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Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC (born Margaret Hilda
Roberts on 13 October 1925) is a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who
was in office from 1979 to 1990. She was leader of the Conservative Party from 1975
until 1990. She is the first and to date only woman to have held the office of
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Thatcher was the longest-serving British Prime Minister since Lord Salisbury and
had the longest continuous period in office since Lord Liverpool in the early 19th
century. She was the first woman to lead a major political party in the UK, and the
first of only two women to have held any of the four great offices of state.
 Early life and
education
Thatcher was born in the town of Grantham in
Lincolnshire, England. Her father, Alfred Roberts, owned a grocer's shop in
the town and was active in local politics and religion, serving as an Alderman
and Methodist lay preacher. Roberts came from a Liberal family but stood—as
was then customary in local government—as an Independent. He lost his post as
Alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham
Council in 1950. He married Beatrice Stephenson, and they had two daughters
(Thatcher and her older sister Muriel, 1921-2004). Thatcher was brought up a
devout Methodist and has remained a Christian throughout her life. Thatcher
performed well academically, attending Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School and
subsequently attending Somerville College, Oxford in 1944 to study Chemistry,
specifically crystallography. She became President of the Oxford University
Conservative Association in 1946, the third woman to hold the post. She
graduated with a degree and worked as a research chemist for British Xylonite
and then J. Lyons and Co., where she helped develop methods for preserving ice
cream. She was a member of the team that developed the first soft frozen ice
cream. Thatcher was also a member of the Association of Scientific
Workers.
Legacy
Margaret Thatcher has undoubtedly made a great impact on British and global
politics. Her policies were emulated around the world, and, though divisive, even
left-wing politicians such as Tony Benn have stated their admiration for the
straight-forward, unflinching way in which she conducted her policies. The first
woman to hold the post of Prime Minister, she was also one of the longest serving
Prime Ministers ranking with the likes of the Lord Salisbury. Her departure was one
of the most dramatic events in British political history.
She has been credited for her macroeconomic reforms with "rescuing" the British
economy from the stagnation of the 1970s, and is admired for her committed
radicalism on economic issues. She was a divisive figure, and some still hold her
responsible for destroying much of the UK's manufacturing base, consigning many to
long-term unemployment (reaching 4 million in the decade she was in power).
However, supporters of privatisation and of the free market cite the recovery of
the economy during the mid-1980s and the present-day success of the British
economy, with its relatively low unemployment and structural shift away from
manufacturing towards the service sector. An unfortunate effect of her policies was
that many of the publicly supported industries and industrial plants that shrank or
closed down were the predominant employers in their areas, thus causing pockets of
very high unemployment, while the growth of new services and technologies normally
took place in other usually more prosperous areas.
When Thatcher took over in 1979, Britain was sometimes nicknamed as the "sick man
of Europe" in the 1970s. Arguably, the UK emerged from the 1980s as one of the more
successful economies in Europe. While the unemployment rate did eventually come
down, it came after initial job losses and radical labour market reforms. These
included laws that weakened trade unions and the deregulation of financial markets,
which certainly played a part in returning London to a leadership position as a
European financial centre, and her push for increased competition in
telecommunications and other public utilities.
Perceptions of Margaret Thatcher are mixed among the British public. Few would
argue that there was any woman who played a more important role on the world stage
in the 20th century. In perhaps the sincerest form of flattery, Labour Prime
Minister Tony Blair, himself a thrice-elected Prime Minister, has acknowledged her
importance. Thatcher herself indirectly acknowledged Blair during a Conservative
leadership contest when she said "The Conservative Party doesn't need someone that
can beat Mr Blair. They need someone like Mr Blair."
Through the Common Agricultural Policy, British agriculture was (and remains)
heavily subsidised while other failing parts of the economy did not receive similar
tax revenue support. This geographical imbalance in Thatcher's support contributed
directly to the growth of devolution movements in those areas.
Perceptions abroad broadly follow the same political divisions. Critical satirists
have often caricatured her. For instance, French singer Renaud wrote a song, Miss
Maggie, which lauded women as refraining from many of the silly behaviours of males
– and every time making an exception for "Mrs Thatcher". She may be remembered most
of all for her remark "There is no such thing as society" to the reporter Douglas
Keay, for Woman's Own magazine, 23 September 1987. This remark has frequently been
quoted out of its full context and the surrounding remarks were as follows:
"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to
understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it.
'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.'
They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as
society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no
government can do anything except through people, and people must look to
themselves first."
In 1996, the Scott Inquiry into the Arms-to-Iraq affair investigated the Thatcher
government's record in dealing with Saddam Hussein. It revealed how £1bn of
Whitehall money was used in soft loan guarantees for British exporters to Iraq. The
judge found that during Baghdad's protracted invasion of Iran in the 1980s,
officials destroyed documents relating to the export of Chieftain tank parts to
Jordan which ended up in Iraq. Ministers clandestinely relaxed official guidelines
to help private companies sell machine tools which were used in munitions
factories. The British company Racal exported sophisticated Jaguar V radios to the
former Iraqi dictator's army on credit. Members of the Conservative cabinet refused
to stop lending guaranteed funds to Saddam even after he executed a British
journalist, Farzad Bazoft, Thatcher’s cabinet minuting that they did not want to
damage British industry.
Many on both the right and left agree that Thatcher had a transformative effect on
the British political spectrum and that her tenure had the effect of moving the
major political parties rightward. Will Hutton, author of the best selling The
State We're In, argues that her necessary economic changes could have been achieved
with more consensus and less hardship by a leader less enamoured of US hegemonic
power.
New Labour and Blairism have incorporated much of the economic, social and
political tenets of "Thatcherism" in the same manner as, in a previous era, the
Conservative Party from the 1950s until the days of Edward Heath accepted many of
the basic assumptions of the welfare state instituted by Labour governments. The
curtailing and large-scale dismantling of elements of the welfare state under
Thatcher have largely remained. As well, Thatcher's program of privatising
state-owned enterprises has not been reversed. Indeed, successive Tory and Labour
governments have further curtailed the involvement of the state in the economy and
have further dismantled public ownership.
Thatcher's impact on the trade union movement in Britain has been lasting, with the
breaking of the miners' strike of 1984-1985 seen as a watershed moment, or even a
breaking point, for a union movement which has been unable to regain the degree of
political power it exercised up through the 1970s. Unionisation rates in Britain
have permanently declined since the 1980s, and the legislative instruments
introduced to curtail the impact of strikes have not been reversed. Instead, the
Labour Party has worked to loosen its ties to the trade union movement. While
industrial action does still occur, there is no longer the kind of mass economic
disruption seen in the 1970s, and the closed shop remains illegal.
Thatcher's legacy has continued strongly to influence the Conservative Party
itself. Successive leaders, starting with John Major, and continuing in opposition
with William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard, have struggled with real
or perceived factions in the Parliamentary and national party to determine what
parts of her heritage should be retained or jettisoned. One cannot yet determine
what the role of Thatcherism will be under the leadership of David Cameron.
Thatcher is credited by Ronald Reagan with persuading him that Mikhail Gorbachev
was sincere in his desire to reform and liberalize the Soviet Union. The resulting
thaw in East-West relations helped to end the Cold War. In recognition of this,
Lady Thatcher was awarded the 1998 Ronald Reagan Freedom Award by Mrs. Nancy
Reagan. The award is only given to those who "have made monumental and lasting
contributions to the cause of freedom worldwide," and "embody President Reagan's
life long belief that one man or woman can truly make a difference." President
Ronald Reagan, who was not able to attend the ceremony, was a longtime friend of
Lady Thatcher.
In a list compiled by the centre-left publication New Statesman in 2006, she was
voted fifth in the list of "Heroes of our time". She was also named a "Hero of
Freedom" by the libertarian magazine Reason.
In February 2007, she became the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to be
honoured with a statue in the House of Commons while still alive. The statue is
made of bronze and stands opposite her political hero and predecessor, Winston
Churchill. The statue, by sculptor Antony Dufort, shows her as if she were
addressing the House of Commons, with her right arm outstretched. Thatcher said she
was thrilled with it.
In May 2007, Thatcher was one of only five Britons selected by voters for an ITV
television programme for the title of 'Greatest Living Briton'
14th June 2007, on the Daily Politics TV programme who was running a poll on who
was Britain's favourite post-Second World War II prime minister, Lady Thatcher won
with 49% of the vote.
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Margaret
Thatcher - Generator - Biography
