Thatcher jokes were big business, from Rik Mayall's student rants in The Young Ones, to Harry Enfield's satire of Thatcher's children with his Loadsamoney character. "Thatcher as mother" seemed, to my tiddly mind, anathema. to his resignation letter on 1 November, defended herself against rough As the authorised biographer of Margaret Thatcher, I was given special permission by the Cabinet Secretary to see government papers not yet released to the public.For . In January 1976, Thatcher delivered a speech at Kensington Town Hall in London, and spoke about the Iron Curtain the political boundary that separated Europe during World War II. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979. April 25, 2020. Everything was justified as long as it made money andthis, too, isstill with us. 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. Yet her long-term effect seems to have been to destroy it. Yet her understanding of Britain was alarmingly crude. delivered an outstanding defence of the Government in the Commons. But she exploited her luck. Trying to trim back spending in her department, she ended the milk subsidies for all children over the age of seven. Thatcher is gone, but Thatcherism has infected and discredited all mainstream parties, depriving us of a chance to turn it down. 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. 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. 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." Farewell, indeed, Baroness Thatcher. The welfare state, with its unemployment and housing benefits and free healthcare, actually protected wages: employers could not force workers to accept low pay or unpaid overtime because of the job's healthcare provision, as they do in the US. 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. International studies of OECD countries suggest a close relationship between the decline in trade union membership and the rise in inequality. decision to resign. When I think of this memorial, I think of the words of Rupert Brooke, "that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.". Margaret Thatcher Fast Facts | CNN Thinking about it now, when I was a child she was just a strict woman telling everyone off and selling everything off. That was before Thatcher modishly renamed the service British Telecom and sold it off. Original, independent voices such as BBC director general Alasdair Milne were brutally silenced. She was evicted from Downing Street with all the ruthlessness, treachery and warped humanity of what passes for high politics. Perhaps there is resentment because the clemency and respect that are being mawkishly displayed now by some and haughtily demanded of the rest of us at the impending, solemn ceremonial funeral, are values that her government and policies sought toannihilate. speech which caused the Soviets to dub her "the Iron Lady", one Rows with Lawson and Geoffrey Howe over a European currency (where she was right) presaged the final shambles of the poll tax. Thatcher's reputation never recovered from the ruthless budgets of 1980 and 1981, or her insensitivity to colleagues. Three aspects of it never completely leave my head. 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. March 7, 1991 - Receives the US Medal of Freedom from President George Bush. 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 . By 1987, anti-Tory tactical voting had taken hold. That's history, but what matters to us is her legacy now that her heirs and imitators rule in her wake. She failed to replace those jobs with well-paid equivalents. What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neo-liberal inculcation begins. Three separate pieces of legislation between 1980 and 1984 attacked the closed shop, toughened up the laws on picketing and imposed secret strike ballots. 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. Faced down trade union leaders after her early years apprentice years, when Jim Callaghan's Britain was falling apart in which the commonest fear was that the little lady would not be able to deal with them across the table. 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. By 1990 it was transformed. Bob Slayer, one of the genuine alternative comedians on the scene, likes to note the irony of what's become of comedy. 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. I'd become a delinquent, living on heroin and benefit fraud. Promises. On November 8th 1989, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave an inspiring speech to the UN General Assembly about the environment and climate change. 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. at The Hague in May 1992. She gave it her best shot. Texts for listed statements are available on the site in almost 70 per Following in the footsteps of Santa Claus, Steve Hynd quickly compiled a list of all the naughty boys and girls "on the left" who dared to express criticisms of the dearly departed Prime Minister, warning that he "will continue to add to this list throughout the day". Today's Tories walk in Thatcher's footsteps, battling with their estranged cousins in Ukip over who is the rightful heir to her Eurosceptic legacy. in his defence during the IranContra affair later that year.. Elected for a third term in June 1987, she told No such alarms ring in Cameron's ears. The last remnants of the postwar consensus were swept away in the ensuing decade a period that saw the crushing of the trade unions, the Big Bang in the City, council house sales, the privatisation of large chunks of industry, the encouragement of inward investment, tax cuts, attempts to roll back the state, a deep manufacturing recession, a boom in North Sea oil production, and support for the creation of a single market in Europe. She was "outraged" when the programmes went ahead. In November 1978, Hannaford and I organized a European fact-finding tour for Reagan, and the first stop was London. Since 1990 a selection of statements is listed. By then, 1990, I was 15, adolescent and instinctively anti-establishment enough to regard her disdainfully. 4.44 avg rating 39 ratings 2 editions. 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. Had pollsters and the 24/7 media forced leaders to follow opinion, not lead it? 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. Those strikes were confusing to me as a child. 1971 was the year of Ted Heath's Conservative government, which was trying to make huge savings to the budget. She was lucky in surviving the IRA's bomb. Far from "smashing the glass ceiling", she was the aberration, the one who got through and then pulled the ladder up right after her. Thatcher has said that negotiation, and not strong economic sanctions, is the way to persuade South Africa's white-minority government to dismantle apartheid. Tim Bale, author of The Conservative Party: from Thatcher to Cameron, says it was conviction. In 1979 she inherited a nation that was the "sick man of Europe", an object of constant transatlantic ridicule. Died: 24 February 2023, aged 90 Sir Bernard Ingham was Margaret Thatcher writ large. For those of us who were dismayed by her brisk distaste for that cosy state-dominated world, it was never enough to dislike her. Yet for all these fissures, even Maoist modernisers and the most reactionary social conservatives share a similar stance over the role of the state. Reagan was received coolly, and the discussion was highly superficial, if only because the British side clearly did not care to engage on substance: meet for a serious discussion with a movie actor and a "Grade B" actor at that? This has been a terrible labour, she said. All can agree that Margaret Thatcher changed the heart of British politics more than any politician since Clement Attlee. Her voice, a bellicose yawn, somehow both boring and boring I could ignore the content but the intent drilled its way in. The Texan who stole the show at Margaret Thatcher's funeral 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? Thatcher became prime minister because she was a woman, not despite it. 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. which revealed a good deal as to her political She was lucky, in her enemies and friends notably Reagan in the Falklands conflict. For Thatcher it all ended months later in November 1990 when she was forced to resign. The centralised statism that dominated politics for much of the 20th century, given its last pathetic gasp under the profligate government of Gordon Brown, ultimately failed the poor while proving financially unsustainable and unsuited to modern times. Margaret Thatcher (October 13, 1925 - April 8, 2013) was the first woman prime minister of the United Kingdom and the first European woman to serve as a prime minister. Therein, 30 years ago, lay the great Thatcher asset and the electorally lethal Thatcher impact in Scotland. After the 1987 election, Thatcher cut an increasingly isolated figure. 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. Only in the sense that all the women beneath her were blinded by falling shards. MT won election as Conservative leader on 11 February 1975 and gave a euphoric As I see it, and as one who had the pleasure of knowing both, they would recognize the huge opportunity created by the presence of each in the respective national and international policy-making role. Making sure the verdict wasn't purloined by others. Perhaps it is more simple for all the iniquities of capitalism, the tide of history favours the right. Margaret Thatcher: Foreign Policy of Great Britain | Speech-Guru Many of the effects of inequality have long lag periods. Collins (Oxford University Press, 1998-2000). The Crown: How Margaret Thatcher Was Removed from Power in 1990 - ELLE But every prime minister since has bowed to her legacy, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown eager to be snapped with her on their doorstep. As coal, steel and shipbuilding fell under her wrecking ball, whole communities were destroyed. This, too, we still live with. 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. of her best Parliamentary speeches in a debate on the strikes, prayed on the Thatcher understood the connection between the social wage and workers' wages better than most unions. Scotsman Obituaries: Sir Bernard Ingham, formidable press secretary to We still live in the land Margaret built. speech in the House of Commons, her She would not have been half the . The remainder are listed without a text because sometimes no record survives Rishi Sunak 20 July 2022 9:30pm. Hugo Young was a political columnist forthe Guardian from 1984 until 2003 and biographer of Margaret Thatcher. You would need to wait six weeks for an engineer. "You see," she announced in her self-satisfied way, "it just goes to show what people can do when they have to. The author Nassim Taleb traded equations on a whiteboard with Gus O'Donnell, then head of the civil service, as they debated econometrics; at another, I watched entranced as Lord Heseltine argued urban policies with Harvard's Ed Glaeser. Thirdly, industrial policy was all but abandoned. Is that what made her so formidable, her ability to ignore the suffering of others? "Fatcha" was an instant punchline back then: simply saying it was enough to get a laugh. When I started knocking on Highland doors in May 1983, two things struck me more than any other. The gender remained, its artefacts deployed with calculation. Norman and Margaret hold, and will always hold, a unique place in our esteem and affection. Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. A distinction is often made between two traditions of British Conservative thought: the paternalist "one nation/middle way" tradition, and the more libertarian one that is associated with Margaret Thatcher. This is an especially pertinent problem given its heartfelt desire for redistribution of wealth. We Americans will not see you again in our time, but we will never forget you. That said, by the mid-1980s it was clear that the Conservative government's economic policy was based on a handful of core principles. I hope I'm not being reductive but it seems Thatcher's time in power was solely spent diminishing the resources of those who had least for the advancement of those who had most. The result . That, plus (inevitable) de-industrialisation, coupled to her perceived overbearing and patronising manner. Margaret Thatcher Curriculum Vitae. 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. series of famous statements that marked the end of her premiership, replied Maybe it was the sound of the estuary pronunciation robbing her of her aspirational airs, a prototype of the Bouquet/Bucket joke. 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. It's interesting, though, that even when comedians try to be political, they can never really land a punch on David Cameron, Nick Clegg or George Osborne. Margaret Thatcher, the "Iron Lady" of British politics who died Monday at the age of 87, is being lionized as the woman who tilted British domestic and economic policy to the right. Nor, contrary to myth, did Thatcherism emerge fully formed in May 1979. This is the area where we need to make progress not just in restoring strong local government, but in understanding that democracy means more than a Westminster vote. her intention to allow her name to go forward to the second ballot (20 performance at a Press Conference afterwards, the Edited and full versions of Margaret Thatcher's 'The lady's not for turning' speech, delivered at the Conservative party conference in Brighton on 10 October 1980 But within a few years, a third of children were poor, a sign of the yawning inequality from which the country never recovered. There is a paradox. The welfare state set out to ensure that no one, in the UK at least, would starve or freeze to death, or suffer or die for lack of medical or other care. Literature had nothing to do with politics, the Italian writers said. 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. She continued for some reason to consider me worth talking to. rejecting Commission proposals at the Rome European Council with the words Later that year she introduced the broadcasting ban on Sinn Fin, which prevented viewers and listeners hearing my voice. I was on my own. 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. But if today's Guardian readers time-travelled to the late 70s they might be irritated to discover that tomorrow's TV listings were a state secret not shared with daily newspapers. Such items have an Meeting Gorbachev for the first time in December 1984 she declared: "We Margaret Thatcher's speech writer will miss funeral but 'shed a tear' 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. press to rejoice at the capture of South Georgia on 25 April 1982, announced that White Typically, this distinction is mapped onto the ideas that Conservatives hold about equality. To her detractors, Thatcher is the prime minister who wiped out more than 15% of Britain's industrial base with her dogmatic monetarism, squandered the once-in-a-lifetime windfall of North Sea oil on unemployment pay and tax cuts, and made the UK the unbalanced, unequal country it is today. The last time I met her was after all this was over. A strong, so strong, leader. In this eulogy, Thatcher uses rhetorical strategies to convince her readers into believing what she states. Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher's attack was wholesale.
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