The items stored in this section of the site are texts, but many of the most important statements are also available in audio or video form in the separate Multimedia section. For those miners and their families to be referred to as the "enemy within" by Thatcher was something they would never forgive and, if there is rejoicing at her death in those communities she set out to destroy, it can only be understood against this background. Maybe it was the sound of the estuary pronunciation robbing her of her aspirational airs, a prototype of the Bouquet/Bucket joke. They had a point, but they had no idea how fascinating she was so powerful, successful, popular, omniscient, irritating and, in our view, wrong. "She's jolly nice," one of them said, "much better to work for than [James] Callaghan." Collins (Oxford University Press, 1998-2000). Some places have become heritage parks, remembering an industry now vanished. The spell he was referring to is the unseen bond that connects us all and prevents us from being subjugated by tyranny. She denounced Nelson Mandela and his ANC as "terrorists", something even David Cameron ultimately admitted was wrong. Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. As leader she was initially hyper-cautious. She became deaf to all warning. The core ideas that underpinned her government endured through 13 years of Labour and are being extended by the coalition. Second was the particular hostility towards Margaret Thatcher and her local ministerial spear-carrier, energy minister and incumbent MP of 13 years' standing, Hamish Gray. Sent Bobby Sands to an Irish hero's grave without a blink. rejecting Commission proposals at the Rome European Council with the words 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. Many hated her. Gloves. one 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. The last time I met her was after all this was over. This was hardly the first or even the worst example of a dig at Thatcher tinged so needlessly with sexism. In the north of Ireland she had the army and the Diplock courts which reached their peak in the mid 1980s. Thatcher was a divisive woman who created discord, not harmony. Her defenders always insisted that sentence had been misunderstood, but it stuck because it seemed to capture something essential about the Thatcherite creed: its embrace of individualism and apparent disdain for the collective. 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. Margaret Thatcher. series of famous statements that marked the end of her premiership, replied When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one's enemies. As working families in poverty now account for more than half of those below the poverty line, a government committed to "making work pay" should surely encourage this trend and raise the minimum wage. In truth, Thatcher is one of the clearest examples of the fact that a successful woman doesn't always mean a step forward for women. To the extent that there was an industrial strategy, it was to sell Britain as a destination for Japanese car companies and to shift the focus of the economy away from manufacturing towards financial services. 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 . 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. Typifying these highly dubious claims about Thatcher was this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama: "The world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend." 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 . They are aggressively exploiting the emotions generated by the person's death to create hagiography. John Major, the "detoxification" successor, was fated to implement many of her unattempted reforms. 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. Are there, even, things we look back on with regret for their passing? Thatcher's passing is marked by street parties in Brixton, Belfast, Bristol, Derry, Glasgow and Liverpool, and seething bitterness among the mining families and communities she was allowed (including by scab union and Labour leaders) to destroy. However, for almost a decade Sinn Fin had been patently trying to build a peace process and unfolding events on the world stage including the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, and the release of Mandela were evidence that governments, and apparently intractable situations, could change. "You see," she announced in her self-satisfied way, "it just goes to show what people can do when they have to. This was my mother speaking at some point in the middle 1980s. The economy had become more productive, more competitive and more profitable. Perhaps she had just come inside. It's how she would have, if pressed, put it herself. Of all the things to criticise Thatcher for, calling her out for being a woman seems like something of a wasted bullet. If you want anything done, ask a woman.". Oxford CD-ROM explains how the statements were assembled and edited Trying to trim back spending in her department, she ended the milk subsidies for all children over the age of seven. As coal, steel and shipbuilding fell under her wrecking ball, whole communities were destroyed. In 1980, I made several fast round trips to London, Paris and Bonn, and, on each occasion, had the opportunity to meet with Prime Minister Thatcher. As far as her supporters are concerned, this radical transformation worked. Narrowly judged, the Thatcher economic revolution was a success. Thatcher was suspicious of democracy. We still live in the land Margaret built. She was among the first Western leaders to In the three years prior to receiving these weapons the loyalist death squads killed 34 people. All rights reserved. She hated what she called "that French phrase laissez faire". Sir Bernard died after a short illness, his family said. Selling off the family silver Harold Macmillan and later Labour called it, as Margaret Thatcher set about reversing the 1945 nationalisations that had put oil, gas, coal, electricity and an airline as well as a house removal company in public hands. Government will respond to clear leadership if it knows what a leader wants. When President Reagan died in June 2004, she delivered a Your local electricity "board" could be a very unfriendly place. This is not the Highland way. In 1984 Britain had 186 working coalmines and approximately 170,000 coalminers. She was evicted from Downing Street with all the ruthlessness, treachery and warped humanity of what passes for high politics. The impact that Hayek's writing had on Thatcher, her advisors, and her policies is undeniable. Since 1990 a selection of statements is listed. The virtual state funeral will rehearse again our extravagant fixations. At every level of his killing, British agents and agencies had a hand: the leader of the UDA group that carried out the killing was a Special Branch agent, as was the man who confessed to being the gunman, and the man who supplied the gun. For she changed the ethos of Britain as well as its landscape. 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. A Tory party desperate for women helped Thatcher through the political foothills to early success as an MP. In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon. Such items have an She attacked the Treaty of Maastricht in a Each now seems banal. A growing body of research now shows that the quality of social relations is among the most powerful influences on the happiness, health and wellbeing of populations in the rich countries. studying Thatcher's speeches . . The south of England and the City of London were the future; the revenues from North Sea oil would pay for the unemployed in the old zones of manufacturing industry. Bob Slayer, one of the genuine alternative comedians on the scene, likes to note the irony of what's become of comedy. Her effect was to force a deeper consideration of priorities, sometimes expressed in a variety of dystopias. Which raises the question: why isn't this happening now? Her voice, a bellicose yawn, somehow both boring and boring I could ignore the content but the intent drilled its way in. The Crown Season 4 brings with it a whole lot of change for Queen Elizabeth II's family and, more importantly, the United Kingdom. From then on she disregarded her critics and became intolerant of any who were "not one of us". Those gushing depictions can be quite consequential, as it was for the week-long tidal wave of unbroken reverence that was heaped on Ronald Reagan upon his death, an episode that to this day shapes how Americans view him and the political ideas he symbolized. The battle with the miners and leftwing councils lay ahead, as did the trauma of an IRA assassination bid. The dockers. On the other hand, growth has been depressed because weak trade unions can no longer ensure wage increases keep pace with inflation. Margaret Thatcher's most popular book is The Downing Street Years. 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. They rallied around each other when times were hard. Statistics now confirm what many people have always recognised: that inequality is divisive and socially corrosive. What saved Thatcher's bacon, and revolutionised her leadership, was Labour's unelectable Michael Foot and the Falklands war. 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. Original, independent voices such as BBC director general Alasdair Milne were brutally silenced. The poll tax showed the opposite, the weakness of Thatcher's strength. first television interview the following day, euphoric 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. In 1976 it still did not help and in the same year they had to take a loan in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) [] . In the pantheon of this comedian's attacks on Thatcher, it was a retort that probably won't be treasured longer than the best lines from The Young Ones. The widening of income differences between rich and poor that took place during the 80s (particularly from 1985) is the most rapid ever recorded. Unable to win the leadership ballot outright, she stood on the steps of 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. The Bruges speech was given by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to the College of Europe at the Belfry of Bruges, Belgium, on 20 September 1988.Thatcher was opposed to any moves to transition the European Economic Community (EEC) into a federal Europe that would take powers away from its members. But as weand others (including Alan Krueger, chair of Obama's council of economic advisers) have shown, wider income differences reduce social mobility and make it harder for people with poorer backgrounds to do so. The main names associated with Fatcha-bashing Ben Elton and Alexei Sayle deny that they relied so heavily on her for material. Edited text: This speech was delivered to the Conservative party conference in Brighton on October 10 1980. She went to a fee-paying school and to Oxford at her father's expense, gliding easily into the upper echelons of student politics. She will be for ever unforgiven by those who now see worse being done in her name to another generation. Rows with Lawson and Geoffrey Howe over a European currency (where she was right) presaged the final shambles of the poll tax. She lavished praise on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, then in its infancy, and laid out the . Margaret Thatcher has 43 books on Goodreads with 14026 ratings. Ed Miliband, a policy wonk himself, claims to be a conviction politician like Thatcher. The resignation was announced Arthur Scargill and the miners represented the only opposition to the prime minister and her destructive and divisive values and, after the strike, the way was open for the most aggressive neoliberal policies. Yes, QI can report that a newspaper called the Evening News on . a new dominance from Brussels". press to rejoice at the capture of South Georgia on 25 April 1982 and The endemic worklessness of her era was never repaired now her successors blame the victims. In her speech, Thatcher used rhetorical techniques to show the strength and principles of Reagan and project those values onto the American people. There was only one state-approved answering machine available. And by my own firsthand experience, it was genuine to the core. It accounted for a large part of the mark Thatcher left on Britain. The young men were those whose childhood was blighted by the effects of relative poverty and inequality on family life. Respected, viewed with awe, a conviction politician, but if liking came into it, that was an accident. Much of any leader's record is unremarkable dross, and Thatcher was no exception. June 5, 1992 - Is named a life peer on the Queen's honor list. Visit a station and notice the plethora of competing train companies, replacing the single British Rail that operated in the pre-Thatcher days the fruit of a rail privatisation that was not hers, but was made possible only by the serial privatisations she had pioneered and made normal. By delivering a crisp, emphatic victory Thatcher showed the world, and more important herself, what a talent for solitary command could achieve. It came to a head over her most egregious policy failure, Europe. When I was a kid, Thatcher was the headmistress of our country. She wrecked her own party, while promoting, via many a tortuous turn, Labour's resurrection. 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. As Danny Dorling says in his 2004 study of the rise in violence: "Those who perpetrated the social violence that was done to the lives of young men starting some 20 years ago [the mid-80s] are the prime suspects for most of the murders in Britain." Full employment had been ditched in 1976, while Labour had introduced monetary targets and cash limits for Whitehall departments while Denis Healey was at the Treasury. There are pangs of nostalgia, yes, because for me she's all tied up with Hi-De-Hi and Speak and Spell and Blockbusters and "follow the bear". In November 1978, Hannaford and I organized a European fact-finding tour for Reagan, and the first stop was London. 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 jobs that went during the 80s tended to be good, skilled jobs, delivering decent incomes and some security. Literature had nothing to do with politics, the Italian writers said. Superlatives can be agreed: a remarkable first woman PM; the first winner of three elections in a row; brave; tough; relentless; clever; sleeplessly driven by a self-confident conviction that overawed her enemies.