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A Labour veteran blamed another legacy of Thatcher: the need for iron discipline after the media onslaught that engulfed her opponents. November 15, 2020 9:00 AM EST. "No, no, no". Rows with Lawson and Geoffrey Howe over a European currency (where she was right) presaged the final shambles of the poll tax. 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. Not the loss of imperial markets, not lazy management, not the education system, not the decline of the industrial ethic: bitter men standing on platforms and asking for a show of hands to down tools were solely to blame. Thatcher's unwavering belief in the invisible hand of the market meant that she did not believe it was part of her job description to put anything in its place. 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Just look around. What you see is a nation ruled for 11 turbulent years by a remarkable woman and which still lives in her image. They are aggressively exploiting the emotions generated by the person's death to create hagiography. It accounted for a large part of the mark Thatcher left on Britain. We still live in the land Margaret built. Now she would more likely have been beaten to the Tory leadership by one of the Etonians in cabinet. In November 1978, Hannaford and I organized a European fact-finding tour for Reagan, and the first stop was London. be a nation in retreat". The welfare state, with its unemployment and housing benefits and free healthcare, actually protected wages: employers could not force workers to accept low pay or unpaid overtime because of the job's healthcare provision, as they do in the US. She forced us to decide what was truly important. As leader she was initially hyper-cautious. When President Reagan died in June 2004, she delivered a Gillian Anderson's portrayal of the Iron Lady in "The Crown" is pretty spot-on. We Americans will not see you again in our time, but we will never forget you. What saved Thatcher's bacon, and revolutionised her leadership, was Labour's unelectable Michael Foot and the Falklands war. Interview by Benedict King. 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. June 30, 1992 - Swearing . This was hardly the first or even the worst example of a dig at Thatcher tinged so needlessly with sexism. March 7, 1991 - Receives the US Medal of Freedom from President George Bush. Typically, this distinction is mapped onto the ideas that Conservatives hold about equality. 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. I always felt a bit sorry for her biological children Mark and Carol, wondering from whom they would get their cuddles. drew an important moral from the Falklands war: "We have ceased to But we have one beacon to guide us that Ronald Reagan never had. The leading feminist Natasha Walter called Thatcher "the great unsung heroine of British feminism". Fourthly, policy was aimed at those who, according to the prime minister, wanted to get on in life. But within a few years, a third of children were poor, a sign of the yawning inequality from which the country never recovered. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979, she 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. It was sad that she had to learn it in war, a grim example to her British and US successors. And as my Guardian colleague Seumas Milne detailed last year, "across Britain Thatcher is still hated for the damage she inflicted and for her political legacy of rampant inequality and greed, privatisation and social breakdown.". to his resignation letter on 1 November, defended herself against rough Whatever else may be true of her, Thatcher engaged in incredibly consequential acts that affected millions of people around the world. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one's enemies. 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. 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. British Labour MP Tom Watson decreed: "I hope that people on the left of politics respect a family in grief today." Indeed a person with achemistry that repelled almost all thesignificant males in Edward Heath's cabinet who could never become theparty leader. Cabinet rank in 1970 without appearing on television more than a handful She denounced Nelson Mandela and his ANC as "terrorists", something even David Cameron ultimately admitted was wrong. She had left a Britain marked by private affluence and public squalor. Cameron's crew crudely imagine she intended it. Secondly, the balance of power in industrial relations was shifted decisively in favour of employers. The last time I met her was after all this was over. Many hated her. 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. Sent Bobby Sands to an Irish hero's grave without a blink. Keith Joseph was her guru. Was it cruelty? "Margaret Thatcher was not a natural communicator. Thatcher became a supremely self-confident leader. The proportion of children living in relative poverty more than doubled during the 80s, and the damage has never been undone. Charles Powell was a senior foreign policy . be a nation in retreat". She gave Nigel Lawson at the Treasury his head and was genuinely alarmed when he cut income tax to 40%. 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. 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. It made her virtually unsackable as education secretary. Sunstein worked for a Democratic president, but did not meet the Labour leader or key advisers. of times. Words. It is no coincidence the three most influential centre-right thinktanks were all conceived over the following months. Reagan, who had recently left office as governor of California, was in London to deliver a speech to the Pilgrim Society. It was not interested in a resolution. Reagan would often hasten to remind those paying tribute to his cold war strategy that it was, in the strictest sense of the term, a team effort. When she returned from Paris many cabinet colleagues showed that The gender remained, its artefacts deployed with calculation. John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. "Maggie Thatcher," he said. Governments can rarely claim to have stimulated the arts but Thatcher, always rather impatient with the examined life, drew writers on to new ground. I can't articulate with the skill of either of "the Marks" Steel or Thomas why Thatcher and Thatcherism were so bad for Britain but I do recall that even to a child her demeanour and every discernible action seemed to be to the detriment of our national spirit and identity. Reagan was a highly influential president during his time in office, and had a lot of responsibility concerning the Cold War. first television interview the following day, euphoric In truth, Thatcher is one of the clearest examples of the fact that a successful woman doesn't always mean a step forward for women. Today's Tories walk in Thatcher's footsteps, battling with their estranged cousins in Ukip over who is the rightful heir to her Eurosceptic legacy. Demonising unions and stripping the great mass of private-sector workers of a voice and power in the workplace is still the root of the great living standards crisis that saw the share of wealth going to wages slide long before Lehman Brothers failed. It may be wrong to imagine that she intended to de-industrialise Britain, but the policies followed by her government had that effect. press to rejoice at the capture of South Georgia on 25 April 1982, announced that White Exactly the same is true of Thatcher. There had been Churchill and his defiance; there had been Kipling and his If; there had been her father in his grocer's shop in Grantham. 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. Her centralism, unequalled in Europe, descended under Blair into a morass of targetry, inefficiency and endless reorganisation. Thatcher became prime minister because she was a woman, not despite it. Maybe it was the sound of the estuary pronunciation robbing her of her aspirational airs, a prototype of the Bouquet/Bucket joke. the British Embassy in Paris and stated 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. It was mostly foreigners who could not understand why she fell. She abolished city-wide local government, capped spending and expected the poll tax to further undermine alternative voices. We are all on our own. 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. There were rumours of a different philosophy, at least in personal relationships. as far as can be known. Maggie was a fully formed comedy character before comedians had even gotten to her. Where copyright is the problem, the full text can be found on the Complete 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. This site follow the same rules (and shares an editor). Tim Bale, author of The Conservative Party: from Thatcher to Cameron, says it was conviction. This was most evident in the shooting dead of three unarmed IRA activists in Gibraltar in March 1988. her maiden Britain's record on innovation and investment have been extremely poor, while the hollowing out of manufacturing left the economy over-dependent on the de-regulated City. 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. There was always an element of the erotic in the national obsession with her. 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. She is an icon of individualism, not of feminism. Thatcher's 11 years of dictating British policy in Ireland was a legacy of bitterness and entrenched division. She mesmerised us. There is now, however, an opportunity to commit to a new politics that learns lessons from her ambition yet undoes the damage and focuses on reconstruction. Respected, viewed with awe, a conviction politician, but if liking came into it, that was an accident. No such alarms ring in Cameron's ears. This is not the Highland way. But the choice captures her perfectly. Thatcher is gone, but Thatcherism has infected and discredited all mainstream parties, depriving us of a chance to turn it down. But now the history was what mattered. All rights reserved. camps were revealed in August 1992. Having no social or political connection with the class most affected, she gave a very good impression of not caring. 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. By 1990 it was transformed. While some remember her as a national saviour, others only see her ruthless demolition of flailing state-owned industries. More insidiously, it fathered amood of tolerated harshness. The first is what changed in the temper of Britain and the British. After the 1987 election, Thatcher cut an increasingly isolated figure. Even some leading figures on the left have jealously praised the right's creativity and ideological crusaders. It's telling that Tony Blair's domestic legacy amounts to two responses to Thatcherism: forcing Labour to accept it and then compensating for the damage the Tories had wreaked through sustained underinvestment in the public realm. She was right, he was wrong. News of Margaret Thatcher's death this morning instantly and predictably gave rise to righteous sermons on the evils of speaking ill of her. Norman and Margaret hold, and will always hold, a unique place in our esteem and affection. This was my mother speaking at some point in the middle 1980s. One thinks now of the closing words of her splendid 2004 eulogy of Ronald Reagan, and how those words so perfectly speak a tribute to her life and works: "We here still move in twilight. She refused to reform social security, or even curb its abuse. Miners were a hardy race of people who faced constant danger in the cause of mining coal but underneath that they were caring, sensitive individuals with a commitment to the communities in which they lived. In her eulogy for the former president, Thatcher uses specific structure, tone and diction, and word choices throughout her writing to . 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. Britain ceased to be the sick man of Europe and entered the 1990s with its reputation enhanced. Each was characterised by her attention to detail. The resignation was announced For years, in fact, she despised writers, except those who did her speeches. In fact, Margaret Thatcher was known for her lack of a sense of humour. April 8, 2013. She, for one, never underestimated her friend from California, then a state of some 24 million. The author Nassim Taleb traded equations on a whiteboard with Gus O'Donnell, then head of the civil service, as they debated econometrics; at another, I watched entranced as Lord Heseltine argued urban policies with Harvard's Ed Glaeser. "Don't follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.". 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. Talk to a Labour MP and you end up discussing politics and positioning; talk to a Tory, and it tends to be about policy. 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. He'd been a bully, she said, whereas Mrs T was warm and understanding. By then, 1990, I was 15, adolescent and instinctively anti-establishment enough to regard her disdainfully. Nobody, at least that I know of, objected to that observation on the ground that it was disrespectful to the ability of the Chavez family to mourn in peace. Thatcher is often credited with showing that you could get to the top whatever your background. Meeting Gorbachev for the first time in December 1984 she declared: "We Following several small strokes she announced, in March 2002, that her career as a speechmaker had ended. She wrecked her own party, while promoting, via many a tortuous turn, Labour's resurrection. She was the daughter of a prosperous civic leader who merely began life as a "grocer". As I see it, and as one who had the pleasure of knowing both, they would recognize the huge opportunity created by the presence of each in the respective national and international policy-making role. In 1979 she inherited a nation that was the "sick man of Europe", an object of constant transatlantic ridicule. Everyone knows that. The most important thing Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did for British politics was to understand the significance of Thatcherism and to decide not to reverse it, indeed to carry it forward. From 1979 to 1990, Margaret Thatcher held the office of Prime . performance at a Press Conference afterwards, the The jobs that went during the 80s tended to be good, skilled jobs, delivering decent incomes and some security. Reagan's decision to bomb Libya, spoke Her policy decisions entrenched sectarian divisions, handed draconian military powers over to the securocrats, and subverted basic human rights. The result . Conscious of being awoman, and incapable of pretending otherwise. They looked after their old and young as well as those who were ill or infirm. 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. That did the trick.). 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. Here is an excerpt from People [PMT]: "In politics," Margaret Thatcher once acidly observed, "if you want anything said, ask a man. Thatcher was suspicious of democracy. Flags were flying over Port Stanley on 14 June. Out! The evidence shows that greater equality provides the foundation on which higher standards of social wellbeing can be built. 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. Ultimately, despite the despondent times of the Cold War and the waning confidence of the citizens, Margaret Thatcher delivered her eulogy speech in belief of President Ronald Reagan and used the rhetorical appeals of pathos, imagery, metaphor, and ethos to accomplish his presidency as successful. There were big tax cuts for those on the highest incomes, driven by the belief that this would encourage entrepreneurship. The spell of community. The organised working class, almost alone, had put Britain on the skids. 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 adopts an endearing and sentimental tone using ethos, repetition, and . delivered an outstanding defence of the Government in the Commons. Hugo Young was a political columnist forthe Guardian from 1984 until 2003 and biographer of Margaret Thatcher. 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. To enrich the global 1% she so brilliantly represented, our "entitlement" had to go and she was just the one to do it. She lavished praise on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, then in its infancy, and laid out the . Perhaps there is resentment because the clemency and respect that are being mawkishly displayed now by some and haughtily demanded of the rest of us at the impending, solemn ceremonial funeral, are values that her government and policies sought toannihilate. she warned that she was not 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. On November 8th 1989, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave an inspiring speech to the UN General Assembly about the environment and climate change. Reagan, for one, recognized the importance of Margaret Thatcher's presence as British prime minister, but would caution any discussionpartnerthat Pope John Paul played an equally important role. They're not Thatcher. first television interview the following day. Thatcher swept away those state monopolies in the new coinage of "privatisation" and transformed daily life in a way we now take for granted. 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. Each now seems banal. Author: Margaret Thatcher Year: 1979 Location: London, the UK Occasion: Address to the Parliament. Everyone knows where they were when they heard. Shoot-to-kill actions by British forces also significantly increased. 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. speech to the House of Lords in June 1993. I will know that we have finally broken from the kind of capitalism that she championed and which died in 2008 when we see workers elected on to company boards. Heath took us into Europe, and a referendum in spring 1975 confirmed national approval for the move. After the Dublin European Council in November 1979 she began a long battle Their target was "the enemy within" working-class power and the so-called culture of entitlement. The young men were those whose childhood was blighted by the effects of relative poverty and inequality on family life. Thatcher did not believe in "picking winners"; instead she preferred to rely on market forces to ensure the survival of the fittest. The latest pit to close, Maltby in Yorkshire, still has a death and general purpose fund to help fellow miners and their families in times of hardship. series of famous statements that marked the end of her premiership, replied She was not a writer. We had an all-out blistering row that delighted the organisers. Those strikes were confusing to me as a child. On the day Thatcher died, the Daily Mail ran a piece claiming that Coco Chanel "was a feminist before the word existed". The battle with the miners and leftwing councils lay ahead, as did the trauma of an IRA assassination bid. A big decline in traditional industries took place across Europe and the US in the 80s and 90s. deeply felt eulogy, filmed in advance and relayed by video link to screens in the National Cathedral in Washington. 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. All rights reserved. This was the feminine creature who, two years later, was leader of the Conservative party. It is odd to reflect that in Thatcher's time, the British novel enjoyed a comparatively lively resurgence. Maggie! They do not have to charm, schmooze or play tag with the press. Bernard Ingham, journalist and civil servant. I grew up in Essex with a single mum and a go-getter Dagenham dad. 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). Oxford CD-ROM explains how the statements were assembled and edited Died: 24 February 2023, aged 90 Sir Bernard Ingham was Margaret Thatcher writ large. That's history, but what matters to us is her legacy now that her heirs and imitators rule in her wake. We can't blame (or credit) her for all of this, of course. The family silver was squandered on bribing voters rather than modernising the economy. Thatcher's reputation never recovered from the ruthless budgets of 1980 and 1981, or her insensitivity to colleagues. Although the "right to buy" and the privatisation of utilities by selling shares to new small investors was often justified as giving rights to "the little people", the reality is that the less well-off fell ever further behind the rich. As she said in her memoirs: "There was no one else." She became harder than hard. But awoman who, at the time, thought that chancellor was the top mark at which she might aim. Here shovels the earth during a tree-planting ceremony . making her big speech the following day as scheduled. These developments set a benchmark. What, in retrospect, seems creative and what destructive? 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 . The real comic nemeses of Thatcher were the puppets of Spitting Image. Underestimating Ronald Reagan was an error committed by many of his critics and opponents; Reagan never minded a bit, thinking that being underestimated yielded him a significant advantage. was an Oxford student home for the university holidays. In front of his journalist colleagues he was told to stand right in front of her so that she could hit him lightly with her order papers. But it did, and the consequences seem impossible to reverse. In 1980, I made several fast round trips to London, Paris and Bonn, and, on each occasion, had the opportunity to meet with Prime Minister Thatcher. Among them was loyalist Brian Nelson, a former British soldier and member of the Ulster Defence Association. 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 widening of income differences between rich and poor that took place during the 80s (particularly from 1985) is the most rapid ever recorded. Farewell, indeed, Baroness Thatcher. Collins (Oxford University Press, 1998-2000). We have his example. This zest for ideas was boosted by the 2010 intake, which comprises just under half the parliamentary party. Oil helped Thatcher paper over the cracks, but Britain's age-old problem finding a way to pay its way in the world remains. A distinction is often made between two traditions of British Conservative thought: the paternalist "one nation/middle way" tradition, and the more libertarian one that is associated with Margaret Thatcher. The milk snatcher reputation absorbed and lived with. Margaret Thatcher. Far from "smashing the glass ceiling", she was the aberration, the one who got through and then pulled the ladder up right after her. Yet by the autumn of 1981 they had made her so unpopular that bets were being taken at the October party conference that she would be "gone by Christmas". Thatcher's title is Baroness. Published: Sunday 21st February 2021. John O'Sullivan, CBE (born 25 April 1942) is a British conservative political commentator and journalist. In her speech, Thatcher used rhetorical techniques to show the strength and principles of Reagan and project those values onto the American people. But what bound all opposition to Margaret Thatcher's programme was a suspicion that the grocer's daughter was intent on monetising human value, that she had no heart and, famously, cared little for the impulses that bind individuals into a society. 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. 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. speech to the House of Lords in June 1993. 100% Success rate. Not even the Falklands war would push it off the tracks or damage it in any way. 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. It's interesting, though, that even when comedians try to be political, they can never really land a punch on David Cameron, Nick Clegg or George Osborne. Hire writer now Order. There are many reasons for this. Research papers can be complex, so best to give our essay writing service a bit more time on this one. Hats. A massive programme of social housing would be a good place to start, stimulating the economy. an interviewer "there is no such thing as society", "We have not Since 1990 a selection of statements is listed.
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