"She had been offered the chance to get on and effectively she then refused to offer it to otherpeople. It destroyed the public's power to determine via parliament the services and prices of gas, electricity, telephone. I am reminded of this every time the debate comes up about whether more female bylines would reduce sexism in the media. She refused to reform social security, or even curb its abuse. of the 1600 libraries around the world which hold the CD-ROM. with the European Community when she Thatcher's passing is marked by street parties in Brixton, Belfast, Bristol, Derry, Glasgow and Liverpool, and seething bitterness among the mining families and communities she was allowed (including by scab union and Labour leaders) to destroy. Would we like her back? The truth lies somewhere between these extremes. She lost seven cabinet ministers on the Europe question, a record that permeated the party for years afterwards. The leading feminist Natasha Walter called Thatcher "the great unsung heroine of British feminism". 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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. But Margaret Thatcher did not hesitate, and the long, substantive lunch seemed to energize both future world leaders. This was my mother speaking at some point in the middle 1980s. Here is a selection of the best writing from commentators, politicians and journalists on the legacy of Margaret Thatcher's 11 years in power - and on her continuing impact in the time following her downfall, as figures from across the political spectrum examine the legacy of one of the most important political figures from the last half-century, this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama, key role not only in bringing about the first Gulf War, publicly advocate for the 2003 attack on Iraq, the Guardian reported upon the death last month of Hugo Chavez, the Daily Mail has morefemale bylines than any other UK paper, Alan Krueger, chair of Obama's council of economic advisers, nor does the balance of research evidence suggest that greater inequality acts as a spur to growth, decline in trade union membership and the rise in inequality, intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich, the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy, Rik Mayall's student rants in The Young Ones, wicked, incompetent mindset that was the spirit of the 80s, "very fashionable in the Guardian for a few months before the financial crisis". She became leader of the Conservatives the year I was born and prime minister when I was four. June 5, 1992 - Is named a life peer on the Queen's honor list. The Crown's Version of Margaret Thatcher's 1990 Downfall Takes a Lot of Liberties with . "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.". Published: Sunday 21st February 2021. she warned that she was not A big decline in traditional industries took place across Europe and the US in the 80s and 90s. 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. 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. "Thatcher as mother" seemed, to my tiddly mind, anathema. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one's enemies. After the 1987 election, Thatcher cut an increasingly isolated figure. She would, say some who knew her, have a found a way to finesse a change of direction by now. Still plumbing for the essence, we have to examine other bits of residue. The first time I met Margaret Thatcher, I swear she was wearing gloves. MT prayed on the Less noted . Maggie and Me: How Thatcher Changed Britain. By 1987, anti-Tory tactical voting had taken hold. outlook at the time. Or perhaps it was just because I was a little kid and more interested in them Weetabix skinheads, Roland Rat and Knight Rider. She and her successors John Major and Tony Blair presided over a quarter century of unprecedented prosperity. Maybe it was the sound of the estuary pronunciation robbing her of her aspirational airs, a prototype of the Bouquet/Bucket joke. 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. Flags were flying over Port Stanley on 14 June. On June 11th, 2004 Margaret Thatcher gave a speech to the American people at Ronald Reagan's funeral. First was the sheer depth of hostility towards the Tories in general. Larkin's evoked the treacherous mind (of an adversary, of a cabinet colleague) helplessly exposed to her steely regard. What is really left by Thatcher to history? The core of this site is a massive database of MT's public statements of all kinds across the years (speeches, interviews, press conferences, etc), searchable by date, subject, importance, and keyword. . Those abandoned places are also landmarks in Thatcher's Britain. Making sure the verdict wasn't purloined by others. The remainder are listed without a text because sometimes no record survives Margaret Thatcher Curriculum Vitae. The organised working class, almost alone, had put Britain on the skids. On 30 October 1990 she made the first of the a new dominance from Brussels". An Inconvenient Truth About Margaret Thatcher: She Was a Climate Hawk. The economy had become more productive, more competitive and more profitable. The widening of income differences between rich and poor that took place during the 80s (particularly from 1985) is the most rapid ever recorded. And the miners. Selling public housing to the tenants who occupied it was another, on top of the denationalisation of industries and utilities once thought to be ineluctably and for ever in the hands of the state. Meeting Gorbachev for the first time in December 1984 she declared: "We The woman dubbed as the Iron Lady during her premiership made her last tearful speech as the leader of the country from the doorstep of . And we won back three we lost at by-elections. The pomp and circumstance that will crown her funeral was proffered by Brown, to some shudders from his own side. Maggie! In retrospect, in much dissenting commentary there was often a taint of unexamined sexism. This book shows how. By raising the pay of their own staff to a minimum of the living wage, they have set an example which a growing number of large private-sector employers have followed. She hated what she called "that French phrase laissez faire". speech in the House of Commons, her Please activate cookies in order to turn autoplay off. I am, it's safe to say, one of Thatcher's children. "Maggie Thatcher" two fierce trochees set against the gentler iambic pulse of Britain's postwar welfare state. 4.44 avg rating 39 ratings 2 editions. It was meant as a term of condemnation, a concise way of arguing that riots in the street or the devastation of a pit village were the inevitable features of this new land that had arisen in the 1980s, a country reshaped by the woman at the top. 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 . But if today's Guardian readers time-travelled to the late 70s they might be irritated to discover that tomorrow's TV listings were a state secret not shared with daily newspapers. 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.". 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. 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.". Steely, certainly. The late Benazir Bhutto later gave me much the same account. It isn't sad for anyone else. I think on balance Thatcher did for Britain what was needed at the time. . 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. But for others, the change in landscape is all too real. But can he shake off the shackles of the past and prove there is an alternative? 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. This has been a terrible labour, she said. declared that she wanted our money back. "What's going on there, mate?" We are all on our own. Today we have four coalmines and around 2,000 miners. Edited and full versions of Margaret Thatcher's 'The lady's not for turning' speech, delivered at the Conservative party conference in Brighton on 10 October 1980 Gaze at the telephone. The most widely used measure of income differences shows inequality increasing by more than a third during her period in office. It is my view that Thatcher authorised the killings at Gibraltar. She made her maiden Hayek was appointed a Companion of Honour in the 1984 Birthday honours for "services to the study of Economics". The machinery of modern political management polls, consulting, focus groups is deployed mainly to discover what will make aparty and politician better liked, or worse, disliked. That bonuses and top incomes continue to rise while the incomes of the rest of the population struggle to keep up with inflation tells us that what we needed was legislation to ensure employee representation on company boards and remuneration committees as many of our European partners have. In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon. This demand for respectful silence in the wake of a public figure's death is not just misguided but dangerous. Keith Joseph was her guru. In October 1984 she survived an IRA bomb during the Conservative Conference British Labour MP Tom Watson decreed: "I hope that people on the left of politics respect a family in grief today." Prime Minister Thatcher delivered the fourth speech to Congress by a British prime minister. She had just finished the first volume of her memoirs, which she insisted was all her own work. But she also provided great material. Her unforgettable presence, but also her policy achievements. We were wary of this. Privatisation did not feature in the Conservative election campaign, while the tougher approach to trade union reform had only really become evident since the winter of discontent, and even then was a gradual process. 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. These developments set a benchmark. Until her final poll-tax hubris, she knew when swerving was the better part of valour and despite that famous one-liner, she was sometimes for turning. She became deaf to all warning. The spell he was referring to is the unseen bond that connects us all and prevents us from being subjugated by tyranny. Perhaps, though, Thatcher "the monster" didn't die yesterday from a stroke, perhaps that Thatcher died as she sobbed self-pitying tears as she was driven, defeated, from Downing Street, ousted by her own party. Not until well out of office, angry and lacking her old judgment, did she lead the rabidly Eurosceptic renegades. I was just behind her at the civic museum in Dubrovnik when the local guide explained a model showing the elaborate system of ancient wells and tunnels that had provided the city with fresh water no matter how fierce the siege. Margaret has spent her life fighting for social justice and equality. In a way, they are all Thatcher's children.". Reagan's decision to bomb Libya in April 1986 and spoke 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. Margaret Thatcher's Speech to Congress. Among them was loyalist Brian Nelson, a former British soldier and member of the Ulster Defence Association. She abolished city-wide local government, capped spending and expected the poll tax to further undermine alternative voices. her intention to allow her name to go forward to the second ballot, she She was lucky, in her enemies and friends notably Reagan in the Falklands conflict. There are many reasons for this. Margaret Thatcher was a hugely divisive figure in British politics. "Respecting the grief" of Thatcher's family members is appropriate if one is friends with them or attends a wake they organize, but the protocols are fundamentally different when it comes to public discourse about the person's life and political acts. a I will be the heir to Margaret Thatcher. There turned out to be no such thing as society, at least in the sense we used to understand it. The family silver was squandered on bribing voters rather than modernising the economy. This is a style whose absence is much missed. Nor, contrary to myth, did Thatcherism emerge fully formed in May 1979. The most important thing Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did for British politics was to understand the significance of Thatcherism and to decide not to reverse it, indeed to carry it forward. When Sir Geoffrey Howe resigned in consequence, she replied Her vision for Britain made a lot of people feel like outsiders, which made them the ideal audience for comedy. But she became a very effective one. Everyone knows where they were when they heard. He was listened to with rapt attention, unsurprisingly, since in both Washington and Westminster his "nudge" theories are saving significant sums of taxpayers' money. Sunstein worked for a Democratic president, but did not meet the Labour leader or key advisers. As I scan the statements of my memory bank for early deposits (it'd be a kid's memory bank account at a neurological NatWest where you're encouraged to become a greedy little capitalist with an escalating family of porcelain pigs), I see her in her hairy helmet, condescending on Nationwide, eviscerating eunuch MPs and baffled BBC fuddy duddies with her General Zodd stare and coldly condemning the IRA. My dad, I suspect, did. Her onslaught on the trade unions left those movements pale imitations of their former selves, too weak to resist the drive to the "flexible labour market" which has seen Britain become the home of what one senior Labour figure calls "crappy jobs", with low pay and no protection.