Leaving aside the detail that the word "feminist" came into existence in 1895, comfortably in Chanel's lifetime, the woman who valued femininity above all other qualities in a woman and was heavily involved with the Nazis, including a wartime relationship with German officer Hans Gunther von Dincklage, could not, in any circumstances, be described as a feminist. Margaret Thatcher formally tendered her resignation to the Queen early this morning after leaving Downing Street for the last time. In 1979 it had a mile or so of shipyards, a sugar works and factories that still made rope and ship's fittings. All Rights Reserved. for the disk. For some, the only consequence of that shift, still visible today, will be a changed brand name or higher bills. Margaret Thatcher's most important long-term legacy is likely to be the huge rise in inequality that she caused. It may be wrong to imagine that she intended to de-industrialise Britain, but the policies followed by her government had that effect. her maiden Thatcher was a divisive woman who created discord, not harmony. ", 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. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one's enemies. But as weand others (including Alan Krueger, chair of Obama's council of economic advisers) have shown, wider income differences reduce social mobility and make it harder for people with poorer backgrounds to do so. He was a political and historical figure and the need to accurately portray his legacy and prevent misleading hagiography easily outweighed precepts of death etiquette that prevail when a private person dies. Meeting Gorbachev for the first time in December 1984 she declared: "We Was it cruelty? Large parts of society never recovered, while Germany and other countries managed the transition without such brutality. making her big speech the following day as scheduled. She was a steadfast friend to brutal tyrants such as Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein and Indonesian dictator General Suharto ("One of our very best and most valuable friends"). This was a historic step, and resulted in further reinforcing the US-UK alliance. I am reminded of this every time the debate comes up about whether more female bylines would reduce sexism in the media. She defended Ronald When Sir Geoffrey Howe resigned in consequence, she replied It was not interested in a resolution. But she exploited her luck. This is a political style, an aesthetic even, that has disappeared from view. Copyright Margaret Thatcher Foundation 2023. 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. (Interestingly, Currie also recalled that when she approached Thatcher in 1988 to get approval for the world's first national breast-screening programme, she tried to appeal to the PM initially "as a woman" but that swiftly proved unsuccessful. She was unashamed about this, loathing localism and rejecting calls to diminish the "strong state". delivered an outstanding defence of the Government in the Commons. In retrospect, in much dissenting commentary there was often a taint of unexamined sexism. Flags were flying over Port Stanley on 14 June. While she spoke of his example as a beacon, she knew very well that she was an important component of what is often attributed solely to him, and in the first instance "winning" the cold war. series of famous statements that marked the end of her premiership, She continued for some reason to consider me worth talking to. Far from "smashing the glass ceiling", she was the aberration, the one who got through and then pulled the ladder up right after her. Thatcher's reign helped to inspire alternative comedy by creating a generation so bereft of hope that they started putting on gigs just for the sake of something to do. All rights reserved. There are more than 8,000. By the 1983 election she had sold off only Britoil and some council houses. 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. This, too, we still live with. Texts for listed statements are available on the site in almost 70 per Faced down trade union leaders after her early years apprentice years, when Jim Callaghan's Britain was falling apart in which the commonest fear was that the little lady would not be able to deal with them across the table. Born: 21 June 1932 in Halifax. Had pollsters and the 24/7 media forced leaders to follow opinion, not lead it? 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. April 17, 2013, 6:40 PM. What will not be forgotten? But it was the killing of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane in February 1989 that reveals the depth of the Thatcher government's state collusion policy. April 8, 2013. But these concrete achievements do not wholly explain why she still looms so large, large enough that not one but two current West End plays The Audience and Billy Elliot grant Thatcher a pivotal, if largely unsympathetic, role, whether seen or unseen. Many hated her. What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neo-liberal inculcation begins. Perhaps we suspected that reality had created a character beyond our creative reach. . The seismic shift from industry to financial-based capitalism that Thatcherism ushered in rattled the establishment. April 25, 2020. Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. Her heirs have not learned that lesson, with no sign of their promised "rebalancing". Handbag. This site follow the same rules (and shares an editor). Out! We watched as her high heels went click-click-click across the stones of the Acropolis and the cement floors of Tito's steel mills. Although the "right to buy" and the privatisation of utilities by selling shares to new small investors was often justified as giving rights to "the little people", the reality is that the less well-off fell ever further behind the rich. 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. First was the sheer depth of hostility towards the Tories in general. She was an ardent pro-European, and her 1979 manifesto made no mention of radical union reform or privatisation. Her refusal to stand against apartheid, her civil war against the unions, her aggression towards our neighbours in Ireland and a taxation system that was devised in the dark ages, the bombing of a retreating ship it's just not British. In the 2004 eulogy in honor of the late president, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher uses a series of rhetorical devices such as parallelism, repetition, and ethos to convey the message in which Reagan was much more than an excellent president. make the case for intervention to protect Bosnia when Serb concentration These values were the exact opposite of those Margaret Thatcher espoused. I was a professional writer. Her gender led her into government and the shadow cabinet, despite Edward Heath's aversion to her. Each now seems banal. Oxford CD-ROM explains how the statements were assembled and edited 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". We have his example. An unclubbable outsider, she allied herself to another outsider, Keith Joseph, and his free-market set. of times. talked of "Victorian Values". Keith Joseph was her guru. In her speech, Thatcher used rhetorical techniques to show the strength and principles of Reagan and project those values onto the American people. Sunstein worked for a Democratic president, but did not meet the Labour leader or key advisers. They are a more energetic and impressive group than their predecessors, often with experience outside politics that makes them impatient and independent-minded. When Margaret Thatcher won the general election in 1979, she became Prime Minister of a land in chaos. But now the history was what mattered. Government will respond to clear leadership if it knows what a leader wants. They were puzzled by the Scots' antipathy, given the Falklands war and the strong militaristic history of the Highlands and elsewhere. Yet I wrote columns of pretty unremitting hostility to most of what she did. It'd be disingenuous to omit that there were a fair number of ding-dong-style celebratory messages amidst the pensive reflections on the end of an era. 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. Thatcher's 11 years of dictating British policy in Ireland was a legacy of bitterness and entrenched division. Margaret Thatcher Essay: Health Category. Britain was battered out of the somnolent conservatism, across awide front of economic policies and priorities, that had held back progress and, arguably, prosperity. All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people's pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms. Second, it's now easier to see the scale of the setback she inflicted on Britain's idea of its own future. Later, when the BBC and ITV scheduled two programmes about Gibraltar, Thatcher tried to stop them. 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. Chavez was indeed a divisive and controversial figure, and it would have been reckless to conceal that fact out of some misplaced deference to the grief of his family and supporters. . But every prime minister since has bowed to her legacy, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown eager to be snapped with her on their doorstep. 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." The Big Bang of City deregulation, the Tell Sid scramble for buying and selling shares, the sense that money is the highest value, wealth the greatest sign of worth all these were hallmarks of the Thatcher era in its mid-80s pomp. Thatcher jokes were big business, from Rik Mayall's student rants in The Young Ones, to Harry Enfield's satire of Thatcher's children with his Loadsamoney character. They rallied around each other when times were hard. In former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's eulogy speech for President Ronald Reagan (2004), she elucidates what a kind and powerful man he was. ROBIN HARRIS worked for the Conservative Party from 1978, and increasingly closely with Margaret Thatcher herself from 1985, writing her speeches and advising on policy. 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. This was most evident in the shooting dead of three unarmed IRA activists in Gibraltar in March 1988. to his resignation letter on 1 November, defended herself against rough This regrettable transformation was blessed by a leader who probably did not know it was happening because she didn't care if it happened or not. The widening of income differences between rich and poor that took place during the 80s (particularly from 1985) is the most rapid ever recorded. Yet, at that last encounter, her tone was different. And by my own firsthand experience, it was genuine to the core. But other villages have never recovered, their heart and purpose ripped out. 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. Reagan had sought to meet with then Prime Minister James Callaghan, but the request was rejected, and bucked to then Foreign Minister David Owen. 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." to secure international action to repair the damaged ozone layer. But what bound all opposition to Margaret Thatcher's programme was a suspicion that the grocer's daughter was intent on monetising human value, that she had no heart and, famously, cared little for the impulses that bind individuals into a society. Such items have an The poll tax showed the opposite, the weakness of Thatcher's strength. She was 87. 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. Plus there's the fact that comedy is now a big business, and there's less money in sharp satire than gentle observation. No children excluded from school activities because mothers couldn't pay. In short, miners believed in society. 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. At the October 1980 Conservative Conference, in the midst of economic recession, Are there, even, things we look back on with regret for their passing? This was hardly the first or even the worst example of a dig at Thatcher tinged so needlessly with sexism. It was illegal to put an extension lead on your phone. But the choice captures her perfectly. Government policy during the 1980s was little more than a war policy, aimed at defeating or isolating republicanism. This is what we mean by the Thatcher revolution, imposing on Britain, for better or for worse, some of the liberalisation that the major continental economies know,20 years later, they still need. Rishi Sunak: 'Our country needs the . Each was characterised by her attention to detail. (No wonder it sold 7m copies a week). The author Nassim Taleb traded equations on a whiteboard with Gus O'Donnell, then head of the civil service, as they debated econometrics; at another, I watched entranced as Lord Heseltine argued urban policies with Harvard's Ed Glaeser. I didn't know what to think of this fearsome woman. Emery Evans . In this moment she inspired only curiosity, a pale phantom, dumbly filling her day. Thatcher answered that question, re-energising the concept of democratic leadership. 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. 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. 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. Perhaps she had just come inside. 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. in his defence during the IranContra affair, told At the Citizen's Theatre in Glasgow, the pantomime featured the Wicked Witch of the South; everyone knew her real identity. The impact that Hayek's writing had on Thatcher, her advisors, and her policies is undeniable. Privatisation was the single most massive attack on democracy we have seen. 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. But she also provided great material. 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 . the British Embassy in Paris and stated She was always the Spitting Image bully. 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. be a nation in retreat". Tim Bale, author of The Conservative Party: from Thatcher to Cameron, says it was conviction. From a peak of 13 million in 1979, trade union membership had declined by 30% by 1990, and is now not much more than half what it was. "Maggie! Those strikes were confusing to me as a child. But Margaret Thatcher did not hesitate, and the long, substantive lunch seemed to energize both future world leaders. 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. In a twitter of panic, Labour shadow ministers sent out pleas yesterday: "Hoping all Labour supporters will respond with dignity and respect to news of Baroness Thatcher's death." The blunt, pathetic reality today is that a little old lady has died, who in the winter of her life had to water roses alone under police supervision. Demonising unions and stripping the great mass of private-sector workers of a voice and power in the workplace is still the root of the great living standards crisis that saw the share of wealth going to wages slide long before Lehman Brothers failed. Since 1990 a selection of statements is listed. So look around this kingdom of ours, at a devolved Scotland contemplating independence a state of affairs that owes much to Thatcher's antagonistic relationship with that country. In 1984 Britain had 186 working coalmines and approximately 170,000 coalminers. We were wary of this. But it was overlaid by the supposedly masculine virtues, sometimes more manly than the men could ever assemble. If I become PM, I will deliver the radical set of reforms need to unleash growth. Thatcher is gone, but Thatcherism has infected and discredited all mainstream parties, depriving us of a chance to turn it down. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979. At countless demonstrations throughout the 80s, it expressed a curious ambivalence a first name intimacy as well as a furious rejection of all she stood for. So the woman I met in Curzon Street, dimpling elegantly, can now be seen in history with an unexpected achievement to her credit. Of all the things to criticise Thatcher for, calling her out for being a woman seems like something of a wasted bullet.
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