COLEGIUL NAȚIONAL ,, NICOLAE BĂLCESCU”

ATESTAT DE COMPETENȚĂ LINGVISTICĂ

LIMBA ENGLEZĂ

PROFESOR ÎNDRUMĂTOR: CANDIDAT:

GHEȚU PAULA CLAUDIA MICU ARINA IOANA

BRĂILA, 2015
MARGARET THATCHER
 Table of contents

Motivation..........................................................................................................................page 5

Margaret Thatcher..............................................................................................................page 6

1 Early life and education...................................................................................................page 7

2 Early political career........................................................................................................page 9

2.1 Member of Parliament (1959–1970).....................................................................page 9

2.2 Education Secretary and Cabinet Minister (1970–1974)......................................page 11

2.3 Leader of the Opposition (1975–1979).................................................................page 11

3 Prime Minister (1979–1990)............................................................................................page 14

3.1 Domestic affairs....................................................................................................page 14

3.2 Environment.........................................................................................................page 19

3.3 Foreign affairs.......................................................................................................page 20

3.4 Challenges to leadership and resignation.............................................................page 23

4 Later life (1990–2013).....................................................................................................page 25

4.1 Post-Commons.......................................................................................................page 25

4.2 Husband's death.....................................................................................................page 26

4.3 Final years..............................................................................................................page 27

4.4 Death......................................................................................................................page 28

5. Legacy...............................................................................................................................page 29

5.1 Political legacy.............................................................................................................page 29

5.2 Honours.......................................................................................................................page 31
 5.3 Cultural depictions.....................................................................................................page 32

Bibliography..........................................................................................................................page 33
 Motivation

I have chosen to speak about Margaret Thatcher, also known as The Iron Lady, because she was
Britain’s only woman prime minister, was the first to become an “-ism” in her lifetime. She left
behind a brand of politics.
For Mrs. Thatcher, her system was moral as much as economic.
Under Thatcher Britain confronted some of the underlying structural problems in its economy –
one which desperately needed freeing up. More people got richer quicker – and gained a
fundamental stake in the economy through buying their own home or shares in the industries she
privatized
Thatcher’s aims to get the economy moving again were mostly based upon ‘supply side’
economics by making it easier for business. She is remembered for privatizing many industries
and the utilities. She moved Britain to being a much more free market economy. This helped
Britain to regain its economic competitiveness.
While Margaret Thatcher may have made decisions that some consider negative, her legacy is
positive because she was a strong, opinionated, capable woman who defined gender roles and
embraced her position with grace, dignity, and led a country very capably for a long time. Her
legacy as whole is most assuredly positive. Taking into account a compilation of her work, she
was an asset to the world like few others before her have been. She helped to create a number of
humanistic advances. Her policies, were done with the benefit of mankind and her legacy will
live on way past her memory.

5
 Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, (born Roberts, 13 October 1925 – 8 April
2013) 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 the only woman to have held the office. A Soviet journalist called 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 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 emphasized deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets,
the privatization 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.

6
 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
(born 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 Finking Street Methodist Church. He
came from a Liberal family but stood—as was then customary in local government—as
and 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.

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, specializing 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

7
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 was 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.

8
 Early political career

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 specialized in taxation. That same year their
twins Carol and Mark were born.

2.1. Member of Parliament (1959–1970)

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 Finchleyin 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 judicial corporal punishment.

Thatcher's talent and drive caused her to be mentioned as a future Prime Minister in her early
20s although 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

9
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 decriminalize 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.

10
2.2. Education Secretary and Cabinet Minister (1970–1974)
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.

2.3. Leader of the Opposition (1975–1979)

The Heath government continued to experience difficulties with oil embargoes and union
demands for wage increases in 1973 and lost the February 1974 general election. Labour formed
a minority government and went on to win a narrow majority in the October 1974 general
election. Heath's leadership of the Conservative Party looked increasingly in doubt. Thatcher was
not initially the obvious replacement, but she eventually became the main challenger, promising
a fresh start. Her main support came from the Conservative 1922 Committee, but Thatcher's time
in office gave her the reputation of a pragmatist instead of an ideologue. She defeated Heath on
the first ballot and he resigned the leadership. In the second ballot she defeated Whitelaw,
Heath's preferred successor. The vote polarized along right-left lines, with the region, experience

11
and education of the MP also having their effects. Thatcher's support was stronger among MPs
on the right, those from southern England, and those who had not attended public schools or
Oxbridge.

Thatcher became party leader and Leader of the Opposition on 11 February 1975; she appointed
Whitelaw as her deputy. Heath was never reconciled to Thatcher's leadership.

Thatcher began to attend lunches regularly at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think
tank founded by the poultry magnate Antony Fisher, a disciple of Friedrich von Hayek; she had
been visiting the IEA and reading its publications since the early 1960s. There she was
influenced by the ideas of Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon, and she became the face of the
ideological movement opposing the welfare state. Keynesian economics, they believed, was
weakening Britain. The institute's pamphlets proposed less government, lower taxes, and more
freedom for business and consumers.

The television critic Clive James, writing in The Observer during the voting for the leadership,
compared her voice of 1973 to a cat sliding down a blackboard. Thatcher had already begun to
work on her presentation on the advice of Gordon Reece, a former television producer. By
chance Reece met the actor Laurence Olivier, who arranged lessons with the National Theatre's
voice coach. Thatcher succeeded in completely suppressing her Lincolnshire dialect except when
under stress, notably after provocation from Denis Healey in the House of Commons in April
1983, when she accused the Labour front bench of being frit.

On 19 January 1976 Thatcher made a speech in Kensington Town Hall in which she made a
scathing attack on the Soviet Union:

The Russians are bent on world dominance, and they are rapidly acquiring the means to become
the most powerful imperial nation the world has seen. The men in the Soviet Politburo do not
have to worry about the ebb and flow of public opinion. They put guns before butter, while we
put just about everything before guns.

In response, the Soviet Defense Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) called her the
"Iron Lady," a sobriquet she gladly adopted.

Margaret Thatcher wanted to prevent the creation of a Scottish assembly. She told Conservative
MPs to vote against the Scotland and Wales Bill in December 1976, which was defeated, and

12
then when new Bills were proposed she supported amending the legislation to allow the English
to vote in the 1979 referendum on devolution.

Britain's economy during the 1970s was so weak that Foreign Minister James Callaghan warned
his fellow Labour Cabinet members in 1974 of the possibility of "a breakdown of democracy",
telling them that "If I were a young man, I would emigrate. "In mid-1978, the economy began to
improve and opinion polls showed Labour in the lead, with a general election being expected
later that year and a Labour win a serious possibility. Now Prime Minister, Callaghan surprised
many by announcing on 7 September that there would be no general election that year and he
would wait until 1979 before going to the polls. Thatcher reacted to this by branding the Labour
government "chickens", and Liberal Party leader David Steel joined in, criticizing Labour for
"running scared".

The Labour government then faced fresh public unease about the direction of the country and a
damaging series of strikes during the winter of 1978–1979, dubbed the "Winter of Discontent".
The Conservatives attacked the Labour government's unemployment record, using advertising
with the slogan "Labour Isn't Working". A general election was called after Callaghan's
government lost a motion of no confidence in early 1979. The Conservatives won a 44-seat
majority in the House of Commons, and Margaret Thatcher became the UK's first female Prime
Minister.

13
 Prime minister (1979-1990)
Thatcher became Prime Minister on 4 May 1979. Arriving at 10 Downing Street, she said, in a
paraphrase of the 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.

3.1. Domestic affairs

Thatcher was Leader of the Opposition and Prime Minister at a time of increased racial tension
in Britain. Commenting on the local elections of May 1977, The Economist noted "The Tory tide
swamped the smaller parties. That specifically includes the National Front, which suffered a
clear decline from last year". Her standing in the polls rose by 11% after a January 1978
interview for World in Action in which she said "the British character has done so much for
democracy, for law and done so much throughout the world that if there is any fear that it might
be swamped people are going to react and be rather hostile to those coming in."; and "in many
ways add to the richness and variety of this country. The moment the minority threatens to
become a big one, people get frightened." In the 1979 general election, the Conservatives
attracted voters from the National Front, whose support almost collapsed. In a meeting in July
1979 with the Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington and Home Secretary William Whitelaw she
objected to the number of Asian immigrants, in the context of limiting the number of Vietnamese
boat people allowed to settle in the UK to fewer than 10,000.

As Prime Minister, Thatcher met weekly with Queen Elizabeth II to discuss government
business, and their relationship came under close scrutiny. In July 1986, The Sunday Times
reported claims attributed to the Queen's advisers of a "rift" between Buckingham
Palace and Downing Street "over a wide range of domestic and international issues". The Palace
issued an official denial, heading off speculation about a possible constitutional crisis. After
Thatcher's retirement a senior Palace source again dismissed as "nonsense" the "stereotyped
idea" that she had not got along with the Queen, or that they had fallen out over Thatcherite
policies. Thatcher later wrote: "I always found the Queen's attitude towards the work of the
Government absolutely correct ... stories of clashes between 'two powerful women' were just too
good not to make up."

14
In August 1989, Thatcher queried her government's response to the Taylor Report, writing a
hand-written comment on a Downing Street briefing note: "The broad thrust is devastating
criticism of the police. Is that for us to welcome? Surely we welcome the thoroughness of the
report and its recommendations?"

During her time in office, Thatcher practiced great frugality in her official residence, including
insisting on paying for her own ironing-board.

Economy and taxation

Thatcher's economic policy was influenced by monetarist thinking and economists such
as Milton Friedman and Alan Walters. Together with Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey
Howe, she lowered direct taxes on income and increased indirect taxes. She increased interest
rates to slow the growth of the money supply and thereby lower inflation, introduced cash limits
on public spending, and reduced expenditure on social services such as education and
housing. Her cuts in higher education spending resulted in her being the first Oxford-educated
post-war Prime Minister not to be awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Oxford,
after a 738 to 319 vote of the governing assembly and a student petition. Her new centrally
funded City Technology Colleges did not enjoy much success, and the Funding Agency for
Schools was set up to control expenditure by opening and closing schools; the Social Market
Foundation, a centre-left think tank, described it as having "an extraordinary range of dictatorial
powers".

Some Heathite Conservatives in the Cabinet, the so-called "wets", expressed doubt over
Thatcher's policies. The1981 England riots resulted in the British media discussing the need for a
policy U-turn. At the 1980 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher addressed the issue directly,
with a speech written by the playwright Ronald Millar that included the lines: "You turn if you
want to. The lady's not for turning!"

Thatcher's job approval rating fell to 23% by December 1980, lower than recorded for any
previous Prime Minister. As the recession of the early 1980s deepened she increased
taxes, despite concerns expressed in a statement signed by 364 leading economists issued
towards the end of March 1981.

15
By 1982 the UK began to experience signs of economic recovery; inflation was down to 8.6%
from a high of 18%, but unemployment was over 3 million for the first time since the 1930s. By
1983 overall economic growth was stronger and inflation and mortgage rates were at their lowest
levels since 1970, although manufacturing output had dropped by 30% since 1978 and
unemployment remained high, peaking at 3.3 million in 1984.

By 1987, unemployment was falling, the economy was stable and strong, and inflation was low.
Opinion polls showed a comfortable Conservative lead, and local council election results had
also been successful, prompting Thatcher to call a general election for 11 June that year, despite
the deadline for an election still being 12 months away. The election saw Thatcher re-elected for
a third successive term.

Throughout the 1980s revenue from the 90% tax on North Sea oil extraction was used as a short-
term funding source to balance the economy and pay the costs of reform.

Thatcher reformed local government taxes by replacing domestic rates—a tax based on the
nominal rental value of a home—with the Community Charge (or poll tax) in which the same
amount was charged to each adult resident. The new tax was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and
in England and Wales the following year, and proved to be among the most unpopular policies of
her premiership. Public disquiet culminated in a 70,000 to 200,000-strong demonstration in
London on 31 March 1990; the demonstration around Trafalgar Square deteriorated into the Poll
Tax Riots, leaving 113 people injured and 340 under arrest. The Community Charge was
abolished by her successor, John Major.

Industrial relations
Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the trade unions, whose leadership she
accused of undermining parliamentary democracy and economic performance through strike
action. Several unions launched strikes in response to legislation introduced to curb their power,
but resistance eventually collapsed. Only 39% of union members voted for Labour in the 1983
general election. According to the BBC, Thatcher "managed to destroy the power of the trade
unions for almost a generation".

16
The miners' strike was the biggest confrontation between the unions and the Thatcher
government. In March 1984 the National Coal Board (NCB) proposed to close 20 of the
174 state-owned mines and cut 20,000 jobs out of 187,000. Two-thirds of the country's miners
led by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) under Arthur Scargill, downed tools in
protest. Scargill had refused to hold a ballot on the strike, having previously lost three ballots on
a national strike (January 1982, October 1982, and March 1983). This led to the strike being
declared illegal.

Thatcher refused to meet the union's demands and compared the miners' dispute to the Falklands
conflict two years earlier, declaring in a speech in 1984: "We had to fight the enemy without in
the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to
fight and more dangerous to liberty." After a year out on strike, in March 1985, the NUM
leadership conceded without a deal. The cost to the economy was estimated to be at least
£1.5 billion, and the strike was blamed for much of the pound's fall against the US dollar. The
government closed 25 unprofitable coal mines in 1985, and by 1992 a total of 97 had been
closed; those that remained were privatised in 1994. The eventual closure of 150 coal mines, not
all of which were losing money, resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and devastated
entire communities. Miners had helped bring down the Heath government, and Thatcher was
determined to succeed where he had failed. Her strategy of preparing fuel stocks, appointing a
union-busting NCB leader in Ian MacGregor, and ensuring police were adequately trained and
equipped with riot gear, contributed to her victory.

The number of stoppages across the UK peaked at 4,583 in 1979, when more than 29 million
working days were lost. In 1984, the year of the miners' strike, there were 1,221, resulting in the
loss of more than 27 million working days. Stoppages then fell steadily throughout the rest of
Thatcher's premiership; in 1990 there were 630 and fewer than 2 million working days lost, and
they continued to fall thereafter. Thatcher’s time in office witnessed a sharp decline in trade
union density, with the percentage of workers belonging to a trade union falling from 57.3% in
1979 to 49.5% in 1985. In 1979 up until Thatcher's last year in office, trade union membership
also fell, from 13.5 million in 1979 to fewer than 10 million.

17
Privatisation
The policy of privatization 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 privatization, 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
privatized 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 privatizing 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.

18
Northern Ireland
In 1980 and 1981, Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation
Army (INLA) prisoners in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison carried out hunger strikes in an effort
to regain the status of political prisoners that had been removed in 1976 by the preceding Labour
government. Bobby Sands began the 1981 strike, saying that he would fast until death unless
prison inmates won concessions over their living conditions. Thatcher refused to countenance a
return to political status for the prisoners, declaring "Crime is crime is crime; it is not
political", but nevertheless the UK government privately contacted republican leaders in a bid to
bring the hunger strikes to an end. After the deaths of Sands and nine others, some rights were
restored to paramilitary prisoners, but not official recognition of their political status. Violence in
Northern Ireland escalated significantly during the hunger strikes; in 1982 Sinn
Féin politician Danny Morrison described Thatcher as "the biggest bastard we have ever known".

Thatcher narrowly escaped injury in an IRA assassination attempt at a Brighton hotel early in the
morning on 12 October 1984. Five people were killed, including the wife of Cabinet
Minister John Wakeham. Thatcher was staying at the hotel to attend the Conservative Party
Conference, which she insisted should open as scheduled the following day. She delivered her
speech as planned, a move that was widely supported across the political spectrum and enhanced
her popularity with the public.

On 6 November 1981 Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald had established the Anglo-
Irish Inter-Governmental Council, a forum for meetings between the two governments. On 15
November 1985, Thatcher and FitzGerald signed the Hillsborough Anglo-Irish Agreement, the
first time a British government had given the Republic of Ireland an advisory role in the
governance of Northern Ireland. In protest the Ulster Says No movement attracted 100,000 to a
rally in Belfast, Ian Gow resigned as Minister of State in the HM Treasury, and all fifteen
Unionist MPs resigned their parliamentary seats; only one was not returned in the subsequent by-
elections on 23 January 1986.

3.2. 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

19
Change and the British Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher - cite_note-gw-150 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.

3.3. Foreign affairs

Thatcher's first foreign policy crisis came with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. She
condemned the invasion, said it showed the bankruptcy of a détente policy, and helped convince
some British athletes to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics. She gave weak support to
American President Jimmy Carter who tried to punish the USSR with economic sanctions.
Britain's economic situation was precarious, and most of NATO was reluctant to cut trade ties.

Thatcher became closely aligned with the Cold War policies of United States President Ronald
Reagan, based on their shared distrust of Communism, although she strongly opposed Reagan's
October 1983 invasion of Grenada. Reagan had assured Thatcher that an invasion was not
contemplated, and thereafter Thatcher felt she could never fully trust Reagan again. During her
first year as Prime Minister she supported NATO's decision to deploy US
nuclear cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe and permitted the US to station more
than 160 cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common, starting on 14 November 1983 and
triggering mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She bought
the Trident nuclear missile submarine system from the US to replace Polaris, tripling the UK's
nuclear forces at an eventual cost of more than £12 billion (at 1996–1997 prices). Thatcher's
preference for defence ties with the US was demonstrated in the Westland affair of January 1986,
when she acted with colleagues to allow the struggling helicopter manufacturer Westland to
refuse a takeover offer from the Italian firm Agusta in favour of the management's preferred
option, a link with Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation. The UK Defense Secretary, Michael Heseltine,
who had supported the Agusta deal, resigned in protest.

On 2 April 1982 the ruling military junta in Argentina ordered the invasion of the British-
controlled Falkland Islands and South Georgia, triggering the Falklands War. The subsequent
crisis was "a defining moment of her premiership". At the suggestion of Harold

20
Macmillan and Robert Armstrong, she set up and chaired a small War Cabinet (formally called
ODSA, Overseas and Defense committee, South Atlantic) to take charge of the conduct of the
war, which by 5–6 April had authorized and dispatched a naval task force to retake the
islands. Argentina surrendered on 14 June and the operation was hailed a success,
notwithstanding the deaths of 255 British servicemen and 3 Falkland Islanders. Argentinean
deaths totalled 649; half of them after the nuclear-powered
submarine HMS Conqueror torpedoed and sank the cruiser ARA General Belgrano on 2 May.
Thatcher was criticised for the neglect of the Falklands' defence that led to the war, and
especially by Tam Dalyell in parliament for the decision to sink the General Belgrano, but
overall she was considered a highly capable and committed war leader. The "Falklands factor",
an economic recovery beginning early in 1982, and a bitterly divided opposition all contributed
to Thatcher's second election victory in 1983. Thatcher often referred after the war to the
"Falklands Spirit"; Hastings and Jenkins (1983) suggested that this reflected her preference for
the streamlined decision-making of her War Cabinet over the painstaking deal-making of peace-
time cabinet government.

In September 1982 she visited China to discuss with Deng Xiaoping the sovereignty of Hong
Kong after 1997. China was the first communist state Thatcher had visited and she was the first
British prime minister to visit China. Throughout their meeting, she sought the PRC's agreement
to a continued British presence in the territory. Deng stated that the PRC's sovereignty on Hong
Kong was non-negotiable, but he was willing to settle the sovereignty issue with Britain through
formal negotiations, and both governments promised to maintain Hong Kong's stability and
prosperity. After the two-year negotiations, Thatcher conceded to the PRC government and
signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration in Beijing in 1984, agreeing to hand over Hong Kong's
sovereignty in 1997.

Although saying that she was in favour of "peaceful negotiations" to end apartheid, Thatcher
stood against the sanctions imposed on South Africa by the Commonwealth and the EC. She
attempted to preserve trade with South Africa while persuading the government there to abandon
apartheid. This included "casting herself as President Botha's candid friend", and inviting him to
visit the UK in June 1984, in spite of the "inevitable demonstrations" against his government.
Thatcher dismissed the African National Congress (ANC) in October 1987 as "a typical terrorist
organization".

21
The Thatcher government supported the Khmer Rouge keeping their seat in the UN after they
were ousted from power in Cambodia by the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. Although denying it
at the time they also sent the SAS to train the non-Communist members of the CGDK to fight
against the Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea government.

Thatcher's antipathy towards European integration became more pronounced during her
premiership, particularly after her third election victory in 1987. During a 1988 speech in
Bruges she outlined her opposition to proposals from the European Community (EC), forerunner
of the European Union, for a federal structure and increased centralization of decision making.
Thatcher and her party had supported British membership of the EC in the 1975 national
referendum, but she believed that the role of the organization should be limited to ensuring free
trade and effective competition, and feared that the EC's approach was at odds with her views on
smaller government and deregulation; in 1988, she remarked, "We have not successfully rolled
back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a
European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels". Thatcher was firmly opposed
to the UK's membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a precursor to European monetary
union, believing that it would constrain the British economy, despite the urging of her Chancellor
of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson and Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, but she was persuaded
by John Major to join in October 1990, at what proved to be too high a rate.

In April 1986, Thatcher permitted US F-111s to use Royal Air Force bases for the bombing of
Libya in retaliation for the alleged Libyan bombing of a Berlin discothèque, citing the right of
self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. Polls suggested that fewer than one in three
British citizens approved of Thatcher's decision. She was in the US on a state visit when Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait in August 1990. During her talks with US
President George H. W. Bush, who had succeeded Reagan in 1989, she recommended
intervention, and put pressure on Bush to deploy troops in the Middle East to drive the Iraqi Arm
yout of Kuwait. Bush was apprehensive about the plan, prompting Thatcher to remark to him
during a telephone conversation that "This was no time to go wobbly!" Thatcher's government
provided military forces to the international coalition in the build-up to the Gulf War, but she had
resigned by the time hostilities began on 17 January 1991.

22
Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to respond warmly to reformist Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Following Reagan–Gorbachev summit meetings and reforms enacted
by Gorbachev in the USSR, she declared in November 1988 that "We're not in a Cold War now",
but rather in a "new relationship much wider than the Cold War ever was". She went on a state
visit to the Soviet Union in 1984 and met with Gorbachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, the Chairman of
the Council of Ministers. Thatcher was initially opposed to German reunification, telling
Gorbachev that it "would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because
such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could
endanger our security". She expressed concern that a united Germany would align itself more
closely with the Soviet Union and move away from NATO.

3.4. Challenges to leadership and resignation

Thatcher was challenged for the leadership of the Conservative Party by the little-known
backbench MP Sir Anthony Meyer in the 1989 leadership election. Of the 374 Conservative MPs
eligible to vote, 314 voted for Thatcher and 33 for Meyer. Her supporters in the party viewed the
result as a success, and rejected suggestions that there was discontent within the party.

During her premiership Thatcher had the second-lowest average approval rating, at 40%, of any
post-war Prime Minister. Polls consistently showed that she was less popular than her party. A
self-described conviction politician, Thatcher always insisted that she did not care about her poll
ratings, pointing instead to her unbeaten election record.

Opinion polls in September 1990 reported that Labour had established a 14% lead over the
Conservatives, and by November the Conservatives had been trailing Labour for
18 months. These ratings, together with Thatcher's combative personality and willingness to
override colleagues' opinions, contributed to discontent within the Conservative party.

On 1 November 1990, Geoffrey Howe the last remaining member of Thatcher's original 1979
cabinet, resigned from his position as Deputy Prime Minister over her refusal to agree to a
timetable for Britain to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. In his resignation speech
on 13 November, Howe commented on Thatcher's European stance: "It is rather like sending
your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find the moment that the first balls are

23
bowled that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain." His resignation
was fatal to Thatcher's premiership.

The next day, Michael Heseltine mounted a challenge for the leadership of the Conservative
Party. Opinion polls had indicated that he would give the Conservatives a national lead over
Labour. Although Thatcher won the first ballot, Heseltine attracted sufficient support to force a
second ballot. Under party rules, Thatcher not only needed to win a majority, but her margin
over Heseltine had to be equivalent to 15% of the 372 Conservative MPs in order to win the
leadership election outright; she came up four votes short. Thatcher initially stated that she
intended to "fight on and fight to win" the second ballot, but consultation with her Cabinet
persuaded her to withdraw. After seeing the Queen, calling other world leaders, and making one
final Commons speech, she left Downing Street in tears. She regarded her ousting as a betrayal.

Thatcher was replaced as Prime Minister and party leader by her Chancellor John Major, who
oversaw an upturn in Conservative support in the 17 months leading up to the 1992 general
election and led the Conservatives to their fourth successive victory on 9 April 1992. Thatcher
favoured Major over Heseltine in the leadership contest, but her support for him weakened in
later years.

24
 Later life (1990-2013)
Thatcher returned to the backbenches as MP for Finchley for two years after leaving the
premiership. She retired from the House at the 1992 election, aged 66, saying that leaving the
Commons would allow her more freedom to speak her mind.

4.1 Post-Commons
After leaving the House of Commons, Thatcher became the first former Prime Minister to set up
a foundation; the British wing was dissolved in 2005 because of financial difficulties. She wrote
two volumes of memoirs, The Downing Street Years (1993) and The Path to Power (1995). In
1991, she and her husband Denis moved to a house in Chester Square, a residential garden
square in central London's Belgravia district.

In 1992, Thatcher was hired by the tobacco company Philip Morris as a "geopolitical consultant"
for $250,000 per year and an annual contribution of $250,000 to her foundation. She also earned
$50,000 for each speech she delivered.

In August 1992, Thatcher called for NATO to stop the Serbian assault
on Goražde and Sarajevo to end ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian War. She compared the
situation in Bosnia to "the worst excesses of the Nazis", and warned that there could be a
"holocaust". She had been an advocate of Croatian and Slovenian independence. In a 1991
interview for Croatian Radiotelevision, Thatcher had commented on the Yugoslav Wars; she was
critical of Western governments for not recognizing the breakaway republics of Croatia and
Slovenia as independent states and supplying them with arms after the Serbian-led Yugoslav
Army attacked.

She made a series of speeches in the Lords criticising the Maastricht Treaty, describing it as "a
treaty too far" and stated "I could never have signed this treaty". She cited A. V. Dicey when
stating that as all three main parties were in favour of the treaty, the people should have their say
in a referendum.

Thatcher was honorary Chancellor of the College of William and Mary in Virginia (1993–2000)
and also of the University of Buckingham (1992–1999), the UK's first private university, which
she had opened in 1975.

25
After Tony Blair's election as Labour Party leader in 1994, Thatcher praised Blair in an interview
as "probably the most formidable Labour leader since Hugh Gaitskell. I see a lot of socialism
behind their front bench, but not in Mr Blair. I think he genuinely has moved".

In 1998, Thatcher called for the release of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when Spain
had him arrested and sought to try him for human rights violations. She cited the help he gave
Britain during the Falklands War. In 1999, she visited him while he was under house arrest near
London.\ Pinochet was released in March 2000 on medical grounds by the Home Secretary Jack
Straw, without facing trial.

In the 2001 general election, Thatcher supported the Conservative general election campaign, as
she had done in 1992 and 1997, and in the Conservative leadership election shortly after, she
supported Iain Duncan Smith over Kenneth Clarke.

In March 2002, Thatcher's book Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, dedicated to
Ronald Reagan, was released. In it, she claimed there would be no peace in the Middle East
until Saddam Hussein was toppled, that Israel must trade land for peace, and that the European
Union (EU) was "fundamentally unreformable", "a classic utopian project, a monument to the
vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure". She argued that Britain
should renegotiate its terms of membership or else leave the EU and join the North American
Free Trade Area.

Thatcher suffered several small strokes in 2002 and was advised by her doctors not to engage in
further public speaking. On 23 March, she announced that on the advice of her doctors she would
cancel all planned speaking engagements and accept no more.

4.2 Husband's death

Sir Denis Thatcher died of heart failure on 26 June 2003 and was cremated on 3 July. She had
paid tribute to him in The Downing Street Years, writing "Being Prime Minister is a lonely job.
In a sense, it ought to be: you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there I was never
alone. What a man. What a husband. What a friend."

26
4.3 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 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 conflated 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.

27
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 hospitalized 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.

4.4 Death
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 personalized 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.

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.

28
 Legacy
5.1. Political legacy
Thatcher defined her own political philosophy in a major and controversial break with One
Nation Conservatives like her predecessor Edward Heath, in her statement to Douglas Keay,
published in Woman's Own magazine in September 1987:

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to
understand "I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!" or "I have a problem, I
will go and get a grant to cope with it!" "I am homeless, the Government must house me!" and so
they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are
individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except
through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then
also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the
entitlements too much in mind without the obligations.

The number of adults owning shares rose from 7 per cent to 25 per cent during her tenure, and
more than a million families bought their council houses, giving an increase from 55 per cent to
67 per cent in owner-occupiers from 1979 to 1990. The houses were sold at a discount of 33–55
per cent, leading to large profits for some new owners. Personal wealth rose by 80 per cent in
real terms during the 1980s, mainly due to rising house prices and increased earnings. Shares in
the privatized utilities were sold below their market value to ensure quick and wide sales, rather
than maximise national income.

Thatcher's premiership was also marked by high unemployment and social unrest, and many
critics on the left of the political spectrum fault her economic policies for the unemployment
level; many of the areas affected by high unemployment as well as her monetarist economic
policies remain blighted by social problems such as drug abuse and family breakdown. Speaking
in Scotland in April 2009, before the 30th anniversary of her election as Prime Minister,
Thatcher insisted she had no regrets and was right to introduce the poll tax, and to withdraw
subsidies from "outdated industries, whose markets were in terminal decline", subsidies that
created "the culture of dependency, which had done such damage to Britain". Political
economist Susan Strange called the new financial growth model "casino capitalism", reflecting

29
her view that speculation and financial trading were becoming more important to the economy
than industry.

Thatcher has been criticised for being divisive and for promoting greed and selfishness. Many
recent biographers have been critical of aspects of the Thatcher years and Michael White, writing
in the New Statesman in February 2009, challenged the view that her reforms had brought a net
benefit. Some critics contend that, despite being Britain's first woman Prime Minister, Thatcher
did "little to advance the political cause of women", either within her party or the government,
and some British feminists regarded her as "an enemy". Her stance on immigration was
perceived by some as part of a rising racist public discourse, which Professor Martin Barker has
called "new racism".

Influenced at the outset by Keith Joseph, the term "Thatcherism" came to refer to her policies as
well as aspects of her ethical outlook and personal style, including moral
absolutism, nationalism, interest in the individual, and an uncompromising approach to achieving
political goals. The nickname "Iron Lady", originally given to her by the Soviets, became
associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style.

Thatcher's tenure of 11 years and 209 days as Prime Minister was the longest since Lord
Salisbur, and the longest continuous period in office since Lord Liverpool . She was voted the
fourth-greatest British Prime Minister of the 20th century in a poll of 139 academics organised
by MORI, and in 2002 was ranked number 16 in the BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. In
1999, Time named Thatcher one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century.

Thatcher's death prompted mixed reactions, including reflections of criticism as well as praise.
Groups celebrated her death in Brixton, Leeds, Bristol and Glasgow, and a crowd of 3,000
gathered in Trafalgar Square to celebrate her demise and protest against her legacy.

Shortly after Thatcher's death, Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, argued that her policies
had the "unintended consequence" of encouraging Scottish devolution. Lord Foulkes agreed
on Scotland Tonight that she had provided "the impetus" for devolution.

30
5.2. Honours
Thatcher became a Privy Councillor upon becoming Secretary of State for Education and
Science in 1970. She was appointed a Member of the Order of Merit within two weeks of
leaving office. Denis Thatcher was made a Baronet at the same time. She became a peer in the
House of Lords in 1992 with a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of
Lincolnshire. She was appointed a Lady Companion of the Order of the Garter, the UK's highest
order of chivalry, in 1995.

She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1983, which caused controversy among the
existing Fellows.

She was the first woman entitled to full membership rights as an honorary member of the Carlton
Club on becoming leader of the Conservative Party in 1975.

In the Falklands, Margaret Thatcher Day has been marked every 10 January since 1992,
commemorating her visit in 1983.Thatcher Drive in Stanley is named for her, as is Thatcher
Peninsula in South Georgia, where the task force troops first set foot on the Falklands.

Thatcher was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour awarded
by the US. She was a patron of The Heritage Foundation, which established the Margaret
Thatcher Center for Freedom in 2005. Speaking of Heritage president Ed Feulner, at the first
Clare Booth Luce lecture in September 1993, Thatcher said: "You didn't just advise President
Reagan on what he should do; you told him how he could do it. And as a practising politician I
can testify that that is the only advice worth having."

31
5.3. Cultural depictions

One of the earliest satires of Thatcher as Prime Minister involved Wells, Janet Brown and future
Spitting Image producer John Lloyd, who in 1979 were teamed up by producer Martin Lewis for
the satirical audio album The Iron Lady consisting of skits and songs satirizing Thatcher's rise to
power. The album was released in September 1979; four months after Thatcher became Premier.

Thatcher was the subject or the inspiration for 1980s protest songs. Billy Bragg and Paul
Weller helped to form the Red Wedge collective to support Labour in opposition to Thatcher.

Thatcher was lampooned by satirist John Wells in several media. Wells collaborated
with Richard Ingrams on the spoof "Dear Bill" letters which ran as a column in Private
Eye magazine, were published in book form, and later became a West End stage revue
named Anyone for Denis?, with Wells in the role of Denis Thatcher. The revue was followed by
a 1982 TV special, directed by Dick Clement, in which Thatcher was portrayed by Angela
Thorne. Spitting Image, a British TV show, satirised Thatcher as a bully who ridiculed her own
ministers. She was voiced by Steve Nallon.

Margaret Thatcher has been depicted in many television programmes, documentaries, films and
plays. She was played by Patricia Hodgein Ian Curteis's long unproduced The Falklands
Play (2002) and by Andrea Riseborough in the TV film The Long Walk to Finchley (2008). She
is the title character in two films, portrayed by Lindsay Duncan in Margaret (2009) and
by Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady (2011), in which she is depicted as having Alzheimer's
disease.

32
 Bibliography

Aldus, Richard (2012). Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship, W. W. Norton.

Beckett, Andy (2010), When the Lights Went Out;” Britain in the Seventies”, Faber & Faber

Burns, William E. (2009), “A Brief History of Great Britain” Facts on File”

Beckett, Clare (2006). Margaret Thatcher. Haus Publishing

Blundell, John (2008). Margaret Thatcher: A Portrait of the Iron Lady.,Algora.

Butler, David; Butler, Gareth (1994), British Political Facts 1900–1994 (7th ed.), Macmillan

Campbell, John (2000). Margaret Thatcher; Volume One: The Grocer's Daughter, Pimlico

Campbell, John (2003). Margaret Thatcher; Volume Two: The Iron Lady. Pimlico

Campbell, J. (2011). Margaret Thatcher Volume Two: The Iron Lady.,Random House.

Childs, David (2006). Britain since 1945: a political history (6th ed.). Taylor & Francis..

Chin, Rita C-K (2009). After the Nazi racial state: difference and democracy in Germany and
Europe.

Cochrane, Feargal (2001). Unionist Politics and the Politics of Unionism Since the Anglo-
Irish Agreement. Cork University Press.

English, Richard (2005). Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA. Oxford University Press..

Evans, Eric (2004). Thatcher and Thatcherism (The Making of the Contemporary
World)(2nd ed.). Routledge.

Erickson, Carolly (2005). Lilibet: An Intimate Portrait of Elizabeth II. Macmillan.

Feigenbaum, Harvey; Henig, Jeffrey; Hamnett, Chris (1998). Shrinking the State: The
Political Underpinnings of Privatization. Cambridge University Press.

33
Floud, Roderick; Johnson, Paul (2004). The Cambridge Economic History of Modern
Britain, Volume 3. Cambridge University Press. .

Foley, Michael (2002). John Major, Tony Blair and a Conflict of Leadership: Collision
Course.Manchester University Press.

Gamble, Andrew (2009). The Spectre at the Feast: Capitalist Crisis and the Politics of
Recession. Palgrave Macmillan.

Gilbert, Martin (2002). A History of the Twentieth Century. Harper Perennial.

Glyn, Andrew (1992). "The 'Productivity Miracle', Profits and Investment'". In Michie,
Jonathan.The Economic Legacy, 1979–1992. Academic Press. pp. 77–87.

Görtemaker, Manfred (2006). Britain and Germany in the Twentieth Century. Berg
Publishers.

Hastings, Max; Jenkins, Simon (1983). Battle for the Falklands. Norton.

Howe, Geoffrey (1994). Conflict of Loyalty. Macmillan.

Jackling, Roger (2005). "The Impact of the Falklands Conflict on Defence Policy". In
Badsey, Stephen; Grove, Mark; Havers, Rob. The Falklands Conflict Twenty Years On:
Lessons for the Future (Sandhurst Conference Series). Routledge.

James, Clive (1977). Visions Before Midnight.

Jones, Bill; Kavanagh, Dennis; Moran, Michael (2007). "Media organisations and the
political process". Politics UK (6 ed.). Longman.

Khabaz, D. V. (2007). Manufactured Schema: Thatcher, the Miners and the Culture Industry.
Matador.

Lacey, Robert (2003). Monarch: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth II. Simon & Schuster.

Lawson, Nigel (1992). The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical. Bantam.

McAleese, Dermott (2004). Economics For Business: Competition, Macro-stability &

Globalisation (3rd ed.). Financial Times Management.

34
Marr, Andrew (2007). A History of Modern Britain, Pan

Moloney, Ed (2002), A Secret History of the IRA. W. W. Norton & Company

Reitan, Earl Aaron (2003). The Thatcher Revolution: Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony
Blair, and the Transformation of Modern Britain, 1979–2001. Rowman & Littlefield

Richards, Howard (2004). Understanding the Global Economy, Peace Education Books

Seldon, Anthony; Collings, Daniel (2000), Britain under Thatcher, Longman

Senden, Linda (2004). Soft Law in European Community Law Hart Publishing

Seward, Ingrid (2001). The Queen and Di: The Untold Story, Arcade Publishing

Smith, Gordon (1989). Battles of the Falklands War. I. Allan.

Thatcher, Margaret (1993), The Downing Street Years, Harper Collins.

Thatcher, Margaret (1995), The Path to Power. Harper Collins.

Thornton, Richard C. (2006). The Reagan Revolution II: Rebuilding the Western Alliance.
Trafford Publishing.

Toye, Richard; Gottlieb, Julie V. (2005), Making Reputations: Power, Persuasion and the
Individual in Modern British Politics. I. B. Tauris

Veljanovski Cento (1990), "The Political Economy of Regulation", In Dunleavy, Patrick;

Gamble, Andrew; Peele, Gillian, Developments in British Politics 3, Macmillan.

Wapshott, Nicholas (2007). Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage.
Sentinel.

Wheeler, Tony (2004), The Falklands and South Georgia Island, Lonely Planet.

Williams Andy (1998), UK Government & Politics, Heinemann.

35
36