Was it cruelty? She failed to replace those jobs with well-paid equivalents. 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. This is a political style, an aesthetic even, that has disappeared from view. "They did their thing with no chance of making any money, so they stood up in crappy pubs and said, 'I hate Maggie'. She denounced Nelson Mandela and his ANC as "terrorists", something even David Cameron ultimately admitted was wrong. Few would argue that they have not endured. 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. Copyright Margaret Thatcher Foundation 2023. Margaret Thatcher might seem to some like an unlikely pioneer of the need for climate action but, in the late 1980s, she made a series of remarkable speeches and interventions on the subject and . Alamat kami. Great speeches: 'Orwellian nightmare' if Tories fail, claims Margaret Thatcher. This was a historic step, and resulted in further reinforcing the US-UK alliance. Asked to report on the "state of things" in our country, we could barely see past her. . Thatcher came to personify those ready to push anyone aside to gain power in a man's world and strengthen that world with their ambition. April 25, 2020. There was always an element of the erotic in the national obsession with her. Until her final poll-tax hubris, she knew when swerving was the better part of valour and despite that famous one-liner, she was sometimes for turning. She was an ardent pro-European, and her 1979 manifesto made no mention of radical union reform or privatisation. She was right, he was wrong. 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. Narrowly judged, the Thatcher economic revolution was a success. He'd been a bully, she said, whereas Mrs T was warm and understanding. Either way, I'm an adult now and none of those things are on telly any more so there's no excuse for apathy. 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. And when I and several other Sinn Fin leaders were elected to the Assembly in 1982 we were barred from entry to Britain. I think by far her greatest virtue, in retrospect, is how little she cared if people liked her. The time was 1973. Well, everything really, even her name. Government policy during the 1980s was little more than a war policy, aimed at defeating or isolating republicanism. Born: 21 June 1932 in Halifax. As coal, steel and shipbuilding fell under her wrecking ball, whole communities were destroyed. There turned out to be no such thing as society, at least in the sense we used to understand it. She also put forward the idea of "a vast . Whathappened at the hands of this woman's indifference to sentiment andgood sense in the early 1980s brought unnecessary calamity to the lives of several million people who losttheir jobs. for the disk. Today's Tories walk in Thatcher's footsteps, battling with their estranged cousins in Ukip over who is the rightful heir to her Eurosceptic legacy. MT won election as Conservative leader on 11 February 1975 and gave a euphoric "What's going on there, mate?" After being asked to deliver a eulogy for the late Ronald Reagan on June 11, 2004, Margaret Thatcher gave a speech about her dear friend, and highlighted his best qualities through her writing. The Thatcher government believed that the criminalisation of the republican prisoners would break the republican struggle. It was not yours, but belonged to the Post Office: in effect, the government. But without any question, sitting behind her desk, she was wearing ahat. The preface to the drew an important moral from the Falklands war: "We have ceased to She was unashamed about this, loathing localism and rejecting calls to diminish the "strong state". 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. 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. A meeting in Downing Street had left the Pakistan leader besotted with the older woman's wisdom and generosity: '"I tell you, she's such a kind person.". . Too timid, too in thrall, the 13-year Labour government rarely dared challenge the attitudes she planted in the national psyche. 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. Real Analysis Solved Problems, Synthesis Essay Freedom Of Speech, Photography Dissertation Titles, Reflective Essay Writers Service Usa, Sample Of The Resume 4423 . Certainly, in 1983, it did not occur to me to criticise Harold Macmillan or Alec Douglas-Home on the doorstep as a sure-fire vote turner. I can't articulate with the skill of either of "the Marks" Steel or Thomas why Thatcher and Thatcherism were so bad for Britain but I do recall that even to a child her demeanour and every discernible action seemed to be to the detriment of our national spirit and identity. For those miners and their families to be referred to as the "enemy within" by Thatcher was something they would never forgive and, if there is rejoicing at her death in those communities she set out to destroy, it can only be understood against this background. Therein, 30 years ago, lay the great Thatcher asset and the electorally lethal Thatcher impact in Scotland. Somesay she revolutionised British politics certainly never again could people say nobody would vote for a woman but it served a reactionary end. Thank you, too, Margaret. Gaze at the telephone. If I become PM, I will deliver the radical set of reforms need to unleash growth. Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. Though the Thatcher years could also be called the Saatchi years, reaching a new level of presentational sophistication in the annals of British politics, they weren't about getting the leader liked. If you behave like there's no such thing as society, in the end there isn't. Steely, certainly. Margaret Thatcher's most popular book is The Downing Street Years. It always struck me as peculiar, too, when the Spice Girls briefly championed Thatcher as an early example of girl power. Action. Scottish and by extension UK politics has been skewed ever since. We had had a strange relationship. But really, such statements were anything but, first because sweeping statements about genders are the opposite of gender equality and second because they revealed her real attitude towards women, which lay behind her notable lack of female-friendly policies, her utter lack of interest in childcare provision or positive action. Yet for all these fissures, even Maoist modernisers and the most reactionary social conservatives share a similar stance over the role of the state. When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms. 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. Out!" Its impact on the streets of the north is evident in the statistics of death. They built and provided their own welfare facilities and, well before today's welfare state was built, miners created their own welfare systems to alleviate hardship. press to rejoice at the capture of South Georgia on 25 April 1982 and Literature had nothing to do with politics, the Italian writers said. Everyone knows where they were when they heard. Her Irish policy failed miserably. 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. Thatcher's reputation never recovered from the ruthless budgets of 1980 and 1981, or her insensitivity to colleagues. She made one They're happy to share big windfall bonuses with their cronies, they'll stick up for deposed dictator chums when they're down on their luck, they'll find opportunities in business for people they care about. speech in the House of Commons, her She famously changed the law after Bobby Sands was elected in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. Is that what made her so formidable, her ability to ignore the suffering of others? Out! Thatcher became a supremely self-confident leader. The Crown Season 4 brings with it a whole lot of change for Queen Elizabeth II's family and, more importantly, the United Kingdom. "Fatcha" was an instant punchline back then: simply saying it was enough to get a laugh. The problem for Labour is that this issue so fundamental, since it underscores so much policy is unresolved in their ranks. History will judge her, but not a country in Europe was untouched by Thatcher's example. For miners, greed was a destructive force, not a force for good. Former Tory MP Louise Mensch, with no apparent sense of irony, invoked precepts of propriety to announce: "Pygmies of the left so predictably embarrassing yourselves, know this: not a one of your leaders will ever be globally mourned like her.". But she also provided great material. Only in the sense that all the women beneath her were blinded by falling shards. After the 1987 election, Thatcher cut an increasingly isolated figure. No homeless or disabled people need beg on the streets. This was hardly the first or even the worst example of a dig at Thatcher tinged so needlessly with sexism. Making sure the verdict wasn't purloined by others. A senior civil servant said, "It worked because we all knew exactly what she wanted.". This was most evident in the shooting dead of three unarmed IRA activists in Gibraltar in March 1988. performance at a Press Conference afterwards, the