It was a Charles I moment in British history. A splendid synergy was created, deliberately and with just that in mind on both sides of the Atlantic. She and her successors John Major and Tony Blair presided over a quarter century of unprecedented prosperity. It made minor savings at best and was, as the . The cautious tactician was suppressed. Here shovels the earth during a tree-planting ceremony . speech to the House of Lords in June 1993. International studies of OECD countries suggest a close relationship between the decline in trade union membership and the rise in inequality. Therein, 30 years ago, lay the great Thatcher asset and the electorally lethal Thatcher impact in Scotland. Everyone knows that. She hurled herself into NHS reform, changes to schools and universities, utilities privatisation and, eventually, local government reform. When I started knocking on Highland doors in May 1983, two things struck me more than any other. On her return to London, she sent me a warm and complimentary letter, a prize in my personal archives. She hated what she called "that French phrase laissez faire". If a leader's record is to be measured by the willingness of the other side to decide itcannot turn back the clock, then Thatcher bulks big in history. Above all, they lack her competence at running the machinery of government. Sir Bernard died after a short illness, his family said. It's kind of a luxury rent-controlled ghetto for lawyers and barristers, and there is a beautiful tailors, a fine chapel, established by the Knights Templar (from which the compound takes its name), a twee cottage designed by Sir Christopher Wren and a rose garden; which I never promised you. "No, no, no". No sign they learned from her that markets don't move in to fill the gaps when the state is rolled back not then, not now. The government's job was to keep inflation low, not to boost growth through demand management. Everything has its season. She wasn't a feminist icon and she wasn't an icon for women. This is not the Highland way. There are many reasons for this. 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 . The machinery of modern political management polls, consulting, focus groups is deployed mainly to discover what will make aparty and politician better liked, or worse, disliked. 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 . I think by far her greatest virtue, in retrospect, is how little she cared if people liked her. This was heightened by the suspicion that this power was not consciously deployed. A couple of days later on the 11th, Margaret Thatcher the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, wrote an eulogy for Ronald Reagan. But it was overlaid by the supposedly masculine virtues, sometimes more manly than the men could ever assemble. 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. Materialistic individualism was blessed as a virtue, the driver of national success. Mrs Thatcher told the assembly: "It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.". Thatcher exposed the sharp edges of class division in Britain and the strike of 1984/5 was as much a clash of values as it was about pit closures. But she regarded rightwing causes as an intellectual hobby. Collins (Oxford University Press, 1998-2000). 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. But keeping the show on the road is what all of them must first attend to, because there's nobody else to do it. Her political antennae refused to allow her to privatise the coal industry, British Rail or the post office. Chvez is gone, but the voters are likely to re-elect Chavismo on 14 April. Where copyright is the problem, the full text can be found on the Complete On Saturday, 27 February, he wrote in his diary: "PM getting great press went up to the [Capitol] Hill some of the senators tried to give her a bad time, she put them down firmly and with typical British courtesy.". This reverie only occurred when the car was out of view. Yet, at that last encounter, her tone was different. He'd been a bully, she said, whereas Mrs T was warm and understanding. From then on she disregarded her critics and became intolerant of any who were "not one of us". Mikhail Gorbachev, for one, learned the hard way. They rallied around each other when times were hard. She attacked the Treaty of Maastricht in a Feminists disowned her by insisting that though she was a woman, she was not a sister. Dignity and decorum ruled the day - except in the poisoned anonymity of the internet. It made her virtually unsackable as education secretary. She was "outraged" when the programmes went ahead. 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. In this eulogy, Thatcher uses rhetorical strategies to convince her readers into believing what she states. She was evicted from Downing Street with all the ruthlessness, treachery and warped humanity of what passes for high politics. The problem for Labour is that this issue so fundamental, since it underscores so much policy is unresolved in their ranks. 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. At an international conference in Lisbon in the late 80s, the British faction, among whom were Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Malcolm Bradbury and myself, referred back to Thatcher constantly in our presentations. Until then Thatcher had shown the strength of her weakness: a dislike of consensus and aversion to debate, leading to decisive action. A week later she spoke Not until well out of office, angry and lacking her old judgment, did she lead the rabidly Eurosceptic renegades. At times the Conservative party is so anarchic as to appear almost ungovernable, like a plethora of pressure groups pushing pet causes rather than a united group ruthlessly focusing on political success. It knew what Thatcher wanted. 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. departing Downing Street on 28 November. 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 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 . 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? But now the history was what mattered. As leader she was initially hyper-cautious. But without any question, sitting behind her desk, she was wearing ahat. Quotation being the warmest form of praise, Larkin was naturally touched. 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. It's how she would have, if pressed, put it herself. It was mostly foreigners who could not understand why she fell. The dominance of finance in the economy and the failure of bank regulation flowed from her belief that markets should always be left to themselves. Many of today's more controversial benefits, such as disability, date back to the 80s. She was immensely brisk. In 1984 Britain had 186 working coalmines and approximately 170,000 coalminers. I don't know if they ever voted for her, I don't know if they liked her. People would denounce them unequivocally, often in graphic terms. For the most part, it has not been undone. Of course, it's in politics that the shadow looms most clearly. an interviewer "there is no such thing as society" and is Hewrote this piece in 2003, two weeks before he died. No single mother raising children was to be called "workless", skipping meals to feed them and forced to ditch them to submit to "workfare" or a starvation wage. speaking in March 2002.). Its strategies included the shallow and ineffectual 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement which was about creating a political alliance involving the Dublin establishment, the SDLP and the British to defeat Irish republicanism. What was it about Thatcher that inspired a generation of comics to rage at her? April 25, 2020. The first time I met Margaret Thatcher, I swear she was wearing gloves. Your local electricity "board" could be a very unfriendly place. Much has been written about the special significance and warmth of the British-American alliance during the two terms of Ronald Reagan. On the contrary, consumerism and materialism have been the norm ever since, rising inequality the consistent trend as the rich soar ever further away from the rest. Oil helped Thatcher paper over the cracks, but Britain's age-old problem finding a way to pay its way in the world remains. We Americans will not see you again in our time, but we will never forget you. People should pay her the respect of doing the same after her death. What saved Thatcher's bacon, and revolutionised her leadership, was Labour's unelectable Michael Foot and the Falklands war. At the time, Thatcher was the education secretary her first major political role. 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. Peggy Noonan. So the woman I met in Curzon Street, dimpling elegantly, can now be seen in history with an unexpected achievement to her credit. Jan Leeming, Sue Lawley, Moira Stuart delivering doctrine with sterile sexiness, like a butterscotch-scented beige vapour. But on their catastrophic economic policy, it's full-speed ahead into the concrete wall. her intention to allow her name to go forward to the second ballot (20 Yet despite the attempts of some columnists to claim otherwise, Thatcher can't really be seen as "a warrior in the sex war", let alone as "the ultimate women's libber". Rhetorical Analysis Of Margaret Thatcher's Speech 722 Words | 3 Pages . Government will respond to clear leadership if it knows what a leader wants. The welfare state, with its unemployment and housing benefits and free healthcare, actually protected wages: employers could not force workers to accept low pay or unpaid overtime because of the job's healthcare provision, as they do in the US. Strident, divisive, and in her own view infallible, and for these reasons hard to mourn. Arthur Scargill and the miners represented the only opposition to the prime minister and her destructive and divisive values and, after the strike, the way was open for the most aggressive neoliberal policies. But former speechwriter Trevor Reeves can no longer . Today we have four coalmines and around 2,000 miners. Since 1990 a selection of statements is listed. In rich societies such as the UK, what makes most difference to the real quality of our lives is the quality of community life and social interaction. One thinks now of the closing words of her splendid 2004 eulogy of Ronald Reagan, and how those words so perfectly speak a tribute to her life and works: "We here still move in twilight. In January 1983 she It destroyed the public's power to determine via parliament the services and prices of gas, electricity, telephone. That speech was a rare instance of a politician saying something tangible. In the three years after the shipment they killed 224 and wounded scores more. to his resignation letter on 1 November, stated She failed to replace those jobs with well-paid equivalents. There were big tax cuts for those on the highest incomes, driven by the belief that this would encourage entrepreneurship. 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. They are acolytes of a raw Thatcher cult they have rough-hewn and exaggerated in their own image. 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." For she changed the ethos of Britain as well as its landscape. In 1982, the English Collective of Prostitutes occupied a church for 12 days in protest against "police illegality and racism in King's Cross" the area to which many sex workers known as "Thatcher's girls" had travelled from high unemployment areas in the Midlands and the north. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry. There is now, however, an opportunity to commit to a new politics that learns lessons from her ambition yet undoes the damage and focuses on reconstruction. When President Reagan died in June 2004, she delivered a Maggie! Making sure the verdict wasn't purloined by others. "Maggie Thatcher," he said. Get over her! 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. To claim that any woman's success is a boon for feminism is like saying all publicity is good publicity. one It became obvious that, while granting that I had "convictions", she never read a word of my stuff. speech which caused the Soviets to dub her "the Iron Lady", one Given the global economic crisis, rampant corporate greed and growing inequality, this should be a time of great ferment, with endless policy proposals bubbling up to challenge the post-Thatcher consensus at a time of immense and unsettling change. 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. 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. Though she recognised the dangers of global warming, Thatcher's industrial and economic policies prioritised economic growth. Out! It still does. She fervently believed the market would soon repair their loss. Whatever Tory historians like to claim, this was the critical turning point. The dockers. 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! 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. The challenge for the left is to fashion new and genuinely progressive policies in an age of austerity, when more money is not the answer to any question. Or maybe audiences just really, really hated her and wanted to blow off some steam. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one's enemies. She gave it her best shot. As the coalition sets about shrinking the welfare state, it's still embarked on Thatcher's project of rolling back the frontiers of the state, dismantling the settlement that held from 1945 until it unravelled in the 1970s. The truth is less significant than the alteration to it. . From her start in politics, Thatcher often attracted sexist critiques for the way she spoke, with many it dubbing her voice "shrill" and "patronizing." Television critic Clive James even compared . 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. Thirdly, industrial policy was all but abandoned. 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 was the great leader in her favourite pose as Samuel Smiles: human beings didn't need to be helped they needed to help themselves. In a way, they are all Thatcher's children.". In short, miners believed in society. The poll tax showed the opposite, the weakness of Thatcher's strength. "She's jolly nice," one of them said, "much better to work for than [James] Callaghan." Typifying these highly dubious claims about Thatcher was this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama: "The world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend." Sharp definition, hard edges, no effort at fuzzy contours (David Cameron, take note). wrong with politics? In the north of Ireland she had the army and the Diplock courts which reached their peak in the mid 1980s. She was lucky, in her enemies and friends notably Reagan in the Falklands conflict. Hire writer now Order. No elderly person would be deprived of the dignity of spectacles, dentures or a hearing aid because they couldn't afford them. On the crucial morning in November 1990, her colleagues marched individually into her room and each told her to go. Sunstein worked for a Democratic president, but did not meet the Labour leader or key advisers. It always irks when rightwing folk demonstrate in a familial or exclusive setting the values that they deny in a broader social context. 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. She needed followers, as long as they went in her frequently unpopular directions. How then do I feel on the day of this matriarchal mourning? As I scan the statements of my memory bank for early deposits (it'd be a kid's memory bank account at a neurological NatWest where you're encouraged to become a greedy little capitalist with an escalating family of porcelain pigs), I see her in her hairy helmet, condescending on Nationwide, eviscerating eunuch MPs and baffled BBC fuddy duddies with her General Zodd stare and coldly condemning the IRA. Hire a Writer. And we won back three we lost at by-elections. She may have got it slightly wrong. Over the years, and through much re-telling, the story had it that Thatcher told Hitchens to bend over, and that she spanked him with her order papers. To her detractors, Thatcher is the prime minister who wiped out more than 15% of Britain's industrial base with her dogmatic monetarism, squandered the once-in-a-lifetime windfall of North Sea oil on unemployment pay and tax cuts, and made the UK the unbalanced, unequal country it is today. speech in the House of Commons, her The centralised statism that dominated politics for much of the 20th century, given its last pathetic gasp under the profligate government of Gordon Brown, ultimately failed the poor while proving financially unsustainable and unsuited to modern times. In retrospect, in much dissenting commentary there was often a taint of unexamined sexism. There had been Churchill and his defiance; there had been Kipling and his If; there had been her father in his grocer's shop in Grantham. She gave Nigel Lawson at the Treasury his head and was genuinely alarmed when he cut income tax to 40%. 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. She would, say some who knew her, have a found a way to finesse a change of direction by now. The Crown Season 4 brings with it a whole lot of change for Queen Elizabeth II's family and, more importantly, the United Kingdom. At Cheltenham the following month she History will judge her, but not a country in Europe was untouched by Thatcher's example. I don't see that. History, Sample Essay. Margaret Thatcher's landmark Bruges speech about the future of Europe was never intended to push the UK towards the exit, the man who wrote it says. 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. 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.". 'It's a wonder nobody has taken a gun to that woman.' Nelson travelled to South Africa where he helped negotiate a deal that saw the UDA, UVF and Ulster Resistance acquire AK-47 automatic rifles, pistols, grenades, and RPG rocket launchers in late 1987 or early 1988. Creative destruction was capitalism's necessary agent, so equilibrium was bound to be restored. Almost everything said of Thatcher's early years was untrue, partly through her own invention.
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