Margaret Roberts, the daughter of a grocer, was born in
Grantham, Lincolnshire, on 13th October, 1925. After graduating from Oxford
University she worked as a research chemist. Later she studied law
and eventually became a barrister.
On 13th December, 1951 she married Denis Thatcher, a
successful businessman. A member of the Conservative
Party, Margaret Thatcher was elected to
represent Finchley in October 1959. Two years later she joined the
government of Harold
Macmillan as joint parliamentary
secretary for Pensions and National Insurance.
The Conservative
Party was defeated in the 1964 General
Election and Harold
Wilson became the new prime minister. Edward
Heath, the new leader of the Conservatives, appointed her as
Opposition Spokesman on Pensions and National Insurance. She later held
opposition posts on Housing (October 1965), Treasury (April 1966), Fuel
and Power (October 1967), Transport (November, 1968) and Education
(October, 1969).
Following the Conservative victory in the 1970 General
Election, Thatcher became Secretary of State for Education and
Science. In October 1970 she created great controversy by bringing an
end to free school milk for children over seven and increasing school
meal charges.
Edward
Heath, the prime minister, came into conflict with the trade unions over
his attempts to impose a prices and incomes policy. His attempts to
legislate against unofficial strikes led to industrial disputes. In 1973
a miners' work-to-rule led to regular power cuts and the imposition of a
three day week. Heath called a general election in 1974 on the issue of
"who rules". He failed to get a majority and Harold
Wilson and the Labour Party
were returned to power.
In January 1975 Thatcher
challenged Edward
Heath for the
leadership of the Conservative
Party. On 4th
February Thatcher defeated Heath by 130 votes to 119 and became the
first woman leader of a major political party. Heath took the defeat
badly and refused to serve in Thatcher's shadow cabinet.
James
Callaghan replaced
Harold
Wilson as prime
minister on 16th March 1976. Thatcher gradually adopted a more
right-wing political programme placing considerable emphasis on the
market economy. In January 1978 she was condemned for making a speech
where she claimed that people feared being "swamped" by immigrants.
In 1978 the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis
Healey, controversially began imposing tight monetary controls. This
included deep cuts in public spending on education and health. Critics
claimed that this laid the foundations of what became known as
monetarism. In 1978 these public spending cuts led to a wave of strikes
(winter of discontent) and the Labour Party
was easily defeated in the 1979 General
Election.
Thatcher now became the
first woman in Britain to become prime minister. In November 1979
Thatcher attended a summit meeting of the European Economic
Community where she attempted to renegotiate Britain's contribution
to the EEC budget.
Thatcher's government
continued the monetarist policies introduced by Denis
Healey. Inflation
was reduced but unemployment doubled between 1979 and 1980. In 1981, Sir
Geoffrey Howe, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced further public spending
cuts. During this period public opinion polls suggested that Thatcher
was the most unpopular prime minister in British history.
Thatcher's government also
raised money by a programme of privatization. This included the
denationalization of British Telecom, British Airways, Rolls Royce and
British Steel.
On 2nd April 1982 Argentina
invaded the Falkland Islands. The following day the United Nations
passed resolution 502 demanding that Argentina withdrew from the
Falklands. On 5th April the British Navy left Portsmouth
for the Falklands. Britain declared a 200 mile exclusion zone around the
Falklands and on 2nd May 1982 the Argentinean battleship General
Belgrano was sunk. Two days later HMS Sheffield was hit by an exocet
missile.
British troops landed on
the Falkland Islands at San Carlos on 21st May. Fighting continued until
Port Stanley was captured and Argentina surrendered on 14th June 1982.
Thatcher's personal popularity was greatly boosted by the successful
outcome of the war and the Conservative
Party won the 1983 General
Election with a majority of 144.
Thatcher developed a close
relationship with President Ronald
Reagan. They both
agreed to take a firm stance with the Soviet Union.
This resulted in her being dubbed the Iron Lady. However, Thatcher was
furious in November 1983 when the United States
invaded the British dependency of Grenada without prior consultation.
Thatcher's government
continued its policy of reducing the power of the trade unions. Sympathy
strikes and the closed shop was banned. Union leaders had to ballot
members on strike action and unions were responsible for the actions of
its members. The government took a firm stand against industrial
disputes and the miners' strike that began in 1984 lasted for 12 months
without success.
At the funeral of Konstantin
Chernenko on 13th March 1985, Thatcher met the new leader
Mikhail
Gorbachev.
Thatcher's views on the Soviet Union changed after Gorbachev announced
his new policy of Perestroika (Restructuring). This heralded a
series of liberalizing economic, political and cultural reforms which
had the aim of making the Soviet economy more efficient. Gorbachev also
introduced policies with the intention of establishing a market economy
by encouraging the private ownership of Soviet industry and agriculture.
At a meeting on 13th
November 1985, Thatcher rejected the idea of entering the European
Exchange Rate Mechanism. However, the following month she attended the
Luxembourg European Council and during the meeting Thatcher agreed to
sign the Single European Act.
In April 1986 Thatcher was
widely criticized for giving permission for US bombers to take off from
Britain to bomb Libya following a series of Libyan inspired terrorist
attacks.
Thatcher was returned to
power for a third time when she won the 1987 General
Election with a majority of 102 seats. The following year she became
Britain's longest serving prime minister for over a hundred years.
However, her popularity was severely damaged when the Community Charge
(Poll Tax) was introduced in Scotland in
April 1989 (the rest of Britain was to follow a year later). The new tax
was extremely unpopular and led to public demonstrations.
In November 1990 Thatcher
was challenged as leader of the Conservative
Party. She won the
first round of the contest but the majority is not enough to prevent a
second round. On 28th November, 1990, Margaret Thatcher resigned as
prime minister and was replaced by John Major.
Thatcher left the House of
Commons in March 1992. Soon afterwards she entered the House of
Lords as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven.
(1) Margaret
Thatcher, The Path of Power
(1995)
The command economy
required in wartime conditions had habituated many people to an
essentially socialist mentality. Within the Armed Forces it was common
knowledge that left-wing intellectuals had exerted a powerful influence
through the Army Education Corps, which as Nigel Birch observed was 'the
only regiment with a general election among its battle honours'. At
home, broadcasters like J.B. Priestley gave a comfortable yet idealistic
gloss to social progress in a left-wing direction. It is also true that
Conservatives, with Churchill in the lead, were so preoccupied with the
urgent imperatives of war that much domestic policy, and in particular
the drawing-up of the agenda for peace, fell largely to the socialists
in the Coalition Government. Churchill himself would have liked to
continue the National Government at least until Japan had been beaten
and, in the light of the fast-growing threat from the Soviet Union,
perhaps beyond then. But the Labour Party had other thoughts and
understandably wished to come into its own collectivist
inheritance.
In I945 therefore, we
Conservatives found ourselves confronting two serious and, as it turned
out, insuperable problems. First, the Labour Party had us fighting on
their ground and were always able to outbid us. Churchill had been
talking about post-war 'reconstruction' for some two years, and as part
of that programme Rab Butler's Education Act was on the Statute Book.
Further, our manifesto committed us to the so-called 'full employment'
policy of the 1944 Employment White Paper, a massive house-building
programme, most of the proposals for National Insurance benefits made by
the great Liberal social reformer Lord Beveridge and a comprehensive
National Health Service. Moreover, we were not able effectively to take
the credit (so far as this was in any case appropriate to the
Conservative Party) for victory, let alone to castigate Labour for its
irresponsibility and extremism, because Attlee and his colleagues had
worked cheek by jowl with the Conservatives in government since 1940. In
any event, the war effort had involved the whole population.
I vividly remember sitting
in the student common room in Somerville listening to Churchill's famous
(or notorious) election
broadcast to the effect that socialism would
require 'some sort of Gestapo' to enforce it, and thinking, 'He's gone
too far.' However logically unassailable the connection between
socialism and coercion was, in our present circumstances the line would
not be credible. I knew from political argument on similar lines at an
election meeting in Oxford what the riposte would be: 'Who's run the
country when Mr Churchill's been away? Mr Attlee.' And such, I found,
was the reaction now.
(2) Margaret Thatcher, speech during the 1950 General
Election.
We are going into one of
the biggest battles this country has ever known - a battle between two
ways of life, one which leads inevitably to slavery and the other to
freedom. Our opponents like to try and make you believe that
Conservatism is a privilege of the few. But Conservatism conserves all
that is great and best in our national heritage. What is one of the
first tenets of Conservatism? It is that of national unity. We say one
nation, not one class against another. You cannot build a great nation
or a brotherhood of man by spreading envy or hatred.
Our policy is not built on
envy or hatred, but on liberty for the individual man or woman. It is
not our policy to suppress success: our policy is to encourage it and
encourage energy and initiative. In 1940 it was not the cry of
nationalization that made this country rise up and fight
totalitarianism. It was
the cry for freedom and liberty.
(3) Margaret Thatcher,
The Path of Power (1995)
Reggie Maudling was thought
to have the better chance. Although his performance as Chancellor of the
Exchequer had incurred serious and in some ways justified criticism,
there was no doubting Reggie's experience, brilliant intellect and
command of the House. His main weakness, which grew more evident in
later years, was a certain laziness - something which is a frequent
temptation to those who know that they are naturally and effortlessly
cleverer than those around them.
Ted had a very different
character. He too had a very well organized mind. He was methodical,
forceful and, at least on the one question which mattered to him above
all others - Europe - a man of unyielding determination. As Shadow
Chancellor he had the opportunity to demonstrate his capabilities in
attacking the 1965 Finance Bill, which in those days was taken on the
floor of the House. Ted was regarded as being somewhat to the right of
Reggie (Maudling) , but they were both essentially centrists in Party
terms. Something could be made of the different approaches they took to
Europe, with Reggie regarding EFTA more favourably and Ted convinced
that membership of the EEC was essential. But their attitudes to
specific policies hardly affected the question of which to
support.
(4) Margaret Thatcher, The Path of Power (1995)
I was hailed in a modest
way as the saviour of the Open University. In Opposition both lain
Macleod and Edward Boyle, who thought that there were educational
priorities more deserving of Government help, had committed themselves
in public against it. And although its abolition was not in the
manifesto, many people expected it to perish. But I was genuinely
attracted to the concept of a 'University of the Airwaves', as it was
often called, because I thought that it was an inexpensive way of giving
wider access to higher education, because I thought that trainee
teachers in particular would benefit from it, because I was alert to the
opportunities offered by technology to bring the best teaching to
schoolchildren and students, and above all because it gave people a
second chance in life. In any case, the university was due to take its
first students that autumn, and cancellation would have been both
expensive and a blow to many hopes. On condition that I agreed to reduce
the immediate intake of students and find other savings, my Cabinet
colleagues allowed the Open University to go ahead.
(5) Margaret
Thatcher, The Path of Power (1995)
I felt sorry for Ted Heath
personally. He had his music and a small circle of friends, but politics
was his life. That year, moreover, he had suffered a series of personal
blows. His yacht, Morning Cloud, had sunk and his godson had been among
those lost. The election defeat was a further blow.
Nonetheless, I had no doubt
that Ted now ought to go. He had lost three elections out of four. He
himself could not change and he was too defensive of his own past record
to see that a fundamental change of policies was needed.
I arranged to see Ted on
Monday 25 November. He was at his desk in his room at the House. I need
not have worried about hurting his feelings. I went in and said: 'I must
tell you that I have decided to stand for the leadership.' He looked at
me coldly, turned his back, shrugged his shoulders and said: "If you
must." I slipped out of the room.
(6) Margaret Thatcher, article in the Daily
Telegraph (30th January,
1975)
I was attacked (as
Education Secretary) for fighting a rear-guard action in defence of
'middle-class interests'. The same accusation is levelled at me now,
when I am leading Conservative opposition to the socialist Capital
Transfer Tax proposals. Well, if 'middle-class values' include the
encouragement of variety and individual choice, the provision of fair
incentives and rewards for skill and hard work, the maintenance of
effective barriers against the excessive power of the state and a belief
in the wide distribution of individual private property, then they are
certainly what I am trying to defend ... If a Tory does not believe that
private property is one of the main bulwarks of individual freedom, then
he had better become a socialist and have done with it. Indeed one of
the reasons for our electoral failure is that people believe too many
Conserva- tives have become socialists already. Britain's progress
towards socialism has been an alternation of two steps forward with half
a step back. And why should anyone support a party that seems to have
the courage of no convictions?
(7) Editorial in the Daily
Telegraph (5th Febuary, 1975)
What kind of leadership Mrs
Thatcher will provide remains to be seen. But one thing is clear enough
at this stage. Mrs Thatcher is a bonny fighter. She believes in the
ethic of hard work and big rewards for success. She has risen from
humble origins by effort and ability and courage. She owes nothing to
inherited wealth or privilege. She ought not to suffer, therefore, from
that fatal and characteristic twentieth-century Tory defect of guilt
about wealth. All too often this has meant that the Tories have felt
themselves to be at a moral disadvantage in the defence of capitalism
against socialism. This is one reason why Britain has travelled so far
down the collectivist road. What Mrs Thatcher ought to be able to offer
is the missing moral dimension to the Tory attack on socialism. If she
does so, her accession to the leadership could mark a sea-change in the whole
character of the party political debate in this country.
(8) Mikhail
Gorbachev, Memoirs (1995)
Mrs Thatcher is a confident
and, I would say, a self-confident woman, the gentle charm and feminine
facade disguising a rather tough and pragmatic politician. His nickname
the 'Iron Lady' is very apt. I told Mrs Thatcher: "I know you are a
person of staunch beliefs, someone who adheres to certain principles and
values. This commands respect. But please consider that next to you is a
person of your own ilk. And I can assure you that I am not under
instructions from the Politburo to persuade you to join the Communist
Party."
After that statement she
burst into a hearty laugh, and the stiff, polite and somewhat acerbic
conversation flowed naturally into more interesting talk, which
continued after lunch. The subject turned to disarmament problems. We
started by using our prepared notes, but eventually I put mine aside
while Mrs Thatcher stuffed hers into her handbag. I unfolded a large
diagram representing all nuclear arsenals, grouped into a thousand
little squares.
"Each of these squares," I
told Mrs Thatcher, "suffices to eradicate all life on earth.
Consequently, the available nuclear arsenals have a capacity to wipe out
all life a thousand times."
Her reaction was very
eloquent and emotional. I believe she was quite sincere. Anyway, this
conversation was a turning point towards a major political dialogue
between our countries.
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