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The Right Honourable The Baroness Thatcher LG OM PC FRS


Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office 4 May 1979 – 28 November 1990
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Deputy	William Whitelaw Geoffrey Howe
Preceded by	James Callaghan
Succeeded by	John Major
Leader of the Opposition
In office 11 February 1975 – 4 May 1979
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson James Callaghan
Preceded by	Edward Heath
Succeeded by	James Callaghan
Leader of the Conservative Party
In office 11 February 1975 – 28 November 1990
Preceded by	Edward Heath
Succeeded by	John Major
Secretary of State for Education and Science
In office 20 June 1970 – 4 March 1974
Prime Minister	Edward Heath
Preceded by	Edward Short
Succeeded by	Reginald Prentice
Member of Parliament for Finchley
In office 8 October 1959 – 9 April 1992
Preceded by	John Crowder
Succeeded by	Hartley Booth

Personal details
Born	Margaret Hilda Roberts (1925-10-13) 13 October 1925 (age 99) Grantham, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom
Political party	Conservative
Spouse(s)	Denis Thatcher (1951–2003) (his death)
Children	Carol Thatcher Mark Thatcher
Alma mater	Somerville College, Oxford
Profession	Chemist Lawyer

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS (née Roberts; born 13 October 1925) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 until 1990. She was born in Grantham in Lincolnshire, and studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, before qualifying as a barrister. In the 1959 general election she became the MP for Finchley. Edward Heath appointed Thatcher Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975 she became Leader of the Conservative Party, the first woman to head a major UK political party. Following the 1979 general election she became Britain's first female Prime Minister.

She entered 10 Downing Street determined to reverse what she perceived as a precipitous national decline. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation, particularly of the financial sector, flexible labour markets, and the sale or closure of state-owned companies and withdrawal of subsidies to others. Thatcher's popularity sank amid recession and high unemployment, although economic recovery and the 1982 Falklands War brought a resurgence of support and she was re-elected in 1983. She survived an assassination attempt in 1984. She took a hard line against trade unions, and her tough rhetoric in opposition to the Soviet Union earned her the nickname of the "Iron Lady". Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987, but her poll tax was widely unpopular and her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990 after Michael Heseltine's challenge to her leadership of the Conservative Party.

She holds a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire, which entitles her to sit in the House of Lords.

Early life and education

Margaret Roberts was born on 13 October 1925. Her father was Alfred Roberts, originally from Northamptonshire, and her mother was the former Beatrice Ethel Stephenson from Lincolnshire. She spent her childhood in Grantham, Lincolnshire, where her father owned two grocery shops. She and her older sister Muriel were raised in the flat above the larger of the two, located near the railway line. Her father was active in local politics and religion, serving as an alderman and a Methodist lay preacher, and brought up his daughter as a strict Methodist. He came from a Liberal family but stood – as was then customary in local government – as an Independent. He lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950.

Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School. Her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement; her extracurricular activities included the piano, hockey, poetry recitals, swimming and walking. She was head girl in 1942–43. In her upper sixth year she applied for a scholarship to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford but was initially rejected, and only offered a place after another candidate withdrew. She arrived in Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with Second Class Honours in the four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree; in her final year she specialised in crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin.

Roberts became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946. During her time at university she became influenced by Friedrich von Hayek's 1944 work The Road to Serfdom, which condemned economic intervention by government as a precursor to an authoritarian state.

Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex after graduating, to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics. She joined the local Conservative Association and attended the party conference at Llandudno in 1948, as a representative of the University Graduate Conservative Association. In January 1949, a friend from Oxford who was working for the Dartford Conservative Association in Kent, told her that they were looking for candidates. Shortly afterwards Roberts was selected as the Conservative candidate, and moved to Dartford to stand for election as a Member of Parliament. There she was employed by J. Lyons and Co., developing methods to preserve ice cream and make it lighter.

Early political career

In the 1950 and 1951 general elections she campaigned for the safe Labour seat of Dartford, where she attracted media attention as the youngest and the only female candidate. She lost both times to Norman Dodds, but reduced the Labour majority by 6,000, and then a further 1,000. While campaigning in Kent in 1950, she met Denis Thatcher, a wealthy divorced businessman who ran his family's firm. They married in 1951. Denis funded his wife's studies for the bar; she qualified as a barrister in 1953 and specialised in taxation. That same year her twins, Carol and Mark, were born.

Member of Parliament (1959–1970)

Thatcher began looking for a safe Conservative seat in the mid-1950s. She was narrowly rejected as the candidate for Orpington in 1955, but was selected for Finchley in April 1958. She won the seat after a hard campaign in the 1959 election and was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP). Her maiden speech was in support of her private member's bill (Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960), requiring local authorities to hold their council meetings in public. In 1961 she went against the Conservative Party's official position by voting for the restoration of birching.

In October 1961 Thatcher was promoted to the front bench as Parliamentary Undersecretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in Harold Macmillan's administration. After the loss of the 1964 election she became Conservative spokesman on Housing and Land, in which position she advocated the Conservative policy of allowing tenants to buy their council houses. She moved to the Shadow Treasury team in 1966, and as Treasury spokesman opposed Labour's mandatory price and income controls, arguing that they would produce contrary effects to those intended and distort the economy.

At the Conservative Party Conference of 1966 she criticised the high-tax policies of the Labour Government as being steps "not only towards Socialism, but towards Communism". She argued that lower taxes served as an incentive to hard work. Thatcher was one of few Conservative MPs to support Leo Abse's Bill to decriminalise male homosexuality and voted in favour of David Steel's Bill to legalise abortion, as well as a ban on hare coursing. She supported the retention of capital punishment and voted against the relaxation of divorce laws.

In 1967 she was selected by the US Embassy in London to take part in the International Visitor Leadership Program (then called the Foreign Leader Program), a professional exchange programme that gave her the opportunity to spend about six weeks visiting various US cities, political figures, and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Thatcher joined the Shadow Cabinet later that year as Shadow Fuel spokesman. Shortly before the 1970 general election, she was promoted to Shadow Transport, and then to Education.

Education Secretary (1970–1974)

The Conservative party under Edward Heath won the 1970 general election, and Thatcher was appointed Secretary of State for Education and Science. In her first months in office she attracted public attention as a result of the administration's attempts to cut spending. She gave priority to academic needs in schools, and imposed public expenditure cuts on the state education system, resulting in the abolition of free milk for schoolchildren aged seven to eleven. She held that few children would suffer if schools were charged for milk, but she agreed to provide younger children with a third of a pint daily, for nutritional purposes. Her decision provoked a storm of protest from the Labour party and the press, and led to the moniker "Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher". Thatcher wrote in her autobiography: "I learned a valuable lesson . I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit."

Thatcher's term of office was marked by proposals for more local education authorities to close grammar schools and to adopt comprehensive secondary education. Although she was committed to a tiered secondary modern–grammar school system of education, and determined to preserve grammar schools, during her tenure as Education Secretary, she turned down only 326 of 3,612 proposals for schools to become comprehensives; the proportion of pupils attending comprehensives rose from 32% to 62% during this time.

Leader of the Opposition (1975–1979)

A black and white photo of Thatcher in a light-coloured raincoat, sitting in a comfortable chair. — Margaret Thatcher, elected as Leader of the Opposition on 18 September 1975

The Heath government continued to experience difficulties with oil embargoes and union demands for wage increases in 1973, and was defeated in the February 1974 general election. The Conservative result in the general election of October 1974 was even worse, and Thatcher mounted a challenge for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Promising a fresh start, she drew her main support from the Conservative 1922 Committee. She defeated Heath on the first ballot and he resigned the leadership. In the second ballot she defeated Heath's preferred successor, William Whitelaw, and became party leader on 11 February 1975; she appointed Whitelaw as her deputy. Heath remained disenchanted with Thatcher to the end of his life for what he, and many of his supporters, perceived as her disloyalty in standing against him.

Thatcher began at this time regularly to attend lunches at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank founded by the poultry magnate Antony Fisher, a disciple of Friedrich von Hayek; she had begun visiting the IEA and reading its publications during the early 1960s. She came in contact there with Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon, who became influences on her. Thatcher now became the face of the ideological movement that opposed the welfare state Keynesian economics they believed was weakening Britain. The institute's pamphlets proposed less government, lower taxes, and more freedom for business and consumers.

Thatcher began to work on her voice and screen image. The critic Clive James, writing in The Observer in 1977, compared her voice of 1973 to a cat sliding down a blackboard, but acknowledged her intelligence and mental agility.

On 19 January 1976 Thatcher made a speech in Kensington Town Hall in which she made a scathing attack on the Soviet Union.

The Russians are bent on world dominance, and they are rapidly acquiring the means to become the most powerful imperial nation the world has seen. The men in the Soviet Politburo do not have to worry about the ebb and flow of public opinion. They put guns before butter, while we put just about everything before guns.

In response, the Soviet Defence Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) gave her the nickname "Iron Lady". She took delight in the name, and it soon became associated with her image.

Despite an economic recovery in the late 1970s, the Labour Government faced public unease about the direction of the country and a damaging series of strikes during the winter of 1978–79, popularly dubbed the "Winter of Discontent". The Conservatives attacked the Labour government's unemployment record, using advertising hoardings with the slogan Labour Isn't Working. A general election was called after James Callaghan's government lost a motion of no confidence in early 1979. The Conservatives won a 44-seat majority in the House of Commons, and Margaret Thatcher became the UK's first female Prime Minister.

Prime Minister (1979–1990)

Main article: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

Thatcher became Prime Minister on 4 May 1979. Arriving at 10 Downing Street, she said, in a paraphrase of St. Francis of Assisi:

Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.

Domestic affairs

Thatcher was Prime Minister at a time of great racial tension in Britain. Her standing in the polls rose by 11% after she said in a TV interview during campaigning for the 1979 election: "The moment a minority threatens to become a big one, people get frightened. The British character has done so much for democracy, for law, that if there is any fear that it might be swamped, people are going to react and be rather hostile to those coming in". She complained privately about Asian immigration in July 1979, in the context of restricting the number of Vietnamese boat people settling in the UK. Her stance on these issues was perceived as taking votes from the openly racist National Front.

As Prime Minister, Thatcher met weekly with Queen Elizabeth II to discuss government business, and their relationship came under close scrutiny. In July 1986 the Sunday Times reported claims attributed to the Queen's advisers of a "rift" between Buckingham Palace and Downing Street "over a wide range of domestic and international issues". The Palace issued an official denial, heading off speculation about a possible constitutional crisis. After Thatcher's retirement a senior Palace source again dismissed as "nonsense" the "stereotyped idea" that she had not got along with the Queen, or that they had fallen out over Thatcherite policies. Thatcher herself declared that "stories of clashes between 'two powerful women' were too good not to make up ... I always found the Queen's attitude towards the work of the Government absolutely correct".

Economy and taxation

Thatcher's economic policy was influenced by monetarist thinking and economists such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek. Together with Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe, she lowered direct taxes on income and increased indirect taxes. She increased interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply and thereby lower inflation, introduced cash limits on public spending, and reduced expenditures on social services such as education and housing. Her cuts in higher education spending resulted in her being the first Oxford-educated post-war Prime Minister not to be awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Oxford, after a 738 to 319 vote of the governing assembly and a student petition. Her new centrally funded City Technology Colleges did not enjoy much success, and the Funding Agency for Schools was set up to control expenditure by opening and closing schools; the Social Market Foundation, a right-wing think tank, described it as having "an extraordinary range of dictatorial powers".

GDP and public spending by functional classification	% change in real terms 1979/80 to 1989/90
GDP	+23.3
Total government spending	+12.9
Law and order	+53.3
Employment and training	+33.3
Health	+31.8
Social security	+31.8
Transport	−5.8
Trade and industry	−38.2
Housing	−67.0
Defence	−3.3

Some Heathite Conservatives in the Cabinet, the so-called "wets", expressed doubt over Thatcher's policies. Civil unrest in Britain resulted in the British media discussing the need for a policy U-turn. At the 1980 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher addressed the issue directly, with a speech written by the playwright Ronald Millar that included the lines: "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning!"

Thatcher's job approval rating fell to 23% by December 1980, lower than recorded for any previous Prime Minister. As the recession of the early 1980s deepened, she increased taxes despite concerns expressed in a statement signed by 364 leading economists and issued towards the end of March 1981.

By 1982 the UK began to experience signs of economic recovery; inflation was down to 8.6% from a high of 18%, but unemployment was over 3 million for the first time since the 1930s. By 1983 overall economic growth was stronger and inflation and mortgage rates were at their lowest levels since 1970, although manufacturing output had dropped by 30% since 1978 and unemployment remained high, peaking at 3.3 million in 1984.

Throughout the 1980s, revenue from the 90% tax on North Sea oil extraction was used as a short-term funding source to balance the economy and pay the costs of reform.

Thatcher replaced local government taxes with a Community Charge or "poll tax", in which property tax rates were made uniform, in that the same amount was charged to every individual resident, and the residential property tax was replaced by a head tax at a rate set by local authorities. The new tax was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales the following year, and proved to be among the most unpopular policies of her premiership, culminating in a public demonstration that turned into rioting in Trafalgar Square, London, on 31 March 1990; more than 100,000 protesters attended and more than 400 people were arrested. Thatcher remained confident that, as with her other major reforms, the initial public opposition would eventually turn into support.

Foreign affairs

Thatcher took office in the final decade of the Cold War, an era of strategic confrontation between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. She became closely aligned with the policies of US President Ronald Reagan, based on their shared distrust of Communism.

During her first year as Prime Minister she supported NATO's decision to deploy US nuclear cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe, and permitted the US to station more than 160 cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common, starting on 14 November 1983. This triggered mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She bought the Trident nuclear missile submarine system from the US to replace Polaris, resulting in a tripling of Britain's nuclear forces at an eventual cost of more than £12 billion (at 1996–97 prices). She strongly opposed Reagan's October 1983 invasion of Grenada, but the US went ahead with it anyway.

Thatcher's preference for defence ties with the US was demonstrated in the Westland affair of January 1986. She acted with colleagues to allow the struggling helicopter manufacturer Westland, a defence contractor, to refuse an offer from the Italian firm Agusta in favour of the management's preferred option, a link with Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation. The UK Defence Secretary, Michael Heseltine, who had supported the Agusta deal, resigned in protest.

In April 1986, Thatcher permitted US F-111s to use RAF bases for the bombing of Libya in retaliation for the alleged Libyan bombing of a Berlin discothèque, citing the right of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter. Thatcher told the House of Commons that America had the right to defend its own assets.

The UK was the only nation to provide assistance for the US action. Polls suggested that more than two out of three people disapproved of Thatcher's decision. Later that year the US Congress approved an extradition treaty intended to stop IRA operatives evading extradition. The US Senate only ratified this treaty when Reagan explicitly mentioned British support for the bombing of Libya.

Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to respond warmly to reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Following Reagan–Gorbachev summit meetings and reforms enacted by Gorbachev in the USSR, Thatcher declared in November 1988, "We're not in a Cold War now" but rather in a "new relationship much wider than the Cold War ever was".

On 2 April 1982, the ruling military junta in Argentina invaded the British overseas territories of Falkland Islands and South Georgia, triggering the Falklands War. The subsequent crisis was "a defining moment of her premiership". At the suggestion of Harold Macmillan and Robert Armstrong, she set up and chaired a small War Cabinet (formally called ODSA, Overseas and Defence committee, South Atlantic) to take charge of the conduct of the war, which by 5–6 April had authorised and despatched a naval task force to retake the islands. Argentina surrendered on 14 June and the operation was hailed a success, notwithstanding the deaths of 255 British servicemen and three Falkland Islanders. Argentinian deaths totalled 649, half of them after the nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror sank the cruiser ARA General Belgrano by torpedo on 2 May. Thatcher was criticised for the original neglect of the Falklands' defence that led to the war, and for the decision to escalate the war by sinking the Belgrano (notably by Tam Dalyell in parliament), but overall was regarded as a highly talented and committed war leader. The "Falklands factor", an economic recovery beginning early in 1982, and a bitterly divided Labour opposition contributed to Thatcher's second election victory in 1983.

Thatcher's antipathy towards European integration became more pronounced during her premiership, particularly after her third election victory in 1987. In a speech at Bruges in 1988, she outlined her opposition to proposals from the European Community, forerunner of the European Union, for a federal structure and increased centralisation of decision-making. Though she had supported British membership of the EC, Thatcher believed that the role of the organisation should be limited to ensuring free trade and effective competition, and feared that the EC approach to governing was at odds with her views on smaller government and deregulatory trends; in 1988, she remarked, "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels".

Thatcher was firmly opposed to the UK joining the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a precursor to European monetary union, believing that it would constrain the British economy, despite the urging of her Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson and Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, but she was persuaded by John Major to join it in October 1990 at what proved in retrospect to be too high a rate.

Thatcher initially opposed German reunification, telling Premier Gorbachev that "this would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security". She expressed concern that a united Germany would align itself more closely with the Soviet Union and move away from NATO.

During Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's invasion of neighbouring Kuwait in August 1990, Thatcher was visiting the US. When she met with US President George H. W. Bush, who had succeeded Reagan in 1989, she recommended intervention and put pressure on Bush to deploy troops in the Middle East to drive the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. Bush was somewhat apprehensive about the plan, prompting Thatcher to remark to him during a telephone conversation that "This was no time to go wobbly!" Thatcher's government provided military forces to the international coalition in the build-up to the Gulf War; by the time hostilities started she had resigned.

Industrial relations

Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the trade unions, whose leadership she accused of undermining parliamentary democracy and economic performance through strike action. Several unions launched strikes in response to legislation introduced to curb their power, but resistance eventually collapsed. Only 39% of union members voted for Labour in the 1983 general election. According to the BBC, Thatcher "managed to destroy the power of the trade unions for almost a generation".

The number of stoppages across the UK peaked at 4,583 in 1979, with over 29 million working days lost. In 1984, the great year of industrial confrontation with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), there were 1,221 stoppages and over 27 million working days lost. Stoppages then fell steadily through the rest of Thatcher's premiership, to 630 by 1990, with under 2 million working days lost, and continued to fall thereafter. Trade union membership also fell, from 13.5 million in 1979 to less than 10 million by the time she left office in 1990.

The miners' strike was the biggest confrontation between the unions and the Thatcher government. In March 1984 two-thirds of the country's miners downed tools led by the NUM under Arthur Scargill, in protest against the National Coal Board (NCB)'s proposals to close 20 of the 174 state-owned mines and cut 20,000 jobs out of 187,000. Thatcher refused to meet the union's demands and compared the miners' dispute with the Falklands conflict two years earlier, declaring in a speech delivered in 1984: "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty."

After a year out on strike, in March 1985, the NUM leadership conceded without a deal. The cost to the economy was estimated to be at least £1.5 billion. and the strike was blamed for much of the pound's fall against the US dollar. The government proceeded to close 25 unprofitable pits in 1985; by 1992, a total of 97 pits had been closed, with the remaining being sold off and privatised in 1994. The eventual closure of 150 collieries, not all of which were losing money, resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and devastated entire communities. Miners had helped bring down the Heath government, and Thatcher was determined to succeed where he had failed. Her strategy of preparing fuel stocks, appointing a union-busting NCB leader in Ian MacGregor, and ensuring police were adequately trained and equipped with riot gear, contributed to her victory.

Privatisation

The policy of privatisation has been called "a crucial ingredient of Thatcherism". After the 1983 election the sale of state utilities to private companies accelerated; more than £29 billion was raised from the sale of industries, and another £18 billion from the sale of council houses.

The process of privatisation, especially the preparation of nationalised industries for privatisation, was associated with marked improvements in performance, particularly in terms of labour productivity, although it is not clear how far this can be attributed to the merits of privatisation itself. Marxian economist Andrew Glyn believed that the "productivity miracle" observed in British industry under Thatcher was achieved not so much by increasing the overall productivity of labour as by reducing workforces and increasing unemployment. A number of the privatised industries including gas, water, and electricity, were natural monopolies for which privatisation involved little increase in competition. The privatised industries that demonstrated improvement often did so while still under state ownership. British Steel, for instance, made great gains in profitability while still a nationalised industry under the government-appointed chairmanship of Ian MacGregor, who faced down trade-union opposition to close plants and reduce the workforce by half. Regulation was also significantly expanded to compensate for the loss of direct government control, with the foundation of regulatory bodies like Ofgas, Oftel and the National Rivers Authority. Overall there was no clear pattern to the degree of competition, regulation and performance among the privatised industries.

The privatisation of public assets was combined with financial deregulation in an attempt to fuel economic growth. In 1979, Geoffrey Howe abolished Britain's exchange controls to allow more capital to be invested in foreign markets, and the Big Bang of 1986 removed many restrictions on the activities of the London Stock Exchange. The Thatcher government encouraged growth in the finance and service sectors to replace Britain's ailing manufacturing industry. Political economist Susan Strange called this new financial growth model "casino capitalism", reflecting her view that speculation and financial trading were becoming a more important part of the economy than industry.

In most cases privatisation benefitted consumers in terms of lower prices and improved efficiency, but the results overall were "mixed". Some privatised companies, such as British Telecom, were successfully transformed, but The Economist considered British Rail's privatisation, for instance, to have been "a disaster".

Northern Ireland

File:Troubled Images Exhibition, Belfast, August 2010 (14).JPG

Campaign UK, 1987. Troubled Images Exhibition, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, August 2010

In 1981, Provisional Irish Republican Army and Irish National Liberation Army prisoners in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison began a hunger strike in an effort to regain the status of political prisoners that had been removed five years earlier under the preceding Labour government. Bobby Sands began the strike, saying that he would fast until death unless prison inmates won concessions over their living conditions. Thatcher refused to countenance a return to political status for the prisoners, declaring "Crime is crime is crime; it is not political". Despite this public stance, the British government made private contact with republican leaders in a bid to bring the hunger strikes to an end. After Sands and nine more men had died and the strike had ended, some rights were restored to paramilitary prisoners, though official recognition of political status was not granted. Violence in Northern Ireland significantly escalated during the hunger strike; Sinn Féin politician Danny Morrison described her as "the biggest bastard we have ever known" in 1982.

Thatcher narrowly escaped injury in a PIRA assassination attempt at a Brighton hotel early in the morning of 12 October 1984. Five people were killed, including the wife of Cabinet Minister John Wakeham. Thatcher was staying at the hotel to attend the Conservative Party Conference, and insisted that the event open as scheduled the following day. She delivered her speech as planned, a gesture which won widespread approval across the political spectrum, and enhanced her personal popularity with the public.

On 6 November 1981 Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald had established the Anglo-Irish Inter-Governmental Council, a forum for meetings between the two governments. On 15 November 1985, Thatcher and FitzGerald signed the Hillsborough Anglo-Irish Agreement, the first time a British government gave the Republic of Ireland an advisory role in the governance of Northern Ireland. The Ulster Says No movement attracted 100,000 to a rally in Belfast protesting against the agreement. Ian Gow resigned as Minister of State in the HM Treasury over the signing, and all fifteen Unionist MPs resigned their Westminster seats in protest. All but one were returned in the resulting by-elections on 23 January 1986.

Resignation

Thatcher was challenged for the leadership of the Conservative Party by virtually unknown backbench MP Sir Anthony Meyer in the 1989 leadership election. Of the 374 Conservative MPs eligible to vote 314 voted for Thatcher and 33 for Meyer. Her supporters in the Party viewed the result as a success, and rejected suggestions that there was discontent within the party.

During her premiership Thatcher had the second-lowest average approval rating, at 40%, of any post-war Prime Minister. Polls consistently showed that she was less popular than her party. A self-described conviction politician, Thatcher always insisted that she did not care about her poll ratings, pointing instead to her unbeaten election record.

Opinion polls in September 1990 reported that Labour had established a 14% lead over the Conservatives, and by November the Conservatives had been trailing Labour for 18 months. These ratings, together with Thatcher's combative personality and willingness to override colleagues' opinions, contributed to discontent within the Conservative party.

On 1 November 1990 Geoffrey Howe, the last remaining member of Thatcher's original 1979 cabinet, resigned from his position as Deputy Prime Minister over her refusal to agree to a timetable for Britain to join the single currency. In his resignation speech on 13 November, Howe commented on Thatcher's European stance: "It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find the moment that the first balls are bowled that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain." His resignation was fatal to Thatcher's premiership.

The next day, Michael Heseltine mounted a challenge for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Opinion polls had indicated that he would give the Conservatives a national lead over Labour. Heseltine attracted sufficient support from Conservative MPs in the first round of voting to force the contest to a second ballot. Although Thatcher initially stated that she intended to contest the second ballot, after consultation with her Cabinet she decided to withdraw. After seeing the Queen, calling other world leaders, and making one final Commons speech, she left Downing Street in tears. She regarded her ousting as a betrayal.

Thatcher was replaced as Prime Minister and party leader by her Chancellor John Major, who oversaw an upturn in Conservative support in the 17 months leading up to the next general election and led the Conservatives to their fourth successive general election victory on 9 April 1992. Thatcher favoured Major over Heseltine in the leadership contest, but her support for him weakened in later years. Despite being Britain's first woman Prime Minister, Thatcher had done "little to advance the political cause of women".

Later years

Thatcher returned to the backbenches as MP for Finchley for two years after leaving the premiership. She retired from the House at the 1992 election, aged 66, saying that leaving the Commons would allow her more freedom to speak her mind.

Post-Commons

After leaving the House of Commons, Thatcher became the first former Prime Minister to set up a foundation; it closed down in 2005 because of financial difficulties. She wrote two volumes of memoirs, The Downing Street Years (1993) and The Path to Power (1995).

In July 1992 she was hired by the tobacco company Philip Morris as a "geopolitical consultant" for $250,000 per year and an annual contribution of $250,000 to her foundation. She also earned $50,000 a time making speeches.

In August 1992 Thatcher called for NATO to stop the Serbian assault on Goražde and Sarajevo to end ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian War. She compared the situation in Bosnia to "the worst excesses of the Nazis", and warned that there could be a "holocaust". She made a series of speeches in the Lords criticising the Maastricht Treaty, describing it as "a treaty too far" and stated "I could never have signed this treaty". She cited A. V. Dicey when stating that as all three main parties were in favour of revisiting the treaty, the people should have their say.

Lady Thatcher was honorary Chancellor of the College of William and Mary in Virginia (1993–2000) and also of the University of Buckingham (1992–1999), the UK's first private university, which she had opened in 1975.

After Tony Blair's election as Labour Party leader in 1994, Thatcher praised Blair in an interview as "probably the most formidable Labour leader since Hugh Gaitskell. I see a lot of socialism behind their front bench, but not in Mr Blair. I think he genuinely has moved."

In 1998 Thatcher called for the release of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when Spain sought to try him for human rights violations, citing the help he gave Britain during the Falklands War. In 1999 she visited him while he was under house arrest near London. Pinochet was released in March 2000 on medical grounds by the Home Secretary Jack Straw, without facing trial.

In the 2001 general election she supported the Conservative general election campaign, but did not endorse Iain Duncan Smith as she had done for John Major and William Hague. In the Conservative leadership election shortly after, she supported Smith over Kenneth Clarke.

In March 2002 her book Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, dedicated to Ronald Reagan, was released. In it, she claimed there would be no peace in the Middle East until Saddam Hussein was toppled and said if he was found to be involved in the attacks on 11 September 2001, war was right. She also said Israel must trade land for peace as part of an equitable settlement. She wrote that the European Union was "fundamentally unreformable" and "a classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure". She argued that Britain should renegotiate its terms of membership or else leave the EU and join the North American Free Trade Area. The book was serialised in The Times on 18 March. On 23 March she announced that on the advice of her doctors she would cancel all planned speaking engagements and accept no more.

Since 2003

Sir Denis Thatcher died on 26 June 2003 and was cremated on 3 July. She had paid tribute to him in The Downing Street Years, writing "Being Prime Minister is a lonely job. In a sense, it ought to be: you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there I was never alone. What a man. What a husband. What a friend".

On 11 June 2004 Thatcher attended the state funeral service for former US President Ronald Reagan. She delivered her eulogy via videotape; in view of her failing mental faculties following several small strokes, the message had been pre-recorded several months earlier. Thatcher then flew to California with the Reagan entourage, and attended the memorial service and interment ceremony for the president at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

Thatcher marked her 80th birthday with a celebration at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hyde Park, London on 13 October 2005, where the guests included the Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Alexandra and Tony Blair. Also present was Geoffrey Howe, then Lord Howe of Aberavon, who said of his former boss: "Her real triumph was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible."

In 2006 Thatcher attended the official Washington, D.C. memorial service to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US. She was a guest of the Vice President, Dick Cheney, and met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit.

In February 2007 she became the first living Prime Minister of the UK to be honoured with a statue in the Houses of Parliament. The bronze statue stands opposite that of her political hero, Sir Winston Churchill, and was unveiled on 21 February 2007 with Lady Thatcher in attendance; she made a rare and brief speech in the members' lobby of the House of Commons, responding: "I might have preferred iron – but bronze will do ... It won't rust." The statue shows her addressing the House of Commons, with her right arm outstretched.

Lady Thatcher was invited back to 10 Downing Street in late November 2009 to attend the unveiling of an official portrait by the artist Richard Stone, an unusual honour for a living ex-Prime Minister. Stone had previously painted portraits of the Queen and the Queen Mother.

Thatcher suffered several small strokes in 2002 and was advised by her doctors not to engage in any more public speaking. After collapsing at a House of Lords dinner, she was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital in central London on 7 March 2008 for tests. Her daughter Carol has recounted ongoing memory loss. In November 2009, a text message from the Canadian transport minister about the death of a pet cat called 'Thatcher' almost caused a diplomatic incident.

At the Conservative Party conference in 2010, the new Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he would invite Lady Thatcher back to 10 Downing Street on her 85th birthday for a party to be attended by past and present ministers. Lady Thatcher was forced to pull out of the celebration at the last minute after being taken ill with a bout of flu.

Legacy

Thatcherism
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Thatcher remains identified with her remarks to the reporter Douglas Keay, for Woman's Own magazine in September 1987:

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand "I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!" or "I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!" "I am homeless, the Government must house me!" and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations.

To her supporters, Margaret Thatcher remains a figure who revitalised Britain's economy, impacted the trade unions, and re-established the nation as a world power. She oversaw an increase from 7% to 25% of adults owning shares, and more than a million families bought their council houses, giving an increase from 55% to 67% in owner-occupiers. Total personal wealth rose by 80%.

Andy Beckett has commented that social mobility declined under Thatcher, and inequality increased. Thatcher's premiership was also marked by high unemployment and social unrest, and many critics fault her economic policies for the unemployment level. Speaking in Scotland in April 2009, before the 30th anniversary of her election as Prime Minister, Thatcher declared: "I regret nothing", and insisted she "was right to introduce the poll tax and to close loss-making industries to end the country's 'dependency culture'".

She often referred after the war to the "Falklands Spirit"; Hastings and Jenkins (1983) suggested that this reflected her preference for the streamlined decision-making of her War Cabinet over the painstaking deal-making of peace-time cabinet government.

Critics have regretted her influence in the abandonment of full employment, poverty reduction and a consensual civility as bedrock policy objectives. Many recent biographers have been critical of aspects of the Thatcher years and Michael White, writing in New Statesman in February 2009, challenged the view that her reforms had brought a net benefit.

The term "Thatcherism" came to refer to her policies as well as aspects of her ethical outlook and personal style, including moral absolutism, nationalism, interest in the individual, and an uncompromising approach to achieving political goals. Thatcher and Thatcherism remain potent bywords in British political parlance, with both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown defining policies in post-Thatcherite terms, and David Cameron saying after a dinner with Thatcher in February 2009: "You have got to do the right thing even if it is painful. Don't trim or track all over the place. Set your course and take the difficult decisions because that is what needs to be done ... I think that influence, that character she had, that conviction she had, I think that will be very important."

Thatcher's tenure as Prime Minister was the longest since that of Lord Salisbury, and the longest continuous period in office since Lord Liverpool in the early 19th century.

Honours

Thatcher became a Member of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council (PC) upon becoming Secretary of State for Education and Science in 1970; she is also a Member of the Order of Merit (OM), a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), and the first woman entitled to full membership rights as an honorary member of the Carlton Club, a gentlemen's club.

She became a peer in the House of Lords in 1992 with a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire. In 1995, she was appointed a Lady Companion of the Order of the Garter, the UK's highest order of chivalry.

In the Falkland Islands, Margaret Thatcher Day has been marked every 10 January since 1992, commemorating her visit in 1983. Thatcher Drive in Stanley is named for her, as is Thatcher Peninsula in South Georgia, where the task force troops first set foot on the Falklands.

Thatcher has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour awarded by the US; the Republican Senatorial Medal of Freedom, and the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award. She is a patron of the Heritage Foundation, which established the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom in 2005.

Media depictions

Depictions of Margaret Thatcher have featured in a number of television programmes, documentaries, films and plays; she was played by Patricia Hodge in The Falklands Play (2002) and Lindsay Duncan in Margaret (2009). She was also the inspiration for a number of protest songs.

Thatcher was lampooned by satirist John Wells in multiple formats. Wells collaborated with Richard Ingrams on the spoof "Dear Bill" letters which ran as a column in Private Eye magazine, were published in book form and were then adapted into a West End stage revue as Anyone for Denis?, starring Wells as Denis Thatcher. The stage show was followed by a 1982 TV special directed by Dick Clement.

Titles

The styles and titles Thatcher has held from birth are:

Miss Margaret Roberts (13 October 1925 – 13 December 1951)
Mrs Denis Thatcher (13 December 1951 – 8 October 1959)
Mrs Denis Thatcher, MP (8 October 1959 – 22 June 1970)
The Rt Hon. Margaret Thatcher, MP, PC (22 June 1970 – 7 December 1990)
The Rt Hon. Margaret Thatcher, OM, MP, PC (7 December 1990 – 4 February 1991)
The Rt Hon. Lady Thatcher, OM, MP, PC (4 February 1991 – 16 March 1992)
The Rt Hon. Lady Thatcher, OM, PC (16 March 1992 – 26 June 1992)
The Rt Hon. The Baroness Thatcher, OM, PC (26 June 1992 – 22 April 1995)
The Rt Hon. The Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC (since 22 April 1995)

References

Notes

In her foreword to the 1979 Conservative manifesto, Thatcher wrote of "a feeling of helplessness, that a once great nation has somehow fallen behind".
"The hang-up has always been the voice. Not the timbre so much as, well, the tone – the condescending explanatory whine which treats the squirming interlocutor as an eight-year-old child with learning deficiencies. News Extra rolled a clip from May 1973 demonstrating the Thatcher sneer at full pitch. She sounded like a cat sliding down a blackboard ... She's cold, hard, quick and superior, and smart enough to know that those qualities could work for her instead of against."
"Authorities on poverty rates and income distributions differ as to precisely when the optimum moment of equality in Britain came, but some statistics leap out. The Gini coefficient, a common measure of income inequality, reached its lowest level for British households in 1977. The proportion of individual Britons below the poverty line did the same in 1978. Social mobility, the likelihood of someone becoming part of a different class from their parents, peaked in the Callaghan era. The egalitarian Britain of the Callaghan years and its social trends were relentlessly reversed in the Thatcher years and beyond, so that Britain in the 1970s was probably more equal than it had ever been before, and certainly more than it has ever been since."

Footnotes

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^ Beckett 2006, p. 3
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Maureen Johnson, "Bible-Quoting Thatcher Stirs Furious Debate", The Associated Press (28 May 1988).
Beckett 2006, p. 5
Beckett 2006, p. 6
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Blundell 2008, pp. 25–27
Beckett 2006, p. 16
Beckett 2006, pp. 20–21
Blundell 2008, p. 28
Reitan 2003, p. 17
Beckett 2006, p. 17
^ Beckett 2006, p. 22
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"BBC News –Baroness Thatcher admitted to hospital". BBC Online. BBC. 19 October 2010. Retrieved 19 October 2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
"Interview for Woman's Own ("no such thing as society") with journalist Douglas Keay". Margaret Thatcher Foundation. 23 September 1987. Retrieved 10 April 2007. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
^ "Evaluating Thatcher's legacy". BBC News. 4 May 2004. Retrieved 1 November 2008.
Marr 2007, p. 430
Beckett 2010, pp. 409–10
Richards 2004, p. 63
"Thatcher: I did right by Scots; Thatcher: I regret nothing.(News)". Sunday Times. 26 April 2009. p. 1. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
Hastings and Jenkins 1983, p. 329 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFHastings_and_Jenkins1983 (help)
"Who was it who first removed the seat belts and airbags from the safe-but-boring Volvo that the West built after 1945? 'Her freer, more promiscuous version of capitalism' in Hugo Young's phrase is reaping a darker harvest." Michael White "The Making of Maggie" New Statesman 26 February 2009
^ "Margaret Thatcher". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 30 October 2008. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
"Thatcher's Britain: Passing the Baton". The Economist. 30 April 2009. Retrieved 16 January 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
HM Government. "Margaret Thatcher, 10 Downing Street". Retrieved 5 January 2008. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
Gay, O.; Rees, A. (2005). "The Privy Council" (PDF). House of Commons Library Standard Note. SN/PC/2708. Retrieved 27 February 2009. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
"No. 52360". The London Gazette. 11 December 1990. {{cite magazine}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
"No. 52943". The London Gazette (invalid |supp= (help)). 5 June 1992. {{cite magazine}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) See also: "No. 52978". The London Gazette. 1 July 1992.
"No. 54017". The London Gazette. 25 April 1995. {{cite magazine}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
^ "Falklands to make 10 January Thatcher Day – Newspaper", Reuters News (6 January 1992).
Wheeler, Tony (2004), p. 171
Pat Roller, "Off the Record", Scottish Daily Record (10 January 2004), p. 10
"Heritage Foundation Board of Trustees". heritage.org. Retrieved 14 June 2008. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (13 September 2005). "Honoring the Iron Lady". The Washington Times. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
Campbell, Duncan (20 March 2007). "Falklands focus for Thatcher — The Movie". The Guardian. Retrieved 14 June 2008. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
"Duncan to take on Iron Lady role". BBC News. 9 April 2008. Retrieved 26 May 2008.
Holmwood, Leigh (8 April 2008). "BBC2 to paint dark portrait of Thatcher". guardian.co.uk. London: Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 26 May 2008.
West, Dave (23 July 2008). "Top UK actors cast in Thatcher drama". Digital Spy. Retrieved 23 July 2008. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
"Stellar cast to join Lindsay Duncan in Margaret". BBC. 24 July 2008. Retrieved 24 July 2008. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
"Anyone for Denis?". British Film Institute. Retrieved 19 January 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

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Floud, Roderick; Johnson, Paul (2003). The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, Volume 3. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-52738-5.
Foley, Michael (2002). John Major, Tony Blair and a Conflict of Leadership: Collision Course. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-6317-5.
Gilbert, Martin (2002). A History of the Twentieth Century. Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-06-050594-X.
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External links

Margaret Thatcher Foundation
Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher on the Downing Street website.
Margaret Thatcher biography at Notable Names Database
Maggie's Big Problem- Profile of Thatcher's post-Premiership from Vanity Fair, June 1991
Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom Public policy center dedicated to advancing the ideas of Thatcher
"Archival material relating to Margaret Thatcher". UK National Archives.
Records of the Prime Minister's Office, digitised files from the Prime Minister's Office, covering from the 1979 general election to December 1979.

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