She remained in power till I was 15. Such seminars are regular events in Downing Street under the coalition. There's still the rage, still the unfairness, so where is the comedy? This was hardly the first or even the worst example of a dig at Thatcher tinged so needlessly with sexism. 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. We have his example. But other villages have never recovered, their heart and purpose ripped out. Eventually, the Italian contingent, largely existential or postmodern, rose up against us. I hope I'm not being reductive but it seems Thatcher's time in power was solely spent diminishing the resources of those who had least for the advancement of those who had most. at The Hague in May 1992. It always irks when rightwing folk demonstrate in a familial or exclusive setting the values that they deny in a broader social context. 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. Britain's record on innovation and investment have been extremely poor, while the hollowing out of manufacturing left the economy over-dependent on the de-regulated City. Copyright Margaret Thatcher Foundation 2023. Throw the Lib Dems into the mix and it becomes highly combustible. 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. Thatcher came to personify those ready to push anyone aside to gain power in a man's world and strengthen that world with their ambition. "The original alternative comics just did it because they had to," he says. Far from "smashing the glass ceiling", she was the aberration, the one who got through and then pulled the ladder up right after her. She showed that modern prime ministers can still mark out room for individual manoeuvre. After being asked to deliver a eulogy for the late Ronald Reagan on June 11, 2004, Margaret Thatcher gave a speech about her dear friend, and highlighted his best qualities through her writing. If I become PM, I will deliver the radical set of reforms need to unleash growth. Contrary to an increasingly common belief, "a woman who is successful" is not synonymous with "a feminist". After the Dublin European Council in November 1979 she began a long battle Words. For years, in fact, she despised writers, except those who did her speeches. Its impact on the streets of the north is evident in the statistics of death. Between 1945-90 every statement made by Margaret Thatcher is listed, Rows with Lawson and Geoffrey Howe over a European currency (where she was right) presaged the final shambles of the poll tax. The Cameron generation wrongly see in the 1980s a revolution to emulate, starting with an economic crisis just like hers, as a chance to reshape everything. Her Irish policy failed miserably. 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. Yet, at that last encounter, her tone was different. Cabinet rank in 1970 without appearing on television more than a handful Quotation being the warmest form of praise, Larkin was naturally touched. in his defence during the IranContra affair later that year.. Elected for a third term in June 1987, she told She continued for some reason to consider me worth talking to. The last time I met her was after all this was over. morning, Available for everyone, funded by readers. This speech was delivered soon after her taking office in 1979. A massive programme of social housing would be a good place to start, stimulating the economy. 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 was a Charles I moment in British history. Everything has its season. Elton has previously said that he did two minutes about Thatcher and two hours about his knob, and all anyone ever remembered was the Thatcher material. Rather, she was a classic example of a certain kind of conservative woman who believed that all women should pull themselves up just as she had done, conveniently overlooking that not all women are blessed with the privileges that had been available to her, such as a wealthy and supportive husband and domestic help. 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 . But former speechwriter Trevor Reeves can no longer . The Thatcher government was across all the details of this shipment. It was under her leadership that in 1982 that the Force Research Unit (FRU) was established within the British Army Intelligence Corps. But we reckoned we got Thatcher only too well and didn't like what we saw, far less what we heard. Not all writers were against her. She needed followers, as long as they went in her frequently unpopular directions. Yet, as the heated benefits debate showed last week, Labour is trapped by history bereft of fresh ideas and, when tentatively offering proposals, strangled by the most stifling conservatism. Thatcher's 11 years of dictating British policy in Ireland was a legacy of bitterness and entrenched division. Luckily, a longer paper means you get a bigger discount! For those of us who were dismayed by her brisk distaste for that cosy state-dominated world, it was never enough to dislike her. Perhaps this is unsurprising: four years ago Ed Miliband sneered at "nudge" economics as something "very fashionable in the Guardian for a few months before the financial crisis". In fact, Margaret Thatcher was known for her lack of a sense of humour. Thatcher never kept a diary, but the archive includes rich details of her role in important domestic and world events. Yet the Daily Mail has morefemale bylines than any other UK paper and is not exactly a totem of gender equality andfemale-friendliness. But within a few years, a third of children were poor, a sign of the yawning inequality from which the country never recovered. But growth rates in the decades since her period in office have been lower than during those that preceded her; nor does the balance of research evidence suggest that greater inequality acts as a spur to growth. 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. In 1976 it still did not help and in the same year they had to take a loan in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) [] . It knew what Thatcher wanted. Ed Miliband, a policy wonk himself, claims to be a conviction politician like Thatcher. ", 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. 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. She describes Reagan as her friend and continues to narrate his good acts in America during his presidency. Now it was the turn of the words, and no one, of course, would, against all the odds, do them better than the lady who, 25 years before, once thought the sky was beyond her limit. But she regarded rightwing causes as an intellectual hobby. That did the trick.). In the 80s, she was the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy and is now simply called "comedy". Indeed a person with achemistry that repelled almost all thesignificant males in Edward Heath's cabinet who could never become theparty leader. In the Meryl Streep film, The Iron Lady, it's the scenes of domesticity that appear most absurd. 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. 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. However, for almost a decade Sinn Fin had been patently trying to build a peace process and unfolding events on the world stage including the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, and the release of Mandela were evidence that governments, and apparently intractable situations, could change. 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. 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. Either way, I'm an adult now and none of those things are on telly any more so there's no excuse for apathy. I always felt a bit sorry for her biological children Mark and Carol, wondering from whom they would get their cuddles. Shoot-to-kill actions by British forces also significantly increased. This is an especially pertinent problem given its heartfelt desire for redistribution of wealth. performance at a Press Conference afterwards. (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. 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. of her best Parliamentary speeches in a debate on the strikes. Above all, they lack her competence at running the machinery of government. Typically, this distinction is mapped onto the ideas that Conservatives hold about equality. When Heath fell, her promoters ran her as a stalking horse because, as a woman, they thought she could not win. Former Tory MP Louise Mensch, with no apparent sense of irony, invoked precepts of propriety to announce: "Pygmies of the left so predictably embarrassing yourselves, know this: not a one of your leaders will ever be globally mourned like her.". recommended by Simon Heffer. 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. A couple of days later on the 11th, Margaret Thatcher the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, wrote an eulogy for Ronald Reagan. Critical Commentary: Margaret Thatcher outlined the British policy in relation to various world issues. The cautious tactician was suppressed. Mrs Thatcher told the assembly: "It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.". Demanding that no criticisms be voiced to counter that hagiography is to enable false history and a propagandistic whitewashing of bad acts, distortions that become quickly ossified and then endure by virtue of no opposition and the powerful emotions created by death. studying Thatcher's speeches . She abolished city-wide local government, capped spending and expected the poll tax to further undermine alternative voices. 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. She, for one, never underestimated her friend from California, then a state of some 24 million. Sue Gray used to be my boss. I didn't know what to think of this fearsome woman. The romantic image of the lady in the tank spurs them on. I think on balance Thatcher did for Britain what was needed at the time. Creative destruction was capitalism's necessary agent, so equilibrium was bound to be restored. The 70s was Britain's most equal decade. 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". successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to The Iron Lady had a green thumband a surprisingly green philosophy. We had had a strange relationship. Interview by Benedict King. 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. 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. First was the sheer depth of hostility towards the Tories in general. "Maggie! On June 11th, 2004 Margaret Thatcher gave a speech to the American people at Ronald Reagan's funeral. Margaret Thatcher, Signed Speech on Hayek, 2003, Estimate 1,500-2,000 . Back when we called her Maggie, when it seemed she would have her wish and "go on and on" in ruling the country, her opponents would lament some new step towards social ruin with the withering, two-word verdict: "Thatcher's Britain.". 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. . A friend of South African apartheid and mass murderers from Kissinger and Pinochet to the Khmer Rouge after they had killed two million Cambodians she was a zealous saleswoman for the arms industry. 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. To claim that any woman's success is a boon for feminism is like saying all publicity is good publicity. The Independent has the story. "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. speech to the House of Lords in June 1993. She was a prime minister who happened to be a woman. It's true that whenever there's a major news story, millions of people immediately begin strip-mining it for puns and bon mots, making it harder for professional comics to develop focused, funny material that nobody's heard before. a If the Falklands war was the making of Thatcher, then the poll tax was her achilles heel not least in Scotland. be a nation in retreat". She refused to reform social security, or even curb its abuse. Among them was loyalist Brian Nelson, a former British soldier and member of the Ulster Defence Association. performance at a Press Conference afterwards, the When President Reagan died in June 2004, she delivered a Thatcher's most baleful influence on government was not on industries and services she privatised but those she did not. And nor could Thatcher, much to her relief as she allegedly abhorred the word, as doubtless Chanel did, too. 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. The young men were those whose childhood was blighted by the effects of relative poverty and inequality on family life. Margaret Thatcher had planned to attack Labour's unwillingness to condemn picket-line violence in her 1984 conference speech but changed her mind when an IRA bomb hit The Grand Hotel in Brighton. She attacked the Treaty of Maastricht in a But she exploited her luck. Her voice, a bellicose yawn, somehow both boring and boring I could ignore the content but the intent drilled its way in. This report of the Conservative party conference ran in the Guardian on Saturday October 11 1980, Edited and full versions of Margaret Thatcher's 'The lady's not for turning' speech, delivered at the Conservative party conference in Brighton on 10 October 1980, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every . "Thatcher as mother" seemed, to my tiddly mind, anathema. she warned that she was not She had left a Britain marked by private affluence and public squalor. with concern about global warming, having done more than any other politician April 25, 2020. It was sad that she had to learn it in war, a grim example to her British and US successors. We were wary of this. "No, no, no". In 1990, Margaret Thatcher emerged as one of the first world leaders to champion climate science, issuing a call to action to fight manmade global warming at the Second World Climate Conference hosted at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. still being scolded for the remark.You can read here exactly what she said, John Major was elected her successor yesterday by Conservative Party members. The task of representing the White House usually was the role of the vice-president, but in this special case, the Reagans and the Bushes both attended. Margaret Thatcher's Speech to Congress. Later that year she introduced the broadcasting ban on Sinn Fin, which prevented viewers and listeners hearing my voice. But she personified the change from meaning to meaninglessness in so many settlements and lives, and for this reason she is hard to forgive. What will not be forgotten? which revealed a good deal as to her political Here shovels the earth during a tree-planting ceremony . It always struck me as peculiar, too, when the Spice Girls briefly championed Thatcher as an early example of girl power. Please activate cookies in order to turn autoplay off. The set text is still Thatcher's declaration quoted in The Audience that "There is no such thing as society". All rights reserved. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979, she To have achieved all this alone would have made Margaret Thatcher a towering, transformational figure, one who altered the physical fabric of the nation. The truth is less significant than the alteration to it. Margaret Thatcher's most popular book is The Downing Street Years. Britain was battered out of the somnolent conservatism, across awide front of economic policies and priorities, that had held back progress and, arguably, prosperity. He'd been a bully, she said, whereas Mrs T was warm and understanding. Of course, it's in politics that the shadow looms most clearly. This is the area where we need to make progress not just in restoring strong local government, but in understanding that democracy means more than a Westminster vote. 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." Nations need to know the big picture of where they belong and, coinciding with the Thatcher appearance at the top, clarity had apparently broken through the clouds of historic ambivalence. In a eulogy by the former prime minister of Great Britain, Margret Thatcher honors the legacy of Ronald Reagan, the late president. 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. And that made it easy to mock her. Therein, 30 years ago, lay the great Thatcher asset and the electorally lethal Thatcher impact in Scotland. The Crown Season 4 brings with it a whole lot of change for Queen Elizabeth II's family and, more importantly, the United Kingdom. It is odd to reflect that in Thatcher's time, the British novel enjoyed a comparatively lively resurgence. Maybe my memory is fanciful. It's how she would have, if pressed, put it herself. Ronald Reagan, the former 40th president of the United States died on June 5th of 2004. Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home, Heath: they seem, by comparison, evanescent figures. The news last week that they are instead considering cutting or freezing the minimum wage surely undermines any pretence that the government is acting either coherently or in the public interest. Perhaps, though, Thatcher "the monster" didn't die yesterday from a stroke, perhaps that Thatcher died as she sobbed self-pitying tears as she was driven, defeated, from Downing Street, ousted by her own party. MT gave her first On the day Thatcher died, the Daily Mail ran a piece claiming that Coco Chanel "was a feminist before the word existed". Thatcher's use of rhetorical devices supports her eulogy because the concept of Reagan being more. As working families in poverty now account for more than half of those below the poverty line, a government committed to "making work pay" should surely encourage this trend and raise the minimum wage. When all the public amenities were flogged, the adverts made it seem to my childish eyes fun and positive, jaunty slogans and affable British stereotypes jostling about in villages, selling people companies that they'd already paid for through tax. Respected, viewed with awe, a conviction politician, but if liking came into it, that was an accident. The Thatcher government believed that the criminalisation of the republican prisoners would break the republican struggle. There were big tax cuts for those on the highest incomes, driven by the belief that this would encourage entrepreneurship. At Cheltenham the following month she Though the Prime Minister was known to shed a tear or two during her 11 years leading the United Kingdom . Maybe it was the sound of the estuary pronunciation robbing her of her aspirational airs, a prototype of the Bouquet/Bucket joke. 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. Thatcher's title is Baroness. What, in retrospect, seems creative and what destructive? She became harder than hard. She pointed out that she was only 10 years old when she ceased to be prime minister. "We have not I have few recollections of Thatcher after the slowly chauffeured, weepy Downing Street cortege. The pomp and circumstance that will crown her funeral was proffered by Brown, to some shudders from his own side. The most widely used measure of income differences shows inequality increasing by more than a third during her period in office. at Brighton, insisting that the Conference go on and 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. 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. speech which caused the Soviets to dub her "the Iron Lady". 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. In her speech, Thatcher used rhetorical techniques to show the strength and principles of Reagan and project those values onto the American people. Ithink on balance, it was for the better, and so, plainly did Thatcher's chief successor, Tony Blair. Maggie! At every level of his killing, British agents and agencies had a hand: the leader of the UDA group that carried out the killing was a Special Branch agent, as was the man who confessed to being the gunman, and the man who supplied the gun. Understandably, less cohesive societies with more drugs, more crime and lower mobility waste talent, and are not good places to do business. As leader she was initially hyper-cautious. Perhaps my early apathy and indifference are a result of what Thatcher deliberately engendered, the idea that "there is no such thing as society", that we are alone on our journey through life, solitary atoms of consciousness. 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. 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.". Reversing Britain's long-term economic decline.