Tuesday, April 9, 2013

She will be held in honour for as long as English is spoken: The definitive account of Margaret Thatcher's incredible life

 

MailOnline - news, sport, celebrity, science and health stories

Tuesday, Apr 09 20139PM 57°F12AM55°F5-Day Forecast

She will be held in honour for as long as English is spoken: The definitive account of Margaret Thatcher's incredible life

By PETER OBORNE

PUBLISHED:17:43 EST, 8 April 2013| UPDATED:18:13 EST, 8 April 2013

There were only two great British prime ministers in the 20th century. One of them, Sir Winston Churchill, rescued the world from Adolf Hitler. Margaret Thatcher was the other.

She entered Downing Street at a time of national calamity in the late Seventies and saved Britain from internal collapse.

Social order was breaking down in parts of Britain, industry was in chaos and inflation surging out of control. Repeated attempts by governments of both Left and Right to restore order had been blocked by the trades unions.

Worse still, the political class assumed that Britain was doomed to inexorable decline, and that nothing could be done.

The face - and handbag - of authority: Mrs Thatcher on her first visit to Washington as party leader in 1975

The face - and handbag - of authority: Mrs Thatcher on her first visit to Washington as party leader in 1975

Margaret Thatcher first challenged, then reversed, this national collapse. She established economic stability, then took on and conquered the unions, creating an astonishing new wave of national prosperity.

She also transformed Britain's standing overseas. When she came to power in 1979, Britain was held in contempt on the international stage, a state of affairs which in 1982 encouraged General Galtieri's Argentina to invade the Falkland Islands.

Mrs Thatcher gambled all to retake the Falklands — and won. As the Eighties progressed, she formed an international partnership with the U.S. president Ronald Reagan that pushed back the frontiers of tyranny across the world.

By the end of her 11-year long premiership, Britain had been transformed. We stood tall once again on the international stage.

And yet even today the sheer scale of her achievement has yet to be fully recognised.

This is because hers was a very lonely journey. She was repeatedly obliged to face down prejudice against women as she searched for a seat in Parliament. Once in government she was opposed not merely by the opposition Labour Party but also by the majority of the British governing class.

As prime minister, mainstream media institutions — such as the BBC — pilloried her. Oxford University, in a particularly vindictive move, refused to give her an honorary degree, an award traditionally presented to every prime minister who, like Margaret Thatcher, had been educated at Oxford.

Schoolgirl: Margaret, aged nine, at Huntingtower Road Primary in 1934

Tradition: Alfred Roberts' grocery, where she grew up

Schoolgirl: Margaret, aged nine, at Huntingtower Road Primary in 1934 and (right) Alfred Roberts' grocery, where she grew up

Legacy: The birthplace of Margaret Thatcher in Grantham, is now a Living Health shop

Legacy: The birthplace of Margaret Thatcher in Grantham, is now a Living Health shop

Even when she was in retirement the British political and intellectual classes never fully acknowledged her achievement. She was even hated by large sections of her own Conservative Party, which eventually turned on her and destroyed her.

Indeed, Thatcher was so widely despised because she spoke out on behalf of ordinary, hard-working people against a complacent and self-interested political establishment. She was always the outsider.

Her values of hard work, individual responsibility, self-sufficiency and an unembarrassed patriotism were derived from her lower-middle-class background in Grantham in Lincolnshire. This upbringing in the heart of Middle England was her strength and her rock, and she never once forgot it.

The future prime minister was born on October 13, 1925, christened Margaret Hilda Roberts. Her father, Alfred Roberts, came from a family of Northamptonshire shoemakers. He broke from this tradition, however, and became manager of a Grantham grocery store in 1913.

'Being prime minister is a lonely job. In a sense it ought to be — you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there I was never alone. What a man. What a husband. What a friend.'

In 1917, Alfred Roberts married Beatrice Stephenson, a dressmaker whom he had met at the local Methodist church. Margaret was their second child. An elder daughter, Muriel (who died in 2004) was born in 1921. The sisters were always close. Muriel, who trained as a physiotherapist, married a farmer and till the end of her life Margaret would often visit her sister's farm near Harwich.

In Grantham, Margaret was brought up over the shop, where she would help her father with tasks such as weighing out the tea, sugar and biscuits.

Many years later, Margaret Thatcher recalled how her remarkable father, a lay preacher who became Alderman of Grantham towards the end of his life, instilled in her 'those upright qualities which entailed a refusal to alter your convictions just because others disagreed or you became unpopular'.

Indeed, Methodism — and the values of thrift, honesty and hard work it taught — were the dominant influences in Margaret's life. 'Nothing in our house was wasted and we lived within our means,' she was later to recall. She would take those same values with her into Downing Street.

Reports from her school days marked her out as hard-working but not brilliant. Winning her first school prize at the age of nine, she showed signs of the temperament that would take her to the very top. 'I wasn't lucky, I deserved it,' she declared.

In 1943, she won a scholarship to read chemistry at wartime Oxford University, where she was taught by the Nobel-prize winning scientist Dorothy Hodgkin. Another famous Oxford scientist, Dame Janet Vaughan, sneeringly called the future prime minister 'a perfectly good second-class chemist'.

While at Oxford, Thatcher took the first steps towards a political career by being elected president of the university Conservative association.

On leaving university, Margaret Roberts went to work as a research chemist, first at BX Plastics in Colchester and later on for the confectionery firm J. Lyons, where she was part of a team that invented a revolutionary new method of preserving ice cream.

When she applied to work for the chemicals giant ICI, she was turned down. The personnel report perceptively noted that she was 'headstrong, obstinate and dangerously opinionated'.

Margaret Hilda Roberts, the Conservative candidate for Dartford, on her way to a garden party at Buckingham Palace in 1950

The height of fashion: Margaret Hilda Roberts, the Conservative candidate for Dartford, on her way to a garden party at Buckingham Palace in 1950

Margaret Thatcher, the youngest Conservative candidate for the General Election at 26, pictured canvassing Mrs Rossiter on Attlee Drive, Dartford, in 1951

Bullseye: Meeting greengrocer Fred Booth, who introduced her to the game of darts, before winning Finchley

Bullseye: Meeting greengrocer Fred Booth (right), who introduced her to the game of darts, before winning Finchley and (left) the youngest Conservative candidate for the General Election at 26, pictured canvassing Mrs Rossiter in Attlee Drive, Dartford, in 1951

But soon her business career was playing second string to her passion for politics. In 1949, thanks to a chance meeting, she was invited to stand as the Conservative candidate at Dartford in Kent. This selection brought her into the national limelight for the first time. Aged just 24, she was the youngest woman Conservative candidate there had ever been.

She fought the constituency in the 1950 and 1951 general elections, though never stood a chance of winning what was a safe Labour seat.

However, she was destined for greatness. On one occasion the young candidate was invited to open a fete. She was introduced to a fortune teller who prophetically informed her: 'You will be great — great as Churchill.'

It was at Dartford that Margaret Roberts met a local businessman called Denis Thatcher. 'His professional interest in paint, and mine in plastic, may seem an unromantic foundation for friendship,' she later recalled. Yet she was reassured to discover he was a 'no-nonsense Conservative'.

In 1951 they were married and Denis — who had been divorced after a brief wartime marriage and was ten years older — became the rock of her life. He gave her unstinting and unequivocal loyalty all the way through her difficult early career, and the grave crises of her premiership. She always said that marrying Denis was the best thing she ever did.

Towards the end of her life she paid the following tribute to her husband: 'Being prime minister is a lonely job. In a sense it ought to be — you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there I was never alone. What a man. What a husband. What a friend.'

After Dartford she put her political career on hold. This was partly because of the birth of twins — Carol and Mark — in 1953. With these new domestic circumstances Margaret Thatcher changed career. She studied for the Bar, qualifying as a barrister in 1953, and specialising in tax law.

'I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit. I resolved not to make the same mistake again.'

The years that followed, while domestically happy, were very tough. She ran up against the entrenched male chauvinism and arrogance of the Fifties Conservative Party and was repeatedly rebuffed in her search for a safe seat.

She was obliged to miss out on fighting the 1955 general election after narrowly avoiding selection for Orpington. She recorded in her autobiography: 'It was the same at Beckenham, Hemel Hempstead and then Maidstone in 1957 and 1958. I would be short-listed for the seat, would make what was generally acknowledged to be a good speech — and then the questions, most of them having the same purpose, would begin.

'With my family commitments, would I have time enough for the constituency? Did I really think that I could fulfil my duties as a mother with young children to look after and as an MP?'

This sex discrimination — faced by women of all parties at this time — was the first major setback Margaret Thatcher had faced. 'I detected a feeling,' she recorded later, 'that the House of Commons was not really the right place for a woman.'

Margaret Thatcher blamed women themselves as much as men. 'Perhaps some of the men at selection committees entertained this prejudice,' she wrote. 'But I found then, and later, that it was the women who came nearest to expressing it openly.'

Despite this experience, Margaret Thatcher was no feminist, once declaring: 'I owe nothing to Women's Lib.'

It was not until 1958, with the likely date for the next election only one year away, that she secured the North London seat of Finchley. Denis was on a sales trip to Africa at the time and only learned of her triumph when picking up a London newspaper left behind at a remote Nigerian airport.

The House of Commons that Margaret Thatcher entered in 1959 was hidebound and male-dominated, and the Conservative Party was run by old Etonians. This 35-year-old, a grammar school-educated and very sexy blonde came as a severe shock to the system.

She enjoyed the company of men and was always prepared to put her sex appeal to good use — French President Francois Mitterrand famously described her as having 'the eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe'.

But any man who went beyond the boundaries and tried to make a move — as the late Tory MP Sir Nicholas Fairbairn is rumoured to have done — got firmly rebuffed.

Bursting with ambition and energy she made her mark at once. Within months she had forced through her own Act of Parliament allowing journalists to report on local council meetings. In 1961, she showed independence of spirit by defying the official Conservative Party line and voting for the restoration of the birch for young offenders.

Carefree days: A windswept Margaret holidays in Cornwall with her husband Denis in 1978

Carefree days: A windswept Margaret holidays in Cornwall with her husband Denis in 1978

Margaret Thatcher was already beginning to align herself with the Right-wing of the Conservative Party. Within two years of entering the Commons she was appointed a minister as Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance.

There, she first showed that limitless attention to detail for which she was famous, remarking much later: 'I would always regard my knowledge of the Social Security system as one of the most important aspects of my training to become prime minister.'

In 1964, the Conservative government, led by the hapless Sir Alec-Douglas Home, was voted out of office. In the leadership election that followed, Margaret Thatcher voted for Edward Heath, who was later to become a bitter enemy.

Under Heath, she was promoted to housing spokesman and as early as 1966 there was speculation she would be elevated to the Shadow Cabinet. She learned later that Heath decided against the move and she felt it was because 'once they got me in, they would never get me out again'.

However, it was impossible to keep such a life force out for long. In the autumn of 1966 she made her first major mark on the Conservative Party conference when, to rapturous applause and speaking only from a few rough notes, she denounced Harold Wilson's high taxes as steps 'not only towards socialism, but towards communism'.

But Mrs Thatcher was not just a reflex Right-winger. She was one of the very few Conservative MPs who supported the reforming legalisation of homosexuality and abortion. Though personally irreproachable, she was always to take a highly tolerant view of the private foibles of others.

In 1967, Edward Heath bowed to the inevitable and (not without strong personal misgivings, in time to be amply justified) brought his new rising star into the Shadow Cabinet as spokesman on fuel. Mrs Thatcher rose quickly through the ranks and was Shadow Education spokesman by the time of the shock Conservative Party victory in the June 1970 general election.

There followed a formative time for the new Cabinet minister. The Seventies were a decade of student radicalism and her speeches were frequently disrupted by protesters.

Within months of taking office a financial crisis forced her to make cuts in the education budget. She succeeded in heading off Treasury pressure to close down the Open University and impose charges on library books. However, in return she was obliged to abolish free milk for schoolchildren.

Well done, Mum: Twins Mark and Carol, six, congratulate her on becoming an MP at last in 1959

Well done, Mum: Twins Mark and Carol, six, congratulate her on becoming an MP at last in 1959

The ensuing storm saw Margaret Thatcher face genuine public unpopularity for the first time. The Guardian — never to be a friend — described her Education (Milk) Bill as a 'vindictive measure which should never have been laid before Parliament'.

She was labelled 'Mrs Thatcher, milk snatcher' and in November 1971 The Sun voted her 'The Most Unpopular Woman in Britain' and even asked: 'Is Mrs Thatcher human?'

Years later she said that she had learned a valuable lesson from the furore: 'I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit. I resolved not to make the same mistake again.'

She was to look back on her time at Education with mixed feelings. She never reversed Harold Wilson's legislation to abolish the grammar schools and the parallel move towards comprehensive education.

And she was out of sympathy with the government she served. The Heath government came to power promising to take on the unions and execute free market policies. It soon found itself making a series of embarrassing policy reverses, or U-turns. Margaret Thatcher was never part of Edward Heath's inner cabal, so after his gamble in calling an early general election in February 1974 went badly wrong, she found herself in the perfect position to challenge for the party leadership.

At first she hoped to play a supporting role for a challenge by her close cabinet ally Sir Keith Joseph. But when Joseph withdrew his name, she launched her own campaign. She found she could rely on the support of a large section of Tory Party Right-wingers who had become disenchanted with the interventionism and policy reversals of the Heath administration.

A mother's pride: Her beloved Mark and Carol are born in 1953

Wedding day: the thatchers marry in December 1951. She was 26, Denis ten years older

A mother's pride: Her beloved Mark and Carol are born in 1953 (left) and (right) the Thatchers marry in December 1951. She was 26, Denis ten years older

In February 1975, she forced Heath to resign the Tory leadership by defeating him on the first ballot. Other senior Tories then threw their hats in the ring but she had established enough momentum to defeat her nearest challenger, Willie Whitelaw, by 146 votes to 79.

So Margaret Thatcher, still only 49 years old, had become the first woman ever to lead a Western political party and the first woman to lead the Opposition in the House of Commons. This fact was bitterly resented by many MPs on all sides.

As a result, her hold on the Conservative Party was always to be precarious. Some party grandees distrusted — and in some cases hated — her because they despised her middle-class values. Heath himself would never forgive his successor for what he saw as her disloyalty, and rebuffed all invitations to join her Shadow Cabinet. He would refer to her as 'that bloody woman'.

One of Heath's supporters, the sneering old Etonian Sir Ian Gilmour, is said to have labelled her 'Attila the Hen'.

More significantly, in 1976, the Soviet newspaper Red Star reacted to her anti-communist rhetoric by naming her the Iron Lady, a nickname which accurately portrayed her steadfast and unwavering character.

'To those waiting with baited breath for that favourite media catchphrase — the U-turn — I have only one thing to say: you turn if you want to; the Lady's not for turning.'

The Labour prime minister, Jim Callaghan, said: 'May I congratulate you on being the only man on your team.' She immediately struck back, responding: 'That's one more than you've got in yours.'

As soon as she became Tory leader she made one very wise decision: the appointment of Willie Whitelaw (who had been Heath's chosen successor) as deputy leader.

Whitelaw linked Margaret Thatcher into a section of the Tory Party which was instinctively hostile, yet he never betrayed her. The presence of Whitelaw — she once artlessly declared that 'every prime minister needs a Willie' — was one of the secrets of her success.

Thus armed, Margaret Thatcher found herself leading the Opposition to one of the most crisis-ridden governments of all British history. Under the Labour government of 1974-9, Britain was to all intents and purposes bankrupt and at one stage was humiliatingly forced to go cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund for extra credit.

The unions destroyed the government pay policy. From the autumn of 1978 onwards — the so-called 'Winter of Discontent' — public services collapsed. The scene was therefore set for Margaret Thatcher's historic general election victory, by a margin of 44 seats, in May 1979.

No peacetime prime minister has entered office facing such grave and apparently insoluble problems: unemployment on the rise, industry in collapse, public finances out of control. Slowly and calmly she set about solving the nation's problems. It is often claimed that she succeeded by refusing to compromise with her opponents. On the contrary — perhaps chastened by her experience as Education Secretary years earlier — she moved slowly and with considerable cunning.

She judged that the time was not right for confrontation with the unions. Instead, she concentrated first on healing the national finances. Chancellor Geoffrey Howe's first budget inflicted a series of painful measures, including the near doubling of VAT from 8 per cent to 15 per cent. Interest rates were also raised in order to combat inflation.

As a result, unemployment soared upwards, while manufacturing output sank. Her government dropped like a stone in the opinion polls. Soon she was facing strong calls both inside and outside the Conservative Party to abandon her tough monetarist policies.

Mrs Thatcher toasts Julie Goodyear and the cast of Coronation Street, during her visit to the Rovers Return in 1990

Mrs Thatcher toasts Julie Goodyear and the cast of Coronation Street, during her visit to the Rovers Return in 1990

Margaret Thatcher living up to her nickname 'the Iron Lady' given to her by the Russians, during a visit today to the Midland Group Training Centre in Coventry

No, no, no: Covering up an 'unpatriotic' BA tail fin design in 1991

Margaret Thatcher living up to her nickname 'the Iron Lady' given to her by the Russians, during a visit to the Midland Group Training Centre in Coventry and covering up an 'unpatriotic' BA tail fin design in 1991

There was a surprise for Mrs Thatcher when she opened a fund-raising tea shop called Thatcher's, which has been set up by party workers in Liverpool's Wavertree constituency. Ken Dodd presented her with a tickling stick

There was a surprise for Mrs Thatcher when she opened a fund-raising tea shop called Thatcher's, which has been set up by party workers in Liverpool's Wavertree constituency. Ken Dodd presented her with a tickling stick

At the Conservative Party conference of autumn 1980, she famously told her critics: 'To those waiting with baited breath for that favourite media catchphrase — the U-turn — I have only one thing to say: you turn if you want to; the Lady's not for turning.'

Some 364 of Britain's leading economists signed an open letter imploring Thatcher to change her mind. She still refused to do so, and in the budget of spring 1981, Howe caused outrage by defying economic orthodoxy and increasing taxes at the depth of a recession.

Denis Healey, the former Labour chancellor, declared that 'Mrs Thatcher is doing for monetarism what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen.'

But Healey was wrong. By 1982 these ruthless policies were working. Inflation was well back in single figures after reaching highs of almost 20 per cent, while the economy was beginning to recover.

It was at this point that Margaret Thatcher was obliged to confront the second great crisis of her premiership. On April 2, 1982, the military junta that controlled Argentina unexpectedly invaded the Falkland Islands.

She reacted with great resolution, over-riding hostility inside the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence to dispatch a military task force to retake the islands. This was an act of astonishing audacity. Probably no other British or European leader would have dared confront aggression in this way.

When Mrs Thatcher at last made the momentous decision to invade, it was greeted by scepticism. Even Britain's closest ally, the United States, put pressure on her to opt for a negotiated solution.

Michael Foot, the leader of the Opposition, urged Britain should solve the problem through diplomacy — and so did a young, up-and-coming Labour parliamentary candidate called Tony Blair.

After several weeks of heavy fighting, and the deaths of some 258 brave British servicemen, the Falkland Islands were brought back under British control. This prompt and vigorous action did a great deal to rebuild Britain's shattered authority, sowing the seeds for a much more confident and independent foreign policy for the remainder of the Eighties. Newsweek magazine even proclaimed that 'The Empire Strikes Back'.

The Falklands Affair was to come back to haunt Margaret Thatcher. She would face mischievous claims, in particular from the Labour MP Tam Dalyell, that she had broken the rules of war by ordering the sinking of an Argentinian battlecruiser, the General Belgrano. Thatcher always denied any wrongdoing, and in 1994 the Argentine government accepted that the sinking of the battleship had been a 'legal act of war'.

Elsewhere, her handling of the conflict was widely praised, and her victory in the forthcoming general election was assured. In June 1983, her government was re-elected by a landslide majority of 144 seats.

The Labour Party was annihilated and Margaret Thatcher moved urgently onto the second stage of her programme of national renewal. The first task was the long-awaited confrontation with the trade unions. Mrs Thatcher was all too well aware that union power had destroyed Edward Heath's government of 1970-4, and undermined the succeeding Jim Callaghan administration from within.

So she began cautiously. In 1980 and 1982 she introduced tentative legislation to curb excess union power. The defining moment did not coming till the long winter of 1984/5 and the strike called by the National Union of Mineworkers led by its militant president Arthur Scargill.

Scargill called his men out in response to plans announced by the National Coal Board chairman Ian MacGregor for pit closures and redundancies. The strike that followed was long, very bitter, and marked by violence.

Bringing harmony: Hairspray adds the finishing touch to the Opposition leader's style in 1975

Bringing harmony: Hairspray adds the finishing touch to the Opposition leader's style in 1975

The government had laid its plans carefully. There were ample reserves of fuel and, in the aftermath of the Falklands War and the landslide election victory, her authority had never stood higher. The strike lasted a full year before Scargill — who made a crucial mistake in never balloting his members — was defeated.

Many scars were left behind, some not fully mended to this day. Were it not for the Miners' Strike, however, the power of the unions which had done such destructive damage to the British way of life ever since World War II would never have been suppressed. In due course, even the union-funded Labour Party was forced to recognise the popularity of Tory anti-union legislation, and promise not to reverse it.

Thanks to the steely courage displayed by Margaret Thatcher during the miners' strike, Britain is today governed by elected politicians and not union barons.

The second defining achievement of her second term was the sell-off of state held assets, which had accounted for an astonishing 20 per cent of the British economy when she came to power in 1979.

The prime minister in 1981 wearing protective clothing when she toured the premises of Vacuum Interrupters Ltd

The prime minister in 1981 wearing protective clothing when she toured the premises of Vacuum Interrupters Ltd

Thatcher had launched this process of so-called 'privatisation' in 1979 with the revolutionary and popular policy of selling council houses to their tenants. But it only took off with the sale of more than half the shares in British Telecom in a giant offer for sale in 1984.

The massively successful BT offer was followed by a wave of other privatisations, including British Gas and the electricity and water companies. In almost all cases, these sell-offs led to far greater efficiency and better prices for the consumer.

But, elsewhere, Britain remained unsettled. In October 1984, the Irish Republican Army attempted to murder Mrs Thatcher and her Cabinet by bombing her hotel during that year's Conservative Party conference. No 20th-century prime minister had ever come so close to assassination.

Though she escaped injury, a number of her close friends and allies were killed or terribly injured. She lived under the threat of assassination throughout her time as prime minister. Many of her closest friends were killed. In 1979, Airey Neave, a war hero who had managed her leadership bid, was murdered by a car bomb which blew up as he was leaving the Commons. Eleven years later, the politician Ian Gow, for some years her closest confidant, was assassinated by the IRA.

Thatcher became the object of special enmity to the IRA because she always remained implacably hostile to terrorism, refusing to compromise even during the prison hunger strikes of 1980-81.

Some ten prisoners starved themselves to death, with IRA leader Bobby Sands perishing on Tuesday, May 5, 1981. 'The date was of some significance for me personally, though I did not know it at the time,' Margaret Thatcher later drily noted. 'From this time forward I became the IRA's top target for assassination.'

And she was not secure politically either. By the middle of the Eighties her popularity went into decline. There had always been an influential section of the Conservative Party which remained oblivious to the colossal achievements of her first six years in office. These critics discovered a figurehead in Michael Heseltine, the defence minister.

In January 1986, Heseltine suddenly resigned from the Cabinet after an apparently obscure dispute over the future of Westland, a manufacturer of helicopters.

Heseltine wanted Westland to establish links with Agusta, a European firm. Thatcher by contrast took the pro-American route, favouring the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation of the United States.

The Thatcher premiership was plunged into crisis after it emerged that a government document had been leaked with the intention of smearing Heseltine.

Many believed that the prime minister herself was implicated, though this was never proven. At one point she herself believed she might be forced to resign.

She survived the Westland affair, but her government was never again to be as strong or as confident. The row had exposed deep rifts within the Conservative government over Europe which would only grow deeper over time.

Michael Heseltine remained a menacing presence on the backbenches, while Mrs Thatcher started to display an arrogance and grandeur which contrasted with her cautious early days in power.

When her son Mark's then wife Diane had a baby, the prime minister incurred ridicule by stating: 'We have become a grandmother.'

After one meeting, the New Zealand prime minister David Lange complained: 'She addressed me as though I was the Nuremberg Rally.'

In 1987, the Conservative government regained power for a third term, securing a majority over Neil Kinnock's Labour Party of 101 seats. One key feature of the Conservative manifesto was a proposal to reform local government taxation, replacing the traditional system of local rates with a community charge, or 'poll tax'.

Mrs Thatcher in 1976 tries on fireman's helmet as she sits in cab of a fire appliance

Mrs Thatcher in 1976 tries on fireman's helmet as she sits in cab of a fire appliance

This new tax proved extremely unpopular and hard to implement, provoking ugly riots. At the same time the economy, which had been exceptionally strong since the tough decisions of the early Eighties, started to badly overheat. In 1988, interest rates doubled in order to combat rising inflation.

Meanwhile, a dispute opened up at the heart of the Thatcher government about economic management.

Her Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, supported by opportunistic younger ministers such as John Major, pressed for the pound sterling to be pegged to the Deutschmark with a view to entry to the European Exchange Rate Mechanism system. This policy was fiercely rejected by Margaret Thatcher. Relations with Lawson grew so poor that, in October 1989, Lawson resigned.

Lurking behind the argument over economic management was the even more fundamental issue of British membership of the European Community.

Thatcher had campaigned for the Common Market in the Seventies. As prime minister, however, she grew ever more opposed to greater European integration. In a famous speech at Bruges in September 1988 she made an eloquent defence of national sovereignty.

This speech set her against the most senior members of her own cabinet, including the Home Secretary Douglas Hurd, Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe and Chancellor Lawson. It was the opening salvo in the Tory civil war over Europe which was to keep the party out of power for more than a decade from 1997.

Paradoxically, these troubles over Europe came as events on the grander international stage were moving very much her way.

Through the Eighties she had formed a warm partnership with Ronald Reagan in defence of Western values and freedoms. Despite the mismatch in power between their two nations, their friendship was always one of equals. He called her 'the best man in England'. She returned the compliment, saying he was 'the second most important man in my life'.

Joint effort: The Prime Minister rolls up her sleeves to help daughter Carol decorate her London flat in 1984, a rare moment when she could devote all her attention to her family

Joint effort: The Prime Minister rolls up her sleeves to help daughter Carol decorate her London flat in 1984, a rare moment when she could devote all her attention to her family

The pair first met long before Reagan became president, thanks to Denis Thatcher. He heard Reagan speak at a business event in 1969, when he was Governor of California, and at once put her in touch with him.

Despite this friendship, Margaret Thatcher was never ready to follow tamely in the wake of a U.S. president — the lamentable weakness shown by Tony Blair in his dealing with President George W. Bush 20 years later.

Unlike Tony Blair, she was always ready to stand up for British interests and if necessary resist the U.S. President, as she famously did when America invaded the British Commonwealth island of Grenada in 1983, or when he tried to force her to the negotiating table with Argentina over the Falklands.

Thatcher urged Reagan to intensify the Cold War and strengthen the Western Alliance against Russia in the early Eighties. Then, as Soviet resolve weakened, Thatcher played a vital role in bringing about rapprochement.

For instance in 1984, when Mikhail Gorbachev emerged as a future Russian leader, she invited him to Britain and announced he was a man she 'could do business with'.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the Soviet empire in the late Eighties was the ultimate vindication for Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher's tough diplomacy.

But this counted for very little in late 1990 when the fierce dispute over Europe prompted Sir Geoffrey Howe to walk out of the Thatcher cabinet.

Her greatest sadness: Baroness Thatcher leaves her darling husband Denis's funeral in 2003

Her greatest sadness: Baroness Thatcher leaves her darling husband Denis's funeral in 2003

In a famous resignation speech in the Commons, Sir Geoffrey issued a call to arms, urging 'others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties' which had caused him to quit.

This was the moment Michael Heseltine had been waiting for. He challenged for the leadership. Although Margaret Thatcher secured a majority of the vote, she was badly weakened. When the result was announced, her fighting spirit came to the fore, and she declared: 'I fight on, I fight to win.'

However, more prudent counsel prevailed. She spent the night of November 21, 1990, consulting with her Cabinet about whether she should contest a second ballot. The news was bad. The following morning, November 22, at just after 9.30am, the prime minister put out the following statement:

'Having consulted widely among my colleagues, I have concluded that the unity of the party and the prospects of victory in a general election would be better served if I stood down to enable Cabinet colleagues to enter the ballot for the leadership.

'I should like to thank all those in Cabinet and outside who have given me such dedicated support.'

In the Tory leadership election that followed, Thatcher flung her weight behind John Major, whom she considered at the time the best flag-bearer for her policies.

Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister on November 28, 1990, being driven from Downing Street in tears. She retired from the House of Commons in the general election of 1992.

She found retirement hard, bleakly declaring that 'home is where you go when you have nothing else to do'. For many years, nevertheless, she remained a potent public figure.

In 1991, the Margaret Thatcher Foundation was established and did a great deal of work promoting democracy in Eastern Europe.

In 1992, she was awarded a life peerage to add to the Order of Merit she had received as a personal gift from the Queen in 1990.

In 1995, Baroness Thatcher was appointed a Lady of the Garter, Britain's highest order of chivalry. Denis Thatcher was made a baronet, a move which ensured a knighthood would pass onto his son Mark.

From the House of Lords, Baroness Thatcher became a strong critic of the Maastricht Treaty promoting deeper European union. Though publicly supportive, in private she became a fierce critic of her successor John Major. By contrast, she spoke warmly of the new Labour leader Tony Blair.

She described him as 'probably the most formidable Labour leader since Hugh Gaitskell' and —in what was seen by some as an endorsement — noted that her 'legacy was safe' with the new Labour prime minister.

In retirement, Lady Thatcher authored two major volumes of autobiography, The Downing Street Years, and The Path To Power. She also played a powerful role in charitable work. She was a strong supporter of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the British Forces Foundation and other charities.

In 2002, following a series of minor strokes, she retired from active public life, having been advised by doctors to make no more speeches. The following year saw the death of Denis. She never fully recovered from this loss.

Baroness Thatcher's 80th birthday party in October 2005 was held at Mandarin Oriental Hotel, where guests included the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.

In February 2007, a bronze statue of her was unveiled in the House of Commons. She attended the unveiling ceremony and said: 'I might have preferred iron —but bronze will do. And this time, I hope, the head will stay on.'

However, her vast achievement was never properly recognised in Britain. Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, Britain stood strong again in the world. She fought for freedom both at home and across the world. At all times she conducted the affairs of this country with courage, with decency and with integrity.

Maggie Thatcher was a woman of the most extraordinary courage, both physical and moral. She was Britain's greatest ever peacetime prime minister. So long as the English language continues to be spoken, her name will always be remembered and held in the highest honour.

Together again...

Her rock: With Denis in 1978. He died on 26 June, 2003, aged 88, following heart problems

Her rock: With Denis in 1978. He died on 26 June, 2003, aged 88, following heart problems



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2305996/Margaret-Thatcher-The-outsider-core-steel-held-honour-long-English-spoken.html#ixzz2Pzj3nstS
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

 

__._,_.___

Reply via web post

Reply to sender

Reply to group

Start a New Topic

Messages in this topic (1)

Recent Activity:

.

__,_._,___

No comments:

Post a Comment