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%. After the 1987 election, Thatcher cut an increasingly isolated figure. In the Meryl Streep film, The Iron Lady, it's the scenes of domesticity that appear most absurd. 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 . Thatcher came to personify those ready to push anyone aside to gain power in a man's world and strengthen that world with their ambition. ", 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. But there are less obvious manifestations of the same habit. By 1990 it was transformed. 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. Perhaps Labour would benefit from another defeat, given the danger of taking power unprepared and turning into a zombie government, like the tragedy unfurling in France. Her bouffant and handbag and nasal voice were comedy gold, but she was also earnest, principled and said exactly what she meant. Luckily, a longer paper means you get a bigger discount! 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. departing Downing Street on 28 November. And the miners. In towns and valleys poleaxed by the Iron Lady, there may be glasses raised at her passing. Climate, freedom and denial: What "Green Thatcherism" teaches us today 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. . Large parts of society never recovered, while Germany and other countries managed the transition without such brutality. Either way, I'm an adult now and none of those things are on telly any more so there's no excuse for apathy. When Margaret Thatcher won the general election in 1979, she became Prime Minister of a land in chaos. It chose her ina fit of desperation, hats and all though it quite liked the hats. We must reduce the inequality that has seen a super-rich elite, openly contemptuous of the flag and family values Thatcher proclaimed, float free from the rest of us. Later that year she introduced the broadcasting ban on Sinn Fin, which prevented viewers and listeners hearing my voice. Margaret Thatcher's Speech to Congress. She pointed out that she was only 10 years old when she ceased to be prime minister. Government policy during the 1980s was little more than a war policy, aimed at defeating or isolating republicanism. History will judge her, but not a country in Europe was untouched by Thatcher's example. And for the people of Ireland, and especially the north, the Thatcher years were among some of the worst of the conflict. As she said in her memoirs: "There was no one else." For those of us who were dismayed by her brisk distaste for that cosy state-dominated world, it was never enough to dislike her. Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher, Signed Speech on Hayek, 2003, Estimate 1,500-2,000 . She was not a writer. I was on my own. Texts for listed statements are available on the site in almost 70 per cent of cases. The fact that the Thatcher question even gets asked confirms vividly just what an upas tree she remains for Scottish Toryism. She had just finished the first volume of her memoirs, which she insisted was all her own work. Margaret expresses that Reagan's leadership was the key to ending The Cold War and unifying a formerly divided nation. Deep-seated and long overdue reforms of the 1980s paved the way for the long 16-year boom between 1992 and 2008. Strident, divisive, and in her own view infallible, and for these reasons hard to mourn. The Crown: How Margaret Thatcher Was Removed from Power in 1990 - ELLE 'The Crown' Season 4: Did Margaret Thatcher Really Sound - Decider It was under her leadership that in 1982 that the Force Research Unit (FRU) was established within the British Army Intelligence Corps. To project the ideas of strength and . Rishi Sunak 20 July 2022 9:30pm. Margaret Thatcher's most popular book is The Downing Street Years. Not all writers were against her. 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. Peggy Noonan. Maybe my memory is fanciful. 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 Instead, her Big Bang blew the roof off City profits and property booms filled the gap where productive industry should have sprouted. On 30 October 1990 she made the first of the If the Falklands war was the making of Thatcher, then the poll tax was her achilles heel not least in Scotland. But former speechwriter Trevor Reeves can no longer . But we have one beacon to guide us that Ronald Reagan never had. Thatcher became a supremely self-confident leader. What did Margaret Thatcher have to say about climate change? Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. Conscious of being awoman, and incapable of pretending otherwise. One also can't forget what happened to the agency that made Thatcher worldfamous: the Conservative party, of which she seemed such an improbable leader. drew an important moral from the Falklands war: "We have ceased to It never was. At her first conference speech, she chastised the Labour Party on economic . Accounts vary. see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising Until then Thatcher had shown the strength of her weakness: a dislike of consensus and aversion to debate, leading to decisive action. The Lady forced the opposition party to accommodate itself to the new, Thatcherite settlement in which the market would rule unless stated otherwise. First was the sheer depth of hostility towards the Tories in general. speech in the House of Commons, her Tim Bale, author of The Conservative Party: from Thatcher to Cameron, says it was conviction. Cameron's crew crudely imagine she intended it. Since 1990 a selection of statements is listed. 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. Chvez is gone, but the voters are likely to re-elect Chavismo on 14 April. This does lead to divisions. Out! Here, for instance, was what the Guardian reported upon the death last month of Hugo Chavez: "To the millions who detested him as a thug and charlatan, it will be occasion to bid, vocally or discreetly, good riddance.". The fact is that if both sides removed their ideological blinkers, as Thatcher, remarkably perhaps, managed to do, then her trilogy of speeches in the late 1980s still offer some of the best and . To have achieved all this alone would have made Margaret Thatcher a towering, transformational figure, one who altered the physical fabric of the nation. She hurled herself into NHS reform, changes to schools and universities, utilities privatisation and, eventually, local government reform. Debate continues on whether Margaret Thatcher saved or destroyed British industry, but there is one industry that she practically created. 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. It was all very well for me to write books. The drastic results of these policies were intentional. A senior civil servant said, "It worked because we all knew exactly what she wanted.". rejecting Commission proposals at the Rome European Council with the words "We have not Plus there's the fact that comedy is now a big business, and there's less money in sharp satire than gentle observation. Oxford CD-ROM explains how the statements were assembled and edited But the left also needs to look beyond the turbulent events in Europe to appreciate the speed of global change and the complications this creates for welfare-laden economies: the dynamos and innovators are increasingly found in Africa, Asia and Latin America rather than France, Germany and Spain. It's how she would have, if pressed, put it herself. Thatcher has said that negotiation, and not strong economic sanctions, is the way to persuade South Africa's white-minority government to dismantle apartheid. John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. Margaret Thatcher Essay: Health Category. Buy the CD-ROM from this link or find one Margaret Thatcher's Strong Stance on Climate Change These include, "We have to show them that we're better than they are", and "Women can get into corners that men can't reach!" She certainly was divisive, bisecting the country politically and geographically: hard-hit regions in the north of England, Wales and Scotland may be notably less civil in their farewells. She also put forward the idea of "a vast . The seismic shift from industry to financial-based capitalism that Thatcherism ushered in rattled the establishment. Almost everything said of Thatcher's early years was untrue, partly through her own invention. Keith Joseph was her guru. Margaret Thatcher's Climate Change Of Heart | HuffPost Impact In the early 1980s, the Republican party joined with other moderate and conservative parties in the world to form the International Democrat Union. 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 . She invited the John Major, the "detoxification" successor, was fated to implement many of her unattempted reforms. Britain ceased to be the sick man of Europe and entered the 1990s with its reputation enhanced. 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. 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. Their target was "the enemy within" working-class power and the so-called culture of entitlement. But Labour is no less in thrall. As leader she was initially hyper-cautious. Copyright Margaret Thatcher Foundation 2023. Margaret Thatcher's landmark Bruges speech about the future of Europe was never intended to push the UK towards the exit, the man who wrote it says. While "one nation" Conservatives condone some forms of redistribution, their libertarian . 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". Yes, QI can report that a newspaper called the Evening News on . Firstly, control of inflation rather than the pursuit of full employment was the centrepiece of macro economic strategy. Three separate pieces of legislation between 1980 and 1984 attacked the closed shop, toughened up the laws on picketing and imposed secret strike ballots. If you behave like there's no such thing as society, in the end there isn't. As a result, Labour authorities in eight or so British cities have set up fairness commissions to reduce income differences locally. The time was 1973. 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. The left misleads us and maybe itself when it says that Thatcher's policies, extended by New Labour and then by the coalition, have failed. Indeed a person with achemistry that repelled almost all thesignificant males in Edward Heath's cabinet who could never become theparty leader. 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. British Labour MP Tom Watson decreed: "I hope that people on the left of politics respect a family in grief today." The spell of community. first television interview the following day, euphoric There turned out to be no such thing as society, at least in the sense we used to understand it. It was illegal to put an extension lead on your phone. She famously changed the law after Bobby Sands was elected in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. Seizing her chariot's reins to drive it on recklessly, they lack her brains, experience and political skill. She was 87. It led to riots that nobody needed. 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. Thatcherism failed to destroy the welfare state. Not even the Falklands war would push it off the tracks or damage it in any way. We had had a strange relationship. In a break with tradition and protocol, Reagan decided he'd also attend the "return dinner" at the British Embassy the next evening. Her political antennae refused to allow her to privatise the coal industry, British Rail or the post office. My mate John and I were wandering there together, he expertly proselytising on the architecture and the history of the place, me pretending to be Rumpole of the Bailey (quietly in my mind), when we spied in the distant garden a hunched and frail figure, in a raincoat, scarf about her head, watering the roses under the breezy supervision of a masticating copper. How then do I feel on the day of this matriarchal mourning? Reagan, who had recently left office as governor of California, was in London to deliver a speech to the Pilgrim Society. She led Britain further into Europe, while talking us further out. Which raises the question: why isn't this happening now? 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. 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. morning, Available for everyone, funded by readers. The first time I met Margaret Thatcher, I swear she was wearing gloves. 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. The US academic Cass Sunstein was in Britain at the end of last month. She was the first prime minister to be more accountable to the international market than to the British economy. No elderly person would be deprived of the dignity of spectacles, dentures or a hearing aid because they couldn't afford them. Now she would more likely have been beaten to the Tory leadership by one of the Etonians in cabinet. Thatcher exposed the sharp edges of class division in Britain and the strike of 1984/5 was as much a clash of values as it was about pit closures. This has been a terrible labour, she said. a Such items have an 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. Emery Evans . I will be the heir to Margaret Thatcher. Each now seems banal. Thatcher understood the connection between the social wage and workers' wages better than most unions. There are more than 8,000. Ultimately, despite the despondent times of the Cold War and the waning confidence of the citizens, Margaret Thatcher delivered her eulogy speech in belief of President Ronald Reagan and used the rhetorical appeals of pathos, imagery, metaphor, and ethos to accomplish his presidency as successful. The core ideas that underpinned her government endured through 13 years of Labour and are being extended by the coalition. She was evicted from Downing Street with all the ruthlessness, treachery and warped humanity of what passes for high politics. She will be for ever unforgiven by those who now see worse being done in her name to another generation. Across Yorkshire or south Wales, Kent or Nottinghamshire, there are villages that have never recovered from the closure of coal mines, ordered by a Thatcher who ruled there was no place for pits that were not "economically viable", regardless of the social consequences. Adam Smith's invisible hand ended up raising two fingers to her moral project. 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. successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to Although the "right to buy" and the privatisation of utilities by selling shares to new small investors was often justified as giving rights to "the little people", the reality is that the less well-off fell ever further behind the rich. Throw the Lib Dems into the mix and it becomes highly combustible. Her vision for Britain made a lot of people feel like outsiders, which made them the ideal audience for comedy. an interviewer "there is no such thing as society", "We have not The main names associated with Fatcha-bashing Ben Elton and Alexei Sayle deny that they relied so heavily on her for material. At countless demonstrations throughout the 80s, it expressed a curious ambivalence a first name intimacy as well as a furious rejection of all she stood for. Ronald Reagan, the former 40th president of the United States died on June 5th of 2004. By the 1983 election she had sold off only Britoil and some council houses. That said, by the mid-1980s it was clear that the Conservative government's economic policy was based on a handful of core principles. Mrs T shared the same reductionism. She wrecked her own party, while promoting, via many a tortuous turn, Labour's resurrection. As I spread my wings in politics, I discovered many Thatcher voters down south who were the same kind of people who loathed her in Scotland. 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. Without the Falklands/Malvinas war, which exploited nationalism (as Argentinian dictator Galtieri did) and which Labour would not oppose, she would never have been re-elected in 1983. Thank you, too, Margaret. The latest pit to close, Maltby in Yorkshire, still has a death and general purpose fund to help fellow miners and their families in times of hardship. Reagan would challenge Gerald Ford, the sitting president, the next year. 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. At an international conference in Lisbon in the late 80s, the British faction, among whom were Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Malcolm Bradbury and myself, referred back to Thatcher constantly in our presentations. Rhetorical Analysis Of Margaret Thatcher's Speech outlook at the time. Since 1990 a selection of statements is listed. There was, for example, the time in the late 1970s when, as Opposition Leader, she almost succeeded in censoring the one half-decent joke in a key campaign speech. I wouldn't say I have got myself a Kennedy-type speech-writer yet . Margaret Thatcher - HISTORY 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. Even some leading figures on the left have jealously praised the right's creativity and ideological crusaders. The family silver was squandered on bribing voters rather than modernising the economy. as far as can be known. 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. Everything has its season. It came to a head over her most egregious policy failure, Europe. Britain's record on innovation and investment have been extremely poor, while the hollowing out of manufacturing left the economy over-dependent on the de-regulated City. Thinking about it now, when I was a child she was just a strict woman telling everyone off and selling everything off. The first is what changed in the temper of Britain and the British. 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. But for others, the change in landscape is all too real. "The original alternative comics just did it because they had to," he says. She may have got it slightly wrong. Thatcher's 11 years of dictating British policy in Ireland was a legacy of bitterness and entrenched division. She, for one, never underestimated her friend from California, then a state of some 24 million. If they have no bread, let them eat from food banks that's Thatcherism, the legacy we are still to bury before it buries us. The widening of income differences between rich and poor that took place during the 80s (particularly from 1985) is the most rapid ever recorded. I was a professional writer. In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon. If You Want Anything Said Ask a Man, Want Anything Done Ask a Woman 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. Her Irish policy failed miserably. Critical Commentary: Margaret Thatcher outlined the British policy in relation to various world issues. Thatcher came to power when the economy was approaching a moment of truth after three decades of poor performance relative to other western countries. Hire a Writer. "Being powerful is like being a lady. She was, of course, the first and so far only female British prime minister, Jon Snow reiterated on Monday night, insinuating that this achievement should in general be celebrated, never mind the specifics of her leadership. When all the public amenities were flogged, the adverts made it seem to my childish eyes fun and positive, jaunty slogans and affable British stereotypes jostling about in villages, selling people companies that they'd already paid for through tax. 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. As David Wearing put it this morning in satirizing these speak-no-ill-of-the-deceased moralists: "People praising Thatcher's legacy should show some respect for her victims. 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. 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. A strong pound crippled exports and emptied factories. But growth rates in the decades since her period in office have been lower than during those that preceded her; nor does the balance of research evidence suggest that greater inequality acts as a spur to growth. Hayek was appointed a Companion of Honour in the 1984 Birthday honours for "services to the study of Economics". Maggie and Me: How Thatcher Changed Britain. Given the global economic crisis, rampant corporate greed and growing inequality, this should be a time of great ferment, with endless policy proposals bubbling up to challenge the post-Thatcher consensus at a time of immense and unsettling change. Later, when the BBC and ITV scheduled two programmes about Gibraltar, Thatcher tried to stop them. Yet, as the heated benefits debate showed last week, Labour is trapped by history bereft of fresh ideas and, when tentatively offering proposals, strangled by the most stifling conservatism. You could never call Margaret Mother by mistake. 'I was there': Margaret Thatcher 'not for turning', 1980 They were puzzled by the Scots' antipathy, given the Falklands war and the strong militaristic history of the Highlands and elsewhere. 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. We might speculate that an adviser had offered Thatcher a selection of good lines, or that she had asked to see some. At a party leaders' meeting in Washington, DC in 1985, Prime Minister Thatcher spent all day in the House of Commons, then boarded Concorde and flew to Washington to participate until late into the evening; she took such policy co-operation very seriously. 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.

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