I was a professional writer. Following several small strokes she announced, in March 2002, that her career as a speechmaker had ended. Margaret Thatcher's most important long-term legacy is likely to be the huge rise in inequality that she caused. This has been a terrible labour, she said. For years, in fact, she despised writers, except those who did her speeches. You can get the Turnitin report from the writer on request along with the final deliverable. In 1979 it had a mile or so of shipyards, a sugar works and factories that still made rope and ship's fittings. April 8, 2013. The events of that awful summer of '81 polarised Irish society, north and south. On the same edition of Channel 4 News, Louise Mensch named only three successful female politicians as part of her defence ofThatcher and only one of those was a Conservative. She hated what she called "that French phrase laissez faire". 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. April 25, 2020. Accounts vary. still being scolded for the remark.You can read here exactly what she said, To demand that all of that be ignored in the face of one-sided requiems to her nobility and greatness is a bit bullying and tyrannical, not to mention warped. To Britons of my generation, she . I will be the heir to Margaret Thatcher. 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. 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. She considered European Commission president Jacques Delors a campaigner for . The Crown: How Margaret Thatcher Was Removed from Power in 1990 - ELLE And we won back three we lost at by-elections. An Inconvenient Truth About Margaret Thatcher: She Was a Climate Hawk. On June 11th, 2004 Margaret Thatcher gave a speech to the American people at Ronald Reagan's funeral. She was catapulted into the Conservative leadership by a small group of ideologues centred around a thinktank, determined to roll back the statist ideas that dominated Britain after the postwar Attlee government. Reagan was received coolly, and the discussion was highly superficial, if only because the British side clearly did not care to engage on substance: meet for a serious discussion with a movie actor and a "Grade B" actor at that? Margaret expresses that Reagan's leadership was the key to ending The Cold War and unifying a formerly divided nation. The day before she died I passed through Greenock on the train. 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. Animals and Pets Anime Art Cars and Motor Vehicles Crafts and DIY Culture, Race, and Ethnicity Ethics and Philosophy Fashion Food and Drink History Hobbies Law Learning and Education Military Movies Music Place Podcasts and Streamers Politics Programming Reading, Writing, and Literature Religion and Spirituality Science Tabletop Games . In the 80s, she was the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy and is now simply called "comedy". Capitalism flourishes on debt, but she insisted that economics were best understood as Mr Micawber's formula in which happiness and misery were separated by a shilling. 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. Cameron's crew crudely imagine she intended it. The poll-tax rioters. A strong pound crippled exports and emptied factories. The "crime" he was accused of was to reclaim the oil revenue from local and foreign thieves, and use it to tackle poverty. In her thoughtful and prescient remarks, the Prime Minister reached back into history to recall how far the English-Speaking Peoples had come since victory in . Words. Action. Had pollsters and the 24/7 media forced leaders to follow opinion, not lead it? In the north of Ireland she had the army and the Diplock courts which reached their peak in the mid 1980s. British Labour MP Tom Watson decreed: "I hope that people on the left of politics respect a family in grief today." "Respecting the grief" of Thatcher's family members is appropriate if one is friends with them or attends a wake they organize, but the protocols are fundamentally different when it comes to public discourse about the person's life and political acts. 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. Some places have become heritage parks, remembering an industry now vanished. She will be for ever unforgiven by those who now see worse being done in her name to another generation. I do not yet know what effect Margaret Thatcher has had on me as an individual or on the character of our country as we continue to evolve. 100% Success rate. 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. Such seminars are regular events in Downing Street under the coalition. The truth lies somewhere between these extremes. Across Yorkshire or south Wales, Kent or Nottinghamshire, there are villages that have never recovered from the closure of coal mines, ordered by a Thatcher who ruled there was no place for pits that were not "economically viable", regardless of the social consequences. Reagan and Thatcher first met in 1975, as my friend and colleague Peter Hannaford reminded me just today. If I become PM, I will deliver the radical set of reforms need to unleash growth. She wasn't a feminist icon and she wasn't an icon for women. Throw the Lib Dems into the mix and it becomes highly combustible. I have few recollections of Thatcher after the slowly chauffeured, weepy Downing Street cortege. cent of cases. She would, say some who knew her, have a found a way to finesse a change of direction by now. 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. There were sporadic resurrections. Collins (Oxford University Press, 1998-2000). and But keeping the show on the road is what all of them must first attend to, because there's nobody else to do it. Sir Bernard Ingham was Margaret Thatcher writ large. at Brighton, insisting that the Conference go on and Full employment had been ditched in 1976, while Labour had introduced monetary targets and cash limits for Whitehall departments while Denis Healey was at the Treasury. Thatcher was never insensitive to the impact of her policies on the poor. . Materialistic individualism was blessed as a virtue, the driver of national success. (They also reveal how she loved to surround herself with yes men who were always men.) When John Lennon was told of Elvis Presley's death, he famously responded: "Elvis died when he joined the army," meaning of course, that his combat clothing and clipped hair signalled the demise of the thrusting, Dionysian revolution of which he was the immaculate emblem. 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. Real Analysis Solved Problems, Synthesis Essay Freedom Of Speech, Photography Dissertation Titles, Reflective Essay Writers Service Usa, Sample Of The Resume 4423 . I will be the heir to Margaret Thatcher - The Telegraph The first three speeches were by Winston Churchill. Thatcher refused to recognise the right of citizens to vote for representatives of their choice. And the miners. Ed Miliband, a policy wonk himself, claims to be a conviction politician like Thatcher. What was it about Thatcher that inspired a generation of comics to rage at her? Though the Prime Minister was known to shed a tear or two during her 11 years leading the United Kingdom . 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. Quotation being the warmest form of praise, Larkin was naturally touched. John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. Any attempts at revisionism do no favours to her, women or feminism. 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. A senior civil servant said, "It worked because we all knew exactly what she wanted.". I met her just once, as a reporter in the press pack that followed her tour around Greece and Yugoslavia in 1980. Feminists disowned her by insisting that though she was a woman, she was not a sister. It got over a deep, instinctive hostility to women at the top of anything, and put her there. But it did, and the consequences seem impossible to reverse. If you have a . 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. She would appear in public to drape a hankie over a model BA plane tailfin because she disliked the unpatriotic logo with which they'd replaced the union flag (maybe don't privatise BA then), or to shuffle about some country pile arm in arm with a doddery Pinochet and tell us all what a fine fellow he was. So the woman I met in Curzon Street, dimpling elegantly, can now be seen in history with an unexpected achievement to her credit. We are all on our own. My mate John and I were wandering there together, he expertly proselytising on the architecture and the history of the place, me pretending to be Rumpole of the Bailey (quietly in my mind), when we spied in the distant garden a hunched and frail figure, in a raincoat, scarf about her head, watering the roses under the breezy supervision of a masticating copper. It's how she would have, if pressed, put it herself. Margaret Thatcher (October 13, 1925 - April 8, 2013) was the first woman prime minister of the United Kingdom and the first European woman to serve as a prime minister. Thatcher came to power when the economy was approaching a moment of truth after three decades of poor performance relative to other western countries. I was just behind her at the civic museum in Dubrovnik when the local guide explained a model showing the elaborate system of ancient wells and tunnels that had provided the city with fresh water no matter how fierce the siege. 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. Yet her understanding of Britain was alarmingly crude. "You see," she announced in her self-satisfied way, "it just goes to show what people can do when they have to. Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home, Heath: they seem, by comparison, evanescent figures. 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. So we agreed to reactivate the back channel. They are a more energetic and impressive group than their predecessors, often with experience outside politics that makes them impatient and independent-minded. Hire a Writer. ", As Matthew Parris evocatively put it in Monday's Times, "She rather liked men (preferring our company, perhaps, to that of women), [but] she thought us the weaker sex. She was not a writer. This site follow the same rules (and shares an editor). They're not Thatcher. The government's welfare bill has been swollen by tax credits and housing benefit caused by the labour market reforms and council house sales of the 1980s. Queen Elizabeth is widely assumed . There is absolutely nothing wrong with loathing Margaret Thatcher or any other person with political influence and power based upon perceived bad acts, and that doesn't change simply because they die. Howe's "broken cricket bats" speech in the Commons was the killer blow. Superlatives can be agreed: a remarkable first woman PM; the first winner of three elections in a row; brave; tough; relentless; clever; sleeplessly driven by a self-confident conviction that overawed her enemies. speaking in March 2002.). It was all very well for me to write books. . Each now seems banal. speech which caused the Soviets to dub her "the Iron Lady". departing Downing Street on 28 November. This is a political style, an aesthetic even, that has disappeared from view. Given the nature of her legacy "survival of the fittest" a phrase that Darwin himself only used twice in On the Origin of Species, compared to hundreds of references to altruism, love and cooperation, it isn't surprising that there are parties tonight in Liverpool, Glasgow and Brixton from where are they to have learned compassion and forgiveness? Her political antennae refused to allow her to privatise the coal industry, British Rail or the post office. Climate, freedom and denial: What "Green Thatcherism" teaches us today All rights reserved. Rishi Sunak 20 July 2022 9:30pm. As far as her supporters are concerned, this radical transformation worked. Selling off the family silver Harold Macmillan and later Labour called it, as Margaret Thatcher set about reversing the 1945 nationalisations that had put oil, gas, coal, electricity and an airline as well as a house removal company in public hands. She played a key role not only in bringing about the first Gulf War but also using her influence to publicly advocate for the 2003 attack on Iraq. Thatcher is often credited with showing that you could get to the top whatever your background. In 1980, I made several fast round trips to London, Paris and Bonn, and, on each occasion, had the opportunity to meet with Prime Minister Thatcher. By the 1983 election she had sold off only Britoil and some council houses. That was the daunting task Margaret Thatcher set herself when she arrived in Downing Street in May 1979 at the end of a traumatic decade that had seen a three-day week, inflation topping 25%, a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and the winter of discontent. After the Dublin European Council in November 1979 she began a long battle "We have not If it ended in disaster, the seeds were only partly hers. At its best, that has meant a mood of freedom and choice that has made these islands a brighter, less drab place than they once were. Too timid, too in thrall, the 13-year Labour government rarely dared challenge the attitudes she planted in the national psyche. These values were the exact opposite of those Margaret Thatcher espoused. Margaret Thatcher Quotes (Author of The Downing Street Years) - Goodreads Not for Turning: The Life of Margaret Thatcher - Amazon I'd become a delinquent, living on heroin and benefit fraud. Why don't you get a proper job, she once sneered at me. The seismic shift from industry to financial-based capitalism that Thatcherism ushered in rattled the establishment. Lady Thatcher's New Threats for Old - National Churchill Museum The set text is still Thatcher's declaration quoted in The Audience that "There is no such thing as society". Even the nasty politics of "welfare reform" is driven by the high cost of subsidising low pay through in-work benefits, and indifference to the plight of jobless communities who have never recovered from de-industrialisation. three press interviews (15-17 November) when Howe's resignation speech She remained in power till I was 15. The Margaret Thatcher speech that was buried by the Brighton bomb History, Sample Essay. Margaret Thatcher was not known for her sense of humour. 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. Plus there's the fact that comedy is now a big business, and there's less money in sharp satire than gentle observation. John Major was elected her successor yesterday by Conservative Party members. Scotland was her mission impossible. Meanwhile, you struggle to identify deep thinkers in party ranks beyond a couple of veteran stalwarts; even the left's thinktanks appear moribund or merely harking back to an idealised past. 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". That speech was a rare instance of a politician saying something tangible. Well, everything really, even her name. 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. In 11 years, Thatcher promoted only one woman to her cabinet, preferring instead to elevate men whom Spitting Image memorably and, in certain instances, accurately, described as "vegetables". Those strikes were confusing to me as a child. A massive programme of social housing would be a good place to start, stimulating the economy. Hugo Young was a political columnist forthe Guardian from 1984 until 2003 and biographer of Margaret Thatcher. On the other hand, growth has been depressed because weak trade unions can no longer ensure wage increases keep pace with inflation. By 1990 it was transformed. 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.