Margaret Thatcher
 |
| Margaret Thatcher |
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS (née Roberts, 13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013) was a British politician, who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, and the Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British Prime Minister of the 20th century and is currently the only woman to have held the office. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. As Prime Minister, she implemented policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism.
Originally a research chemist before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975, Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition and became the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom. She became Prime Minister after winning the 1979 general election.
On moving into 10 Downing Street, Thatcher introduced a series of political and economic initiatives intended to reverse high unemployment and Britain's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an ongoing recession.Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Thatcher's popularity during her first years in office waned amid recession and high unemployment, until the 1982 Falklands War brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her re-election in 1983.
Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987. During this period her support for a Community Charge (referred to as the "poll tax") was widely unpopular, and her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership. After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the county of Lincolnshire, which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. After a series of small strokes in 2002, she was advised to withdraw from public speaking, and in 2013 she died of another stroke in London at the age of 87.
Early life and education
Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts in Grantham, Lincolnshire, on 13 October 1925. Her father was Alfred Roberts, originally from Northamptonshire, and her mother was Beatrice Ethel (née Stephenson) from Lincolnshire.She spent her childhood in Grantham, where her father owned two grocery shops. She and her older sister Muriel (1921–2004) were raised in the flat above the larger of the two, on North Parade near the railway line.Her father was active in local politics and the Methodist church, serving as an alderman and a local preacher,and brought up his daughter as a strict Wesleyan Methodist attending the Finkin Street Methodist Church. He came from a Liberal family but stood—as was then customary in local government—as an Independent. He was Mayor of Grantham in 1945–1946 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950.
The corner of a terraced street in a suburban setting. The lower storey is a corner shop, advertising as a chiropractic clinic. The building is two storeys high, with some parts three storeys high.
Margaret Thatcher's birthplace, in Grantham, above her father's grocery shop. Coord. 52°54'57.09?N 0°38'42.40?W
"Birth place of the Rt.Hon. Margaret Thatcher, M.P. First woman prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"
Commemorative plaque at Thatcher's birthplace
Margaret Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School. Her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement; her extracurricular activities included the piano, field hockey, poetry recitals, swimming and walking.She was head girl in 1942–1943.In her upper sixth year she applied for a scholarship to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, but she was initially rejected and was offered a place only after another candidate withdrew.Roberts arrived at Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with Second-Class Honours in the four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree, specialising in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin. Her dissertation was on the structure of the antibiotic gramicidin.Even while working on chemistry, she was already thinking towards law and politics.She was reportedly more proud of becoming the first Prime Minister with a science degree than the first female Prime Minister.
Roberts became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946. She was influenced at university by political works such as Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944), which condemned economic intervention by government as a precursor to an authoritarian state.After graduating, Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics.In 1948 she applied for a job at ICI, but was rejected after the personnel department assessed her as "headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated".Roberts joined the local Conservative Association and attended the party conference at Llandudno in 1948, as a representative of the University Graduate Conservative Association.One of her Oxford friends was also a friend of the Chair of the Dartford Conservative Association in Kent, who were looking for candidates.Officials of the association were so impressed by her that they asked her to apply, even though she was not on the Conservative Party's approved list: she was selected in January 1951, at age twenty-five, and added to the approved list post ante.At a dinner following her formal adoption as Conservative candidate for Dartford in February 1951 she met Denis Thatcher, a successful and wealthy divorced businessman, who drove her to her Essex train.In preparation for the election Roberts moved to Dartford, where she supported herself by working as a research chemist for J. Lyons and Co. in Hammersmith, part of a team developing emulsifiers for ice cream.
Early political career, 1959–79
In the 1950 and 1951 general elections, Roberts was the Conservative candidate for the safe Labour seat of Dartford. The local party selected her as its candidate because, though not a dynamic public speaker, Roberts was well-prepared and fearless in her answers; another prospective candidate recalled that "Once she opened her mouth, the rest of us began to look rather second-rate".She attracted media attention as the youngest and the only female candidate.She lost on both occasions to Norman Dodds, but reduced the Labour majority by 6,000, and then a further 1,000.During the campaigns she was supported by her parents and by Denis Thatcher, whom she married in December 1951.Denis funded his wife's studies for the bar;she qualified as a barrister in 1953 and specialised in taxation.That same year their twins Carol and Mark were born.
Member of Parliament (1959–70)
In 1954, Thatcher was narrowly defeated when she sought selection as the candidate for the Orpington by-election of January 1955. She was not a candidate in the 1955 general election, as it came fairly soon after the birth of her children.Afterwards, Thatcher began looking for a Conservative safe seat and was selected as the candidate for Finchley in April 1958 (narrowly beating Ian Montagu Fraser). She was elected as MP for the seat after a hard campaign in the 1959 election.Benefiting from her fortunate result in a lottery for backbenchers to propose new legislation,Thatcher's maiden speech was in support of her private member's bill (Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960), requiring local authorities to hold their council meetings in public.In 1961 she went against the Conservative Party's official position by voting for the restoration of birching as a judicial corporal punishment.
Thatcher's talent and drive caused her to be mentioned as a future Prime Minister in her early 20salthough she herself was more pessimistic, stating as late as 1970 that "There will not be a woman prime minister in my lifetime—the male population is too prejudiced."In October 1961 she was promoted to the front bench as Parliamentary Undersecretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in Harold Macmillan's administration.Thatcher was the youngest woman in history to receive such a post, and among the first MPs elected in 1959 to be promoted.After the Conservatives lost the 1964 election she became spokeswoman on Housing and Land, in which position she advocated her party's policy of allowing tenants to buy their council houses.She moved to the Shadow Treasury team in 1966 and, as Treasury spokeswoman, opposed Labour's mandatory price and income controls, arguing that they would produce effects contrary to those intended and distort the economy.
By 1966, party leaders viewed Thatcher as a potential Shadow Cabinet member. James Prior proposed her as a member after the Conservatives' 1966 defeat, but party leader Edward Heath and Chief Whip Willie Whitelaw chose Mervyn Pike as the shadow cabinet's sole woman member.At the Conservative Party Conference of 1966 she criticised the high-tax policies of the Labour Government as being steps "not only towards Socialism, but towards Communism", arguing that lower taxes served as an incentive to hard work.Thatcher was one of the few Conservative MPs to support Leo Abse's Bill to decriminalise male homosexuality.She voted in favour of David Steel's bill to legalise abortion,as well as a ban on hare coursing.She supported the retention of capital punishment and voted against the relaxation of divorce laws.
In 1967, the United States Embassy in London chose Thatcher to take part in the International Visitor Leadership Program (then called the Foreign Leader Program), a professional exchange programme that gave her the opportunity to spend about six weeks visiting various US cities and political figures as well as institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Although she was not yet a cabinet or shadow cabinet member, the embassy reportedly described her to the State Department as a possible future prime minister. The description helped Thatcher meet with many prominent people during a busy itinerary focused on economic issues, including Paul Samuelson, Walt Rostow, Pierre-Paul Schweitzer, and Nelson Rockefeller. After Pike's retirement, Heath appointed Thatcher later that year to the Shadow Cabinet as Fuel and Power spokesman.Shortly before the 1970 general election, she was promoted to Shadow Transport spokesman and later to Education.
Education Secretary and Cabinet Minister (1970–74)
The Conservative Party under Edward Heath won the 1970 general election, and Thatcher was subsequently appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Science. During her first months in office she attracted public attention as a result of the administration's attempts to cut spending. She gave priority to academic needs in schools.She imposed public expenditure cuts on the state education system, resulting in the abolition of free milk for schoolchildren aged seven to eleven.She held that few children would suffer if schools were charged for milk, but she agreed to provide younger children with a third of a pint daily, for nutritional purposes.Cabinet papers later revealed that she opposed the policy but had been forced into it by the Treasury.Her decision provoked a storm of protest from Labour and the press,leading to the moniker "Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher". She reportedly considered leaving politics in the aftermath and later wrote in her autobiography: "I learned a valuable lesson. I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit."
Thatcher's term of office was marked by proposals for more local education authorities to close grammar schools and to adopt comprehensive secondary education. Although she was committed to a tiered secondary modern-grammar school system of education and was determined to preserve grammar schools,during her tenure as Education Secretary she turned down only 326 of 3,612 proposals for schools to become comprehensives; the proportion of pupils attending comprehensive schools consequently rose from 32 per cent to 62 per cent.
Prime Minister (1979–90)
Thatcher is the only woman in a room, where a dozen men in suits sit around an oval table. Reagan and Thatcher sit opposite each other in the middle of the long axis of the table. The room is decorated in white, with drapes, a gold chandelier and a portrait of Lincoln.
Thatcher's Cabinet meets with Reagan's Cabinet at the White House, 1981
Thatcher became Prime Minister on 4 May 1979. Arriving at 10 Downing Street, she said, in a paraphrase of St. Francis of Assisi's prayer Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace:
Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.
Privatisation
Thatcher during a visit to the University of Salford, 1982
The policy of privatisation has been called "a crucial ingredient of Thatcherism".After the 1983 election the sale of state utilities accelerated;more than £29 billion was raised from the sale of nationalised industries, and another £18 billion from the sale of council houses.
The process of privatisation, especially the preparation of nationalised industries for privatisation, was associated with marked improvements in performance, particularly in terms of labour productivity.Some of the privatised industries, including gas, water, and electricity, were natural monopolies for which privatisation involved little increase in competition. The privatised industries that demonstrated improvement sometimes did so while still under state ownership. British Steel, for instance, made great gains in profitability while still a nationalised industry under the government-appointed chairmanship of Ian MacGregor, who faced down trade-union opposition to close plants and reduce the workforce by half.Regulation was also significantly expanded to compensate for the loss of direct government control, with the foundation of regulatory bodies such as Ofgas, Oftel and the National Rivers Authority.There was no clear pattern to the degree of competition, regulation, and performance among the privatised industries;in most cases privatisation benefited consumers in terms of lower prices and improved efficiency, but the results overall were "mixed".
Thatcher always resisted rail privatisation and was said to have told Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley "Railway privatisation will be the Waterloo of this government. Please never mention the railways to me again." Shortly before her resignation, she accepted the arguments for privatising British Rail, which her successor John Major implemented in 1994.The Economist later considered the move to have been "a disaster".
The privatisation of public assets was combined with financial deregulation in an attempt to fuel economic growth. Geoffrey Howe abolished Britain's exchange controls in 1979, allowing more capital to be invested in foreign markets, and the Big Bang of 1986 removed many restrictions on the London Stock Exchange. The Thatcher government encouraged growth in the finance and service sectors to compensate for Britain's ailing manufacturing industry.
Environment
Thatcher supported an active climate protection policy and was instrumental in the creation of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and in founding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the British Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter.Thatcher helped to put climate change, acid rain and general pollution in the British mainstream in the early 1980s.Her speeches included one to Royal Society on 27 September 1988 and to the UN general assembly in November 1989, She did not visit the Earth Summit 1992 and later became sceptical about climate change policy.
Final years
On 11 June 2004, Thatcher attended the state funeral service for Ronald Reagan.She delivered her eulogy via videotape; in view of her health, the message had been pre-recorded several months earlier.Thatcher flew to California with the Reagan entourage, and attended the memorial service and interment ceremony for the president at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
Thatcher attends a Washington memorial service marking the 5th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, pictured with Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife
Thatcher celebrated her 80th birthday at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hyde Park, London, on 13 October 2005; guests included the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Alexandra and Tony Blair.Geoffrey Howe, by then Lord Howe of Aberavon, was also present, and said of his former leader: "Her real triumph was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible."
According to a later article in The Daily Telegraph, Thatcher's daughter Carol first revealed that her mother had dementia in 2005, saying that "Mum doesn't read much any more because of her memory loss ... It's pointless. She can't remember the beginning of a sentence by the time she reaches the end."She later recounted how she was first struck by her mother's dementia when in conversation Thatcher confused the Falklands and Yugoslav conflicts; she has also recalled the pain of needing to tell her mother repeatedly that Denis Thatcher was dead.
In 2006, Thatcher attended the official Washington, D.C. memorial service to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States. She was a guest of Vice President Dick Cheney, and met Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit.
In February 2007, Thatcher became the first living British Prime Minister to be honoured with a statue in the Houses of Parliament. The bronze statue stands opposite that of her political hero, Sir Winston Churchill,and was unveiled on 21 February 2007 with Thatcher in attendance; she made a brief speech in the members' lobby of the House of Commons, responding: "I might have preferred iron — but bronze will do ... It won't rust."The statue shows her addressing the House of Commons, with her right arm outstretched.
She was a public supporter of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism and the resulting Prague Process, and sent a public letter of support to its preceding conference.
After collapsing at a House of Lords dinner, Thatcher was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital in central London on 7 March 2008 for tests. In 2009 she was hospitalised again when she fell and broke her arm.
Thatcher returned to 10 Downing Street in late November 2009 for the unveiling of an official portrait by artist Richard Stone,an unusual honour for a living ex-Prime Minister. Stone had previously painted portraits of the Queen and the Queen Mother.On 4 July 2011, Thatcher was to attend a ceremony for the unveiling of a 10-foot statue to former American President Ronald Reagan, outside the American Embassy in London, but was unable to attend because of frail health.On 31 July 2011, it was announced that her office in the House of Lords had been closed.Earlier that month, Thatcher had been named the most competent British Prime Minister of the past 30 years in an Ipsos MORI poll.
Death
Wikinews has related news: Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher dies aged 87
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Death and funeral of Margaret Thatcher
Main article: Death and funeral of Margaret Thatcher
Thatcher's coffin being carried up the steps of St Paul's Cathedral
Plaques on the graves of Margaret and Denis Thatcher at the Royal Hospital Chelsea
Thatcher died on 8 April 2013 at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke. She had been staying at a suite in the Ritz Hotel in London since December 2012 after having difficulty with stairs at her Chester Square home.
Reactions to the news of Thatcher's death were mixed in the UK, ranging from tributes lauding her as Britain's greatest-ever peacetime Prime Minister to public celebrations of her death and expressions of personalised vitriol.
Details of Thatcher's funeral had been agreed with her in advance.In line with her wishes she received a ceremonial funeral, including full military honours, with a church service at St Paul's Cathedral on 17 April. Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, attended the funeral,the second time in the Queen's reign that she had attended the funeral of a former prime minister (the first being Winston Churchill's in 1965).
After the service at St Paul's Cathedral, Thatcher's body was cremated at Mortlake Crematorium, where her husband had been cremated. On 28 September a service for Thatcher was held in the All Saints Chapel of the Royal Hospital Chelsea's Margaret Thatcher Infirmary. In a private ceremony Thatcher's ashes were interred in the grounds of the hospital, next to those of her husband.
0 comments:
Post a Comment