After the 1987 election, Thatcher cut an increasingly isolated figure. verbatim and in context. Less noted . It was a Charles I moment in British history. Any attempts at revisionism do no favours to her, women or feminism. Maggie! By raising the pay of their own staff to a minimum of the living wage, they have set an example which a growing number of large private-sector employers have followed. "They did their thing with no chance of making any money, so they stood up in crappy pubs and said, 'I hate Maggie'. There are more than 8,000. Reagan was a highly influential president during his time in office, and had a lot of responsibility concerning the Cold War. We had an all-out blistering row that delighted the organisers. But the key point is this: those who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics) aren't silent at all. This demand for respectful silence in the wake of a public figure's death is not just misguided but dangerous. Farewell, indeed, Baroness Thatcher. in a statement the following morning (22 November), hours before she 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. So we agreed to reactivate the back channel. Her centralism, unequalled in Europe, descended under Blair into a morass of targetry, inefficiency and endless reorganisation. It is full of insights into a neglected aspect of how Thatcher came to dominate British politics." (Andrew Gamble, University of Sheffield, UK) "A fascinating insight into the world of speech writing. Much of any leader's record is unremarkable dross, and Thatcher was no exception. Words. Britain was battered out of the somnolent conservatism, across awide front of economic policies and priorities, that had held back progress and, arguably, prosperity. Having no social or political connection with the class most affected, she gave a very good impression of not caring. 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." Too timid, too in thrall, the 13-year Labour government rarely dared challenge the attitudes she planted in the national psyche. Strident, divisive, and in her own view infallible, and for these reasons hard to mourn. North sea oil was squandered when it should have seeded new industries. The resignation was announced Or perhaps it was just because I was a little kid and more interested in them Weetabix skinheads, Roland Rat and Knight Rider. The leading feminist Natasha Walter called Thatcher "the great unsung heroine of British feminism". You may not be a fan of Edwina Currie but, really, was she any worse than John Gummer? It was part of her conspicuous virtue, her indifference to familiar political conventions. an interviewer "there is no such thing as society" and is In 2009, Boris Johnson lamented that Thatcher had become "a boo-word in British politics, a shorthand for selfishness and me-first-ism, and devil-take-the-hindmost and grinding the faces of the poor.". April 17, 2013, 6:40 PM. Nobody, at least that I know of, objected to that observation on the ground that it was disrespectful to the ability of the Chavez family to mourn in peace. When I awoke today on LA time my phone was full of impertinent digital eulogies. Both were successful women who could play the flirt card when it suited them, but ultimately had little interest in being kind to their own sex; Thatcher especially resented being defined by her gender. MT gave her first She remained in power till I was 15. This zest for ideas was boosted by the 2010 intake, which comprises just under half the parliamentary party. This was most evident in the shooting dead of three unarmed IRA activists in Gibraltar in March 1988. Certainly, in 1983, it did not occur to me to criticise Harold Macmillan or Alec Douglas-Home on the doorstep as a sure-fire vote turner. We were not unique in such a response but she failed to appreciate that Scots are balanced, canny folk insofar as we have a well-developed chip on each shoulder. Reagan's decision to bomb Libya in April 1986 and spoke Now she would more likely have been beaten to the Tory leadership by one of the Etonians in cabinet. Viewed from today, that past Britain is indeed a foreign country. No one noticed, but she was Blair's first guest at Downing Street in 1997. speech to the House of Lords in June 1993. In 1990 Thatcher authorised the then British secretary of state Peter Brooke to reopen back-channel negotiations with republicans. Take the larger view. I think on balance Thatcher did for Britain what was needed at the time. It's kind of a luxury rent-controlled ghetto for lawyers and barristers, and there is a beautiful tailors, a fine chapel, established by the Knights Templar (from which the compound takes its name), a twee cottage designed by Sir Christopher Wren and a rose garden; which I never promised you. Her refusal to stand against apartheid, her civil war against the unions, her aggression towards our neighbours in Ireland and a taxation system that was devised in the dark ages, the bombing of a retreating ship it's just not British. What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neo-liberal inculcation begins. To demand that all of that be ignored in the face of one-sided requiems to her nobility and greatness is a bit bullying and tyrannical, not to mention warped. one Interview by Benedict King. The machinery of modern political management polls, consulting, focus groups is deployed mainly to discover what will make aparty and politician better liked, or worse, disliked. It was all very well for me to write books. Talk to a Labour MP and you end up discussing politics and positioning; talk to a Tory, and it tends to be about policy. Former Tory MP Louise Mensch, with no apparent sense of irony, invoked precepts of propriety to announce: "Pygmies of the left so predictably embarrassing yourselves, know this: not a one of your leaders will ever be globally mourned like her.". Thirdly, industrial policy was all but abandoned. The government's job was to keep inflation low, not to boost growth through demand management. It was a watershed moment in Irish politics. Creative destruction was capitalism's necessary agent, so equilibrium was bound to be restored. In former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's eulogy speech for President Ronald Reagan (2004), she elucidates what a kind and powerful man he was. 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. as far as can be known. It came to a head over her most egregious policy failure, Europe. One thinks now of the closing words of her splendid 2004 eulogy of Ronald Reagan, and how those words so perfectly speak a tribute to her life and works: "We here still move in twilight. The stance was often in broadest terms, more moral than political. Three aspects of it never completely leave my head. The most widely used measure of income differences shows inequality increasing by more than a third during her period in office. Of all the things to criticise Thatcher for, calling her out for being a woman seems like something of a wasted bullet. Died: 24 February 2023, aged 90 Sir Bernard Ingham was Margaret Thatcher writ large. In 1968 she gave a lecture asking What's That gives them the nerve to set about cutting benefits and the public realm with a glee they don't bother to hide. "She had been offered the chance to get on and effectively she then refused to offer it to otherpeople. Thatcher has said that negotiation, and not strong economic sanctions, is the way to persuade South Africa's white-minority government to dismantle apartheid. 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. Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. Gaze at the telephone. She is an icon of individualism, not of feminism. I have few recollections of Thatcher after the slowly chauffeured, weepy Downing Street cortege. There is absolutely nothing wrong with loathing Margaret Thatcher or any other person with political influence and power based upon perceived bad acts, and that doesn't change simply because they die. And by my own firsthand experience, it was genuine to the core. Several strong women on the continent have risen to the top, but thisBritish woman, in Britain of all places, became a phenomenon, first, throughher gender. It is no coincidence the three most influential centre-right thinktanks were all conceived over the following months. 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." But every prime minister since has bowed to her legacy, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown eager to be snapped with her on their doorstep. Scotland was her mission impossible. A Labour veteran blamed another legacy of Thatcher: the need for iron discipline after the media onslaught that engulfed her opponents. From her start in politics, Thatcher often attracted sexist critiques for the way she spoke, with many it dubbing her voice "shrill" and "patronizing." Television critic Clive James even compared . She considered European Commission president Jacques Delors a campaigner for . They married the personality and belief to action. So look around this kingdom of ours, at a devolved Scotland contemplating independence a state of affairs that owes much to Thatcher's antagonistic relationship with that country. Many of the effects of inequality have long lag periods. She said "there is no such thing as society", and set out to prove it by promoting individual greed and competition for everything. When I was a kid, Thatcher was the headmistress of our country. She went to a fee-paying school and to Oxford at her father's expense, gliding easily into the upper echelons of student politics. But these concrete achievements do not wholly explain why she still looms so large, large enough that not one but two current West End plays The Audience and Billy Elliot grant Thatcher a pivotal, if largely unsympathetic, role, whether seen or unseen. All of the Tory edicts that bludgeoned our nation, as my generation squirmed through ghoulish puberty, were confusing. There were rumours of a different philosophy, at least in personal relationships. a Margaret expresses that Reagan's leadership was the key to ending The Cold War and unifying a formerly divided nation. 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. The core ideas that underpinned her government endured through 13 years of Labour and are being extended by the coalition. You can get the Turnitin report from the writer on request along with the final deliverable. The Winter of Discontent in 1978-79 brought rhetorical as well as political News of Margaret Thatcher's death this morning instantly and predictably gave rise to righteous sermons on the evils of speaking ill of her. But for others, the change in landscape is all too real. A great windfall in the short-term for asset-owners one form of inflation she encouraged but disastrous for future generations. led Michael Heseltine to run against her for the party leadership. series of famous statements that marked the end of her premiership, But Thatcher was a naturally, perhaps incurably, divisive figure. No such alarms ring in Cameron's ears. The real comic nemeses of Thatcher were the puppets of Spitting Image. We are all on our own. Yet despite the attempts of some columnists to claim otherwise, Thatcher can't really be seen as "a warrior in the sex war", let alone as "the ultimate women's libber". As I spread my wings in politics, I discovered many Thatcher voters down south who were the same kind of people who loathed her in Scotland. "You see," she announced in her self-satisfied way, "it just goes to show what people can do when they have to. Maggie and Me: How Thatcher Changed Britain. Scottish and by extension UK politics has been skewed ever since. Those strikes were confusing to me as a child. The woman, however, changed. The prime minister was intensely interested in the campaign, and asked many penetrating questions. By the close of her premiership, he was probably the most trusted member of her political team at Downing Street, and he left Number Ten with her. She showed that modern prime ministers can still mark out room for individual manoeuvre. The word "free" is used to help the audience Asked to report on the "state of things" in our country, we could barely see past her. The gender remained, its artefacts deployed with calculation. We Americans will not see you again in our time, but we will never forget you. The drastic results of these policies were intentional. But Labour is no less in thrall. After the Dublin European Council in November 1979 she began a long battle 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 . But within a few years, a third of children were poor, a sign of the yawning inequality from which the country never recovered. Every quality had its obverse, but she had a myth-making charisma to capture the world's imagination. If you have a . Either way, I'm an adult now and none of those things are on telly any more so there's no excuse for apathy. The proportion of children living in relative poverty more than doubled during the 80s, and the damage has never been undone.