Margaret Thatcher

By Olga Kokunko, RIMO-203

The main aim of this presentation is to share my interest about Margaret Thatcher – the first female British Prime Minister, leader of the Conservative Party, and at the time the longest serving PM since 1827, governing from 1979 – 90, and her way to success.

Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher

«What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not

enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose».

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher (Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, née Roberts) was born on October 13th 1925 in Grantham to Alfred and Beatrice Roberts. The Roberts family ran a grocery business, bringing up two daughters in a flat over the shop.

Margaret Thatcher's home and early life in Grantham played a large part in forming her political convictions. Her parents were Methodists and her father was a local councilor.

«I just owe almost everything to my father and it's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election».

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School.

From there won a place at Oxford, where she studied chemistry at Somerville College (1943-47). Her tutor was Dorothy Hodgkin, a pioneer of X-ray crystallography who won a Nobel Prize in 1964.

After graduating, Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist. She joined the local Conservative Association.

In her mid-twenties she ran as the Conservative candidate for the strong Labour seat of Dartford (1950 and 1951), winning national publicity as the youngest woman candidate in the country.

She lost both times, but cut the Labour majority sharply enjoyed the experience of campaigning.

In Dartford she met Denis Thatcher, a successful and wealthy businessman, whom she married in December 1951. Denis funded his wife's studies for the bar; she qualified as a barrister in 1953 and specialized in taxation. The same year her twins, Carol and Mark, were born.

Margaret Thatcher was elected to Parliament in 1959 as Member of Parliament for Finchley, a north London constituency, which she continued to represent until she was made a member of the House of Lords (as Baroness Thatcher) in 1992.

The Conservative party under Edward Heath won the 1970 general election, and Thatcher was subsequently appointed Secretary of State for Education and Science.

The Heath government experienced difficulties with oil embargoes and union demands for wage increases in 1973, and lost 1974 general election. Labour went on to win a majority in 1974 general election. Heath's leadership of the Conservative Party looked increasingly in doubt. Thatcher became party leader in 1975.

The Labour government faced public unease about the direction of the country and a damaging series of strikes during the winter of 1978–79. A general election was called after James Callaghan's government lost a motion of no confidence in early 1979.

Margaret Thatcher was the leader of the Opposition in 1975–1979

The Conservatives won a majority in the House of Commons, and Margaret Thatcher became the UK's first female Prime Minister.

«If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman».

Margaret Thatcher

The new government pledged to check

and reverse Britain's economic decline. Direct taxes were cut, indirect taxes were increased. By the end of Thatcher's first term, unemployment in Britain was more than three million and it began to fall only in 1986.

Inflation was checked and the government created the expectation that it would do whatever was necessary to keep it low.

1979-1983: Prime Minister – First Term

Political support flowed from this achievement, but the re-election of the government was only made certain by the Falklands War. The Argentine Junta's invasion of the islands in 1982 was met by Thatcher in the firmest way.

Although she worked with the US administration in pursuing the possibility of a diplomatic solution. When diplomacy failed, military action was successful and the Falklands were back under British control by 1982.

The cover of Newsweek magazine, 19 April 1982, depicts HMS Hermes, flagship of the British Task Force.

1983-1987: Prime Minister – Second Term

The economy continued to improve during the 1983-87 Parliament and the policy of economic liberalization was extended. The government began to pursue a policy of selling state assets.

The British privatizations of the 1980s were the first of their kind and proved influential across the world.

In October 1984 the Irish Republican Army attempted to murder Margaret Thatcher and many of her cabinet by bombing her hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party annual conference.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 was an attempt to improve security cooperation between Britain and Ireland and to give some recognition to the political outlook of Catholics in Northern Ireland, an initiative which won warm endorsement from the Reagan administration and the US Congress.

Margaret Thatcher & Ronald Reagan at Camp David, 22 December 1984.

1987-1990: Prime Minister – Third Term

The legislative platform of the third-term Thatcher Government was among the most ambitious ever put forward by a British administration.

There were measures to reform the education system (1988). There was a new tax system for local government (1989), the Community Charge. And there was legislation to separate purchasers and providers within the National Health Service (1990).

The Soviets had dubbed her the 'Iron Lady' — a tag she relished — for the tough line she took against them in speeches shortly after becoming Conservative leader in 1975.

But when Mikhail Gorbachev emerged as a potential leader of the Soviet Union, she invited him to Britain in 1984 and pronounced him a man she could do business with. She did not soften her criticisms of the Soviet system, making use of new opportunities to broadcast to television audiences in the east to put the case against Communism.

Margaret Thatcher & Gorbachev at RAF Brize Norton, 7 December 1987.

«What Britain needs is an iron lady».

«It pays to know the enemy - not least because at some time you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend».

Margaret Thatcher

After 1990 Lady Thatcher remained a potent political figure. She wrote two best-selling volumes of memoirs - The Downing Street Years (1993) and The Path to Power (1995) - while continuing for a full decade to tour the world as a lecturer. A book of reflections on international politics - Statecraft - was published in 2002.

Margaret Thatcher remains an intensely controversial figure in Britain.

Critics claim that her economic policies were divisive socially, that she was harsh in her politics.

Defenders point to a transformation in Britain's economic performance over the course of the Thatcher Governments.

Trade union reforms, privatization, deregulation, a strong anti-inflationary stance, and control of tax and spending have created better economic prospects for Britain than seemed possible when she became Prime Minister in 1979.

The Labour Party leadership was transformed by her period of office and the 'New Labour' politics of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would not have existed without her. Her legacy remains the core of modern British politics: the world economic crisis since 2008 has revived many of the arguments of the 1980s, keeping her name at the centre of political debate in Britain.

Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Brown

Critics and supporters alike recognize the Thatcher premiership as a period of fundamental importance in British history. Margaret Thatcher accumulated huge prestige over the course of the 1980s and often compelled the respect even of her bitterest critics. Indeed, her effect on the terms of political debate has been profound.

«I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near».

Links

• http://www.margaretthatcher.org/essential/biography.asp

• http://www.biography.com/people/margaret-thatcher-9504796

• http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/margaret_thatcher.html

• http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/margaret-thatcher/as-prime-minister.html