This was my mother speaking at some point in the middle 1980s. At a party leaders' meeting in Washington, DC in 1985, Prime Minister Thatcher spent all day in the House of Commons, then boarded Concorde and flew to Washington to participate until late into the evening; she took such policy co-operation very seriously. performance at a Press Conference afterwards, the Thatcher's Spitting Image puppet was different from the others; while other characters, such as Ronald Reagan and the pope, were exaggerated into fantasy versions of themselves, the rubber Maggie was just like the one who appeared on the news a stern, cold, matronly figure who had a slightly oedipal relationship with her cabinet. they did not want her to go on (21 November) and that night she made the Please activate cookies in order to turn autoplay off. Norman and Margaret hold, and will always hold, a unique place in our esteem and affection. In January 1983 she The British inflation was in 1975 up at 24, 11% [] and with the union's constant claim for higher salaries, nobody expected it to drop to a normal level. Contrary to an increasingly common belief, "a woman who is successful" is not synonymous with "a feminist". By then, 1990, I was 15, adolescent and instinctively anti-establishment enough to regard her disdainfully. (No wonder it sold 7m copies a week). All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people's pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. How could anyone who was so resolutely Margaret Thatcher be anything else? To Britons of my generation, she . speaking in March 2002.). Here shovels the earth during a tree-planting ceremony . which revealed a good deal as to her political When Margaret Hilda Thatcher took over as Prime Minister, in May, 1979, I was sixteen. The passing of Chvez is mourned by the many millions who loved him in Latin America and everywhere. Which raises the question: why isn't this happening now? If the Falklands war was the making of Thatcher, then the poll tax was her achilles heel not least in Scotland. We watched as her high heels went click-click-click across the stones of the Acropolis and the cement floors of Tito's steel mills. I can't articulate with the skill of either of "the Marks" Steel or Thomas why Thatcher and Thatcherism were so bad for Britain but I do recall that even to a child her demeanour and every discernible action seemed to be to the detriment of our national spirit and identity. But really, such statements were anything but, first because sweeping statements about genders are the opposite of gender equality and second because they revealed her real attitude towards women, which lay behind her notable lack of female-friendly policies, her utter lack of interest in childcare provision or positive action. see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising In her thoughtful and prescient remarks, the Prime Minister reached back into history to recall how far the English-Speaking Peoples had come since victory in . Sir Bernard Ingham was Margaret Thatcher writ large. The former reporter, who was 90, died with his family around him yesterday lunchtime, a statement said. "Being powerful is like being a lady. Reagan's decision to bomb Libya, spoke Tasteless." Council house sales and advertising campaigns that encouraged the public to buy shares in privatised companies were meant to broaden the appeal of capitalism. But on their catastrophic economic policy, it's full-speed ahead into the concrete wall. "The original alternative comics just did it because they had to," he says. Thatcher's most baleful influence on government was not on industries and services she privatised but those she did not. It never was. Leaving aside the detail that the word "feminist" came into existence in 1895, comfortably in Chanel's lifetime, the woman who valued femininity above all other qualities in a woman and was heavily involved with the Nazis, including a wartime relationship with German officer Hans Gunther von Dincklage, could not, in any circumstances, be described as a feminist. He'd been a bully, she said, whereas Mrs T was warm and understanding. But it was overlaid by the supposedly masculine virtues, sometimes more manly than the men could ever assemble. Philip Larkin visited Downing Street where the prime minister quoted approvingly one of his lines to him "Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives." 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. Lady Thatcher, you honor us by coming to the site of Sir Winston's pivotal speech, an event Westminster College has immortalized with the beautiful Winston Churchill Memorial. That one should not speak ill of the dead is arguably appropriate when a private person dies, but it is wildly inappropriate for the death of a controversial public figure, particularly one who wielded significant influence and political power. Peggy Noonan. The drastic results of these policies were intentional. There was, for example, the time in the late 1970s when, as Opposition Leader, she almost succeeded in censoring the one half-decent joke in a key campaign speech. The impact that Hayek's writing had on Thatcher, her advisors, and her policies is undeniable. ", As Matthew Parris evocatively put it in Monday's Times, "She rather liked men (preferring our company, perhaps, to that of women), [but] she thought us the weaker sex. Weakening the power of trade unions was not only essential to her project, but several studies suggest that their continued weakness may be an important part of the reason why inequality has not declined in the intervening decades. 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. of the 1600 libraries around the world which hold the CD-ROM. She was unashamed about this, loathing localism and rejecting calls to diminish the "strong state". The stance was often in broadest terms, more moral than political. She was 87. led Michael Heseltine to run against her for the party leadership. "No, no, no". Promises. Still plumbing for the essence, we have to examine other bits of residue. She and her successors John Major and Tony Blair presided over a quarter century of unprecedented prosperity. He had enough Del Boy about him to admire her coiffured virility but in a way Thatcher was so omnipotent; so omnipresent, so omni-everything that all opinion was redundant. Or maybe audiences just really, really hated her and wanted to blow off some steam. a new dominance from Brussels". She wanted to win, but did not put much faith in the quick smile. M argaret Thatcher does an awful lot of crying in The Crown. There were sporadic resurrections. At a banquet in Belgrade the press sat next to the so-called "Garden Girls", who were the secretaries at No 10. She refused to reform social security, or even curb its abuse. The news last week that they are instead considering cutting or freezing the minimum wage surely undermines any pretence that the government is acting either coherently or in the public interest. The milk snatcher reputation absorbed and lived with. Modern comedians complain that they don't have personalities, they don't really stand for anything. During Margaret Thatcher's rise to the top, he was one of the backroom figures whose words helped create her reputation as the Iron Lady. In the 80s, she was the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy and is now simply called "comedy". How Does Ronald Reagan Use Syntax In A Throw To Our Dead "They did their thing with no chance of making any money, so they stood up in crappy pubs and said, 'I hate Maggie'. John O'Sullivan (columnist) - Wikipedia Under this heading, Thatcher left a dark legacy that, like her successes, has still not disappeared behind the historical horizon. The appointment was a 20-minute audience with the . But what bound all opposition to Margaret Thatcher's programme was a suspicion that the grocer's daughter was intent on monetising human value, that she had no heart and, famously, cared little for the impulses that bind individuals into a society. If they have no bread, let them eat from food banks that's Thatcherism, the legacy we are still to bury before it buries us. Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister 1979-1990 - ThoughtCo Interview by Benedict King. On June 11th, 2004 Margaret Thatcher gave a speech to the American people at Ronald Reagan's funeral. The three of us watched as the gentle horticultural ritual was feebly enacted, then regarded the Iron Lady being helped into the back of a car and trundling off. was an Oxford student home for the university holidays. There had been Churchill and his defiance; there had been Kipling and his If; there had been her father in his grocer's shop in Grantham. Hugo Young was a political columnist forthe Guardian from 1984 until 2003 and biographer of Margaret Thatcher. But former speechwriter Trevor Reeves can no longer . No gloves, or hats, except for royalty or at funerals, but feet on the table, whisky glass at hand, into the small hours of solitude, for want of male cronies in the masculine world she dominated for all her 11yearsin power. If you have a . Her onslaught on the trade unions left those movements pale imitations of their former selves, too weak to resist the drive to the "flexible labour market" which has seen Britain become the home of what one senior Labour figure calls "crappy jobs", with low pay and no protection. No homeless or disabled people need beg on the streets. The jobs that went during the 80s tended to be good, skilled jobs, delivering decent incomes and some security. Yet her understanding of Britain was alarmingly crude. Firstly, control of inflation rather than the pursuit of full employment was the centrepiece of macro economic strategy. Though she recognised the dangers of global warming, Thatcher's industrial and economic policies prioritised economic growth. In this eulogy, Thatcher uses rhetorical strategies to convince her readers into believing what she states. But she regarded rightwing causes as an intellectual hobby. Alamat kami. What is really left by Thatcher to history? These developments set a benchmark. Bob Slayer, one of the genuine alternative comedians on the scene, likes to note the irony of what's become of comedy. She needed followers, as long as they went in her frequently unpopular directions. She wrecked her own party, while promoting, via many a tortuous turn, Labour's resurrection. That was the daunting task Margaret Thatcher set herself when she arrived in Downing Street in May 1979 at the end of a traumatic decade that had seen a three-day week, inflation topping 25%, a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and the winter of discontent. It was sad that she had to learn it in war, a grim example to her British and US successors. The family silver was squandered on bribing voters rather than modernising the economy. After the Dublin European Council in November 1979 she began a long battle Why don't you get a proper job, she once sneered at me. But other villages have never recovered, their heart and purpose ripped out. In her 1982 party conference speech, Margaret Thatcher offered a prediction for the future: "How absurd it will seem in a few years' time that the state ran Pickfords removals and Gleneagles Hotel . Such seminars are regular events in Downing Street under the coalition. On November 8th 1989, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave an inspiring speech to the UN General Assembly about the environment and climate change. On the day Thatcher died, the Daily Mail ran a piece claiming that Coco Chanel "was a feminist before the word existed". The problem for Labour is that this issue so fundamental, since it underscores so much policy is unresolved in their ranks. . Between 1945-90 every statement made by Margaret Thatcher is listed, as far as can be known. As far as her supporters are concerned, this radical transformation worked. It was only in the mid-80s that she became truly radical and remotely comparable to David Cameron in 2010. It became obvious that, while granting that I had "convictions", she never read a word of my stuff. She lavished praise on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, then in its infancy, and laid out the . As a child she unnerved me but we are not children now and we are free to choose our own ethical codes and leaders that reflect them. Thatcher came to personify those ready to push anyone aside to gain power in a man's world and strengthen that world with their ambition. delivered an outstanding defence of the Government in the Commons. This zest for ideas was boosted by the 2010 intake, which comprises just under half the parliamentary party. Across Yorkshire or south Wales, Kent or Nottinghamshire, there are villages that have never recovered from the closure of coal mines, ordered by a Thatcher who ruled there was no place for pits that were not "economically viable", regardless of the social consequences. Margaret Thatcher's Speech to Congress - Hillsdale College What you see is a nation ruled for 11 turbulent years by a remarkable woman and which still lives in her image. . At its best, that has meant a mood of freedom and choice that has made these islands a brighter, less drab place than they once were. Britain ceased to be the sick man of Europe and entered the 1990s with its reputation enhanced. She usually knew the limits to public tolerance, gauging how much of the spirit of '45 abided, so even if it was between gritted teeth, she forced herself to say, "The NHS is safe in our hands": she reorganised but did not privatise it. The London mayor regretted that usage, but he surely understood its origins. The number of days lost through strikes tumbled. A senior civil servant said, "It worked because we all knew exactly what she wanted.". 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. Not until well out of office, angry and lacking her old judgment, did she lead the rabidly Eurosceptic renegades. Where copyright is the problem, the full text can be found on the Complete She made her maiden Thatcher swept away those state monopolies in the new coinage of "privatisation" and transformed daily life in a way we now take for granted. She was lucky, in her enemies and friends notably Reagan in the Falklands conflict. speech which caused the Soviets to dub her "the Iron Lady", one We are all on our own. This was the feminine creature who, two years later, was leader of the Conservative party. The first three speeches were by Winston Churchill. Alexei Sayle blames Twitter and the "multiplicity of voices" in the modern world. Died: 24 February 2023, aged 90 Sir Bernard Ingham was Margaret Thatcher writ large. Jan Leeming, Sue Lawley, Moira Stuart delivering doctrine with sterile sexiness, like a butterscotch-scented beige vapour. The 1978 meeting was their last in person until Mrs Thatcher became Reagan's first state visitor, 26-28 February 1981. She added layers of her own to this intimacy, directing the creation of a single European market that surrendered important national powers to the collective. Thatcher's social instincts were always nostalgic conservative. for the disk. As leader she was initially hyper-cautious. The 70s was Britain's most equal decade. Any attempts at revisionism do no favours to her, women or feminism. When all the public amenities were flogged, the adverts made it seem to my childish eyes fun and positive, jaunty slogans and affable British stereotypes jostling about in villages, selling people companies that they'd already paid for through tax. There are still some great comics doing political material, with Mark Steel and Mark Thomas flying the flag of alternative comedy, while people such as Josie Long and Chris Coltrane find the funny in activism. She wasn't a feminist icon and she wasn't an icon for women. What Is Wrong With Margaret Thatcher's Voice On 'The Crown - Esquire It made her virtually unsackable as education secretary. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one's enemies. At the Citizen's Theatre in Glasgow, the pantomime featured the Wicked Witch of the South; everyone knew her real identity. 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. Union in a speech But we have one beacon to guide us that Ronald Reagan never had. The poll tax showed the opposite, the weakness of Thatcher's strength. She undoubtedly rescued the prestige of the country from its postwar nadir, but at a high cost to the generosity of its political and social culture. British Labour MP Tom Watson decreed: "I hope that people on the left of politics respect a family in grief today." Between 1945-90 every statement made by Margaret Thatcher is listed, The prime minister was intensely interested in the campaign, and asked many penetrating questions. 'The Crown': Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth's Key Conflicts I'd become a delinquent, living on heroin and benefit fraud. still being scolded for the remark.You can read here exactly what she said, The party she led three times to electoral triumph became unelectable for a generation. Yet I wrote columns of pretty unremitting hostility to most of what she did. The author uses this idea of freedom in her writing to allow the audience to feel and understand the mission of Reagan--"to restore the strength of the free world, and to free the slaves of communism" (6-7). She hated what she called "that French phrase laissez faire". Margaret Thatcher, Signed Speech on Hayek, 2003, Estimate 1,500-2,000 . The Crown's Version of Margaret Thatcher's 1990 Downfall Takes a Lot of Liberties with . wrong with politics? She certainly was divisive, bisecting the country politically and geographically: hard-hit regions in the north of England, Wales and Scotland may be notably less civil in their farewells. Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. It was illegal to put an extension lead on your phone. It is no coincidence the three most influential centre-right thinktanks were all conceived over the following months. In 1979 she inherited a nation that was the "sick man of Europe", an object of constant transatlantic ridicule. Following several small strokes she announced, in March 2002, that her career as a speechmaker had ended. Scotsman Obituaries: Bernard Ingham, press secretary who ensured Interviewing him, I was struck by a Victorian sort of kindness; as an Oxford student in the 1930s he'd worked in his vacation helping families of the unemployed in the Yorkshire coalfield one of them had even named their baby Keith in his honour. Her political antennae refused to allow her to privatise the coal industry, British Rail or the post office. I met her just once, as a reporter in the press pack that followed her tour around Greece and Yugoslavia in 1980. Everything has its season. Thatcher's reign helped to inspire alternative comedy by creating a generation so bereft of hope that they started putting on gigs just for the sake of something to do. We had an all-out blistering row that delighted the organisers. ", This was the great leader in her favourite pose as Samuel Smiles: human beings didn't need to be helped they needed to help themselves. Bruges speech - Wikipedia 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. making her big speech the following day as scheduled. But it was the killing of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane in February 1989 that reveals the depth of the Thatcher government's state collusion policy. But she also provided great material. in his defence during the IranContra affair, told The battle with the miners and leftwing councils lay ahead, as did the trauma of an IRA assassination bid. Whathappened at the hands of this woman's indifference to sentiment andgood sense in the early 1980s brought unnecessary calamity to the lives of several million people who losttheir jobs. Yet for all these fissures, even Maoist modernisers and the most reactionary social conservatives share a similar stance over the role of the state. At Cheltenham the following month she She was able to reach ", This attitude that men are fun but dumb, women are smart but strident, a view of the sexes that seems to come straight out of a Judd Apatow film led to various quotes of hers that some like to twist into proof that Thatcher was an unwitting feminist. But Margaret Thatcher did not hesitate, and the long, substantive lunch seemed to energize both future world leaders. She had left a Britain marked by private affluence and public squalor. You may not be a fan of Edwina Currie but, really, was she any worse than John Gummer? While she spoke of his example as a beacon, she knew very well that she was an important component of what is often attributed solely to him, and in the first instance "winning" the cold war. He was listened to with rapt attention, unsurprisingly, since in both Washington and Westminster his "nudge" theories are saving significant sums of taxpayers' money. In the current wall-to-wall media welter, I caught the current leader of the Scottish Tories, Ruth Davison MSP, being asked if Thatcher was an electoral asset for her. "Margaret Thatcher was not a natural communicator. As coal, steel and shipbuilding fell under her wrecking ball, whole communities were destroyed. They recognised the need for cohesion when at any time disaster could strike a family unit or indeed a whole community. I was a professional writer. 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. In fact, several countries have adopted these ideas with startlingly successful results; just changing the wording on some forms raised an extra 200m income tax in Britain, while personalised text messages drastically reduced the use of bailiffs to recover court fines. She lost seven cabinet ministers on the Europe question, a record that permeated the party for years afterwards. Farewelling Baroness Margaret Thatcher in a proper fashion is a difficult task: she left such a deep imprint upon the world that assessing its importance demands volumes analyzing her beliefs and paying proper tribute. It was under her leadership that in 1982 that the Force Research Unit (FRU) was established within the British Army Intelligence Corps. So it suggests the anachronistic and unaffordable return to a contributory welfare system, while opposing the further opening up of education and health provision; some even float the renationalisation of railways. Margaret Thatcher's landmark Bruges speech about the future of Europe was never intended to push the UK towards the exit, the man who wrote it says. The Messed Up Truth About Margaret Thatcher - Grunge.com We liked disliking her. 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. Yet, at that last encounter, her tone was different. for turning. What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neo-liberal inculcation begins. Her imitators swerve all over the place, with 37 U-turns at the Telegraph's latest count on matters from forests and pasties to buzzard nests and caravans. Reagan, who had recently left office as governor of California, was in London to deliver a speech to the Pilgrim Society. Typically, this distinction is mapped onto the ideas that Conservatives hold about equality. first television interview the following day, euphoric She showed that modern prime ministers can still mark out room for individual manoeuvre. The Thatcher government was across all the details of this shipment. But she exploited her luck. Of all the things to criticise Thatcher for, calling her out for being a woman seems like something of a wasted bullet. In the three years prior to receiving these weapons the loyalist death squads killed 34 people. Margaret Thatcher: sitcom star - British Comedy Guide the British Embassy in Paris and stated The Thatcher Papers - Churchill Archives Centre She was among the first Western leaders to A decade later they were wiped out in terms of Scotland-based Westminster constituency representation. Given the nature of her legacy "survival of the fittest" a phrase that Darwin himself only used twice in On the Origin of Species, compared to hundreds of references to altruism, love and cooperation, it isn't surprising that there are parties tonight in Liverpool, Glasgow and Brixton from where are they to have learned compassion and forgiveness? Her heirs have not learned that lesson, with no sign of their promised "rebalancing". morning, Available for everyone, funded by readers. This reverie only occurred when the car was out of view. Some places have become heritage parks, remembering an industry now vanished. Margaret Thatcher was a hugely divisive figure in British politics. "Maggie Thatcher" two fierce trochees set against the gentler iambic pulse of Britain's postwar welfare state. departing Downing Street on 28 November. The best books on Margaret Thatcher - Five Books In the 2011 biographical drama film "The Iron Lady," Meryl Streep plays the role of Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. It still does. The spell of community. On taking office she showered money on public sector unions, and her "cuts" were only to planned increases, mild compared with today's. A meeting in Downing Street had left the Pakistan leader besotted with the older woman's wisdom and generosity: '"I tell you, she's such a kind person.". . A couple of days later on the 11th, Margaret Thatcher the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, wrote an eulogy for Ronald Reagan. It led to riots that nobody needed. From a peak of 13 million in 1979, trade union membership had declined by 30% by 1990, and is now not much more than half what it was. "You see," she announced in her self-satisfied way, "it just goes to show what people can do when they have to. And for the people of Ireland, and especially the north, the Thatcher years were among some of the worst of the conflict. camps were revealed in August 1992. rejecting Commission proposals at the Rome European Council with the words In front of his journalist colleagues he was told to stand right in front of her so that she could hit him lightly with her order papers. All Rights Reserved. Maggie was a fully formed comedy character before comedians had even gotten to her. Yet the Daily Mail has morefemale bylines than any other UK paper and is not exactly a totem of gender equality andfemale-friendliness. Thatcher and Reagan went on to facilitate a colossal transfer of wealth from poor to rich, leading to the world economic crash we now witness. So what caused this great divide, with one side a fountain of fresh ideas and the other struggling for new inspiration? Or perhaps it was just because I was a little kid and more interested in them Weetabix skinheads, Roland Rat and Knight Rider. Norman Tebbit, one of Thatcher's acolytes and fellow "Munsters evacuee", said when the National Union of Mineworkers eventually succumbed to the military onslaught and starvation over which she presided: "We didn't just break the strike, we broke the spell."
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