Police charges against picketing union printers in Wapping enabled the Murdoch empire to flourish, ensuring their power and hers. declared that she wanted our money back, invited the It is no coincidence the three most influential centre-right thinktanks were all conceived over the following months. There are many reasons for this. It was all very well for me to write books. Like John Major in her wake, Thatcher was convinced that she understood the Scots yet couldn't understand why we remained so stubbornly resistant towards the notion of understanding her. This is accomplished by this baseless moral precept that it is gauche or worse to balance the gushing praise for them upon death with valid criticisms. She lavished praise on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, then in its infancy, and laid out the . Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013), who in 1979 would become Great Britain's first female Prime Minister, traveled to the United States and Canada in September 1975, seven months after becoming the leader of Britain's Conservative Party, then out of power. She was right, he was wrong. announced that White opportunities. Opponents and supporters of Margaret Thatcher will never agree about the value of her legacy, but as for her importance, her hypnotic hold on us, they are bound to find common ground. More than once the view was advanced that it was a pity the IRA had not succeeded in their ultimate objective when they bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Where copyright is the problem, the full text can be found on the Complete If the Falklands war was the making of Thatcher, then the poll tax was her achilles heel not least in Scotland. For Thatcher it all ended months later in November 1990 when she was forced to resign. Its strategies included the shallow and ineffectual 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement which was about creating a political alliance involving the Dublin establishment, the SDLP and the British to defeat Irish republicanism. At a banquet in Belgrade the press sat next to the so-called "Garden Girls", who were the secretaries at No 10. Any such objections would have been invalid. Everyone knows where they were when they heard. Watch a million words pour out today placing her anywhere from Boudicca to the wicked witch of the west. At countless demonstrations throughout the 80s, it expressed a curious ambivalence a first name intimacy as well as a furious rejection of all she stood for. defended Ronald first television interview the following day. Maggie was a fully formed comedy character before comedians had even gotten to her. Born: 21 June 1932 in Halifax. Gaze at the telephone. Without it, she would have been nothing. After being carried through the streets of London in a flag-draped coffin aboard a gun carriage, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was laid to rest this . steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979. Her policy decisions entrenched sectarian divisions, handed draconian military powers over to the securocrats, and subverted basic human rights. Though she recognised the dangers of global warming, Thatcher's industrial and economic policies prioritised economic growth. These talks, sometimes joined by the prime minister and run by his aide Rohan Silva, show the restless search for new ideas that still grips the right, one of the least recognised legacies of Margaret Thatcher. MT won election as Conservative leader on 11 February 1975 and gave a euphoric I am, it's safe to say, one of Thatcher's children. She led Britain further into Europe, while talking us further out. The Lady forced the opposition party to accommodate itself to the new, Thatcherite settlement in which the market would rule unless stated otherwise. 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. Margaret Thatcher might seem to some like an unlikely pioneer of the need for climate action but, in the late 1980s, she made a series of remarkable speeches and interventions on the subject and . see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising She made her remarks We still live in the land Margaret built. In 1979 it had a mile or so of shipyards, a sugar works and factories that still made rope and ship's fittings. Out!" First was the sheer depth of hostility towards the Tories in general. Margaret Thatcher was a hugely divisive figure in British politics. They do not have to charm, schmooze or play tag with the press. The government's job was to keep inflation low, not to boost growth through demand management. Thatcherism failed to destroy the welfare state. Simon Heffer, journalist, historian and friend of Margaret Thatcher, recommends the best books to read to gain an understanding of the United Kingdom's first female prime ministerand explains why she was the most influential British leader of the modern era. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979, she Shoot-to-kill actions by British forces also significantly increased. 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. In the prime Thatcher years they required a severity of will to carry through that would now, if called on, bewrapped in so many cycles of deluding spin as to persuade us it hadn't really happened. Many of today's more controversial benefits, such as disability, date back to the 80s. Today we have four coalmines and around 2,000 miners. 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. People should pay her the respect of doing the same after her death. Steely, certainly. It was not yours, but belonged to the Post Office: in effect, the government. Look at the trains on the track, the phone in your house, the trio of 1980s teenagers who lead the three main parties. I'd unthinkingly imbibed enough doctrine to know that, troubled as I was, there was little point looking elsewhere for support. More insidiously, it fathered amood of tolerated harshness. She was a gentle and peaceable woman my mother, that is and said few hard words about anyone, but in certain parts of the United Kingdom, and among certain social classes, Mrs T was detested, and not just for what people thought were her policies but for her persona for what she was. This was hardly the first or even the worst example of a dig at Thatcher tinged so needlessly with sexism. She was able to reach She lost seven cabinet ministers on the Europe question, a record that permeated the party for years afterwards. This was most evident in the shooting dead of three unarmed IRA activists in Gibraltar in March 1988. successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to I will know that we have finally broken from the kind of capitalism that she championed and which died in 2008 when we see workers elected on to company boards. How dare her apologists and beneficiaries of her legacy refer to trade unions like the NUM as "corrupt" in the face of their bonuses and tax cuts! Great speeches: 'Orwellian nightmare' if Tories fail, claims Margaret Thatcher. Too timid, too in thrall, the 13-year Labour government rarely dared challenge the attitudes she planted in the national psyche. It is not true that Thatcher didn't care about the media. But without any question, sitting behind her desk, she was wearing ahat. Capitalism flourishes on debt, but she insisted that economics were best understood as Mr Micawber's formula in which happiness and misery were separated by a shilling. By John Cassidy. And we won back three we lost at by-elections. Charles Powell was a senior foreign policy . bowling at the Lord Mayor's Banquet (12 November) and gave Instead state assets and a huge income stream from North sea oil were used to fund a populist programme of tax cuts, privatisation and council housesales. So what caused this great divide, with one side a fountain of fresh ideas and the other struggling for new inspiration? "The original alternative comics just did it because they had to," he says. Therein, 30 years ago, lay the great Thatcher asset and the electorally lethal Thatcher impact in Scotland. She had just finished the first volume of her memoirs, which she insisted was all her own work. In short, miners believed in society. I am reminded of this every time the debate comes up about whether more female bylines would reduce sexism in the media. It was perfectly justified to note that, particularly as the Guardian also explained that "to the millions who revered him a third of the country, according to some polls a messiah has fallen, and their grief will be visceral." Later that year she introduced the broadcasting ban on Sinn Fin, which prevented viewers and listeners hearing my voice. Whether pushing each other off the road, barging past social rivals, beating up rival soccer fans, or idolising wealth as the only measure of virtue, Brits became more unpleasant to be with. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one's enemies. For miners, greed was a destructive force, not a force for good. Mrs Thatcher was on the way up in British political life. One leading Tory thinker said current academic concepts such as evolutionary psychology and behavioural economics were fundamentally rightwing; another said disruptive digital technology liberated individuals against powerful behemoths which may be true, but some of the most striking online advances harness the collective spirit. In 11 years, Thatcher promoted only one woman to her cabinet, preferring instead to elevate men whom Spitting Image memorably and, in certain instances, accurately, described as "vegetables". She played a key role not only in bringing about the first Gulf War but also using her influence to publicly advocate for the 2003 attack on Iraq. In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon. The young men were those whose childhood was blighted by the effects of relative poverty and inequality on family life. Margaret Thatcher's Speech to Congress. John Major was elected her successor yesterday by Conservative Party members. He'd been a bully, she said, whereas Mrs T was warm and understanding. Even the nasty politics of "welfare reform" is driven by the high cost of subsidising low pay through in-work benefits, and indifference to the plight of jobless communities who have never recovered from de-industrialisation. Those strikes were confusing to me as a child. 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. Sunstein worked for a Democratic president, but did not meet the Labour leader or key advisers. Behind "omnishambles" headlines, her revolution is being pushed forward on new fronts in schools, health, planning, policing, probation and welfare. Britain ceased to be the sick man of Europe and entered the 1990s with its reputation enhanced. For a start, she had a superb memory for a brief, and she would have had no problem memorising quickly any number of lines. drew an important moral from the Falklands war: "We have ceased to But we have one beacon to guide us that Ronald Reagan never had. Out! Beleagured Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher makes pun during the 1981 Conservative Party conference speech: "the lady's not for turning" she says to her crit. camps were revealed in August 1992. Many whom Reagan encountered in public life thought of him in this way, but most politicians would love to reach even "Grade B" status. They are a more energetic and impressive group than their predecessors, often with experience outside politics that makes them impatient and independent-minded. News of Margaret Thatcher's death this morning instantly and predictably gave rise to righteous sermons on the evils of speaking ill of her. Thatcher did not believe in "picking winners"; instead she preferred to rely on market forces to ensure the survival of the fittest. Thatcher has said that negotiation, and not strong economic sanctions, is the way to persuade South Africa's white-minority government to dismantle apartheid. What was it about Thatcher that inspired a generation of comics to rage at her? The 70s was Britain's most equal decade. The first three speeches were by Winston Churchill. Somesay she revolutionised British politics certainly never again could people say nobody would vote for a woman but it served a reactionary end. As leader she was initially hyper-cautious. 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. "Respecting the grief" of Thatcher's family members is appropriate if one is friends with them or attends a wake they organize, but the protocols are fundamentally different when it comes to public discourse about the person's life and political acts. But it did, and the consequences seem impossible to reverse. At an international conference in Lisbon in the late 80s, the British faction, among whom were Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Malcolm Bradbury and myself, referred back to Thatcher constantly in our presentations. Or maybe audiences just really, really hated her and wanted to blow off some steam. The financial crash of 2008 was a direct result of the policies Thatcher championed. But there were also cuts for basic-rate taxpayers: the 1988 budget, for example, cut the top rate of tax from 60% to 40% and the standard rate from 27% to 25%. She forced us to decide what was truly important. My dad, I suspect, did. Seizing her chariot's reins to drive it on recklessly, they lack her brains, experience and political skill. The economic crisis that Britain faced had been created not by the working class itself, these wholesome people that Sir Keith remembered from his vac weeks in Barnsley, but by a working-class leadership that was determined to bring the whole system crashing down. making her big speech the following day as scheduled. John O'Sullivan, CBE (born 25 April 1942) is a British conservative political commentator and journalist. Animals and Pets Anime Art Cars and Motor Vehicles Crafts and DIY Culture, Race, and Ethnicity Ethics and Philosophy Fashion Food and Drink History Hobbies Law Learning and Education Military Movies Music Place Podcasts and Streamers Politics Programming Reading, Writing, and Literature Religion and Spirituality Science Tabletop Games . She would appear in public to drape a hankie over a model BA plane tailfin because she disliked the unpatriotic logo with which they'd replaced the union flag (maybe don't privatise BA then), or to shuffle about some country pile arm in arm with a doddery Pinochet and tell us all what a fine fellow he was. Each was characterised by her attention to detail. But other villages have never recovered, their heart and purpose ripped out. 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. Contrary to an increasingly common belief, "a woman who is successful" is not synonymous with "a feminist". Their target was "the enemy within" working-class power and the so-called culture of entitlement. Hewrote this piece in 2003, two weeks before he died. Ultimately, despite the despondent times of the Cold War and the waning confidence of the citizens, Margaret Thatcher delivered her eulogy speech in belief of President Ronald Reagan and used the rhetorical appeals of pathos, imagery, metaphor, and ethos to accomplish his presidency as successful. her intention to allow her name to go forward to the second ballot, she One of the few direct hits scored in the modern era was when Alex Ross and James Herring remixed Nick Clegg's bizarre "I'm sorry" speech and turned it into a hilarious R&B tune. We Americans will not see you again in our time, but we will never forget you. History will judge her, but not a country in Europe was untouched by Thatcher's example. On 30 October 1990 she made the first of the The US academic Cass Sunstein was in Britain at the end of last month. At times the Conservative party is so anarchic as to appear almost ungovernable, like a plethora of pressure groups pushing pet causes rather than a united group ruthlessly focusing on political success. She was a steadfast friend to brutal tyrants such as Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein and Indonesian dictator General Suharto ("One of our very best and most valuable friends"). Government policy during the 1980s was little more than a war policy, aimed at defeating or isolating republicanism. Out! an interviewer "there is no such thing as society", "We have not She preferred markets, and a strong but minimal central state that backed their rule. It was not interested in a resolution. When she returned from Paris many cabinet colleagues showed that 4.44 avg rating 39 ratings 2 editions. But perhaps her greatest legacy was New Labour. Here shovels the earth during a tree-planting ceremony . In a world where most media talking heads come from the top few percent of income earners, unions are not only important in wage bargaining, they also provide some of the few well-informed voices whose job it is to speak on behalf of the less well-paid. On the same edition of Channel 4 News, Louise Mensch named only three successful female politicians as part of her defence ofThatcher and only one of those was a Conservative. Above all, they lack her competence at running the machinery of government. That gives them the nerve to set about cutting benefits and the public realm with a glee they don't bother to hide. This legacy remains intact with a party that places a premium on radical thinking and, for all its flaws, sets the political agenda. It came to a head over her most egregious policy failure, Europe. If you want anything done, ask a woman.". Yet I wrote columns of pretty unremitting hostility to most of what she did. And for the people of Ireland, and especially the north, the Thatcher years were among some of the worst of the conflict. speech in the House of Commons, her 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. In my view, nothing said prior to her passing or since has been inaccurate in the description of this very special, warm relationship, the likes of which we may never see again. This zest for ideas was boosted by the 2010 intake, which comprises just under half the parliamentary party. She, for one, never underestimated her friend from California, then a state of some 24 million. Her centralism, unequalled in Europe, descended under Blair into a morass of targetry, inefficiency and endless reorganisation. No one noticed, but she was Blair's first guest at Downing Street in 1997. If you want anything done, ask a woman.". There's something distinctively creepy - in a Roman sort of way - about this mandated ritual that our political leaders must be heralded and consecrated as saints upon death. It fell to Blair to do something about the latter, while giving free rein to the former. Council house sales and advertising campaigns that encouraged the public to buy shares in privatised companies were meant to broaden the appeal of capitalism. She would not have been half the . This is what we mean by the Thatcher revolution, imposing on Britain, for better or for worse, some of the liberalisation that the major continental economies know,20 years later, they still need. At the time, Thatcher was the education secretary her first major political role. Margaret Thatcher had planned to attack Labour's unwillingness to condemn picket-line violence in her 1984 conference speech but changed her mind when an IRA bomb hit The Grand Hotel in Brighton. North sea oil was squandered when it should have seeded new industries. Everything has its season. What saved Thatcher's bacon, and revolutionised her leadership, was Labour's unelectable Michael Foot and the Falklands war. And in 1983, for the first time, children born in Britain to non-British parents were denied automatic citizenship, fostering further racism and discrimination in immigration policy. 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." April 25, 2020. can do business together". The gender remained, its artefacts deployed with calculation. But at its crudest, the Thatcher ethos translated into the get-rich-quick, greed-is-good spirit of the 1980s, satirised by Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney creation. Any attempts at revisionism do no favours to her, women or feminism. Margaret Thatcher was Britain's most significant leader since Churchill. When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms. Not even the Falklands war would push it off the tracks or damage it in any way. It destroyed the public's power to determine via parliament the services and prices of gas, electricity, telephone. Now she would more likely have been beaten to the Tory leadership by one of the Etonians in cabinet. A special licence was granted exclusively to the Radio Times. But Margaret Thatcher did not hesitate, and the long, substantive lunch seemed to energize both future world leaders. An Inconvenient Truth About Margaret Thatcher: She Was a Climate Hawk. 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. That chanted demand of the left has been fully and finally met. In the 80s, she was the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy and is now simply called "comedy". This regrettable transformation was blessed by a leader who probably did not know it was happening because she didn't care if it happened or not. Second, it's now easier to see the scale of the setback she inflicted on Britain's idea of its own future. But, as the prince in Lampedusa's The Leopard says: "For things to remain the same, everything must change.". She was "outraged" when the programmes went ahead. Speaking personally, it was a personal privilege beyond measure to have witnessed and participate in the blossoming of the special ties that continued throughout her entire time in office. In the 2004 eulogy in honor of the late president, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher uses a series of rhetorical devices such as parallelism, repetition, and ethos to convey the message in which Reagan was much more than an excellent president. Although the "right to buy" and the privatisation of utilities by selling shares to new small investors was often justified as giving rights to "the little people", the reality is that the less well-off fell ever further behind the rich. Thatcher swept away those state monopolies in the new coinage of "privatisation" and transformed daily life in a way we now take for granted. Creative destruction was capitalism's necessary agent, so equilibrium was bound to be restored. Her Irish policy failed miserably. Thatcher's use of rhetorical devices supports her eulogy because the concept of Reagan being more. and series of famous statements that marked the end of her premiership, Throw the Lib Dems into the mix and it becomes highly combustible. This was my mother speaking at some point in the middle 1980s. Miners were a hardy race of people who faced constant danger in the cause of mining coal but underneath that they were caring, sensitive individuals with a commitment to the communities in which they lived. The drastic results of these policies were intentional. Between 1945-90 every statement made by Margaret Thatcher is listed, as far as can be known.
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