Respected, viewed with awe, a conviction politician, but if liking came into it, that was an accident. M argaret Thatcher does an awful lot of crying in The Crown. Reagan and Thatcher first met in 1975, as my friend and colleague Peter Hannaford reminded me just today. Thatcher is remembered for her achievements, but more for a presence, which was wrapped up with being a woman. Was it cruelty? with the European Community when she As leader she was initially hyper-cautious. This book shows how. A senior civil servant said, "It worked because we all knew exactly what she wanted.". In this moment she inspired only curiosity, a pale phantom, dumbly filling her day. You may not be a fan of Edwina Currie but, really, was she any worse than John Gummer? April 17, 2013, 6:40 PM. 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. Margaret Thatcher's Eulogy for Ronald Reagan- Rhetorical Analysis Essay When I started knocking on Highland doors in May 1983, two things struck me more than any other. But Thatcher was a naturally, perhaps incurably, divisive figure. She was propped up by police who were encouraged to brutality against not only strikers but communities of colour, already hardest hit by unemployment: police powers were enhanced and their racism given free rein, especially with stop and search; CS gas was used on the mainland for the first time. 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. There were rumours of a different philosophy, at least in personal relationships. 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. She and her successors John Major and Tony Blair presided over a quarter century of unprecedented prosperity. Yet, at that last encounter, her tone was different. Ed Miliband, a policy wonk himself, claims to be a conviction politician like Thatcher. In the north of Ireland she had the army and the Diplock courts which reached their peak in the mid 1980s. Reversing Britain's long-term economic decline. In a way, they are all Thatcher's children.". We had an all-out blistering row that delighted the organisers. Margaret Thatcher's Speech to Congress - Hillsdale College Seeing as women aren't a minor Brit-flick grateful for even a bad review, that truism doesn't quite hold true here. More insidiously, it fathered amood of tolerated harshness. Her centralism, unequalled in Europe, descended under Blair into a morass of targetry, inefficiency and endless reorganisation. Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013), who in 1979 would become Great Britain's first female Prime Minister, traveled to the United States and Canada in September 1975, seven months after becoming the leader of Britain's Conservative Party, then out of power. Thatcher understood the connection between the social wage and workers' wages better than most unions. North sea oil was squandered when it should have seeded new industries. There turned out to be no such thing as society, at least in the sense we used to understand it. Larkin's evoked the treacherous mind (of an adversary, of a cabinet colleague) helplessly exposed to her steely regard. . "Being powerful is like being a lady. The truth is less significant than the alteration to it. . On November 8th 1989, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave an inspiring speech to the UN General Assembly about the environment and climate change. Thatcher's opposition to a positive role for the state in industrial policy caused her grief even during her time in office, but a cross-party consensus newly shaped by Michael Heseltine's report has given him the last word. More subtly, Thatcher bequeathed a kind of instinctive rejection of once-valued forms of collective activity. Margaret Thatcher - Quotes, Death & Life - Biography at The Hague in May 1992. The Winter of Discontent in 1978-79 brought rhetorical as well as political As the authorised biographer of Margaret Thatcher, I was given special permission by the Cabinet Secretary to see government papers not yet released to the public.For . To the extent that there was an industrial strategy, it was to sell Britain as a destination for Japanese car companies and to shift the focus of the economy away from manufacturing towards financial services. Maggie was a fully formed comedy character before comedians had even gotten to her. But she became a very effective one. But the sense of community evaporated. The novel may thrive in adversity and it was a general sense of dismay at the new world she was showing us that lured many writers into opposition. Between 1945-90 every statement made by Margaret Thatcher is listed, as far as can be known. Margaret Flowers is a leading activist, doctor, teacher, and co-founder of PopularResistance.org, a website that aims to inform and inspire grassroots movements around the world. Much of any leader's record is unremarkable dross, and Thatcher was no exception. There were big tax cuts for those on the highest incomes, driven by the belief that this would encourage entrepreneurship. 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. Opponents and supporters of Margaret Thatcher will never agree about the value of her legacy, but as for her importance, her hypnotic hold on us, they are bound to find common ground. Throw the Lib Dems into the mix and it becomes highly combustible. History, Sample Essay. That was before Thatcher modishly renamed the service British Telecom and sold it off. Norman Tebbit, one of Thatcher's acolytes and fellow "Munsters evacuee", said when the National Union of Mineworkers eventually succumbed to the military onslaught and starvation over which she presided: "We didn't just break the strike, we broke the spell." In 1990 Thatcher authorised the then British secretary of state Peter Brooke to reopen back-channel negotiations with republicans. 4.44 avg rating 39 ratings 2 editions. The organised working class, almost alone, had put Britain on the skids. Great speeches: Margaret Thatcher | World | The Guardian 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. Endeavouring to persuade the British into an attitude of hostility to the group with which she spent 11 years deepening their connection must take a high place in any catalogue of anti-statesmanship. Thatcher became prime minister because she was a woman, not despite it. These talks, sometimes joined by the prime minister and run by his aide Rohan Silva, show the restless search for new ideas that still grips the right, one of the least recognised legacies of Margaret Thatcher. The state retained control of some nationalised industries the railways, for example but BT, British Airways, British Steel, British Gas and the British Airports Authority were among the big companies sold off. Without it, she would have been nothing. her maiden The Brixton rioters, the Argentinians, teachers; everyone actually. Their reckless private finance of public investment and services went beyond anything she dared dream of. 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. Texts for listed statements are available on the site in almost 70 per cent of cases. Gillian Anderson's Portrayl of Margaret Thatcher's Voice in 'The Crown When President Reagan died in June 2004, she delivered a She, and Blair after her, brought an unprecedented dirigisme to the NHS, education, police and local government. The author uses this idea of freedom in her writing to allow the audience to feel and understand the mission of Reagan--"to restore the strength of the free world, and to free the slaves of communism" (6-7). It's like a whimsical live-action episode of Postman Pat where his cat is craftily carved up and sold back to him. It is my view that Thatcher authorised the killings at Gibraltar. Gaze at the telephone. A special licence was granted exclusively to the Radio Times. She made her maiden Philip Larkin visited Downing Street where the prime minister quoted approvingly one of his lines to him "Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives." Nor, contrary to myth, did Thatcherism emerge fully formed in May 1979. 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. Following in the footsteps of Santa Claus, Steve Hynd quickly compiled a list of all the naughty boys and girls "on the left" who dared to express criticisms of the dearly departed Prime Minister, warning that he "will continue to add to this list throughout the day". Still plumbing for the essence, we have to examine other bits of residue. She made one You could never call Margaret Mother by mistake. drew an important moral from the Falklands war: "We have ceased to Charles Powell was a senior foreign policy . 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. On June 11th, 2004 Margaret Thatcher gave a speech to the American people at Ronald Reagan's funeral. That speech was a rare instance of a politician saying something tangible. In her 1982 party conference speech, Margaret Thatcher offered a prediction for the future: "How absurd it will seem in a few years' time that the state ran Pickfords removals and Gleneagles Hotel." Had Jim Callaghan won the 1979 election, he too would have faced the challenge of how to modernise an economy beset by high inflation, weak management and poor industrial relations. There are more than 8,000. Scotland was her mission impossible. From 1987 to 1988, he was a senior policy writer and speechwriter in 10 Downing Street for Margaret Thatcher when she was British prime minister and remained close to her up to her death.. O'Sullivan served from 2008-2012 as vice-president and executive editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio . She was among the first Western leaders to Donning a starched coiff and padded shoulders out to there, Emmy Award winner Gillian Anderson of The X-Files is . BBC ON THIS DAY | 28 | 1990: Tearful farewell from Iron Lady Second, it's now easier to see the scale of the setback she inflicted on Britain's idea of its own future. Of course, it's in politics that the shadow looms most clearly. But we reckoned we got Thatcher only too well and didn't like what we saw, far less what we heard. Nicknamed the "Iron Lady," Thatcher served as the prime minister of England from 1979 to 1990. She would not have been half the . "Margaret Thatcher was not a natural communicator. Yet I wrote columns of pretty unremitting hostility to most of what she did. Yet for all these fissures, even Maoist modernisers and the most reactionary social conservatives share a similar stance over the role of the state. Many of the effects of inequality have long lag periods. It's telling that Tony Blair's domestic legacy amounts to two responses to Thatcherism: forcing Labour to accept it and then compensating for the damage the Tories had wreaked through sustained underinvestment in the public realm. She was evicted from Downing Street with all the ruthlessness, treachery and warped humanity of what passes for high politics. Scottish and by extension UK politics has been skewed ever since. November 15, 2020 9:00 AM EST. In 1968 she gave a lecture asking What's This speech was delivered soon after her taking office in 1979. I am, it's safe to say, one of Thatcher's children. 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. Norman and Margaret hold, and will always hold, a unique place in our esteem and affection. There is a paradox. Alexei Sayle blames Twitter and the "multiplicity of voices" in the modern world. I'd unthinkingly imbibed enough doctrine to know that, troubled as I was, there was little point looking elsewhere for support. By 1990 it was transformed. And the single mums. We might speculate that an adviser had offered Thatcher a selection of good lines, or that she had asked to see some. she warned that she was not Her bouffant and handbag and nasal voice were comedy gold, but she was also earnest, principled and said exactly what she meant. "The original alternative comics just did it because they had to," he says. During the speech, . Making sure the verdict wasn't purloined by others. Author: Margaret Thatcher Year: 1979 Location: London, the UK Occasion: Address to the Parliament. Somesay she revolutionised British politics certainly never again could people say nobody would vote for a woman but it served a reactionary end. 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. Margaret Thatcher's environmental record: She was a climate hawk. It was under her leadership that in 1982 that the Force Research Unit (FRU) was established within the British Army Intelligence Corps. Flags were flying over Port Stanley on 14 June. a new dominance from Brussels", the A strong pound crippled exports and emptied factories. I grew up in Essex with a single mum and a go-getter Dagenham dad. 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. During Margaret Thatcher's rise to the top, he was one of the backroom figures whose words helped create her reputation as the Iron Lady. 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 within a few years, a third of children were poor, a sign of the yawning inequality from which the country never recovered. I met her just once, as a reporter in the press pack that followed her tour around Greece and Yugoslavia in 1980. The former reporter, who was 90, died with his family around him yesterday lunchtime, a statement said. She defended Ronald On taking office she showered money on public sector unions, and her "cuts" were only to planned increases, mild compared with today's. 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 . She was a radical conservative, known for dismantling nationalized industries and social services, weakening union power.She was also the first incumbent prime minister in the UK removed on a vote of their own party. Hayek was appointed a Companion of Honour in the 1984 Birthday honours for "services to the study of Economics". But the key point is this: those who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics) aren't silent at all. Margaret Thatcher's Eulogy for Ronald Reagan: Essay Conscious of being awoman, and incapable of pretending otherwise. Feminists disowned her by insisting that though she was a woman, she was not a sister. Speech: 07:39-28:33 Q & A: 28:34-48:08 (Recording ends abruptly during Q&A) Topics of . Any attempts at revisionism do no favours to her, women or feminism. I will be the heir to Margaret Thatcher. 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. Her policy decisions entrenched sectarian divisions, handed draconian military powers over to the securocrats, and subverted basic human rights. Thatcher's title is Baroness. Thatcher's unwavering belief in the invisible hand of the market meant that she did not believe it was part of her job description to put anything in its place. Great speeches: 'Orwellian nightmare' if Tories fail, claims Margaret Thatcher. Indeed a person with achemistry that repelled almost all thesignificant males in Edward Heath's cabinet who could never become theparty leader. 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. Later, when the BBC and ITV scheduled two programmes about Gibraltar, Thatcher tried to stop them. departing Downing Street on 28 November. Luckily, a longer paper means you get a bigger discount! When Margaret Thatcher won the general election in 1979, she became Prime Minister of a land in chaos. A growing body of research now shows that the quality of social relations is among the most powerful influences on the happiness, health and wellbeing of populations in the rich countries. Lecturing me about the comprehensive schools, of which she created more than any minister before or since. When Heath fell, her promoters ran her as a stalking horse because, as a woman, they thought she could not win. The stance was often in broadest terms, more moral than political. 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. Bernard Ingham, journalist and civil servant.