Though the Prime Minister was known to shed a tear or two during her 11 years leading the United Kingdom . In rich societies such as the UK, what makes most difference to the real quality of our lives is the quality of community life and social interaction. The Bruges speech was given by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to the College of Europe at the Belfry of Bruges, Belgium, on 20 September 1988.Thatcher was opposed to any moves to transition the European Economic Community (EEC) into a federal Europe that would take powers away from its members. Over the years, and through much re-telling, the story had it that Thatcher told Hitchens to bend over, and that she spanked him with her order papers. Her policy decisions entrenched sectarian divisions, handed draconian military powers over to the securocrats, and subverted basic human rights. she I don't see that. It accounted for a large part of the mark Thatcher left on Britain. 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. She was "outraged" when the programmes went ahead. Thatcher became prime minister because she was a woman, not despite it. The Thatcher government was across all the details of this shipment. And in 1983, for the first time, children born in Britain to non-British parents were denied automatic citizenship, fostering further racism and discrimination in immigration policy. She and her successors John Major and Tony Blair presided over a quarter century of unprecedented prosperity. The British inflation was in 1975 up at 24, 11% [] and with the union's constant claim for higher salaries, nobody expected it to drop to a normal level. But former speechwriter Trevor Reeves can no longer . She was an ardent pro-European, and her 1979 manifesto made no mention of radical union reform or privatisation. I think on balance Thatcher did for Britain what was needed at the time. Privatisation did not feature in the Conservative election campaign, while the tougher approach to trade union reform had only really become evident since the winter of discontent, and even then was a gradual process. Not even the Falklands war would push it off the tracks or damage it in any way. Critical Commentary: Margaret Thatcher outlined the British policy in relation to various world issues. While she spoke of his example as a beacon, she knew very well that she was an important component of what is often attributed solely to him, and in the first instance "winning" the cold war. When I started knocking on Highland doors in May 1983, two things struck me more than any other. 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. She abolished city-wide local government, capped spending and expected the poll tax to further undermine alternative voices. Following several small strokes she announced, in March 2002, that her career as a speechmaker had ended. Keith Joseph was her guru. Chvez is gone, but the voters are likely to re-elect Chavismo on 14 April. Three aspects of it never completely leave my head. 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. She was right, he was wrong. I know from my own indulgence in selfish behaviour that it's much easier to get what you want if you remove from consideration the effect your actions will have on others. to secure international action to repair the damaged ozone layer. As David Wearing put it this morning in satirizing these speak-no-ill-of-the-deceased moralists: "People praising Thatcher's legacy should show some respect for her victims. A longer version of this article appears on Gerry Adams' blog, Margaret Thatcher was good at destruction. She lavished praise on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, then in its infancy, and laid out the . To have achieved all this alone would have made Margaret Thatcher a towering, transformational figure, one who altered the physical fabric of the nation. Since 1990 a selection of statements is listed. From 1987 to 1988, he was a senior policy writer and speechwriter in 10 Downing Street for Margaret Thatcher when she was British prime minister and remained close to her up to her death.. O'Sullivan served from 2008-2012 as vice-president and executive editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio . But she regarded rightwing causes as an intellectual hobby. 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. A massive programme of social housing would be a good place to start, stimulating the economy. The real comic nemeses of Thatcher were the puppets of Spitting Image. Not all writers were against her. Second, it's now easier to see the scale of the setback she inflicted on Britain's idea of its own future. It is no coincidence the three most influential centre-right thinktanks were all conceived over the following months. June 30, 1992 - Swearing . So what caused this great divide, with one side a fountain of fresh ideas and the other struggling for new inspiration? For her own part, she was a social conservative and yet today's right for, say, gay couples to marry if they want to fits with one aspect of the Thatcherite vision of personal choice. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one's enemies. she warned that she was not At Cheltenham the following month she The eulogy is a good illustration of Thatcher's feelings for . Then they discovered that they could make money, so they dropped all that. It was a Charles I moment in British history. see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising That chanted demand of the left has been fully and finally met. When I was a kid, Thatcher was the headmistress of our country. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.". She hated what she called "that French phrase laissez faire". A meeting in Downing Street had left the Pakistan leader besotted with the older woman's wisdom and generosity: '"I tell you, she's such a kind person.". Thatcher understood the connection between the social wage and workers' wages better than most unions. 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.". The remainder are listed without a text because sometimes no record survives Today we have four coalmines and around 2,000 miners. Yet her understanding of Britain was alarmingly crude. It fell to Blair to do something about the latter, while giving free rein to the former. But for others, the change in landscape is all too real. Given the global economic crisis, rampant corporate greed and growing inequality, this should be a time of great ferment, with endless policy proposals bubbling up to challenge the post-Thatcher consensus at a time of immense and unsettling change. be a nation in retreat". 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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. A week later she spoke a new dominance from Brussels". opportunities. How dare her apologists and beneficiaries of her legacy refer to trade unions like the NUM as "corrupt" in the face of their bonuses and tax cuts! Britain's relative decline came to an end, although that was more due to slowdowns in countries such as France and Germany than an acceleration in UK productivity growth. 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. It destroyed the public's power to determine via parliament the services and prices of gas, electricity, telephone. For those miners and their families to be referred to as the "enemy within" by Thatcher was something they would never forgive and, if there is rejoicing at her death in those communities she set out to destroy, it can only be understood against this background. (MT gave up public speaking in March 2002.) Before the real Thatcher's election in 1979 she took lessons with a speech coach at the Royal National Theatre, hoping to make her voice more commanding and less "shrill" in broadcasts. 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. After the 1987 election, Thatcher cut an increasingly isolated figure. Debate continues on whether Margaret Thatcher saved or destroyed British industry, but there is one industry that she practically created. . Out! 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. Many whom Reagan encountered in public life thought of him in this way, but most politicians would love to reach even "Grade B" status. can do business together". First was the sheer depth of hostility towards the Tories in general. 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 refused to reform social security, or even curb its abuse. I met her just once, as a reporter in the press pack that followed her tour around Greece and Yugoslavia in 1980. Talk to a Labour MP and you end up discussing politics and positioning; talk to a Tory, and it tends to be about policy. 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. All Rights Reserved. "Fatcha" was an instant punchline back then: simply saying it was enough to get a laugh. 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. 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. Words. June 5, 1992 - Is named a life peer on the Queen's honor list. Above all, they lack her competence at running the machinery of government. 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 . I always felt a bit sorry for her biological children Mark and Carol, wondering from whom they would get their cuddles. She failed to replace those jobs with well-paid equivalents. Maggie! 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. Nicknamed the "Iron Lady," Thatcher served as the prime minister of England from 1979 to 1990. Would we like her back? The great contradiction in her politics was that someone who yearned for the certainties of small-town shopkeeper economics helped create the amoral yuppiedom of 80s excess and an explosion of cultural resistance that is still an ironic positive legacy of her time in power. Meeting Gorbachev for the first time in December 1984 she declared: "We Maggie and Me: How Thatcher Changed Britain. Margaret Thatcher was not known for her sense of humour. This was the feminine creature who, two years later, was leader of the Conservative party. It was illegal to put an extension lead on your phone. 100% Success rate. On Saturday, 27 February, he wrote in his diary: "PM getting great press went up to the [Capitol] Hill some of the senators tried to give her a bad time, she put them down firmly and with typical British courtesy.". Thatcher's social instincts were always nostalgic conservative. Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. Hayek was appointed a Companion of Honour in the 1984 Birthday honours for "services to the study of Economics". Even the nasty politics of "welfare reform" is driven by the high cost of subsidising low pay through in-work benefits, and indifference to the plight of jobless communities who have never recovered from de-industrialisation. Weakening the power of trade unions was not only essential to her project, but several studies suggest that their continued weakness may be an important part of the reason why inequality has not declined in the intervening decades. 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." She needed followers, as long as they went in her frequently unpopular directions. She denounced Nelson Mandela and his ANC as "terrorists", something even David Cameron ultimately admitted was wrong. Texts for listed statements are available on the site in almost 70 per cent of cases. John Major, the "detoxification" successor, was fated to implement many of her unattempted reforms. That, plus (inevitable) de-industrialisation, coupled to her perceived overbearing and patronising manner. 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. The first is what changed in the temper of Britain and the British. She was lucky in surviving the IRA's bomb. When John Lennon was told of Elvis Presley's death, he famously responded: "Elvis died when he joined the army," meaning of course, that his combat clothing and clipped hair signalled the demise of the thrusting, Dionysian revolution of which he was the immaculate emblem. It never was. Thatcher's most baleful influence on government was not on industries and services she privatised but those she did not. They rallied around each other when times were hard. Witness the steady downgrading of local government or the persistent assumption that the private sector will always be better than the public. Margaret Thatcher Essay: Health Category. The prime minister was intensely interested in the campaign, and asked many penetrating questions. Thatcher will be especially remembered for her shameful role during the epic hunger strikes of 1980 and 81. The virtual state funeral will rehearse again our extravagant fixations. On her return to London, she sent me a warm and complimentary letter, a prize in my personal archives. still being scolded for the remark.You can read here exactly what she said, Her vision for Britain made a lot of people feel like outsiders, which made them the ideal audience for comedy. They recognised the need for cohesion when at any time disaster could strike a family unit or indeed a whole community. "You would see MPs who came into any politics after Ihad and who were no better than me being promoted over my head," said Currie this week. Let us give thanks today for a life that achieved so much for all of God's children.". After all, the right began to refocus only after Tony Blair's second landslide, when people began to recognise they would not drift back into power. Her onslaught on the trade unions left those movements pale imitations of their former selves, too weak to resist the drive to the "flexible labour market" which has seen Britain become the home of what one senior Labour figure calls "crappy jobs", with low pay and no protection. in a statement the following morning (22 November), hours before she By the close of her premiership, he was probably the most trusted member of her political team at Downing Street, and he left Number Ten with her. International studies of OECD countries suggest a close relationship between the decline in trade union membership and the rise in inequality. I have few recollections of Thatcher after the slowly chauffeured, weepy Downing Street cortege. Each was characterised by her attention to detail. All can agree that Margaret Thatcher changed the heart of British politics more than any politician since Clement Attlee. Reagan's decision to bomb Libya in April 1986 and spoke If you have a . Margaret Thatcher, Signed Speech on Hayek, 2003, Estimate 1,500-2,000 . Research papers can be complex, so best to give our essay writing service a bit more time on this one. The party she led three times to electoral triumph became unelectable for a generation. How could anyone who was so resolutely Margaret Thatcher be anything else? British Labour MP Tom Watson decreed: "I hope that people on the left of politics respect a family in grief today." By 1987, anti-Tory tactical voting had taken hold. Margaret Thatcher has 43 books on Goodreads with 14026 ratings. A Labour veteran blamed another legacy of Thatcher: the need for iron discipline after the media onslaught that engulfed her opponents. The battle with the miners and leftwing councils lay ahead, as did the trauma of an IRA assassination bid. Understandably, less cohesive societies with more drugs, more crime and lower mobility waste talent, and are not good places to do business. But if today's Guardian readers time-travelled to the late 70s they might be irritated to discover that tomorrow's TV listings were a state secret not shared with daily newspapers. She pointed out that she was only 10 years old when she ceased to be prime minister.
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