He was a political and historical figure and the need to accurately portray his legacy and prevent misleading hagiography easily outweighed precepts of death etiquette that prevail when a private person dies. see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising 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. Contrary to an increasingly common belief, "a woman who is successful" is not synonymous with "a feminist". The truth lies somewhere between these extremes. 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Margaret Thatcher's speech writer will miss funeral but 'shed a tear' When the mourners gather for Baroness Thatcher's funeral tomorrow, one important figure from her political past will be . Yet by the autumn of 1981 they had made her so unpopular that bets were being taken at the October party conference that she would be "gone by Christmas". 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. She all but erased his political legacy to stamp her own image on the nation, so Britain before and after Thatcher were two different countries. She failed to replace those jobs with well-paid equivalents. The remainder are listed without a text because sometimes no record survives Sharp definition, hard edges, no effort at fuzzy contours (David Cameron, take note). Thatcher refused to recognise the right of citizens to vote for representatives of their choice. How then do I feel on the day of this matriarchal mourning? Firstly, control of inflation rather than the pursuit of full employment was the centrepiece of macro economic strategy. After leaving office, MT widened and deepened her criticism of the European More insidiously, it fathered amood of tolerated harshness. In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon. I don't see that. Rows with Lawson and Geoffrey Howe over a European currency (where she was right) presaged the final shambles of the poll tax. Council house sales and advertising campaigns that encouraged the public to buy shares in privatised companies were meant to broaden the appeal of capitalism. If it ended in disaster, the seeds were only partly hers. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979. She fervently believed the market would soon repair their loss. 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. 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". We were wary of this. 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. Here is a selection of the best writing from commentators, politicians and journalists on the legacy of Margaret Thatcher's 11 years in power - and on her continuing impact in the time following her downfall, as figures from across the political spectrum examine the legacy of one of the most important political figures from the last half-century, this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama, key role not only in bringing about the first Gulf War, publicly advocate for the 2003 attack on Iraq, the Guardian reported upon the death last month of Hugo Chavez, the Daily Mail has morefemale bylines than any other UK paper, Alan Krueger, chair of Obama's council of economic advisers, nor does the balance of research evidence suggest that greater inequality acts as a spur to growth, decline in trade union membership and the rise in inequality, intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich, the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy, Rik Mayall's student rants in The Young Ones, wicked, incompetent mindset that was the spirit of the 80s, "very fashionable in the Guardian for a few months before the financial crisis". To claim that any woman's success is a boon for feminism is like saying all publicity is good publicity. Draining down those 11 years to their memorable essence, what does one light upon? Prime Minister Thatcher inherited a settled state of British Europeanness, in which Brussels and the [European] Community began to influence, and often determine, the British way of doing things. This demand for respectful silence in the wake of a public figure's death is not just misguided but dangerous. Margaret Thatcher Curriculum Vitae. She was the daughter of a prosperous civic leader who merely began life as a "grocer". 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. On Saturday, 27 February, he wrote in his diary: "PM getting great press went up to the [Capitol] Hill some of the senators tried to give her a bad time, she put them down firmly and with typical British courtesy.". Perhaps it is more simple for all the iniquities of capitalism, the tide of history favours the right. The preface to the . I have few recollections of Thatcher after the slowly chauffeured, weepy Downing Street cortege. Above all, they lack her competence at running the machinery of government. It made her virtually unsackable as education secretary. But the key point is this: those who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics) aren't silent at all. 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. All rights reserved. John Major, the "detoxification" successor, was fated to implement many of her unattempted reforms. She continued for some reason to consider me worth talking to. She had left a Britain marked by private affluence and public squalor. 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 became leader of the Conservatives the year I was born and prime minister when I was four. The relative wealth of the UK 1% had been falling steadily for 50 years when Thatcher took power in 1979; since then it has climbed steeply and is almost back to 1918 levels. 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. Britain was battered out of the somnolent conservatism, across awide front of economic policies and priorities, that had held back progress and, arguably, prosperity. She, for one, never underestimated her friend from California, then a state of some 24 million. 100% Success rate. They built and provided their own welfare facilities and, well before today's welfare state was built, miners created their own welfare systems to alleviate hardship. There were sporadic resurrections. Her vision for Britain made a lot of people feel like outsiders, which made them the ideal audience for comedy. 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. Even some leading figures on the left have jealously praised the right's creativity and ideological crusaders. 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. We had an all-out blistering row that delighted the organisers. The novel may thrive in adversity and it was a general sense of dismay at the new world she was showing us that lured many writers into opposition. Donning a starched coiff and padded shoulders out to there, Emmy Award winner Gillian Anderson of The X-Files is . The Iron Lady had a green thumband a surprisingly green philosophy. The main names associated with Fatcha-bashing Ben Elton and Alexei Sayle deny that they relied so heavily on her for material. No gloves, or hats, except for royalty or at funerals, but feet on the table, whisky glass at hand, into the small hours of solitude, for want of male cronies in the masculine world she dominated for all her 11yearsin power. The economy had become more productive, more competitive and more profitable. I don't know if they ever voted for her, I don't know if they liked her. 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. The passing of Chvez is mourned by the many millions who loved him in Latin America and everywhere. Whathappened at the hands of this woman's indifference to sentiment andgood sense in the early 1980s brought unnecessary calamity to the lives of several million people who losttheir jobs. The authors show just how much . "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.". 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. The widening of income differences between rich and poor that took place during the 80s (particularly from 1985) is the most rapid ever recorded. Narrowly judged, the Thatcher economic revolution was a success. "Maggie Thatcher," he said. Only today are we facing the cost. 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 a way, they are all Thatcher's children.". He was listened to with rapt attention, unsurprisingly, since in both Washington and Westminster his "nudge" theories are saving significant sums of taxpayers' money. In January 1983 she She was a radical conservative, known for dismantling nationalized industries and social services, weakening union power.She was also the first incumbent prime minister in the UK removed on a vote of their own party. Was it cruelty? for turning. Hayek was appointed a Companion of Honour in the 1984 Birthday honours for "services to the study of Economics". 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. Strident, divisive, and in her own view infallible, and for these reasons hard to mourn. Eventually, the Italian contingent, largely existential or postmodern, rose up against us. In this eulogy, Thatcher uses rhetorical strategies to convince her readers into believing what she states. Published: Sunday 21st February 2021. Action. And the miners. To use a less bizarre analogy: if Thatcher was the headmistress, they were junior teachers, authoritative but warm enough that you could call them "mum" by accident. We have his example. 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. The gender remained, its artefacts deployed with calculation. In the three years after the shipment they killed 224 and wounded scores more. Three separate pieces of legislation between 1980 and 1984 attacked the closed shop, toughened up the laws on picketing and imposed secret strike ballots. 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 a child she unnerved me but we are not children now and we are free to choose our own ethical codes and leaders that reflect them. By the 1983 election she had sold off only Britoil and some council houses. She was 87. The place was her office at the Department of Education, then in Curzon Street. 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. The jobs that went during the 80s tended to be good, skilled jobs, delivering decent incomes and some security. Maggie! Maybe my memory is fanciful. Look at the cars on the road, none made by the old, nationally-owned British Leyland and only few by the British marques that once dominated but which went the way of much of British industry unable to survive the chill wind of "market forces", another phrase which filled the air back then. 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. Perhaps this is unsurprising: four years ago Ed Miliband sneered at "nudge" economics as something "very fashionable in the Guardian for a few months before the financial crisis". Reagan, for one, recognized the importance of Margaret Thatcher's presence as British prime minister, but would caution any discussionpartnerthat Pope John Paul played an equally important role. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.". One might even credit Thatcher with a willingness to jettison the old rules and conventions that used to prevent individuals deciding their own destiny. If you want anything done, ask a woman.". She would not have been half the . outlook at the time. At Bruges in September 1988 she outraged European orthodoxy by declaring: drew an important moral from the Falklands war: "We have ceased to She hurled herself into NHS reform, changes to schools and universities, utilities privatisation and, eventually, local government reform. People should pay her the respect of doing the same after her death. "Thatcher as mother" seemed, to my tiddly mind, anathema. her maiden 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 . making her big speech the following day as scheduled. 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. Some places have become heritage parks, remembering an industry now vanished. Steely, certainly. She was lucky in surviving the IRA's bomb. 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. 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. After material needs have been met, research has repeatedly shown that further rises in material standards contribute less and less to wellbeing. Where she privatised state-owned industries, they go much further, seeking to dismantle the state itself. If you have a . Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. Bob Slayer, one of the genuine alternative comedians on the scene, likes to note the irony of what's become of comedy. Under this heading, Thatcher left a dark legacy that, like her successes, has still not disappeared behind the historical horizon. That one should not speak ill of the dead is arguably appropriate when a private person dies, but it is wildly inappropriate for the death of a controversial public figure, particularly one who wielded significant influence and political power. Lecturing me about the comprehensive schools, of which she created more than any minister before or since. She was catapulted into the Conservative leadership by a small group of ideologues centred around a thinktank, determined to roll back the statist ideas that dominated Britain after the postwar Attlee government. "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. 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. But what bound all opposition to Margaret Thatcher's programme was a suspicion that the grocer's daughter was intent on monetising human value, that she had no heart and, famously, cared little for the impulses that bind individuals into a society. By then, 1990, I was 15, adolescent and instinctively anti-establishment enough to regard her disdainfully. Or perhaps it was just because I was a little kid and more interested in them Weetabix skinheads, Roland Rat and Knight Rider. 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. The Thatcher government was across all the details of this shipment. We watched as her high heels went click-click-click across the stones of the Acropolis and the cement floors of Tito's steel mills. This is one small sign of how the left seems paralysed by a lack of intellectual curiosity and confidence. She gave Nigel Lawson at the Treasury his head and was genuinely alarmed when he cut income tax to 40%. first television interview the following day, euphoric She defended Ronald News of Margaret Thatcher's death this morning instantly and predictably gave rise to righteous sermons on the evils of speaking ill of her. The lady was too shrewd to try that, and barely succeeded in reducing the share of the national income taken by the public sector. This was hardly the first or even the worst example of a dig at Thatcher tinged so needlessly with sexism. Out!" Ronald Reagan, the former 40th president of the United States died on June 5th of 2004. For years, in fact, she despised writers, except those who did her speeches. A big decline in traditional industries took place across Europe and the US in the 80s and 90s. Lady Thatcher, you honor us by coming to the site of Sir Winston's pivotal speech, an event Westminster College has immortalized with the beautiful Winston Churchill Memorial. speech to the House of Lords in June 1993. Endeavouring to persuade the British into an attitude of hostility to the group with which she spent 11 years deepening their connection must take a high place in any catalogue of anti-statesmanship. But now the history was what mattered. 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. What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neo-liberal inculcation begins. Making sure the verdict wasn't purloined by others. Reagan's decision to bomb Libya, spoke More subtly, Thatcher bequeathed a kind of instinctive rejection of once-valued forms of collective activity. Yet her long-term effect seems to have been to destroy it. After the Dublin European Council in November 1979 she began a long battle True, Labour, James Callaghan and the unions played their part by blocking Barbara Castle's In Place of Strife attempt to create German or Nordic co-operation between unions and industry that might have rescued unions from Thatcher's crushing. Yes, QI can report that a newspaper called the Evening News on . She adopts an endearing and sentimental tone using ethos, repetition, and . It was a visit warmly welcomed by President Reagan, with a resplendent state nner on the first evening. The 70s was Britain's most equal decade. 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. In the three years prior to receiving these weapons the loyalist death squads killed 34 people. That, plus (inevitable) de-industrialisation, coupled to her perceived overbearing and patronising manner. 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. 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. If anything, it becomes more compelling to commemorate those bad acts upon death as the only antidote against a society erecting a false and jingoistically self-serving history. Chvez is gone, but the voters are likely to re-elect Chavismo on 14 April. 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. "What's going on there, mate?" 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."