No elderly person would be deprived of the dignity of spectacles, dentures or a hearing aid because they couldn't afford them. One of the few direct hits scored in the modern era was when Alex Ross and James Herring remixed Nick Clegg's bizarre "I'm sorry" speech and turned it into a hilarious R&B tune. It accounted for a large part of the mark Thatcher left on Britain. She would not have been half the . On the other hand, growth has been depressed because weak trade unions can no longer ensure wage increases keep pace with inflation. The last time I met her was after all this was over. She was a prime minister who happened to be a woman. The remainder are listed without a text because sometimes no record survives with the European Community when she If it ended in disaster, the seeds were only partly hers. On one visit, our campaign chairman, William J Casey, later director of the CIA, came along, and we had a fruitful meeting at 10 Downing Street. Her effect was to force a deeper consideration of priorities, sometimes expressed in a variety of dystopias. In the three years prior to receiving these weapons the loyalist death squads killed 34 people. Gloves. I grew up in Essex with a single mum and a go-getter Dagenham dad. 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. It was a watershed moment in Irish politics. How could anyone who was so resolutely Margaret Thatcher be anything else? March 7, 1991 - Receives the US Medal of Freedom from President George Bush. When President Reagan died in June 2004, she delivered a The "crime" he was accused of was to reclaim the oil revenue from local and foreign thieves, and use it to tackle poverty. To project the ideas of strength and . After the Dublin European Council in November 1979 she began a long battle I wouldn't say I have got myself a Kennedy-type speech-writer yet . Certainly, in 1983, it did not occur to me to criticise Harold Macmillan or Alec Douglas-Home on the doorstep as a sure-fire vote turner. 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. Hire writer now Order. What Is Wrong With Margaret Thatcher's Voice On 'The Crown - Esquire When Sir Geoffrey Howe resigned in consequence, she replied 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. Here is a selection of the best writing from commentators, politicians and journalists on the legacy of Margaret Thatcher's 11 years in power - and on her continuing impact in the time following her downfall, as figures from across the political spectrum examine the legacy of one of the most important political figures from the last half-century, this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama, key role not only in bringing about the first Gulf War, publicly advocate for the 2003 attack on Iraq, the Guardian reported upon the death last month of Hugo Chavez, the Daily Mail has morefemale bylines than any other UK paper, Alan Krueger, chair of Obama's council of economic advisers, nor does the balance of research evidence suggest that greater inequality acts as a spur to growth, decline in trade union membership and the rise in inequality, intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich, the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy, Rik Mayall's student rants in The Young Ones, wicked, incompetent mindset that was the spirit of the 80s, "very fashionable in the Guardian for a few months before the financial crisis". But for others, the change in landscape is all too real. 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. When she returned from Paris many cabinet colleagues showed that Thinking about it now, when I was a child she was just a strict woman telling everyone off and selling everything off. Yet I wrote columns of pretty unremitting hostility to most of what she did. One might even credit Thatcher with a willingness to jettison the old rules and conventions that used to prevent individuals deciding their own destiny. She became leader of the Conservatives the year I was born and prime minister when I was four. an interviewer "there is no such thing as society", "We have not "What's going on there, mate?" Thatcher did not believe in "picking winners"; instead she preferred to rely on market forces to ensure the survival of the fittest. Each now seems banal. Thatcher's infamous failure to recognise the existence of society was a double failure. Is that what made her so formidable, her ability to ignore the suffering of others? Later, when the BBC and ITV scheduled two programmes about Gibraltar, Thatcher tried to stop them. For a start, she had a superb memory for a brief, and she would have had no problem memorising quickly any number of lines. They're not Thatcher. Speech to Conservative Party Conference - Margaret Thatcher Thatcher is often credited with showing that you could get to the top whatever your background. Having no social or political connection with the class most affected, she gave a very good impression of not caring. Whatever else may be true of her, Thatcher engaged in incredibly consequential acts that affected millions of people around the world. I was on my own. But former speechwriter Trevor Reeves can no longer . Margaret Thatcher's speech writer will miss funeral but 'shed a tear' Everything has its season. Between 1945-90 every statement made by Margaret Thatcher is listed, Thatcher became a supremely self-confident leader. The London mayor regretted that usage, but he surely understood its origins. "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. It was all very well for me to write books. Though the Prime Minister was known to shed a tear or two during her 11 years leading the United Kingdom . Thatcher and Reagan went on to facilitate a colossal transfer of wealth from poor to rich, leading to the world economic crash we now witness. No homeless or disabled people need beg on the streets. In her eulogy for the former president, Thatcher uses specific structure, tone and diction, and word choices throughout her writing to . There was only one state-approved answering machine available. 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. As she cut local housing budgets, she sent housing benefit soaring in compensation. 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. The Yale Book of Quotations also states, "Thatcher is said to have used this in a 1965 speech.". speech which caused the Soviets to dub her "the Iron Lady", one Thatcher was never insensitive to the impact of her policies on the poor. Lecturing me about the comprehensive schools, of which she created more than any minister before or since. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979, she Thatcher was the Prime Minister of Great Britain during Reagan's presidency, and was close with him which Everyone knows that. She was lucky in surviving the IRA's bomb. It destroyed the public's power to determine via parliament the services and prices of gas, electricity, telephone. In front of his journalist colleagues he was told to stand right in front of her so that she could hit him lightly with her order papers. The Tories triumphed, of course, and lost only two sitting MPs Hamish Gray and the social-security scrounger-bashing Iain Sproat, who vacated his marginal Aberdeen seat and headed for the Scottish Borders, only to suffer defeat there at the hands of the Alliance. Everyone knows where they were when they heard. still being scolded for the remark.You can read here exactly what she said, There's something distinctively creepy - in a Roman sort of way - about this mandated ritual that our political leaders must be heralded and consecrated as saints upon death. In 1976 it still did not help and in the same year they had to take a loan in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) [] . June 30, 1992 - Swearing . Get over her! Prime Minister Thatcher delivered the fourth speech to Congress by a British prime minister. I have few recollections of Thatcher after the slowly chauffeured, weepy Downing Street cortege. Gillian Anderson's portrayal of the Iron Lady in "The Crown" is pretty spot-on. Her Irish policy failed miserably. wrong with politics? There are pangs of nostalgia, yes, because for me she's all tied up with Hi-De-Hi and Speak and Spell and Blockbusters and "follow the bear". Thatcher has said that negotiation, and not strong economic sanctions, is the way to persuade South Africa's white-minority government to dismantle apartheid. speech in the House of Commons, her Howe's "broken cricket bats" speech in the Commons was the killer blow. Above all has been the hollowing out of the labour market. 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.". three press interviews (15-17 November) when Howe's resignation speech 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. The poll-tax rioters. 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. In short, miners believed in society. 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. She, and Blair after her, brought an unprecedented dirigisme to the NHS, education, police and local government. When she walked into Downing Street promising harmony instead of discord, only one in seven children was poor and Britain was more equal than at any time in modern history. 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. . Or perhaps it was just because I was a little kid and more interested in them Weetabix skinheads, Roland Rat and Knight Rider. Thatcher became prime minister because she was a woman, not despite it. Had pollsters and the 24/7 media forced leaders to follow opinion, not lead it? Three separate pieces of legislation between 1980 and 1984 attacked the closed shop, toughened up the laws on picketing and imposed secret strike ballots. Donning a starched coiff and padded shoulders out to there, Emmy Award winner Gillian Anderson of The X-Files is . Only in the sense that all the women beneath her were blinded by falling shards. Adam Smith's invisible hand ended up raising two fingers to her moral project. There were rumours of a different philosophy, at least in personal relationships. The last remnants of the postwar consensus were swept away in the ensuing decade a period that saw the crushing of the trade unions, the Big Bang in the City, council house sales, the privatisation of large chunks of industry, the encouragement of inward investment, tax cuts, attempts to roll back the state, a deep manufacturing recession, a boom in North Sea oil production, and support for the creation of a single market in Europe. She usually knew the limits to public tolerance, gauging how much of the spirit of '45 abided, so even if it was between gritted teeth, she forced herself to say, "The NHS is safe in our hands": she reorganised but did not privatise it. All of the Tory edicts that bludgeoned our nation, as my generation squirmed through ghoulish puberty, were confusing. Thatcher's social instincts were always nostalgic conservative. Making sure the verdict wasn't purloined by others. Copyright Margaret Thatcher Foundation 2023. declared that she wanted our money back, invited the 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. 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". As a result, Labour authorities in eight or so British cities have set up fairness commissions to reduce income differences locally. Thatcher's use of rhetorical devices supports her eulogy because the concept of Reagan being more. The resignation was announced She wanted to win, but did not put much faith in the quick smile. 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." 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. And then, perversely, would come the throwaway, sign-off remark to the effect of: "At least you know where you stand with Maggie she hates us and we hate her.". (They also reveal how she loved to surround herself with yes men who were always men.) Who was 'Iron Lady' Margaret Thatcher? | Live Science I can't articulate with the skill of either of "the Marks" Steel or Thomas why Thatcher and Thatcherism were so bad for Britain but I do recall that even to a child her demeanour and every discernible action seemed to be to the detriment of our national spirit and identity. Nissan's arrival in the north-east showed that Britain was no longer the west's industrial pariah. Under this heading, Thatcher left a dark legacy that, like her successes, has still not disappeared behind the historical horizon. Less noted . It's how she would have, if pressed, put it herself. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979. Each was characterised by her attention to detail. which revealed a good deal as to her political Every quality had its obverse, but she had a myth-making charisma to capture the world's imagination. Thatcher's threat to butcher the mining industry, destroy the fabric of mining communities and in particular the trade union to which miners had a bond of loyalty, was met with the fiercest resistance any government has met in peacetime. The prime minister was intensely interested in the campaign, and asked many penetrating questions. Collins (Oxford University Press, 1998-2000). "The News" was the pompous conduit through which we suckled at the barren baroness through newscaster wet-nurses, naturally; not direct from the steel teat. Margaret Thatcher's Eulogy for Ronald Reagan- Rhetorical Analysis Essay 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. performance at a Press Conference afterwards. In 1984 Britain had 186 working coalmines and approximately 170,000 coalminers. Look at the trains on the track, the phone in your house, the trio of 1980s teenagers who lead the three main parties. a new dominance from Brussels". Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher's attack was wholesale. They are acolytes of a raw Thatcher cult they have rough-hewn and exaggerated in their own image. At its heart must be an active programme to create good jobs and raise living standards. The Lady forced the opposition party to accommodate itself to the new, Thatcherite settlement in which the market would rule unless stated otherwise. 'The Crown': Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth's Key Conflicts her intention to allow her name to go forward to the second ballot (20 It was part of her conspicuous virtue, her indifference to familiar political conventions. and Great speeches: 'Orwellian nightmare' if Tories fail, claims Margaret Thatcher. And nor could Thatcher, much to her relief as she allegedly abhorred the word, as doubtless Chanel did, too. The endemic worklessness of her era was never repaired now her successors blame the victims. Witness the steady downgrading of local government or the persistent assumption that the private sector will always be better than the public. If I become PM, I will deliver the radical set of reforms need to unleash growth. At Bruges in September 1988 she outraged European orthodoxy by declaring: Mrs Thatcher told the assembly: "It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.". 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. departing Downing Street on 28 November. MT gave her first But the sense of community evaporated. Margaret Thatcher has 43 books on Goodreads with 14026 ratings. 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. to his resignation letter on 1 November, stated Thatcher is remembered for her achievements, but more for a presence, which was wrapped up with being a woman. Ithink on balance, it was for the better, and so, plainly did Thatcher's chief successor, Tony Blair. The left misleads us and maybe itself when it says that Thatcher's policies, extended by New Labour and then by the coalition, have failed. It was mostly foreigners who could not understand why she fell. They are a more energetic and impressive group than their predecessors, often with experience outside politics that makes them impatient and independent-minded. Reagan and Thatcher first met in 1975, as my friend and colleague Peter Hannaford reminded me just today. Margaret Thatcher, 'Iron Lady' of British politics, is dead - USA TODAY at Brighton, insisting that the Conference go on and In this moment she inspired only curiosity, a pale phantom, dumbly filling her day. She pointed out that she was only 10 years old when she ceased to be prime minister. The price we all continue to pay for Thatcherite policies is to live in a less cohesive and more antisocial society, in which community life is weaker, people feel less able to trust each other and fewer of those in government have the experience and compassion to represent or understand the vast majority. 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. 4.44 avg rating 39 ratings 2 editions. Was it cruelty? All rights reserved. camps were revealed in August 1992. Bernard Ingham, journalist and civil servant. The Man Whose Powerful Critique of Socialism Influenced Margaret Thatcher National Press Club Luncheon Speakers: Margaret Thatcher (Recorded But she exploited her luck. The real comic nemeses of Thatcher were the puppets of Spitting Image. A massive programme of social housing would be a good place to start, stimulating the economy. North sea oil was squandered when it should have seeded new industries. 1971 was the year of Ted Heath's Conservative government, which was trying to make huge savings to the budget. She was a gentle and peaceable woman my mother, that is and said few hard words about anyone, but in certain parts of the United Kingdom, and among certain social classes, Mrs T was detested, and not just for what people thought were her policies but for her persona for what she was. As coal, steel and shipbuilding fell under her wrecking ball, whole communities were destroyed. Any attempts at revisionism do no favours to her, women or feminism. She remained in power till I was 15. Watch a million words pour out today placing her anywhere from Boudicca to the wicked witch of the west. But Thatcher was still cautious. But she regarded rightwing causes as an intellectual hobby. 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. Sent Bobby Sands to an Irish hero's grave without a blink. Chvez is gone, but the voters are likely to re-elect Chavismo on 14 April. She was able to reach In my view, nothing said prior to her passing or since has been inaccurate in the description of this very special, warm relationship, the likes of which we may never see again. MT prayed on the History, Sample Essay. Reagan would often hasten to remind those paying tribute to his cold war strategy that it was, in the strictest sense of the term, a team effort. She refused to reform social security, or even curb its abuse. Promises. Are there, even, things we look back on with regret for their passing? Arguably, it was not the sale of council houses that was the problem, but the failure to replace the stock and maintain a sufficient supply of affordable homes. 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. This was most evident in the shooting dead of three unarmed IRA activists in Gibraltar in March 1988. She made her maiden But on their catastrophic economic policy, it's full-speed ahead into the concrete wall. Died: 24 February 2023, aged 90 Sir Bernard Ingham was Margaret Thatcher writ large. 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. 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. . She lost seven cabinet ministers on the Europe question, a record that permeated the party for years afterwards. Perhaps it is more simple for all the iniquities of capitalism, the tide of history favours the right. I was a professional writer. If anything, it becomes more compelling to commemorate those bad acts upon death as the only antidote against a society erecting a false and jingoistically self-serving history. She was lucky, in her enemies and friends notably Reagan in the Falklands conflict. Speeches, interviews & other statements - Margaret Thatcher Born: 21 June 1932 in Halifax. They were puzzled by the Scots' antipathy, given the Falklands war and the strong militaristic history of the Highlands and elsewhere. What will not be forgotten? It led to riots that nobody needed. 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. She considered European Commission president Jacques Delors a campaigner for . declared that she wanted our money back. It was meant as a term of condemnation, a concise way of arguing that riots in the street or the devastation of a pit village were the inevitable features of this new land that had arisen in the 1980s, a country reshaped by the woman at the top. These developments set a benchmark. Yet the Daily Mail has morefemale bylines than any other UK paper and is not exactly a totem of gender equality andfemale-friendliness. 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. 'The Crown' Season 4: Did Margaret Thatcher Really Sound - Decider I didn't know what to think of this fearsome woman. Still plumbing for the essence, we have to examine other bits of residue. It made her virtually unsackable as education secretary. The battle with the miners and leftwing councils lay ahead, as did the trauma of an IRA assassination bid. I think on balance Thatcher did for Britain what was needed at the time. A longer version of this article appears on Gerry Adams' blog, Margaret Thatcher was good at destruction. 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. Thatcher was a divisive woman who created discord, not harmony. November). No one noticed, but she was Blair's first guest at Downing Street in 1997. John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. I'd unthinkingly imbibed enough doctrine to know that, troubled as I was, there was little point looking elsewhere for support. The Thatcher Papers - Churchill Archives Centre Public Statements of Margaret Thatcher on CD-ROM, 1945-90, edited Christopher This, too, we still live with. One turns with gratitude to Alan Clark's diaries for a fine description of being summoned to No 10 and being subjected to just such an examination. At Cheltenham the following month she For a national matriarch she is oddly unmaternal. Somesay she revolutionised British politics certainly never again could people say nobody would vote for a woman but it served a reactionary end. (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 right, he was wrong. For Thatcher it all ended months later in November 1990 when she was forced to resign. It's like a whimsical live-action episode of Postman Pat where his cat is craftily carved up and sold back to him. A distinction is often made between two traditions of British Conservative thought: the paternalist "one nation/middle way" tradition, and the more libertarian one that is associated with Margaret Thatcher.
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