In January 1976 she gave the The 70s was Britain's most equal decade. (They also reveal how she loved to surround herself with yes men who were always men.) Thatcher swept away those state monopolies in the new coinage of "privatisation" and transformed daily life in a way we now take for granted. How could anyone who was so resolutely Margaret Thatcher be anything else? But there were also cuts for basic-rate taxpayers: the 1988 budget, for example, cut the top rate of tax from 60% to 40% and the standard rate from 27% to 25%. Thatcher became a supremely self-confident leader. So the woman I met in Curzon Street, dimpling elegantly, can now be seen in history with an unexpected achievement to her credit. Thatcher is often credited with showing that you could get to the top whatever your background. The government's welfare bill has been swollen by tax credits and housing benefit caused by the labour market reforms and council house sales of the 1980s. There are pangs of nostalgia, yes, because for me she's all tied up with Hi-De-Hi and Speak and Spell and Blockbusters and "follow the bear". April 8, 2013. Secondly, the balance of power in industrial relations was shifted decisively in favour of employers. wrong with politics? She failed to replace those jobs with well-paid equivalents. "The News" was the pompous conduit through which we suckled at the barren baroness through newscaster wet-nurses, naturally; not direct from the steel teat. History will judge her, but not a country in Europe was untouched by Thatcher's example. 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. The Collected Speeches of Margaret Thatcher by. It was a visit warmly welcomed by President Reagan, with a resplendent state nner on the first evening. On the crucial morning in November 1990, her colleagues marched individually into her room and each told her to go. In the Meryl Streep film, The Iron Lady, it's the scenes of domesticity that appear most absurd. It'd be disingenuous to omit that there were a fair number of ding-dong-style celebratory messages amidst the pensive reflections on the end of an era. To the victors we saycongratulations. Among them was loyalist Brian Nelson, a former British soldier and member of the Ulster Defence Association. That said, by the mid-1980s it was clear that the Conservative government's economic policy was based on a handful of core principles. Until then Thatcher had shown the strength of her weakness: a dislike of consensus and aversion to debate, leading to decisive action. To have achieved all this alone would have made Margaret Thatcher a towering, transformational figure, one who altered the physical fabric of the nation. 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. Today's Tories walk in Thatcher's footsteps, battling with their estranged cousins in Ukip over who is the rightful heir to her Eurosceptic legacy. The credit boom both here and in the USA may have gone against her Grantham roots but was an equally inevitable result of deregulation and the temptation of easy loans for people hungry to improve living standards. She adopts an endearing and sentimental tone using ethos, repetition, and . Indeed, many of the policy innovations associated with Thatcher had already been pioneered by her predecessor. her maiden But it did, and the consequences seem impossible to reverse. The place was her office at the Department of Education, then in Curzon Street. She would appear in public to drape a hankie over a model BA plane tailfin because she disliked the unpatriotic logo with which they'd replaced the union flag (maybe don't privatise BA then), or to shuffle about some country pile arm in arm with a doddery Pinochet and tell us all what a fine fellow he was. was an Oxford student home for the university holidays. I have few recollections of Thatcher after the slowly chauffeured, weepy Downing Street cortege. At the October 1980 Conservative Conference, in the midst of economic recession, 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. to secure international action to repair the damaged ozone layer. speech which caused the Soviets to dub her "the Iron Lady", one The London mayor regretted that usage, but he surely understood its origins. At an international conference in Lisbon in the late 80s, the British faction, among whom were Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Malcolm Bradbury and myself, referred back to Thatcher constantly in our presentations. Margaret Thatcher Fast Facts | CNN Now it was the turn of the words, and no one, of course, would, against all the odds, do them better than the lady who, 25 years before, once thought the sky was beyond her limit. The leading feminist Natasha Walter called Thatcher "the great unsung heroine of British feminism". Second, it's now easier to see the scale of the setback she inflicted on Britain's idea of its own future. Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. It was thoroughly "wet". On 30 October 1990 she made the first of the Reagan's decision to bomb Libya, spoke A longer version of this article appears on Gerry Adams' blog, Margaret Thatcher was good at destruction. I don't see that. Many whom Reagan encountered in public life thought of him in this way, but most politicians would love to reach even "Grade B" status. She denounced Nelson Mandela and his ANC as "terrorists", something even David Cameron ultimately admitted was wrong. In November 1978, Hannaford and I organized a European fact-finding tour for Reagan, and the first stop was London. Draining down those 11 years to their memorable essence, what does one light upon? She refused to reform social security, or even curb its abuse. This book shows how. Feminists disowned her by insisting that though she was a woman, she was not a sister. The government's job was to keep inflation low, not to boost growth through demand management. Far from "smashing the glass ceiling", she was the aberration, the one who got through and then pulled the ladder up right after her. But at its crudest, the Thatcher ethos translated into the get-rich-quick, greed-is-good spirit of the 1980s, satirised by Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney creation. Margaret Thatcher Essay | Best Writing Service "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. drew an important moral from the Falklands war: "We have ceased to What did Margaret Thatcher have to say about climate change? And the miners. Back when we called her Maggie, when it seemed she would have her wish and "go on and on" in ruling the country, her opponents would lament some new step towards social ruin with the withering, two-word verdict: "Thatcher's Britain.". But, as the prince in Lampedusa's The Leopard says: "For things to remain the same, everything must change.". Hire writer now Order. Margaret Thatcher's Strong Stance on Climate Change The welfare state set out to ensure that no one, in the UK at least, would starve or freeze to death, or suffer or die for lack of medical or other care. This was heightened by the suspicion that this power was not consciously deployed. They're happy to share big windfall bonuses with their cronies, they'll stick up for deposed dictator chums when they're down on their luck, they'll find opportunities in business for people they care about. Analysis Of Ronald Reagan's Eulogy By Margaret Thatcher After all, the right began to refocus only after Tony Blair's second landslide, when people began to recognise they would not drift back into power. Much of any leader's record is unremarkable dross, and Thatcher was no exception. In 1979 she inherited a nation that was the "sick man of Europe", an object of constant transatlantic ridicule. The truth lies somewhere between these extremes. 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. As she said in her memoirs: "There was no one else." Sent Bobby Sands to an Irish hero's grave without a blink. The drastic results of these policies were intentional. In fact, Margaret Thatcher was known for her lack of a sense of humour. Reagan would often hasten to remind those paying tribute to his cold war strategy that it was, in the strictest sense of the term, a team effort. 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. The day before she died I passed through Greenock on the train. studying Thatcher's speeches . In short, miners believed in society. Perhaps my early apathy and indifference are a result of what Thatcher deliberately engendered, the idea that "there is no such thing as society", that we are alone on our journey through life, solitary atoms of consciousness. A Soviet . 'The Crown' Season 4: Did Margaret Thatcher Really Sound - Decider performance at a Press Conference afterwards. As the coalition sets about shrinking the welfare state, it's still embarked on Thatcher's project of rolling back the frontiers of the state, dismantling the settlement that held from 1945 until it unravelled in the 1970s. The Crown Struggles With Portrayal of Margaret Thatcher | Time Steely, certainly. Any attempts at revisionism do no favours to her, women or feminism. Privatisation was the single most massive attack on democracy we have seen. All can agree that Margaret Thatcher changed the heart of British politics more than any politician since Clement Attlee. Margaret Thatcher's speech writer will miss funeral but 'shed a tear' When the mourners gather for Baroness Thatcher's funeral tomorrow, one important figure from her political past will be . Her policy decisions entrenched sectarian divisions, handed draconian military powers over to the securocrats, and subverted basic human rights. The seismic shift from industry to financial-based capitalism that Thatcherism ushered in rattled the establishment. "Yes and that was one of the many weird things about her," smirked Alexei Sayle. In the 80s, she was the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy and is now simply called "comedy". She lavished praise on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, then in its infancy, and laid out the . The novel may thrive in adversity and it was a general sense of dismay at the new world she was showing us that lured many writers into opposition. When the late Christopher Hitchens was a political reporter for the New Statesman, he corrected the prime minister on a point of fact, and she was quick to correct Hitchens in turn. of her best Parliamentary speeches in a debate on the strikes. By delivering a crisp, emphatic victory Thatcher showed the world, and more important herself, what a talent for solitary command could achieve. 'The Crown': Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth's Key Conflicts Today we have four coalmines and around 2,000 miners. She was a prime minister who happened to be a woman. This was her last important public statement. Margaret Thatcher was a hugely divisive figure in British politics. Margaret Thatcher: Private tears of Iron Lady's speech writer who no She became leader of the Conservatives the year I was born and prime minister when I was four. MT prayed on the The relative wealth of the UK 1% had been falling steadily for 50 years when Thatcher took power in 1979; since then it has climbed steeply and is almost back to 1918 levels. In truth, Thatcher is one of the clearest examples of the fact that a successful woman doesn't always mean a step forward for women. 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 Sir Bernard died after a short illness, his family said. The Big Bang of City deregulation, the Tell Sid scramble for buying and selling shares, the sense that money is the highest value, wealth the greatest sign of worth all these were hallmarks of the Thatcher era in its mid-80s pomp. The former reporter, who was 90, died with his family around him yesterday lunchtime, a statement said. She also put forward the idea of "a vast . They had a point, but they had no idea how fascinating she was so powerful, successful, popular, omniscient, irritating and, in our view, wrong. Chavez was indeed a divisive and controversial figure, and it would have been reckless to conceal that fact out of some misplaced deference to the grief of his family and supporters. Later that year she introduced the broadcasting ban on Sinn Fin, which prevented viewers and listeners hearing my voice. Margaret Thatcher's most popular book is The Downing Street Years. She, and Blair after her, brought an unprecedented dirigisme to the NHS, education, police and local government. Debate continues on whether Margaret Thatcher saved or destroyed British industry, but there is one industry that she practically created. If you want anything done, ask a woman.". To her detractors, Thatcher is the prime minister who wiped out more than 15% of Britain's industrial base with her dogmatic monetarism, squandered the once-in-a-lifetime windfall of North Sea oil on unemployment pay and tax cuts, and made the UK the unbalanced, unequal country it is today. Either way, I'm an adult now and none of those things are on telly any more so there's no excuse for apathy. But there are less obvious manifestations of the same habit. As working families in poverty now account for more than half of those below the poverty line, a government committed to "making work pay" should surely encourage this trend and raise the minimum wage. November). Margaret Flowers is a leading activist, doctor, teacher, and co-founder of PopularResistance.org, a website that aims to inform and inspire grassroots movements around the world. I will know that we have finally broken from the kind of capitalism that she championed and which died in 2008 when we see workers elected on to company boards. 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. Meryl Streep's depiction of a shuffling figure, stricken and isolated by the death of her husband, Denis, may have softened memories, or formed them in the minds of a younger generation. The spell he was referring to is the unseen bond that connects us all and prevents us from being subjugated by tyranny. The speakers form a rollcall of the globe's most interesting thinkers: Amartya Sen, the Nobel-winning Indian economist; Daniel Kahneman, the Israeli psychologist and another Nobel winner; and Hernando de Soto, the Peruvian economist, who focused on land rights for the poor. Then they discovered that they could make money, so they dropped all that. Margaret Thatcher Essay: Health Category. I always felt a bit sorry for her biological children Mark and Carol, wondering from whom they would get their cuddles. Viewed from today, that past Britain is indeed a foreign country. Yet I wrote columns of pretty unremitting hostility to most of what she did. What was it about Thatcher that inspired a generation of comics to rage at her? 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." Shoot-to-kill actions by British forces also significantly increased. She famously changed the law after Bobby Sands was elected in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. 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. Reagan, for one, recognized the importance of Margaret Thatcher's presence as British prime minister, but would caution any discussionpartnerthat Pope John Paul played an equally important role. Rows with Lawson and Geoffrey Howe over a European currency (where she was right) presaged the final shambles of the poll tax. It came to a head over her most egregious policy failure, Europe. The left misleads us and maybe itself when it says that Thatcher's policies, extended by New Labour and then by the coalition, have failed. 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. 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.". Visit a station and notice the plethora of competing train companies, replacing the single British Rail that operated in the pre-Thatcher days the fruit of a rail privatisation that was not hers, but was made possible only by the serial privatisations she had pioneered and made normal. John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. The Man Whose Powerful Critique of Socialism Influenced Margaret Thatcher Dignity and decorum ruled the day - except in the poisoned anonymity of the internet. A decade later they were wiped out in terms of Scotland-based Westminster constituency representation. In a twitter of panic, Labour shadow ministers sent out pleas yesterday: "Hoping all Labour supporters will respond with dignity and respect to news of Baroness Thatcher's death." One leading Tory thinker said current academic concepts such as evolutionary psychology and behavioural economics were fundamentally rightwing; another said disruptive digital technology liberated individuals against powerful behemoths which may be true, but some of the most striking online advances harness the collective spirit. Arguably, it was not the sale of council houses that was the problem, but the failure to replace the stock and maintain a sufficient supply of affordable homes. On taking office she showered money on public sector unions, and her "cuts" were only to planned increases, mild compared with today's. The Messed Up Truth About Margaret Thatcher - Grunge.com I will be the heir to Margaret Thatcher. Norman and Margaret hold, and will always hold, a unique place in our esteem and affection. For years, in fact, she despised writers, except those who did her speeches. In 11 years, Thatcher promoted only one woman to her cabinet, preferring instead to elevate men whom Spitting Image memorably and, in certain instances, accurately, described as "vegetables". 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. From 1979 to 1990, Margaret Thatcher held the office of Prime . This is one small sign of how the left seems paralysed by a lack of intellectual curiosity and confidence. And we won back three we lost at by-elections. Sue Gray has shown the dangers of thinking officials are more ethical To demand that all of that be ignored in the face of one-sided requiems to her nobility and greatness is a bit bullying and tyrannical, not to mention warped. Margaret Thatcher - Quotes, Death & Life - Biography But she exploited her luck. Oil helped Thatcher paper over the cracks, but Britain's age-old problem finding a way to pay its way in the world remains. Nicknamed the "Iron Lady," Thatcher served as the prime minister of England from 1979 to 1990. 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 . Trying to trim back spending in her department, she ended the milk subsidies for all children over the age of seven. No elderly person would be deprived of the dignity of spectacles, dentures or a hearing aid because they couldn't afford them. This is a political style, an aesthetic even, that has disappeared from view. At Bruges in September 1988 she outraged European orthodoxy by declaring: Was it cruelty? "Fatcha" was an instant punchline back then: simply saying it was enough to get a laugh. "I thought I'd be overjoyed, but really it's just another one bites the dust " This demonstrates, I suppose, that if you opposed Thatcher's ideas it was likely because of their lack of compassion, which is really just a word for love. delivered an outstanding defence of the Government in the Commons. At the time, Thatcher was the education secretary her first major political role. Many hated her. Without it, she would have been nothing. making her big speech the following day as scheduled. Another head of government died recently who, like Thatcher, was called divisive. three press interviews (15-17 November) when Howe's resignation speech By the 1983 election she had sold off only Britoil and some council houses. Scotsman Obituaries: Sir Bernard Ingham, formidable press secretary to Her vision for Britain made a lot of people feel like outsiders, which made them the ideal audience for comedy. . For she changed the ethos of Britain as well as its landscape. The poll tax showed the opposite, the weakness of Thatcher's strength.
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