March 7, 1991 - Receives the US Medal of Freedom from President George Bush. . Hire a Writer. Thatcherism failed to destroy the welfare state. Thatcher's use of rhetorical devices supports her eulogy because the concept of Reagan being more. As I spread my wings in politics, I discovered many Thatcher voters down south who were the same kind of people who loathed her in Scotland. As the authorised biographer of Margaret Thatcher, I was given special permission by the Cabinet Secretary to see government papers not yet released to the public.For . She said "there is no such thing as society", and set out to prove it by promoting individual greed and competition for everything. Given the nature of her legacy "survival of the fittest" a phrase that Darwin himself only used twice in On the Origin of Species, compared to hundreds of references to altruism, love and cooperation, it isn't surprising that there are parties tonight in Liverpool, Glasgow and Brixton from where are they to have learned compassion and forgiveness? Animals and Pets Anime Art Cars and Motor Vehicles Crafts and DIY Culture, Race, and Ethnicity Ethics and Philosophy Fashion Food and Drink History Hobbies Law Learning and Education Military Movies Music Place Podcasts and Streamers Politics Programming Reading, Writing, and Literature Religion and Spirituality Science Tabletop Games . If you behave like there's no such thing as society, in the end there isn't. We must reduce the inequality that has seen a super-rich elite, openly contemptuous of the flag and family values Thatcher proclaimed, float free from the rest of us. Keith Joseph was her guru. Reagan was a highly influential president during his time in office, and had a lot of responsibility concerning the Cold War. "Labour is stuck because they do not want to carry on the slimming down of the state and devolution of power but nor do they really want to reverse it," said one central Tory figure. In October 1984 she survived an IRA bomb during the Conservative Conference But this didn't come without a price. All of the Tory edicts that bludgeoned our nation, as my generation squirmed through ghoulish puberty, were confusing. Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister at the time, gave a eulogy to the grieving American people in honor of the late Ronald Reagan on June 11th, 2004. At times the Conservative party is so anarchic as to appear almost ungovernable, like a plethora of pressure groups pushing pet causes rather than a united group ruthlessly focusing on political success. This reverie only occurred when the car was out of view. The late Benazir Bhutto later gave me much the same account. This was my mother speaking at some point in the middle 1980s. 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.". 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. I'd become a delinquent, living on heroin and benefit fraud. 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. To Britons of my generation, she . Selling public housing to the tenants who occupied it was another, on top of the denationalisation of industries and utilities once thought to be ineluctably and for ever in the hands of the state. at The Hague in May 1992. 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. It made minor savings at best and was, as the . Norman and Margaret hold, and will always hold, a unique place in our esteem and affection. 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 his usual slightly dishevelled style, he went to Downing Street to discuss his pioneering concepts of behavioural economics and attempts to implement them under Barack Obama. bowling at the Lord Mayor's Banquet (12 November) and gave Look inside your own house, at the water coming out of the tap: once a public utility but, after Thatcher, the property of private companies, many foreign-owned. Hugo Young was a political columnist forthe Guardian from 1984 until 2003 and biographer of Margaret Thatcher. "You see," she announced in her self-satisfied way, "it just goes to show what people can do when they have to. 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. Lady Thatcher, you honor us by coming to the site of Sir Winston's pivotal speech, an event Westminster College has immortalized with the beautiful Winston Churchill Memorial. Maggie and Me: How Thatcher Changed Britain. How could anyone who was so resolutely Margaret Thatcher be anything else? To use a less bizarre analogy: if Thatcher was the headmistress, they were junior teachers, authoritative but warm enough that you could call them "mum" by accident. Thank you, too, Margaret. talked of "Victorian Values". 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. It was only in the mid-80s that she became truly radical and remotely comparable to David Cameron in 2010. Endeavouring to persuade the British into an attitude of hostility to the group with which she spent 11 years deepening their connection must take a high place in any catalogue of anti-statesmanship. 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. The current crop of leaders are so dull, so ill-defined, so lacking in personality that it's almost impossible for comedians to rage against them. Several strong women on the continent have risen to the top, but thisBritish woman, in Britain of all places, became a phenomenon, first, throughher gender. Police charges against picketing union printers in Wapping enabled the Murdoch empire to flourish, ensuring their power and hers. Far from "smashing the glass ceiling", she was the aberration, the one who got through and then pulled the ladder up right after her. My dad, I suspect, did. Thatcher's reputation never recovered from the ruthless budgets of 1980 and 1981, or her insensitivity to colleagues. 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. Is that what made her so formidable, her ability to ignore the suffering of others? That said, by the mid-1980s it was clear that the Conservative government's economic policy was based on a handful of core principles. News of Margaret Thatcher's death this morning instantly and predictably gave rise to righteous sermons on the evils of speaking ill of her. She defended Ronald And for all the tributes being paid by ministers this week, the issues at the topof the government's agenda are all to do with clearing up the mess she created. 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. Sir Bernard died after a short illness, his family said. Much of any leader's record is unremarkable dross, and Thatcher was no exception. Her imitators swerve all over the place, with 37 U-turns at the Telegraph's latest count on matters from forests and pasties to buzzard nests and caravans. That one should not speak ill of the dead is arguably appropriate when a private person dies, but it is wildly inappropriate for the death of a controversial public figure, particularly one who wielded significant influence and political power. To claim that any woman's success is a boon for feminism is like saying all publicity is good publicity. successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to When I awoke today on LA time my phone was full of impertinent digital eulogies. Which raises the question: why isn't this happening now? First was the sheer depth of hostility towards the Tories in general. They rallied around each other when times were hard. It is no coincidence the three most influential centre-right thinktanks were all conceived over the following months. the British Embassy in Paris and stated Margaret Thatcher (October 13, 1925 - April 8, 2013) was the first woman prime minister of the United Kingdom and the first European woman to serve as a prime minister. She preferred markets, and a strong but minimal central state that backed their rule. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979. The eulogy is a good illustration of Thatcher's feelings for . 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. Its impact on the streets of the north is evident in the statistics of death. Her vision for Britain made a lot of people feel like outsiders, which made them the ideal audience for comedy. The novel may thrive in adversity and it was a general sense of dismay at the new world she was showing us that lured many writers into opposition. "I thought I'd be overjoyed, but really it's just another one bites the dust " This demonstrates, I suppose, that if you opposed Thatcher's ideas it was likely because of their lack of compassion, which is really just a word for love. MT won election as Conservative leader on 11 February 1975 and gave a euphoric 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. Above all has been the hollowing out of the labour market. 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 There were sporadic resurrections. Even some leading figures on the left have jealously praised the right's creativity and ideological crusaders. Almost everything said of Thatcher's early years was untrue, partly through her own invention. "What's going on there, mate?" On her return to London, she sent me a warm and complimentary letter, a prize in my personal archives. Dignity and decorum ruled the day - except in the poisoned anonymity of the internet. Women aren't always good for other women because the gender of a person matters a lot less than that person's actual beliefs. The core ideas that underpinned her government endured through 13 years of Labour and are being extended by the coalition. 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. Such seminars are regular events in Downing Street under the coalition. After leaving office, MT widened and deepened her criticism of the European It was a watershed moment in Irish politics. Everything has its season. The Crown Season 4 brings with it a whole lot of change for Queen Elizabeth II's family and, more importantly, the United Kingdom. But keeping the show on the road is what all of them must first attend to, because there's nobody else to do it. 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 . Her gender led her into government and the shadow cabinet, despite Edward Heath's aversion to her. decision to resign. The Independent has the story. 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. MT prayed on the Alexei Sayle blames Twitter and the "multiplicity of voices" in the modern world. The spell he was referring to is the unseen bond that connects us all and prevents us from being subjugated by tyranny. "Maggie! It was a Charles I moment in British history. Farewell, indeed, Baroness Thatcher. If I become PM, I will deliver the radical set of reforms need to unleash growth. The impact that Hayek's writing had on Thatcher, her advisors, and her policies is undeniable. Bob Slayer, one of the genuine alternative comedians on the scene, likes to note the irony of what's become of comedy. Her Irish policy failed miserably. She went to a fee-paying school and to Oxford at her father's expense, gliding easily into the upper echelons of student politics. But can he shake off the shackles of the past and prove there is an alternative? No one noticed, but she was Blair's first guest at Downing Street in 1997. 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. But perhaps her greatest legacy was New Labour. Mrs Thatcher was on the way up in British political life. What was different in Britain was that she assumed no responsibility to minimise social disruption or to create new jobs and industries. And, of course, Nelson provided the intelligence. For those of us who were dismayed by her brisk distaste for that cosy state-dominated world, it was never enough to dislike her. 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. The 70s was Britain's most equal decade. Any attempts at revisionism do no favours to her, women or feminism. In 1982, the English Collective of Prostitutes occupied a church for 12 days in protest against "police illegality and racism in King's Cross" the area to which many sex workers known as "Thatcher's girls" had travelled from high unemployment areas in the Midlands and the north. 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. "Maggie Thatcher," he said. They married the personality and belief to action. Her policy decisions entrenched sectarian divisions, handed draconian military powers over to the securocrats, and subverted basic human rights. They recognised the need for cohesion when at any time disaster could strike a family unit or indeed a whole community. "We have not She remained in power till I was 15. This was a historic step, and resulted in further reinforcing the US-UK alliance. 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. They built and provided their own welfare facilities and, well before today's welfare state was built, miners created their own welfare systems to alleviate hardship.