at The Hague in May 1992. The government's welfare bill has been swollen by tax credits and housing benefit caused by the labour market reforms and council house sales of the 1980s. Among them was loyalist Brian Nelson, a former British soldier and member of the Ulster Defence Association. But she regarded rightwing causes as an intellectual hobby. In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon. with concern about global warming, having done more than any other politician 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? Are there, even, things we look back on with regret for their passing? Flags were flying over Port Stanley on 14 June. This legacy remains intact with a party that places a premium on radical thinking and, for all its flaws, sets the political agenda. It'd be disingenuous to omit that there were a fair number of ding-dong-style celebratory messages amidst the pensive reflections on the end of an era. the British Embassy in Paris and stated A couple of days later on the 11th, Margaret Thatcher the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, wrote an eulogy for Ronald Reagan. The events of that awful summer of '81 polarised Irish society, north and south. The Cameron and Osborne circle are crude copies carried away with the dangerous idea that conviction is all it takes to run a country. What is really left by Thatcher to history? She was a steadfast friend to brutal tyrants such as Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein and Indonesian dictator General Suharto ("One of our very best and most valuable friends"). She is an icon of individualism, not of feminism. She was unashamed about this, loathing localism and rejecting calls to diminish the "strong state". 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. Its strategies included the shallow and ineffectual 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement which was about creating a political alliance involving the Dublin establishment, the SDLP and the British to defeat Irish republicanism. This was the feminine creature who, two years later, was leader of the Conservative party. April 17, 2013, 6:40 PM. Second, it's now easier to see the scale of the setback she inflicted on Britain's idea of its own future. Yet, at that last encounter, her tone was different. As I scan the statements of my memory bank for early deposits (it'd be a kid's memory bank account at a neurological NatWest where you're encouraged to become a greedy little capitalist with an escalating family of porcelain pigs), I see her in her hairy helmet, condescending on Nationwide, eviscerating eunuch MPs and baffled BBC fuddy duddies with her General Zodd stare and coldly condemning the IRA. 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. Tributes paid as Sir Bernard Ingham dies, aged 90 - PressReader Margaret Thatcher's environmental record: She was a climate hawk. And the single mums. Thanks to the comparison with Cameron, we are reminded that the Thatcher reign was more circumspect and well-managed than it seemed at the time. Feminists disowned her by insisting that though she was a woman, she was not a sister. performance at a Press Conference afterwards. If I become PM, I will deliver the radical set of reforms need to unleash growth. This was my mother speaking at some point in the middle 1980s. Her political antennae refused to allow her to privatise the coal industry, British Rail or the post office. Thatcher is often credited with showing that you could get to the top whatever your background. Rather, she was a classic example of a certain kind of conservative woman who believed that all women should pull themselves up just as she had done, conveniently overlooking that not all women are blessed with the privileges that had been available to her, such as a wealthy and supportive husband and domestic help. By 1987, anti-Tory tactical voting had taken hold. I am, it's safe to say, one of Thatcher's children. making her big speech the following day as scheduled. Her unforgettable presence, but also her policy achievements. We might speculate that an adviser had offered Thatcher a selection of good lines, or that she had asked to see some. Farewell, indeed, Baroness Thatcher. The state retained control of some nationalised industries the railways, for example but BT, British Airways, British Steel, British Gas and the British Airports Authority were among the big companies sold off. "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. In January 1976 she gave the The gender remained, its artefacts deployed with calculation. Margaret Thatcher's most popular book is The Downing Street Years. outlook at the time. Edited text: This speech was delivered to the Conservative party conference in Brighton on October 10 1980. Bernard Ingham, journalist and civil servant. Books by Margaret Thatcher (Author of The Downing Street Years) - Goodreads first television interview the following day, euphoric The first is what changed in the temper of Britain and the British. "Comes here every week to water them flowers." 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. It is odd to reflect that in Thatcher's time, the British novel enjoyed a comparatively lively resurgence. 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 original alternative comics just did it because they had to," he says. In 1979 she inherited a nation that was the "sick man of Europe", an object of constant transatlantic ridicule. That gives them the nerve to set about cutting benefits and the public realm with a glee they don't bother to hide. Action. True, Labour, James Callaghan and the unions played their part by blocking Barbara Castle's In Place of Strife attempt to create German or Nordic co-operation between unions and industry that might have rescued unions from Thatcher's crushing. recommended by Simon Heffer. We are all on our own. as far as can be known. 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. Analysis Of Ronald Reagan's Eulogy By Margaret Thatcher Margaret Thatcher 'the Lady's not for turning' - YouTube Contrary to an increasingly common belief, "a woman who is successful" is not synonymous with "a feminist". For those of us who were dismayed by her brisk distaste for that cosy state-dominated world, it was never enough to dislike her. The cautious tactician was suppressed. departing Downing Street on 28 November. To claim that any woman's success is a boon for feminism is like saying all publicity is good publicity. But the key point is this: those who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics) aren't silent at all. Still plumbing for the essence, we have to examine other bits of residue. in his defence during the IranContra affair, told Though she recognised the dangers of global warming, Thatcher's industrial and economic policies prioritised economic growth. 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. Yet a leader that a wide cross-section of Scots had come to despise. A strong, so strong, leader. I will be the heir to Margaret Thatcher. If the Falklands war was the making of Thatcher, then the poll tax was her achilles heel not least in Scotland. John O'Sullivan (columnist) - Wikipedia On 30 October 1990 she made the first of the Opponents and supporters of Margaret Thatcher will never agree about the value of her legacy, but as for her importance, her hypnotic hold on us, they are bound to find common ground. What's more, it was moulded to the wall as one commentator recalled and you had no right to change it, not without becoming entangled in a state-managed bureaucracy. Peggy Noonan. Secondly, the balance of power in industrial relations was shifted decisively in favour of employers. Another head of government died recently who, like Thatcher, was called divisive. Margaret Thatcher's landmark Bruges speech about the future of Europe was never intended to push the UK towards the exit, the man who wrote it says. Hire a Writer. Ingham's rough redraft of my speech with very little success. So what caused this great divide, with one side a fountain of fresh ideas and the other struggling for new inspiration? She had just finished the first volume of her memoirs, which she insisted was all her own work. "What's going on there, mate?" No gloves, or hats, except for royalty or at funerals, but feet on the table, whisky glass at hand, into the small hours of solitude, for want of male cronies in the masculine world she dominated for all her 11yearsin power. 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. Those abandoned places are also landmarks in Thatcher's Britain. In a break with tradition and protocol, Reagan decided he'd also attend the "return dinner" at the British Embassy the next evening. announced that White She all but erased his political legacy to stamp her own image on the nation, so Britain before and after Thatcher were two different countries. To enrich the global 1% she so brilliantly represented, our "entitlement" had to go and she was just the one to do it. The fact is that if both sides removed their ideological blinkers, as Thatcher, remarkably perhaps, managed to do, then her trilogy of speeches in the late 1980s still offer some of the best and . Thatcher's reign helped to inspire alternative comedy by creating a generation so bereft of hope that they started putting on gigs just for the sake of something to do. One Sunday recently while staying in London, I took a stroll in the gardens of Temple, the insular clod of quads and offices between the Strand and the Embankment. 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. Thatcher's 11 years of dictating British policy in Ireland was a legacy of bitterness and entrenched division. Privatisation was the single most massive attack on democracy we have seen. However, for almost a decade Sinn Fin had been patently trying to build a peace process and unfolding events on the world stage including the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, and the release of Mandela were evidence that governments, and apparently intractable situations, could change. A longer version of this article appears on Gerry Adams' blog, Margaret Thatcher was good at destruction. In January 1976, Thatcher delivered a speech at Kensington Town Hall in London, and spoke about the Iron Curtain the political boundary that separated Europe during World War II. History will judge her, but not a country in Europe was untouched by Thatcher's example. Her refusal to stand against apartheid, her civil war against the unions, her aggression towards our neighbours in Ireland and a taxation system that was devised in the dark ages, the bombing of a retreating ship it's just not British. The organised working class, almost alone, had put Britain on the skids. There are more than 8,000. She undoubtedly rescued the prestige of the country from its postwar nadir, but at a high cost to the generosity of its political and social culture. 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. Oxford CD-ROM explains how the statements were assembled and edited This speech was delivered soon after her taking office in 1979. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979, she It's how she would have, if pressed, put it herself. She attacked the Treaty of Maastricht in a Margaret Thatcher, 'Iron Lady' of British politics, is dead - USA TODAY It may be wrong to imagine that she intended to de-industrialise Britain, but the policies followed by her government had that effect. For she changed the ethos of Britain as well as its landscape. She wanted to win, but did not put much faith in the quick smile. Without it, she would have been nothing. delivered an outstanding defence of the Government in the Commons. "Margaret Thatcher was not a natural communicator. Not all writers were against her. Farewelling Baroness Margaret Thatcher in a proper fashion is a difficult task: she left such a deep imprint upon the world that assessing its importance demands volumes analyzing her beliefs and paying proper tribute. But Thatcher was a naturally, perhaps incurably, divisive figure. The three of us watched as the gentle horticultural ritual was feebly enacted, then regarded the Iron Lady being helped into the back of a car and trundling off.