucked to then Foreign Minister David Owen. But Labour is no less in thrall. She worked to enhance its corporate power. Is that what made her so formidable, her ability to ignore the suffering of others? of the 1600 libraries around the world which hold the CD-ROM. Unable to win the leadership ballot outright, she stood on the steps of Reagan's decision to bomb Libya in April 1986 and spoke Thatcher has said that negotiation, and not strong economic sanctions, is the way to persuade South Africa's white-minority government to dismantle apartheid. This was a historic step, and resulted in further reinforcing the US-UK alliance. Not even the Falklands war would push it off the tracks or damage it in any way. No gloves, or hats, except for royalty or at funerals, but feet on the table, whisky glass at hand, into the small hours of solitude, for want of male cronies in the masculine world she dominated for all her 11yearsin power. speech which caused the Soviets to dub her "the Iron Lady". There had been Churchill and his defiance; there had been Kipling and his If; there had been her father in his grocer's shop in Grantham. This does lead to divisions. Until then Thatcher had shown the strength of her weakness: a dislike of consensus and aversion to debate, leading to decisive action. Nations need to know the big picture of where they belong and, coinciding with the Thatcher appearance at the top, clarity had apparently broken through the clouds of historic ambivalence. 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. On Saturday, 27 February, he wrote in his diary: "PM getting great press went up to the [Capitol] Hill some of the senators tried to give her a bad time, she put them down firmly and with typical British courtesy.". On June 11th, 2004 Margaret Thatcher gave a speech to the American people at Ronald Reagan's funeral. MT won election as Conservative leader on 11 February 1975 and gave a euphoric A massive programme of social housing would be a good place to start, stimulating the economy. Not until well out of office, angry and lacking her old judgment, did she lead the rabidly Eurosceptic renegades. Cabinet rank in 1970 without appearing on television more than a handful Research papers can be complex, so best to give our essay writing service a bit more time on this one. To Britons of my generation, she . We were wary of this. All rights reserved. Among them was loyalist Brian Nelson, a former British soldier and member of the Ulster Defence Association. her intention to allow her name to go forward to the second ballot (20 Getting the record straight. The US academic Cass Sunstein was in Britain at the end of last month. In the 2004 eulogy in honor of the late president, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher uses a series of rhetorical devices such as parallelism, repetition, and ethos to convey the message in which Reagan was much more than an excellent president. As she said in her memoirs: "There was no one else." She, and Blair after her, brought an unprecedented dirigisme to the NHS, education, police and local government. Every quality had its obverse, but she had a myth-making charisma to capture the world's imagination. For those miners and their families to be referred to as the "enemy within" by Thatcher was something they would never forgive and, if there is rejoicing at her death in those communities she set out to destroy, it can only be understood against this background. She continued for some reason to consider me worth talking to. This regrettable transformation was blessed by a leader who probably did not know it was happening because she didn't care if it happened or not. Margaret Thatcher Curriculum Vitae. series of famous statements that marked the end of her premiership, replied A strong, so strong, leader. The organised working class, almost alone, had put Britain on the skids. Perhaps she had just come inside. In rich societies such as the UK, what makes most difference to the real quality of our lives is the quality of community life and social interaction. wrong with politics? 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. The author Nassim Taleb traded equations on a whiteboard with Gus O'Donnell, then head of the civil service, as they debated econometrics; at another, I watched entranced as Lord Heseltine argued urban policies with Harvard's Ed Glaeser. Copyright Margaret Thatcher Foundation 2023. 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 . This is a style whose absence is much missed. This was heightened by the suspicion that this power was not consciously deployed. Take the larger view. In 2009, Boris Johnson lamented that Thatcher had become "a boo-word in British politics, a shorthand for selfishness and me-first-ism, and devil-take-the-hindmost and grinding the faces of the poor.". The Independent has the story. There were rumours of a different philosophy, at least in personal relationships. Margaret Thatcher (October 13, 1925 - April 8, 2013) was the first woman prime minister of the United Kingdom and the first European woman to serve as a prime minister. As Danny Dorling says in his 2004 study of the rise in violence: "Those who perpetrated the social violence that was done to the lives of young men starting some 20 years ago [the mid-80s] are the prime suspects for most of the murders in Britain." But the left also needs to look beyond the turbulent events in Europe to appreciate the speed of global change and the complications this creates for welfare-laden economies: the dynamos and innovators are increasingly found in Africa, Asia and Latin America rather than France, Germany and Spain. Buy the CD-ROM from this link or find one People should pay her the respect of doing the same after her death. 4.44 avg rating 39 ratings 2 editions. They're not Thatcher. Gaze at the telephone. She was a radical conservative, known for dismantling nationalized industries and social services, weakening union power.She was also the first incumbent prime minister in the UK removed on a vote of their own party. In the north of Ireland she had the army and the Diplock courts which reached their peak in the mid 1980s. Thatcher came to power when the economy was approaching a moment of truth after three decades of poor performance relative to other western countries. Today we have four coalmines and around 2,000 miners. The eulogy is a good illustration of Thatcher's feelings for . Thanks to the comparison with Cameron, we are reminded that the Thatcher reign was more circumspect and well-managed than it seemed at the time. her intention to allow her name to go forward to the second ballot, she Britain was battered out of the somnolent conservatism, across awide front of economic policies and priorities, that had held back progress and, arguably, prosperity. Animals and Pets Anime Art Cars and Motor Vehicles Crafts and DIY Culture, Race, and Ethnicity Ethics and Philosophy Fashion Food and Drink History Hobbies Law Learning and Education Military Movies Music Place Podcasts and Streamers Politics Programming Reading, Writing, and Literature Religion and Spirituality Science Tabletop Games . Had Jim Callaghan won the 1979 election, he too would have faced the challenge of how to modernise an economy beset by high inflation, weak management and poor industrial relations. Are there, even, things we look back on with regret for their passing? The economic crisis that Britain faced had been created not by the working class itself, these wholesome people that Sir Keith remembered from his vac weeks in Barnsley, but by a working-class leadership that was determined to bring the whole system crashing down. Opponents and supporters of Margaret Thatcher will never agree about the value of her legacy, but as for her importance, her hypnotic hold on us, they are bound to find common ground. On the contrary, consumerism and materialism have been the norm ever since, rising inequality the consistent trend as the rich soar ever further away from the rest. There are still some great comics doing political material, with Mark Steel and Mark Thomas flying the flag of alternative comedy, while people such as Josie Long and Chris Coltrane find the funny in activism. This was her last important public statement. ROBIN HARRIS worked for the Conservative Party from 1978, and increasingly closely with Margaret Thatcher herself from 1985, writing her speeches and advising on policy. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one's enemies. Each now seems banal. Between 1945-90 every statement made by Margaret Thatcher is listed, . In the pantheon of this comedian's attacks on Thatcher, it was a retort that probably won't be treasured longer than the best lines from The Young Ones. 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. All rights reserved. (Interestingly, Currie also recalled that when she approached Thatcher in 1988 to get approval for the world's first national breast-screening programme, she tried to appeal to the PM initially "as a woman" but that swiftly proved unsuccessful. Even the nasty politics of "welfare reform" is driven by the high cost of subsidising low pay through in-work benefits, and indifference to the plight of jobless communities who have never recovered from de-industrialisation. The preface to the or copyright prevents reproduction on the site. (MT gave up public speaking in March 2002.) The virtual state funeral will rehearse again our extravagant fixations. 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. Ingham's rough redraft of my speech with very little success. Margaret Thatcher's most important long-term legacy is likely to be the huge rise in inequality that she caused. But the sense of community evaporated. At a banquet in Belgrade the press sat next to the so-called "Garden Girls", who were the secretaries at No 10.

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