She hurled herself into NHS reform, changes to schools and universities, utilities privatisation and, eventually, local government reform. Published: Sunday 21st February 2021. But now the history was what mattered. 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Collins (Oxford University Press, 1998-2000). I was a professional writer. It chose her ina fit of desperation, hats and all though it quite liked the hats. Deep-seated and long overdue reforms of the 1980s paved the way for the long 16-year boom between 1992 and 2008. That 1983 general election contained the telltale seeds of eventual Scottish Tory self-destruction. Many of the effects of inequality have long lag periods. In towns and valleys poleaxed by the Iron Lady, there may be glasses raised at her passing. What was it about Thatcher that inspired a generation of comics to rage at her? By 1987, anti-Tory tactical voting had taken hold. 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. 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. Jan Leeming, Sue Lawley, Moira Stuart delivering doctrine with sterile sexiness, like a butterscotch-scented beige vapour. speech which caused the Soviets to dub her "the Iron Lady", one At a banquet in Belgrade the press sat next to the so-called "Garden Girls", who were the secretaries at No 10. 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." 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? Not the loss of imperial markets, not lazy management, not the education system, not the decline of the industrial ethic: bitter men standing on platforms and asking for a show of hands to down tools were solely to blame. It was only in the mid-80s that she became truly radical and remotely comparable to David Cameron in 2010. By delivering a crisp, emphatic victory Thatcher showed the world, and more important herself, what a talent for solitary command could achieve. 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 She and her successors John Major and Tony Blair presided over a quarter century of unprecedented prosperity. She gave Nigel Lawson at the Treasury his head and was genuinely alarmed when he cut income tax to 40%. April 8, 2013. Symbolically, the key moment was the defeat of the miners after the year-long pit strike in March 1985. But on their catastrophic economic policy, it's full-speed ahead into the concrete wall. Hewrote this piece in 2003, two weeks before he died. This speech was delivered soon after her taking office in 1979. But on the subject of Europe, Thatcher became a contradictory figure. 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 . Charles Powell was a senior foreign policy . John Major was elected her successor yesterday by Conservative Party members. 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 . 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. I wouldn't say I have got myself a Kennedy-type speech-writer yet . Debate continues on whether Margaret Thatcher saved or destroyed British industry, but there is one industry that she practically created. You would need to wait six weeks for an engineer. John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. The truth lies somewhere between these extremes. 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. At the time, Thatcher was the education secretary her first major political role. April 17, 2013, 6:40 PM. It came to a head over her most egregious policy failure, Europe. It always struck me as peculiar, too, when the Spice Girls briefly championed Thatcher as an early example of girl power. Seeing as women aren't a minor Brit-flick grateful for even a bad review, that truism doesn't quite hold true here. Seizing her chariot's reins to drive it on recklessly, they lack her brains, experience and political skill. November). This is one small sign of how the left seems paralysed by a lack of intellectual curiosity and confidence. She preferred markets, and a strong but minimal central state that backed their rule. It was all very well for me to write books. Thatcherism failed to destroy the welfare state. Exactly the same is true of Thatcher. She famously changed the law after Bobby Sands was elected in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. Without it, she would have been nothing. And he would credit the contribution of Helmut Kohl, who rose to power in Germany in part because of the influence of Thatcher and Reagan. outlook at the time. This legacy remains intact with a party that places a premium on radical thinking and, for all its flaws, sets the political agenda. It'd be disingenuous to omit that there were a fair number of ding-dong-style celebratory messages amidst the pensive reflections on the end of an era. The Thatcher government was across all the details of this shipment. Much of any leader's record is unremarkable dross, and Thatcher was no exception. delivered an outstanding defence of the Government in the Commons. 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. The US academic Cass Sunstein was in Britain at the end of last month. 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. When Sir Geoffrey Howe resigned in consequence, she replied Margaret Thatcher Essay: Health Category. Their reckless private finance of public investment and services went beyond anything she dared dream of. 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. 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. For a national matriarch she is oddly unmaternal. 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. She was not a writer. Thatcher is gone, but Thatcherism has infected and discredited all mainstream parties, depriving us of a chance to turn it down. It was not yours, but belonged to the Post Office: in effect, the government. ", 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. This report of the Conservative party conference ran in the Guardian on Saturday October 11 1980, 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, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every Secondly, the balance of power in industrial relations was shifted decisively in favour of employers. The Winter of Discontent in 1978-79 brought rhetorical as well as political In October 1984 she survived an IRA bomb during the Conservative Conference which revealed a good deal as to her political Viewed from today, that past Britain is indeed a foreign country. It may be wrong to imagine that she intended to de-industrialise Britain, but the policies followed by her government had that effect. Her policy decisions entrenched sectarian divisions, handed draconian military powers over to the securocrats, and subverted basic human rights. Before the real Thatcher's election in 1979 she took lessons with a speech coach at the Royal National Theatre, hoping to make her voice more commanding and less "shrill" in broadcasts. Out! Ithink on balance, it was for the better, and so, plainly did Thatcher's chief successor, Tony Blair. A couple of days later on the 11th, Margaret Thatcher the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, wrote an eulogy for Ronald Reagan. one I think by far her greatest virtue, in retrospect, is how little she cared if people liked her. Thatcher was suspicious of democracy. She made her remarks Margaret Thatcher has 43 books on Goodreads with 14026 ratings. 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. But she became a very effective one. Sir Bernard died after a short illness, his family said. That said, by the mid-1980s it was clear that the Conservative government's economic policy was based on a handful of core principles. Its impact on the streets of the north is evident in the statistics of death. I was on my own. 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. If the Falklands war was the making of Thatcher, then the poll tax was her achilles heel not least in Scotland. Margaret Thatcher's 1980 speech was written by playwright Ronnie Miller, and Julia recalls that the night before delivering the speech she had a huge row with him about the content. 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. Look inside your own house, at the water coming out of the tap: once a public utility but, after Thatcher, the property of private companies, many foreign-owned. 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. Bernard Ingham, journalist and civil servant. 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. She defended Ronald Texts for listed statements are available on the site in almost 70 per The papers date from Margaret Thatcher's childhood to the end of her life, and include tens of thousands of photographs, as well as a vast collection of press cuttings, and many audio and video tapes of public and private events. Why don't you get a proper job, she once sneered at me. All rights reserved. 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 without any question, sitting behind her desk, she was wearing ahat. While some remember her as a national saviour, others only see her ruthless demolition of flailing state-owned industries. In retrospect, in much dissenting commentary there was often a taint of unexamined sexism. Meryl Streep's depiction of a shuffling figure, stricken and isolated by the death of her husband, Denis, may have softened memories, or formed them in the minds of a younger generation. Cameron's crew crudely imagine she intended it. At Bruges in September 1988 she outraged European orthodoxy by declaring: Buy the CD-ROM from this link or find one Ronald Reagan, the former 40th president of the United States died on June 5th of 2004. Later that year she introduced the broadcasting ban on Sinn Fin, which prevented viewers and listeners hearing my voice. 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." It's like a whimsical live-action episode of Postman Pat where his cat is craftily carved up and sold back to him. or copyright prevents reproduction on the site. The gender remained, its artefacts deployed with calculation. She had left a Britain marked by private affluence and public squalor. Sunstein worked for a Democratic president, but did not meet the Labour leader or key advisers. announced that White Maggie! 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%. Rhetorical Analysis Of Margaret Thatcher's Speech 722 Words | 3 Pages . Public Statements of Margaret Thatcher on CD-ROM, 1945-90, edited Christopher "Maggie! Two especially forceful and committed leaders on the world stage at the same time: this was critical and key to ending the cold war, permitting the reunification of Germany, the consolidation of the EU and drawing our two nations together in a historic cooperation. If a leader's record is to be measured by the willingness of the other side to decide itcannot turn back the clock, then Thatcher bulks big in history. In the three years prior to receiving these weapons the loyalist death squads killed 34 people. Typically, this distinction is mapped onto the ideas that Conservatives hold about equality. Tellingly, few people have trouble understanding the need for balanced commentary when the political leaders disliked by the west pass away. Mrs Thatcher told the assembly: "It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.". 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." September 25, 2020. Literature had nothing to do with politics, the Italian writers said. What will not be forgotten? She is an anomaly; a product of the freak-onomy of her time. And the single mums. On the contrary, consumerism and materialism have been the norm ever since, rising inequality the consistent trend as the rich soar ever further away from the rest. History will judge her, but not a country in Europe was untouched by Thatcher's example. On Sunday, looking down at the waterfront, I could see how these had been replaced by a housing estate, a supermarket, and sometimes by nothing at all. No sign they learned from her that markets don't move in to fill the gaps when the state is rolled back not then, not now. None present eyed her meanly or spoke with vitriol and it wasn't until an hour later that I dreamt up an Ealing comedy-style caper in which two inept crooks kidnap Thatcher from the garden but are unable to cope with the demands of dealing with her, and finally give her back. an interviewer "there is no such thing as society", "We have not International studies of OECD countries suggest a close relationship between the decline in trade union membership and the rise in inequality. I met her just once, as a reporter in the press pack that followed her tour around Greece and Yugoslavia in 1980. Hire writer now Order. But the key point is this: those who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics) aren't silent at all. This site follow the same rules (and shares an editor). they did not want her to go on (21 November) and that night she made the To have achieved all this alone would have made Margaret Thatcher a towering, transformational figure, one who altered the physical fabric of the nation. As she said in her memoirs: "There was no one else." "The News" was the pompous conduit through which we suckled at the barren baroness through newscaster wet-nurses, naturally; not direct from the steel teat. As she cut local housing budgets, she sent housing benefit soaring in compensation. These values were the exact opposite of those Margaret Thatcher espoused. In 1982, the English Collective of Prostitutes occupied a church for 12 days in protest against "police illegality and racism in King's Cross" the area to which many sex workers known as "Thatcher's girls" had travelled from high unemployment areas in the Midlands and the north. What's more, it was moulded to the wall as one commentator recalled and you had no right to change it, not without becoming entangled in a state-managed bureaucracy. Heath took us into Europe, and a referendum in spring 1975 confirmed national approval for the move. . Steely, certainly. Over the years, and through much re-telling, the story had it that Thatcher told Hitchens to bend over, and that she spanked him with her order papers. Tim Bale, author of The Conservative Party: from Thatcher to Cameron, says it was conviction. They married the personality and belief to action. she But, as the prince in Lampedusa's The Leopard says: "For things to remain the same, everything must change.". Nissan's arrival in the north-east showed that Britain was no longer the west's industrial pariah. Nelson travelled to South Africa where he helped negotiate a deal that saw the UDA, UVF and Ulster Resistance acquire AK-47 automatic rifles, pistols, grenades, and RPG rocket launchers in late 1987 or early 1988. press to rejoice at the capture of South Georgia on 25 April 1982 and She was lucky in surviving the IRA's bomb. Thatcher was born as Margaret Hilda Roberts on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, England. An Inconvenient Truth About Margaret Thatcher: She Was a Climate Hawk. She considered European Commission president Jacques Delors a campaigner for . While Labour was now "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich", ambitious feminism wanted to be let in to the boardroom and every corridor of power that and little else is what they mean by changing the world. Get over her! The remainder are listed without a text because sometimes no record survives "She had been offered the chance to get on and effectively she then refused to offer it to otherpeople. Another head of government died recently who, like Thatcher, was called divisive. first television interview the following day. It still does. Sharp definition, hard edges, no effort at fuzzy contours (David Cameron, take note). to his resignation letter on 1 November, defended herself against rough The Crown Season 4 brings with it a whole lot of change for Queen Elizabeth II's family and, more importantly, the United Kingdom. So what caused this great divide, with one side a fountain of fresh ideas and the other struggling for new inspiration? And that made it easy to mock her. Thatcher understood the connection between the social wage and workers' wages better than most unions. By the 1983 election she had sold off only Britoil and some council houses. Margaret expresses that Reagan's leadership was the key to ending The Cold War and unifying a formerly divided nation. Conscious of being awoman, and incapable of pretending otherwise. She, and Blair after her, brought an unprecedented dirigisme to the NHS, education, police and local government. From 1987 to 1988, he was a senior policy writer and speechwriter in 10 Downing Street for Margaret Thatcher when she was British prime minister and remained close to her up to her death.. O'Sullivan served from 2008-2012 as vice-president and executive editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio . Peggy Noonan. It's how she would have, if pressed, put it herself. We had had a strange relationship. A massive programme of social housing would be a good place to start, stimulating the economy. for turning. Quotation being the warmest form of praise, Larkin was naturally touched. They had a point, but they had no idea how fascinating she was so powerful, successful, popular, omniscient, irritating and, in our view, wrong. It isn't sad for anyone else. The poll tax showed the opposite, the weakness of Thatcher's strength. Well, everything really, even her name. She worked to enhance its corporate power. She wrecked her own party, while promoting, via many a tortuous turn, Labour's resurrection. 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. The Tories triumphed, of course, and lost only two sitting MPs Hamish Gray and the social-security scrounger-bashing Iain Sproat, who vacated his marginal Aberdeen seat and headed for the Scottish Borders, only to suffer defeat there at the hands of the Alliance.
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