. What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neo-liberal inculcation begins. But at its crudest, the Thatcher ethos translated into the get-rich-quick, greed-is-good spirit of the 1980s, satirised by Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney creation. I'd unthinkingly imbibed enough doctrine to know that, troubled as I was, there was little point looking elsewhere for support. For some, the only consequence of that shift, still visible today, will be a changed brand name or higher bills. But what bound all opposition to Margaret Thatcher's programme was a suspicion that the grocer's daughter was intent on monetising human value, that she had no heart and, famously, cared little for the impulses that bind individuals into a society. 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. 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! History, Sample Essay. Is that what made her so formidable, her ability to ignore the suffering of others? She adopts an endearing and sentimental tone using ethos, repetition, and . It was thoroughly "wet". she Texts for listed statements are available on the site in almost 70 per cent of cases. "Fatcha" was an instant punchline back then: simply saying it was enough to get a laugh. As she cut local housing budgets, she sent housing benefit soaring in compensation. (They also reveal how she loved to surround herself with yes men who were always men.) Thatcher's Spitting Image puppet was different from the others; while other characters, such as Ronald Reagan and the pope, were exaggerated into fantasy versions of themselves, the rubber Maggie was just like the one who appeared on the news a stern, cold, matronly figure who had a slightly oedipal relationship with her cabinet. The stance was often in broadest terms, more moral than political. TRIBUTES were paid last night to Sir Bernard Ingham, the longstanding press secretary to Margaret Thatcher and a columnist in The Yorkshire Post until just a few weeks ago. see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising But it did, and the consequences seem impossible to reverse. Literature had nothing to do with politics, the Italian writers said. The south of England and the City of London were the future; the revenues from North Sea oil would pay for the unemployed in the old zones of manufacturing industry. delivered an outstanding defence of the Government in the Commons. Underestimating Ronald Reagan was an error committed by many of his critics and opponents; Reagan never minded a bit, thinking that being underestimated yielded him a significant advantage. To claim that any woman's success is a boon for feminism is like saying all publicity is good publicity. in a statement the following morning (22 November), hours before she Respected, viewed with awe, a conviction politician, but if liking came into it, that was an accident. The woman, however, changed. It is odd to reflect that in Thatcher's time, the British novel enjoyed a comparatively lively resurgence. 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. She made one I met her just once, as a reporter in the press pack that followed her tour around Greece and Yugoslavia in 1980. Thirdly, industrial policy was all but abandoned. This was a historic step, and resulted in further reinforcing the US-UK alliance. 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. 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. Plus there's the fact that comedy is now a big business, and there's less money in sharp satire than gentle observation. You could never call Margaret Mother by mistake. The Collected Speeches of Margaret Thatcher by. Second, it's now easier to see the scale of the setback she inflicted on Britain's idea of its own future. Gillian Anderson's portrayal of the Iron Lady in "The Crown" is pretty spot-on. Between 1945-90 every statement made by Margaret Thatcher is listed, as far as can be known. Elton has previously said that he did two minutes about Thatcher and two hours about his knob, and all anyone ever remembered was the Thatcher material. The first is what changed in the temper of Britain and the British. 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. in his defence during the IranContra affair later that year.. Elected for a third term in June 1987, she told Not even the Falklands war would push it off the tracks or damage it in any way. . Instead state assets and a huge income stream from North sea oil were used to fund a populist programme of tax cuts, privatisation and council housesales. And for all the tributes being paid by ministers this week, the issues at the topof the government's agenda are all to do with clearing up the mess she created. Margaret Thatcher has 43 books on Goodreads with 14026 ratings. She hated what she called "that French phrase laissez faire". Thatcher was never insensitive to the impact of her policies on the poor. The speakers form a rollcall of the globe's most interesting thinkers: Amartya Sen, the Nobel-winning Indian economist; Daniel Kahneman, the Israeli psychologist and another Nobel winner; and Hernando de Soto, the Peruvian economist, who focused on land rights for the poor. There was always an element of the erotic in the national obsession with her. Peggy Noonan. Feminists disowned her by insisting that though she was a woman, she was not a sister. 'It's a wonder nobody has taken a gun to that woman.' John Major, the "detoxification" successor, was fated to implement many of her unattempted reforms. performance at a Press Conference afterwards. Thatcher has said that negotiation, and not strong economic sanctions, is the way to persuade South Africa's white-minority government to dismantle apartheid. Your local electricity "board" could be a very unfriendly place. In the 2011 biographical drama film "The Iron Lady," Meryl Streep plays the role of Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. 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. 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. Here is an excerpt from People [PMT]: "In politics," Margaret Thatcher once acidly observed, "if you want anything said, ask a man. April 17, 2013, 6:40 PM. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one's enemies. . The real comic nemeses of Thatcher were the puppets of Spitting Image. This zest for ideas was boosted by the 2010 intake, which comprises just under half the parliamentary party. talked of "Victorian Values". Scottish and by extension UK politics has been skewed ever since. Why don't you get a proper job, she once sneered at me. In October 1984 she survived an IRA bomb during the Conservative Conference This was heightened by the suspicion that this power was not consciously deployed. There are many reasons for this. In the pantheon of this comedian's attacks on Thatcher, it was a retort that probably won't be treasured longer than the best lines from The Young Ones. Having no social or political connection with the class most affected, she gave a very good impression of not caring. The fact that the Thatcher question even gets asked confirms vividly just what an upas tree she remains for Scottish Toryism. Selling public housing to the tenants who occupied it was another, on top of the denationalisation of industries and utilities once thought to be ineluctably and for ever in the hands of the state. . "She's jolly nice," one of them said, "much better to work for than [James] Callaghan." The Crown's Version of Margaret Thatcher's 1990 Downfall Takes a Lot of Liberties with . Each now seems banal. They are a more energetic and impressive group than their predecessors, often with experience outside politics that makes them impatient and independent-minded. Watch a million words pour out today placing her anywhere from Boudicca to the wicked witch of the west. "Thatcher as mother" seemed, to my tiddly mind, anathema. Margaret Thatcher was not known for her sense of humour. Thatcher's passing is marked by street parties in Brixton, Belfast, Bristol, Derry, Glasgow and Liverpool, and seething bitterness among the mining families and communities she was allowed (including by scab union and Labour leaders) to destroy. LONDON Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first female prime minister and uncompromisingly conservative "Iron Lady" of the 1980s, has died. She also put forward the idea of "a vast . They looked after their old and young as well as those who were ill or infirm. in his defence during the IranContra affair, told The last time the UK ran a trade surplus was the year of the Falklands war. By John Cassidy. In 2009, Boris Johnson lamented that Thatcher had become "a boo-word in British politics, a shorthand for selfishness and me-first-ism, and devil-take-the-hindmost and grinding the faces of the poor.". opportunities. It was not interested in a resolution. "She had been offered the chance to get on and effectively she then refused to offer it to otherpeople. A massive programme of social housing would be a good place to start, stimulating the economy. So the woman I met in Curzon Street, dimpling elegantly, can now be seen in history with an unexpected achievement to her credit. A special licence was granted exclusively to the Radio Times. Secondly, the balance of power in industrial relations was shifted decisively in favour of employers. Charles Powell was a senior foreign policy . Whatever else may be true of her, Thatcher engaged in incredibly consequential acts that affected millions of people around the world. From 1979 to 1990, Margaret Thatcher held the office of Prime . 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. 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. Adam Smith's invisible hand ended up raising two fingers to her moral project. By the close of her premiership, he was probably the most trusted member of her political team at Downing Street, and he left Number Ten with her. Demanding that no criticisms be voiced to counter that hagiography is to enable false history and a propagandistic whitewashing of bad acts, distortions that become quickly ossified and then endure by virtue of no opposition and the powerful emotions created by death. No gloves, or hats, except for royalty or at funerals, but feet on the table, whisky glass at hand, into the small hours of solitude, for want of male cronies in the masculine world she dominated for all her 11yearsin power. Perhaps my early apathy and indifference are a result of what Thatcher deliberately engendered, the idea that "there is no such thing as society", that we are alone on our journey through life, solitary atoms of consciousness. 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. first television interview the following day, euphoric All Rights Reserved. She was the first prime minister to be more accountable to the international market than to the British economy. Britain's relative decline came to an end, although that was more due to slowdowns in countries such as France and Germany than an acceleration in UK productivity growth. The young men were those whose childhood was blighted by the effects of relative poverty and inequality on family life. But we reckoned we got Thatcher only too well and didn't like what we saw, far less what we heard. Without the Falklands/Malvinas war, which exploited nationalism (as Argentinian dictator Galtieri did) and which Labour would not oppose, she would never have been re-elected in 1983. Her heirs have not learned that lesson, with no sign of their promised "rebalancing". Materialistic individualism was blessed as a virtue, the driver of national success. A big decline in traditional industries took place across Europe and the US in the 80s and 90s. June 30, 1992 - Swearing . the British Embassy in Paris and stated And nor could Thatcher, much to her relief as she allegedly abhorred the word, as doubtless Chanel did, too. The gender remained, its artefacts deployed with calculation. We still live in the land Margaret built. The truth is less significant than the alteration to it. wrong with politics? As I spread my wings in politics, I discovered many Thatcher voters down south who were the same kind of people who loathed her in Scotland. She was immensely brisk. I have few recollections of Thatcher after the slowly chauffeured, weepy Downing Street cortege. Just look around. 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. Union in a speech Sayle recorded the song Get Me Mrs Thatcher, but says that in general he felt Thatcher jokes were a bit too easy, although he still shudders at the memory of a "wicked, incompetent mindset that was the spirit of the 80s". The core of this site is a massive database of MT's public statements of all kinds across the years (speeches, interviews, press conferences, etc), searchable by date, subject, importance, and keyword. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979. North sea oil was squandered when it should have seeded new industries. 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. She became leader of the Conservatives the year I was born and prime minister when I was four. I am, it's safe to say, one of Thatcher's children. It was illegal to put an extension lead on your phone. But within a few years, a third of children were poor, a sign of the yawning inequality from which the country never recovered. Behind "omnishambles" headlines, her revolution is being pushed forward on new fronts in schools, health, planning, policing, probation and welfare. 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. By raising the pay of their own staff to a minimum of the living wage, they have set an example which a growing number of large private-sector employers have followed. Norman and Margaret hold, and will always hold, a unique place in our esteem and affection. She made her remarks A strong, so strong, leader. Lady Thatcher, you honor us by coming to the site of Sir Winston's pivotal speech, an event Westminster College has immortalized with the beautiful Winston Churchill Memorial. Her onslaught on the trade unions left those movements pale imitations of their former selves, too weak to resist the drive to the "flexible labour market" which has seen Britain become the home of what one senior Labour figure calls "crappy jobs", with low pay and no protection. From the valleys of Wales to the far reaches of Scotland, miners were, by and large, socialists by nature but this was tempered by strong Christian beliefs. defended Ronald One Sunday recently while staying in London, I took a stroll in the gardens of Temple, the insular clod of quads and offices between the Strand and the Embankment. History will judge her, but not a country in Europe was untouched by Thatcher's example. In front of his journalist colleagues he was told to stand right in front of her so that she could hit him lightly with her order papers. Several strong women on the continent have risen to the top, but thisBritish woman, in Britain of all places, became a phenomenon, first, throughher gender. November 15, 2020 9:00 AM EST. Symbolically, the key moment was the defeat of the miners after the year-long pit strike in March 1985. Published: Sunday 21st February 2021. This was most evident in the shooting dead of three unarmed IRA activists in Gibraltar in March 1988. Government will respond to clear leadership if it knows what a leader wants. Heath took us into Europe, and a referendum in spring 1975 confirmed national approval for the move. Reagan, who had recently left office as governor of California, was in London to deliver a speech to the Pilgrim Society. (No wonder it sold 7m copies a week). Nissan's arrival in the north-east showed that Britain was no longer the west's industrial pariah. bowling at the Lord Mayor's Banquet (12 November) and gave of the 1600 libraries around the world which hold the CD-ROM. 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. Sunstein worked for a Democratic president, but did not meet the Labour leader or key advisers. Mikhail Gorbachev, for one, learned the hard way. The impact that Hayek's writing had on Thatcher, her advisors, and her policies is undeniable. Yet I wrote columns of pretty unremitting hostility to most of what she did. It is my view that Thatcher authorised the killings at Gibraltar. There was, for example, the time in the late 1970s when, as Opposition Leader, she almost succeeded in censoring the one half-decent joke in a key campaign speech. She became deaf to all warning. 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. Collins (Oxford University Press, 1998-2000). When the late Christopher Hitchens was a political reporter for the New Statesman, he corrected the prime minister on a point of fact, and she was quick to correct Hitchens in turn. The lady was too shrewd to try that, and barely succeeded in reducing the share of the national income taken by the public sector. Or perhaps it was just because I was a little kid and more interested in them Weetabix skinheads, Roland Rat and Knight Rider. But she exploited her luck. first television interview the following day. The jobs that went during the 80s tended to be good, skilled jobs, delivering decent incomes and some security. The current crop of leaders are so dull, so ill-defined, so lacking in personality that it's almost impossible for comedians to rage against them. In fact, several countries have adopted these ideas with startlingly successful results; just changing the wording on some forms raised an extra 200m income tax in Britain, while personalised text messages drastically reduced the use of bailiffs to recover court fines. This is not the Highland way. A distinction is often made between two traditions of British Conservative thought: the paternalist "one nation/middle way" tradition, and the more libertarian one that is associated with Margaret Thatcher.