Where copyright is the problem, the full text can be found on the Complete But it was the killing of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane in February 1989 that reveals the depth of the Thatcher government's state collusion policy. Look inside your own house, at the water coming out of the tap: once a public utility but, after Thatcher, the property of private companies, many foreign-owned. She was lucky, in her enemies and friends notably Reagan in the Falklands conflict. at The Hague in May 1992. The machinery of modern political management polls, consulting, focus groups is deployed mainly to discover what will make aparty and politician better liked, or worse, disliked. She was unashamed about this, loathing localism and rejecting calls to diminish the "strong state". That did the trick.). outlook at the time. This was her last important public statement. First was the sheer depth of hostility towards the Tories in general. Thatcher became a supremely self-confident leader. We watched as her high heels went click-click-click across the stones of the Acropolis and the cement floors of Tito's steel mills. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979. To have achieved all this alone would have made Margaret Thatcher a towering, transformational figure, one who altered the physical fabric of the nation. But awoman who, at the time, thought that chancellor was the top mark at which she might aim. Her policy decisions entrenched sectarian divisions, handed draconian military powers over to the securocrats, and subverted basic human rights. 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. Not all writers were against her. Original, independent voices such as BBC director general Alasdair Milne were brutally silenced. 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. 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%. Many of today's more controversial benefits, such as disability, date back to the 80s. As coal, steel and shipbuilding fell under her wrecking ball, whole communities were destroyed. While Labour was now "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich", ambitious feminism wanted to be let in to the boardroom and every corridor of power that and little else is what they mean by changing the world. I think by far her greatest virtue, in retrospect, is how little she cared if people liked her. You may not be a fan of Edwina Currie but, really, was she any worse than John Gummer? Typifying these highly dubious claims about Thatcher was this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama: "The world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend." All Rights Reserved. He had enough Del Boy about him to admire her coiffured virility but in a way Thatcher was so omnipotent; so omnipresent, so omni-everything that all opinion was redundant. Contrary to an increasingly common belief, "a woman who is successful" is not synonymous with "a feminist". Rishi Sunak 20 July 2022 9:30pm. The relative wealth of the UK 1% had been falling steadily for 50 years when Thatcher took power in 1979; since then it has climbed steeply and is almost back to 1918 levels. Larkin's evoked the treacherous mind (of an adversary, of a cabinet colleague) helplessly exposed to her steely regard. The welfare state set out to ensure that no one, in the UK at least, would starve or freeze to death, or suffer or die for lack of medical or other care. Farewelling Baroness Margaret Thatcher in a proper fashion is a difficult task: she left such a deep imprint upon the world that assessing its importance demands volumes analyzing her beliefs and paying proper tribute. The real comic nemeses of Thatcher were the puppets of Spitting Image. She gave it her best shot. She worked to enhance its corporate power. To Britons of my generation, she . speech in the House of Commons on 5 February 1960 and gave her Above all has been the hollowing out of the labour market. The Crown's Version of Margaret Thatcher's 1990 Downfall Takes a Lot of Liberties with . ROBIN HARRIS worked for the Conservative Party from 1978, and increasingly closely with Margaret Thatcher herself from 1985, writing her speeches and advising on policy. Watch a million words pour out today placing her anywhere from Boudicca to the wicked witch of the west. Privatisation did not feature in the Conservative election campaign, while the tougher approach to trade union reform had only really become evident since the winter of discontent, and even then was a gradual process. This reverie only occurred when the car was out of view. There are many reasons for this. Plus there's the fact that comedy is now a big business, and there's less money in sharp satire than gentle observation. The pomp and circumstance that will crown her funeral was proffered by Brown, to some shudders from his own side. This does lead to divisions. Hire writer now Order. 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. speech to the House of Lords in June 1993. Thatcher was suspicious of democracy. Look at the trains on the track, the phone in your house, the trio of 1980s teenagers who lead the three main parties. Reagan, who had recently left office as governor of California, was in London to deliver a speech to the Pilgrim Society. One turns with gratitude to Alan Clark's diaries for a fine description of being summoned to No 10 and being subjected to just such an examination. At its heart must be an active programme to create good jobs and raise living standards. Behind "omnishambles" headlines, her revolution is being pushed forward on new fronts in schools, health, planning, policing, probation and welfare. 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. In a eulogy by the former prime minister of Great Britain, Margret Thatcher honors the legacy of Ronald Reagan, the late president. series of famous statements that marked the end of her premiership, her maiden I'd unthinkingly imbibed enough doctrine to know that, troubled as I was, there was little point looking elsewhere for support. So instead: "I put it to her that we would be saving money." Her defenders always insisted that sentence had been misunderstood, but it stuck because it seemed to capture something essential about the Thatcherite creed: its embrace of individualism and apparent disdain for the collective. MT won election as Conservative leader on 11 February 1975 and gave a euphoric Your local electricity "board" could be a very unfriendly place. And for the people of Ireland, and especially the north, the Thatcher years were among some of the worst of the conflict. verbatim and in context. The "crime" he was accused of was to reclaim the oil revenue from local and foreign thieves, and use it to tackle poverty. That's because, 23 years after she was ejected from Downing Street by her own party in a move whose psychic wounds linger on, the country we live in remains Thatcher's Britain. The jobs that went during the 80s tended to be good, skilled jobs, delivering decent incomes and some security. We were wary of this. The Independent has the story. It was all very well for me to write books. In 1990 Thatcher authorised the then British secretary of state Peter Brooke to reopen back-channel negotiations with republicans. What will not be forgotten? recommended by Simon Heffer. . Faced down trade union leaders after her early years apprentice years, when Jim Callaghan's Britain was falling apart in which the commonest fear was that the little lady would not be able to deal with them across the table. If you 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. Feminists disowned her by insisting that though she was a woman, she was not a sister. 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. But we have one beacon to guide us that Ronald Reagan never had. And nor could Thatcher, much to her relief as she allegedly abhorred the word, as doubtless Chanel did, too. All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people's pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. The organised working class, almost alone, had put Britain on the skids. She denounced Nelson Mandela and his ANC as "terrorists", something even David Cameron ultimately admitted was wrong. Adam Smith's invisible hand ended up raising two fingers to her moral project. LONDON Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first female prime minister and uncompromisingly conservative "Iron Lady" of the 1980s, has died. And the single mums. So we agreed to reactivate the back channel. We were not unique in such a response but she failed to appreciate that Scots are balanced, canny folk insofar as we have a well-developed chip on each shoulder. It was sad that she had to learn it in war, a grim example to her British and US successors. The truth lies somewhere between these extremes. Between 1945-90 every statement made by Margaret Thatcher is listed, Rishi Sunak: 'Our country needs the . We liked disliking her. . She mesmerised us. Her voice, a bellicose yawn, somehow both boring and boring I could ignore the content but the intent drilled its way in. Thatcher's reputation never recovered from the ruthless budgets of 1980 and 1981, or her insensitivity to colleagues. More than once the view was advanced that it was a pity the IRA had not succeeded in their ultimate objective when they bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Large parts of society never recovered, while Germany and other countries managed the transition without such brutality. as far as can be known. Heath took us into Europe, and a referendum in spring 1975 confirmed national approval for the move. Whether pushing each other off the road, barging past social rivals, beating up rival soccer fans, or idolising wealth as the only measure of virtue, Brits became more unpleasant to be with. The most important thing Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did for British politics was to understand the significance of Thatcherism and to decide not to reverse it, indeed to carry it forward. The Iron Lady had a green thumband a surprisingly green philosophy. Reagan's decision to bomb Libya, spoke Margaret Thatcher had planned to attack Labour's unwillingness to condemn picket-line violence in her 1984 conference speech but changed her mind when an IRA bomb hit The Grand Hotel in Brighton. As a result, Labour authorities in eight or so British cities have set up fairness commissions to reduce income differences locally. press to rejoice at the capture of South Georgia on 25 April 1982, announced that White Many of the effects of inequality have long lag periods. of her best Parliamentary speeches in a debate on the strikes. she warned that she was not But she personified the change from meaning to meaninglessness in so many settlements and lives, and for this reason she is hard to forgive. Margaret Thatcher was a hugely divisive figure in British politics. be a nation in retreat". The first is what changed in the temper of Britain and the British. In 1979 she inherited a nation that was the "sick man of Europe", an object of constant transatlantic ridicule. was an Oxford student home for the university holidays. They had a point, but they had no idea how fascinating she was so powerful, successful, popular, omniscient, irritating and, in our view, wrong. But we reckoned we got Thatcher only too well and didn't like what we saw, far less what we heard. Hire a Writer. Texts for listed statements are available on the site in almost 70 per cent of cases. A special licence was granted exclusively to the Radio Times. an interviewer "there is no such thing as society" and is Reagan, for one, recognized the importance of Margaret Thatcher's presence as British prime minister, but would caution any discussionpartnerthat Pope John Paul played an equally important role. How could anyone who was so resolutely Margaret Thatcher be anything else? I am reminded of this every time the debate comes up about whether more female bylines would reduce sexism in the media. And on the 11th June, we even won some nine seats we failed to gain in 1983. Fourthly, policy was aimed at those who, according to the prime minister, wanted to get on in life. 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. That chanted demand of the left has been fully and finally met. Sent Bobby Sands to an Irish hero's grave without a blink. Demonising unions and stripping the great mass of private-sector workers of a voice and power in the workplace is still the root of the great living standards crisis that saw the share of wealth going to wages slide long before Lehman Brothers failed. Critical Commentary: Margaret Thatcher outlined the British policy in relation to various world issues. Ronald Reagan, the former 40th president of the United States died on June 5th of 2004. Those gushing depictions can be quite consequential, as it was for the week-long tidal wave of unbroken reverence that was heaped on Ronald Reagan upon his death, an episode that to this day shapes how Americans view him and the political ideas he symbolized. To the victors we saycongratulations. And then, perversely, would come the throwaway, sign-off remark to the effect of: "At least you know where you stand with Maggie she hates us and we hate her.". No children excluded from school activities because mothers couldn't pay. She abolished city-wide local government, capped spending and expected the poll tax to further undermine alternative voices. delivered an outstanding defence of the Government in the Commons. Prime Minister Thatcher delivered the fourth speech to Congress by a British prime minister. speech in July 1945, delivered in a town close to Grantham while she And we won back three we lost at by-elections. A splendid synergy was created, deliberately and with just that in mind on both sides of the Atlantic. to his resignation letter on 1 November, stated It was under her leadership that in 1982 that the Force Research Unit (FRU) was established within the British Army Intelligence Corps. But as weand others (including Alan Krueger, chair of Obama's council of economic advisers) have shown, wider income differences reduce social mobility and make it harder for people with poorer backgrounds to do so. But, as the prince in Lampedusa's The Leopard says: "For things to remain the same, everything must change.". The papers date from Margaret Thatcher's childhood to the end of her life, and include tens of thousands of photographs, as well as a vast collection of press cuttings, and many audio and video tapes of public and private events. Back when we called her Maggie, when it seemed she would have her wish and "go on and on" in ruling the country, her opponents would lament some new step towards social ruin with the withering, two-word verdict: "Thatcher's Britain.". 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. We have paid for that transformation with a world that is harder-edged, more competitive, and certainly more intently aware of the lure of cash. Scotland was her mission impossible. How dare her apologists and beneficiaries of her legacy refer to trade unions like the NUM as "corrupt" in the face of their bonuses and tax cuts! The US academic Cass Sunstein was in Britain at the end of last month. Margaret Thatcher's most popular book is The Downing Street Years. Many hated her. The fact that the Thatcher question even gets asked confirms vividly just what an upas tree she remains for Scottish Toryism. "Being powerful is like being a lady. I didn't know what to think of this fearsome woman. for turning. Get over her! Perhaps she had just come inside. It is not true that Thatcher didn't care about the media. Everything was justified as long as it made money andthis, too, isstill with us. If you want anything done, ask a woman.". When Margaret Thatcher won the general election in 1979, she became Prime Minister of a land in chaos. 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. The London mayor regretted that usage, but he surely understood its origins. But this didn't come without a price. It is full of insights into a neglected aspect of how Thatcher came to dominate British politics." (Andrew Gamble, University of Sheffield, UK) "A fascinating insight into the world of speech writing. The 1978 meeting was their last in person until Mrs Thatcher became Reagan's first state visitor, 26-28 February 1981. Margaret Thatcher Essay: Health Category. Though she recognised the dangers of global warming, Thatcher's industrial and economic policies prioritised economic growth. But former speechwriter Trevor Reeves can no longer . Without it, she would have been nothing. And he would credit the contribution of Helmut Kohl, who rose to power in Germany in part because of the influence of Thatcher and Reagan. Collins (Oxford University Press, 1998-2000). I met her just once, as a reporter in the press pack that followed her tour around Greece and Yugoslavia in 1980. Government will respond to clear leadership if it knows what a leader wants. A Soviet . That one should not speak ill of the dead is arguably appropriate when a private person dies, but it is wildly inappropriate for the death of a controversial public figure, particularly one who wielded significant influence and political power. But for others, the change in landscape is all too real. Reagan was especially interested in Mrs Thatcher's domestic policy initiatives, and it was quickly established that the foreign policy views ran along parallel lines. That speech was a rare instance of a politician saying something tangible. It's true that whenever there's a major news story, millions of people immediately begin strip-mining it for puns and bon mots, making it harder for professional comics to develop focused, funny material that nobody's heard before. The romantic image of the lady in the tank spurs them on. Whatever else may be true of her, Thatcher engaged in incredibly consequential acts that affected millions of people around the world. 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". of the 1600 libraries around the world which hold the CD-ROM. This book shows how. In a world where most media talking heads come from the top few percent of income earners, unions are not only important in wage bargaining, they also provide some of the few well-informed voices whose job it is to speak on behalf of the less well-paid. As working families in poverty now account for more than half of those below the poverty line, a government committed to "making work pay" should surely encourage this trend and raise the minimum wage. "Margaret Thatcher was not a natural communicator. The woman dubbed as the Iron Lady during her premiership made her last tearful speech as the leader of the country from the doorstep of . The proportion of children living in relative poverty more than doubled during the 80s, and the damage has never been undone. Prime Minister Thatcher inherited a settled state of British Europeanness, in which Brussels and the [European] Community began to influence, and often determine, the British way of doing things. 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. April 25, 2020. There is a paradox. It was a visit warmly welcomed by President Reagan, with a resplendent state nner on the first evening. Under Heath and Jim Callaghan the question was widely asked: had democracies become "ungovernable"? Later, when the BBC and ITV scheduled two programmes about Gibraltar, Thatcher tried to stop them. Every quality had its obverse, but she had a myth-making charisma to capture the world's imagination. If you have a . The most widely used measure of income differences shows inequality increasing by more than a third during her period in office. On her return to London, she sent me a warm and complimentary letter, a prize in my personal archives. At her first conference speech, she chastised the Labour Party on economic . She was always the Spitting Image bully. They married the personality and belief to action. Either way, I'm an adult now and none of those things are on telly any more so there's no excuse for apathy. Rather, she was a classic example of a certain kind of conservative woman who believed that all women should pull themselves up just as she had done, conveniently overlooking that not all women are blessed with the privileges that had been available to her, such as a wealthy and supportive husband and domestic help. A decade later they were wiped out in terms of Scotland-based Westminster constituency representation. Farewell, indeed, Baroness Thatcher. Yet her long-term effect seems to have been to destroy it. 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. This has been a terrible labour, she said. in his defence during the IranContra affair, told Emery Evans . Mrs Thatcher told the assembly: "It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.". Just look around. I always felt a bit sorry for her biological children Mark and Carol, wondering from whom they would get their cuddles. Author: Margaret Thatcher Year: 1979 Location: London, the UK Occasion: Address to the Parliament. That was before Thatcher modishly renamed the service British Telecom and sold it off. delivered an outstanding defence of the Government in the Commons. The Bruges speech was given by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to the College of Europe at the Belfry of Bruges, Belgium, on 20 September 1988.Thatcher was opposed to any moves to transition the European Economic Community (EEC) into a federal Europe that would take powers away from its members. That, plus (inevitable) de-industrialisation, coupled to her perceived overbearing and patronising manner. Those strikes were confusing to me as a child. A friend of South African apartheid and mass murderers from Kissinger and Pinochet to the Khmer Rouge after they had killed two million Cambodians she was a zealous saleswoman for the arms industry. 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. The gender remained, its artefacts deployed with calculation. Statistics now confirm what many people have always recognised: that inequality is divisive and socially corrosive. As she cut local housing budgets, she sent housing benefit soaring in compensation. When I started knocking on Highland doors in May 1983, two things struck me more than any other. Many are children of the Thatcher age. Not until well out of office, angry and lacking her old judgment, did she lead the rabidly Eurosceptic renegades. She became deaf to all warning. 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. Two especially forceful and committed leaders on the world stage at the same time: this was critical and key to ending the cold war, permitting the reunification of Germany, the consolidation of the EU and drawing our two nations together in a historic cooperation. 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. Flags were flying over Port Stanley on 14 June. The seismic shift from industry to financial-based capitalism that Thatcherism ushered in rattled the establishment. Alexei Sayle blames Twitter and the "multiplicity of voices" in the modern world. As far as her supporters are concerned, this radical transformation worked. ", 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. her intention to allow her name to go forward to the second ballot (20 Any attempts at revisionism do no favours to her, women or feminism. Being a woman is undoubtedly one of the features, possibly the most potent, that makes her ascent to power memorable, 25 years on, in a way that applied to no man. No elderly person would be deprived of the dignity of spectacles, dentures or a hearing aid because they couldn't afford them. Nobody, at least that I know of, objected to that observation on the ground that it was disrespectful to the ability of the Chavez family to mourn in peace. If the Falklands war was the making of Thatcher, then the poll tax was her achilles heel not least in Scotland. So what caused this great divide, with one side a fountain of fresh ideas and the other struggling for new inspiration? Maybe it was the sound of the estuary pronunciation robbing her of her aspirational airs, a prototype of the Bouquet/Bucket joke. 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. It'd be disingenuous to omit that there were a fair number of ding-dong-style celebratory messages amidst the pensive reflections on the end of an era. The Cameron generation wrongly see in the 1980s a revolution to emulate, starting with an economic crisis just like hers, as a chance to reshape everything. Much of any leader's record is unremarkable dross, and Thatcher was no exception. One thinks now of the closing words of her splendid 2004 eulogy of Ronald Reagan, and how those words so perfectly speak a tribute to her life and works: "We here still move in twilight. Thatcher's infamous failure to recognise the existence of society was a double failure. Out! From the invention of the term "sado-monetarism" through to the way her powerful ministers seemed to swoon before her, and the constant negative reiteration by her critics of her femininity, or lack of it, she exerted a glacial hold over the (male) nation's masochistic imagination. This speech was delivered soon after her taking office in 1979. Getting the record straight. November). Howe's "broken cricket bats" speech in the Commons was the killer blow. And that made it easy to mock her. There had been Churchill and his defiance; there had been Kipling and his If; there had been her father in his grocer's shop in Grantham. They are aggressively exploiting the emotions generated by the person's death to create hagiography. Britain ceased to be the sick man of Europe and entered the 1990s with its reputation enhanced. The tragic upshot has been the steep erosion of wages for the powerless bottom half, as income, wealth and property is sucked up to the top. She was "outraged" when the programmes went ahead. 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. She famously changed the law after Bobby Sands was elected in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. Having no social or political connection with the class most affected, she gave a very good impression of not caring. History will judge her, but not a country in Europe was untouched by Thatcher's example. Margaret Thatcher, the "Iron Lady" of British politics who died Monday at the age of 87, is being lionized as the woman who tilted British domestic and economic policy to the right. Absurd or not, it does indeed seem alien not least to those born in the 1980s, the generation we shall always call Thatcher's children. Not the loss of imperial markets, not lazy management, not the education system, not the decline of the industrial ethic: bitter men standing on platforms and asking for a show of hands to down tools were solely to blame. 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 Thatcher is often credited with showing that you could get to the top whatever your background. In the north of Ireland she had the army and the Diplock courts which reached their peak in the mid 1980s. She hurled herself into NHS reform, changes to schools and universities, utilities privatisation and, eventually, local government reform.
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