Since 1990 a selection of statements is listed. 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. There are still some great comics doing political material, with Mark Steel and Mark Thomas flying the flag of alternative comedy, while people such as Josie Long and Chris Coltrane find the funny in activism. We have paid for that transformation with a world that is harder-edged, more competitive, and certainly more intently aware of the lure of cash. delivered an outstanding defence of the Government in the Commons. The last time I met her was after all this was over. Both were successful women who could play the flirt card when it suited them, but ultimately had little interest in being kind to their own sex; Thatcher especially resented being defined by her gender. I was just behind her at the civic museum in Dubrovnik when the local guide explained a model showing the elaborate system of ancient wells and tunnels that had provided the city with fresh water no matter how fierce the siege. Somesay she revolutionised British politics certainly never again could people say nobody would vote for a woman but it served a reactionary end. The endemic worklessness of her era was never repaired now her successors blame the victims. There were big tax cuts for those on the highest incomes, driven by the belief that this would encourage entrepreneurship. 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. But former speechwriter Trevor Reeves can no longer . Governments can rarely claim to have stimulated the arts but Thatcher, always rather impatient with the examined life, drew writers on to new ground. 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. Many of today's more controversial benefits, such as disability, date back to the 80s. MT won election as Conservative leader on 11 February 1975 and gave a euphoric If you want anything done, ask a woman.". And the single mums. Promises. The first three speeches were by Winston Churchill. Much of any leader's record is unremarkable dross, and Thatcher was no exception. 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.". Gillian Anderson's portrayal of the Iron Lady in "The Crown" is pretty spot-on. To project the ideas of strength and . They recognised the need for cohesion when at any time disaster could strike a family unit or indeed a whole community. We might speculate that an adviser had offered Thatcher a selection of good lines, or that she had asked to see some. Prime Minister Thatcher inherited a settled state of British Europeanness, in which Brussels and the [European] Community began to influence, and often determine, the British way of doing things. Instead state assets and a huge income stream from North sea oil were used to fund a populist programme of tax cuts, privatisation and council housesales. of her best Parliamentary speeches in a debate on the strikes. The day before she died I passed through Greenock on the train. Above all, they lack her competence at running the machinery of government. 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. Maybe it was the sound of the estuary pronunciation robbing her of her aspirational airs, a prototype of the Bouquet/Bucket joke. 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. The eulogy is a good illustration of Thatcher's feelings for . 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 But really, such statements were anything but, first because sweeping statements about genders are the opposite of gender equality and second because they revealed her real attitude towards women, which lay behind her notable lack of female-friendly policies, her utter lack of interest in childcare provision or positive action. While some remember her as a national saviour, others only see her ruthless demolition of flailing state-owned industries. This was her last important public statement. Thatcher is remembered for her achievements, but more for a presence, which was wrapped up with being a woman. She was the daughter of a prosperous civic leader who merely began life as a "grocer". Everything was justified as long as it made money andthis, too, isstill with us. To enrich the global 1% she so brilliantly represented, our "entitlement" had to go and she was just the one to do it. Of course, it's in politics that the shadow looms most clearly. Why don't you get a proper job, she once sneered at me. bowling at the Lord Mayor's Banquet (12 November) and gave So it suggests the anachronistic and unaffordable return to a contributory welfare system, while opposing the further opening up of education and health provision; some even float the renationalisation of railways. After being carried through the streets of London in a flag-draped coffin aboard a gun carriage, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was laid to rest this . Beleagured Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher makes pun during the 1981 Conservative Party conference speech: "the lady's not for turning" she says to her crit. That gives them the nerve to set about cutting benefits and the public realm with a glee they don't bother to hide. I don't see that. She was among the first Western leaders to After the 1987 election, Thatcher cut an increasingly isolated figure. She may have got it slightly wrong. The real comic nemeses of Thatcher were the puppets of Spitting Image. Police charges against picketing union printers in Wapping enabled the Murdoch empire to flourish, ensuring their power and hers. Had pollsters and the 24/7 media forced leaders to follow opinion, not lead it? 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. She said "there is no such thing as society", and set out to prove it by promoting individual greed and competition for everything. 4.44 avg rating 39 ratings 2 editions. This was most evident in the shooting dead of three unarmed IRA activists in Gibraltar in March 1988. The welfare state set out to ensure that no one, in the UK at least, would starve or freeze to death, or suffer or die for lack of medical or other care. She failed to replace those jobs with well-paid equivalents. If you have a . Leaving aside the detail that the word "feminist" came into existence in 1895, comfortably in Chanel's lifetime, the woman who valued femininity above all other qualities in a woman and was heavily involved with the Nazis, including a wartime relationship with German officer Hans Gunther von Dincklage, could not, in any circumstances, be described as a feminist. A week later she spoke I met her just once, as a reporter in the press pack that followed her tour around Greece and Yugoslavia in 1980. speech in the House of Commons, her Therein, 30 years ago, lay the great Thatcher asset and the electorally lethal Thatcher impact in Scotland. June 5, 1992 - Is named a life peer on the Queen's honor list. It is no coincidence the three most influential centre-right thinktanks were all conceived over the following months. For miners, greed was a destructive force, not a force for good. Thatcher understood the connection between the social wage and workers' wages better than most unions. press to rejoice at the capture of South Georgia on 25 April 1982 and We can't blame (or credit) her for all of this, of course. 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". But it did, and the consequences seem impossible to reverse. 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 . An Inconvenient Truth About Margaret Thatcher: She Was a Climate Hawk. The proportion of children living in relative poverty more than doubled during the 80s, and the damage has never been undone. The passing of Chvez is mourned by the many millions who loved him in Latin America and everywhere. was an Oxford student home for the university holidays. And for the people of Ireland, and especially the north, the Thatcher years were among some of the worst of the conflict. She forced us to decide what was truly important. 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. Respected, viewed with awe, a conviction politician, but if liking came into it, that was an accident. Too timid, too in thrall, the 13-year Labour government rarely dared challenge the attitudes she planted in the national psyche. This was my mother speaking at some point in the middle 1980s. wrong with politics? successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to I was a professional writer. Heath took us into Europe, and a referendum in spring 1975 confirmed national approval for the move. And when I and several other Sinn Fin leaders were elected to the Assembly in 1982 we were barred from entry to Britain. Whether pushing each other off the road, barging past social rivals, beating up rival soccer fans, or idolising wealth as the only measure of virtue, Brits became more unpleasant to be with. They married the personality and belief to action. As leader she was initially hyper-cautious. Let us give thanks today for a life that achieved so much for all of God's children.". Thatcher's title is Baroness. The Brixton rioters, the Argentinians, teachers; everyone actually. 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.". 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. 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 . That did the trick.). Her bouffant and handbag and nasal voice were comedy gold, but she was also earnest, principled and said exactly what she meant. The preface to the Margaret Thatcher's most popular book is The Downing Street Years. Howe's "broken cricket bats" speech in the Commons was the killer blow. Margaret Thatcher's 1980 speech was written by playwright Ronnie Miller, and Julia recalls that the night before delivering the speech she had a huge row with him about the content. Instead, her Big Bang blew the roof off City profits and property booms filled the gap where productive industry should have sprouted. Prime Minister Thatcher delivered the fourth speech to Congress by a British prime minister. Her vision for Britain made a lot of people feel like outsiders, which made them the ideal audience for comedy. Interview by Benedict King. Margaret Thatcher is being remembered as the prime minister who remade Britain's economy, the "Iron Lady" who stood up to communism and who fought and won a war in the distant South Atlantic . 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. I was on my own. But she personified the change from meaning to meaninglessness in so many settlements and lives, and for this reason she is hard to forgive. When I think of this memorial, I think of the words of Rupert Brooke, "that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.". Perhaps we suspected that reality had created a character beyond our creative reach. Well, everything really, even her name. 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. Keith Joseph was her guru. 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. This was hardly the first or even the worst example of a dig at Thatcher tinged so needlessly with sexism. As a child she unnerved me but we are not children now and we are free to choose our own ethical codes and leaders that reflect them. But Thatcher was a naturally, perhaps incurably, divisive figure. A splendid synergy was created, deliberately and with just that in mind on both sides of the Atlantic. By John Cassidy. And he would credit the contribution of Helmut Kohl, who rose to power in Germany in part because of the influence of Thatcher and Reagan. The last time the UK ran a trade surplus was the year of the Falklands war. It is not true that Thatcher didn't care about the media. Thatcher swept away those state monopolies in the new coinage of "privatisation" and transformed daily life in a way we now take for granted. This is an especially pertinent problem given its heartfelt desire for redistribution of wealth. Statistics now confirm what many people have always recognised: that inequality is divisive and socially corrosive. The result . Thatcher answered that question, re-energising the concept of democratic leadership. They are a more energetic and impressive group than their predecessors, often with experience outside politics that makes them impatient and independent-minded. During the speech, . Until then Thatcher had shown the strength of her weakness: a dislike of consensus and aversion to debate, leading to decisive action. 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. 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. The 70s was Britain's most equal decade. I'd unthinkingly imbibed enough doctrine to know that, troubled as I was, there was little point looking elsewhere for support. Yet I wrote columns of pretty unremitting hostility to most of what she did. "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. A decade later they were wiped out in terms of Scotland-based Westminster constituency representation. 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. The organised working class, almost alone, had put Britain on the skids. But on the subject of Europe, Thatcher became a contradictory figure. LONDON Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first female prime minister and uncompromisingly conservative "Iron Lady" of the 1980s, has died. Two especially forceful and committed leaders on the world stage at the same time: this was critical and key to ending the cold war, permitting the reunification of Germany, the consolidation of the EU and drawing our two nations together in a historic cooperation. You may not be a fan of Edwina Currie but, really, was she any worse than John Gummer? It was a watershed moment in Irish politics. April 17, 2013, 6:40 PM. Where copyright is the problem, the full text can be found on the Complete As the coalition sets about shrinking the welfare state, it's still embarked on Thatcher's project of rolling back the frontiers of the state, dismantling the settlement that held from 1945 until it unravelled in the 1970s. Indeed, many of the policy innovations associated with Thatcher had already been pioneered by her predecessor. But at its crudest, the Thatcher ethos translated into the get-rich-quick, greed-is-good spirit of the 1980s, satirised by Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney creation. Rows with Lawson and Geoffrey Howe over a European currency (where she was right) presaged the final shambles of the poll tax. In the current wall-to-wall media welter, I caught the current leader of the Scottish Tories, Ruth Davison MSP, being asked if Thatcher was an electoral asset for her. We were not unique in such a response but she failed to appreciate that Scots are balanced, canny folk insofar as we have a well-developed chip on each shoulder. She certainly was divisive, bisecting the country politically and geographically: hard-hit regions in the north of England, Wales and Scotland may be notably less civil in their farewells. Charles Powell was a senior foreign policy . Perhaps Labour would benefit from another defeat, given the danger of taking power unprepared and turning into a zombie government, like the tragedy unfurling in France. The machinery of modern political management polls, consulting, focus groups is deployed mainly to discover what will make aparty and politician better liked, or worse, disliked. On the other hand, growth has been depressed because weak trade unions can no longer ensure wage increases keep pace with inflation. One leading Tory thinker said current academic concepts such as evolutionary psychology and behavioural economics were fundamentally rightwing; another said disruptive digital technology liberated individuals against powerful behemoths which may be true, but some of the most striking online advances harness the collective spirit. her maiden And that made it easy to mock her. (No wonder it sold 7m copies a week). Here is a selection of the best writing from commentators, politicians and journalists on the legacy of Margaret Thatcher's 11 years in power - and on her continuing impact in the time following her downfall, as figures from across the political spectrum examine the legacy of one of the most important political figures from the last half-century, this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama, key role not only in bringing about the first Gulf War, publicly advocate for the 2003 attack on Iraq, the Guardian reported upon the death last month of Hugo Chavez, the Daily Mail has morefemale bylines than any other UK paper, Alan Krueger, chair of Obama's council of economic advisers, nor does the balance of research evidence suggest that greater inequality acts as a spur to growth, decline in trade union membership and the rise in inequality, intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich, the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy, Rik Mayall's student rants in The Young Ones, wicked, incompetent mindset that was the spirit of the 80s, "very fashionable in the Guardian for a few months before the financial crisis". Margaret expresses that Reagan's leadership was the key to ending The Cold War and unifying a formerly divided nation. Here is an excerpt from People [PMT]: "In politics," Margaret Thatcher once acidly observed, "if you want anything said, ask a man. to his resignation letter on 1 November, defended herself against rough Few would argue that they have not endured. As she said in her memoirs: "There was no one else." I have few recollections of Thatcher after the slowly chauffeured, weepy Downing Street cortege. 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. John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. Thatcher was never insensitive to the impact of her policies on the poor. "Maggie Thatcher," he said. When Sir Geoffrey Howe resigned in consequence, she replied Three separate pieces of legislation between 1980 and 1984 attacked the closed shop, toughened up the laws on picketing and imposed secret strike ballots. All Rights Reserved. The author uses this idea of freedom in her writing to allow the audience to feel and understand the mission of Reagan--"to restore the strength of the free world, and to free the slaves of communism" (6-7). "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. Thatcher's use of rhetorical devices supports her eulogy because the concept of Reagan being more. Thatcher will be especially remembered for her shameful role during the epic hunger strikes of 1980 and 81. All rights reserved. Privatisation was the single most massive attack on democracy we have seen. The milk snatcher reputation absorbed and lived with. There was, for example, the time in the late 1970s when, as Opposition Leader, she almost succeeded in censoring the one half-decent joke in a key campaign speech. She describes Reagan as her friend and continues to narrate his good acts in America during his presidency. When President Reagan died in June 2004, she delivered a What was different in Britain was that she assumed no responsibility to minimise social disruption or to create new jobs and industries. The family silver was squandered on bribing voters rather than modernising the economy. What is really left by Thatcher to history? But can he shake off the shackles of the past and prove there is an alternative? She lavished praise on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, then in its infancy, and laid out the . Her voice, a bellicose yawn, somehow both boring and boring I could ignore the content but the intent drilled its way in. At its best, that has meant a mood of freedom and choice that has made these islands a brighter, less drab place than they once were. press to rejoice at the capture of South Georgia on 25 April 1982, announced that White The Cameron and Osborne circle are crude copies carried away with the dangerous idea that conviction is all it takes to run a country. She had just finished the first volume of her memoirs, which she insisted was all her own work. Reagan had sought to meet with then Prime Minister James Callaghan, but the request was rejected, and bucked to then Foreign Minister David Owen. Thatcher was the Prime Minister of Great Britain during Reagan's presidency, and was close with him which What was it about Thatcher that inspired a generation of comics to rage at her? 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. 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. Are there, even, things we look back on with regret for their passing? Union in a speech "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.". So we agreed to reactivate the back channel. This reverie only occurred when the car was out of view. At a banquet in Belgrade the press sat next to the so-called "Garden Girls", who were the secretaries at No 10. At the time, Thatcher was the education secretary her first major political role. In November 1978, Hannaford and I organized a European fact-finding tour for Reagan, and the first stop was London. speech in the House of Commons on 5 February 1960 and gave her While Labour was now "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich", ambitious feminism wanted to be let in to the boardroom and every corridor of power that and little else is what they mean by changing the world. Chvez is gone, but the voters are likely to re-elect Chavismo on 14 April. And, of course, Nelson provided the intelligence. At its heart must be an active programme to create good jobs and raise living standards. It was all very well for me to write books. History will judge her, but not a country in Europe was untouched by Thatcher's example. In this moment she inspired only curiosity, a pale phantom, dumbly filling her day. History, Sample Essay. There was only one state-approved answering machine available. 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. 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 first time I met Margaret Thatcher, I swear she was wearing gloves. She played a key role not only in bringing about the first Gulf War but also using her influence to publicly advocate for the 2003 attack on Iraq. Absurd or not, it does indeed seem alien not least to those born in the 1980s, the generation we shall always call Thatcher's children. declared that she wanted our money back, invited the Nor, contrary to myth, did Thatcherism emerge fully formed in May 1979. But look at this typical difference between her and her imitators: where Cameron has charged into Europe, taking his party out of the influential European People's party of natural allies, making enemies and building no useful coalitions, it was she who signed the Single European Act, understanding its importance for British trade, careful to make allies as well as swinging her handbag. Please activate cookies in order to turn autoplay off. 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. Her effect was to force a deeper consideration of priorities, sometimes expressed in a variety of dystopias. The 1978 meeting was their last in person until Mrs Thatcher became Reagan's first state visitor, 26-28 February 1981. Hewrote this piece in 2003, two weeks before he died. She wrecked her own party, while promoting, via many a tortuous turn, Labour's resurrection. Gaze at the telephone. In a world where most media talking heads come from the top few percent of income earners, unions are not only important in wage bargaining, they also provide some of the few well-informed voices whose job it is to speak on behalf of the less well-paid. When she took over in 1979, the bottom of that device would have carried the legend, "Property of the GPO." 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. Thatcher's social instincts were always nostalgic conservative. Each now seems banal. Thatcher's threat to butcher the mining industry, destroy the fabric of mining communities and in particular the trade union to which miners had a bond of loyalty, was met with the fiercest resistance any government has met in peacetime. But she exploited her luck. The Yale Book of Quotations also states, "Thatcher is said to have used this in a 1965 speech.". There was always an element of the erotic in the national obsession with her. The Thatcher government was across all the details of this shipment.
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