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Margaret
Thatcher
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Margaret Thatcher, one of the most
important British politicians of the 20th century, died Monday morning after
suffering a stroke. She was 87.
Thatcher was the first woman to become
U.K. prime minister and Britain's only prime minister of the 20th century to
win three consecutive terms.
After leading the Conservatives to
victory in the 1979 election, Thatcher shook Britain to its economic roots in a
relentless battle to restructure the country.
Richard Longworth of the Chicago
Tribune described Thatcher in 1989 as "perhaps the most admired, hated,
fascinating, boring, radical and conservative leader in the Western
world."
The next year she would be forced from
office by her own party.
The mayor's daughter
Born Margaret Hilda Roberts in
Grantham, England in 1925 she was the second daughter of Alfred and Beatrice
Roberts. Her father eventually owned two grocery stores (the family lived above
one of them) and would become mayor of Grantham.
He had a huge influence on Margaret, as
she observed when she became prime minister.
"Of course I just owe almost
everything to my father. He brought me up to believe almost all the things I do
believe."
She graduated from Oxford in 1947 after
majoring in chemistry. She was barred from joining the all-male Oxford Union debating
society, so she joined Oxford's conservative association and in 1946 became its
first female president.
She ran for Parliament in 1950, the
youngest person seeking a seat. She lost — and lost again the next year.
At the end of 1951 she married Denis
Thatcher, a wealthy, divorced businessman she met in 1949.
Since graduating, Margaret had been
working as a research chemist. She returned to university and earned a law
degree in 1953. A multi-tasker, she gave birth that year to twins and continued
to be politically active.
After being called to the bar she
specialized in patent law and then tax law, until 1961.
Elected to Parliament on her third try
In 1959 she was elected as the MP from
Finchley. Two years later then prime minister Harold Macmillan named her
parliamentary secretary to the minister of pensions and insurance.
From 1964 to 1970 the Labour Party
governed and Thatcher held various portfolios in the opposition shadow cabinet.
When the Conservatives were back in
power under Edward Heath, Thatcher was the secretary of state for education and
science, the only woman in the cabinet.
She got attention when she abolished a
free milk program for school children, and was dubbed 'Thatcher the milk
snatcher' by the Labour opposition.
Heath resigned as leader after losing
the 1974 election and his successor was the first woman to lead the
Conservatives, Margaret Thatcher.
"I am not a consensus politician.
I am a conviction politician," Thatcher announced when she took over in
1975.
The Iron Lady
That kind of approach earned her the
nickname the Iron Lady, which she wore proudly. That description originated in
the Russian media after she harshly denounced Soviet expansionism and
questioned the long-standing Western policy of detente with the Soviet Union in
1976.
Here's an example of how she turned the
nickname to her advantage in the 1979 election campaign, at a rally in Birmingham:
"We took that risk in 1976 when we warned the nation of the growing
dangers of Soviet expansion. And what happened? The Russians said that I was an
Iron Lady. They were right. Britain needs an Iron Lady."
Her campaign slogan was "Labour
isn't working," a slogan that U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt
Romney borrowed for his own campaign in 2012, "Obama isn't working."
Two years before she took the reins as
Conservative Party leader, Thatcher said on the BBC: "I don't think there
will be a woman prime minister in my lifetime."
But after winning the May 3, 1979
election, Margaret Thatcher became prime minister the next day.
Her victory followed six weeks of
public sector strikes known as the winter of discontent, which caused deep difficulties
for the Labour government and eventually led to its fall.
Once in office Thatcher slashed the tax
rates for the wealthiest Britons, increased the value-added tax (VAT), reduced
government subsidies and began to sell off state-owned enterprises and public
housing.
The number of unemployed quickly
doubled.
"We shall not be diverted from our
course," she told the party conference in Brighton in 1980. She continued:
"To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase
the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady's
not for turning."
By March 1982, the Conservatives had
fallen to third place in public opinion polls, with just a 22 per cent approval
rating.
A bold decision to go to war
The next month, there was a huge
opportunity to turn that plummeting support around: Argentina's military
dictatorship seized the Falkland Islands, a British overseas territory in the
South Atlantic Ocean, which Argentina also claimed.
If politics is the art of knowing what
to do next, Thatcher showed she had the right stuff.
"I worried stiff. It was a
decision which had to be taken, a very bold courageous decision," she
recalled in a 1983 interview with the CBC's Barbara Frum.
A naval task force was quickly
dispatched. After 10 weeks and the loss of 255 British lives, Argentina
surrendered. "Great Britain is great again," Thatcher shouted to a
jubilant crowd outside her residence.
Thatcher called an early election in
1983 and won a larger majority, although with a popular vote lower than in
1979.
Thatcherism
Thatcher continued to forge ahead with
her policies, known as Thatcherism. She succeeded in curbing union power,
especially with the defeat of mineworkers in 1984-85.
She took on the Irish Republican Army,
but had little success in solving the crisis in Northern Ireland. In 1984 the
Provisional IRA tried to kill her by placing a bomb in her hotel in Brighton.
Five people were killed, Thatcher's bathroom was destroyed, but she and her
husband emerged unscathed.
In a 1986 profile of Thatcher in The
New Yorker magazine, John Newhouse wrote: "Her policies are blamed for
Britain's having become a net importer of manufactured goods — for the first
time since the days of Henry VIII." Newhouse went on to note that,
according to the IMF, the average Briton had become poorer than the average
Italian.
Thatcher would stay the course.
"This government has rolled back the frontiers of the state and will roll
them back still further," she triumphantly declared at the party
conference in October 1986.
The unemployment rate was dropping at
the time, although inflation was rising.
Close relations with Reagan, Gorbachev
Internationally, her close relationship
with then U.S. president Ronald Reagan continued. "We share so many of the
same goals, and a determination to achieve them," she said at a joint
appearance with Reagan in Washington in 1985.
She also formed a close relationship
with Mikhail Gorbachev, who led the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991. "I
like Mr. Gorbachev, we can do business together," she famously told BBC
interviewer John Cole in 1984.
Thatcher is also remembered for her
refusal to join 48 other Commonwealth nations, including Canada, in
implementing sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa.
In 1987, hoping to reap the benefits of
her now considerable international standing, including a successful visit to
Moscow, Thatcher again called an early election.
She won a then unprecedented third
term, although the Conservative popular support dropped slightly to 42.2 per
cent.
Her targets for rolling back the state
now included health care, education and utilities. By 1988, while no longer
operating with a deficit, her government cut tax rates, most dramatically for
those in the top tier.
A cabinet coup d'etat
Her leadership style was stirring up
dissent within her cabinet. One of the critical issues was the preparations for
economic and monetary union in Europe, with Thatcher more or less opposed. Her
chancellor of the exchequer, Nigel Lawson, would resign over the issue in
October 1989.
The other issue was Thatcher's stubborn
clinging to her plans for a community charge, damned as the poll tax. The tax
outraged taxpayers, culminating in a riot in Trafalgar Square in March 1990.
The Conservatives were trailing Labour by about 10 points in public opinion
polls and unemployment was rapidly increasing again.
Geoffrey Howe, her deputy prime
minister, resigned over both issues in November and followed that with a bitter
speech critical of Thatcher's leadership.
The party was now in full crisis. In a
challenge to her leadership later that month, Thatcher won on the first ballot
but, with an insufficient level of support, she soon resigned as party leader
and then, on Nov. 28, 1990, as prime minister.
Her voice breaking, she began her brief
but final speech as prime minister: "We're leaving Downing Street for the
last time after eleven-and-a-half wonderful years, and we're very happy that we
leave the United Kingdom in a very, very much better state than when we
came."
She continued to voice her opposition
to greater European economic integration, causing problems for her successor,
John Major.
She was appointed to the House of Lords
in 1992 as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven.
After a few years, and apart from
promoting her books, she was not often in the public eye. One notable moment
was in 1999 when she ostentatiously visited Augusto Pinochet in London. The
former head of a brutal military dictatorship in Chile was being detained in
London over war crimes charges.
In 2002, she announced she was retiring
from public speaking, following a series of minor strokes. In 2003 her husband
Denis died.
In 2008 her daughter Carol confirmed
that Thatcher was suffering from dementia.
Loved or loathed, Thatcher's personal
accomplishments will remain part of world history. In a 2007 radio address
marking the 25th anniversary of the end of the Falklands war, making use of an ancient Latin proverb,
she told her listeners, "Fortune does, in the end, favour the brave."
Source: cbc.ca
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