Margaret Thatcher climbs over a house : r/funny It fell to Blair to do something about the latter, while giving free rein to the former. But on their catastrophic economic policy, it's full-speed ahead into the concrete wall. The Cameron and Osborne circle are crude copies carried away with the dangerous idea that conviction is all it takes to run a country. When Margaret Thatcher won the general election in 1979, she became Prime Minister of a land in chaos. Sue Gray has shown the dangers of thinking officials are more ethical At countless demonstrations throughout the 80s, it expressed a curious ambivalence a first name intimacy as well as a furious rejection of all she stood for. 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 . Toastmasters International -Famous Speechwriters Thatcher is gone, but Thatcherism has infected and discredited all mainstream parties, depriving us of a chance to turn it down. Thirdly, industrial policy was all but abandoned. 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. The Winter of Discontent in 1978-79 brought rhetorical as well as political "Fatcha" was an instant punchline back then: simply saying it was enough to get a laugh. From then on she disregarded her critics and became intolerant of any who were "not one of us". Their target was "the enemy within" working-class power and the so-called culture of entitlement. The jobs that went during the 80s tended to be good, skilled jobs, delivering decent incomes and some security. Each was characterised by her attention to detail. But keeping the show on the road is what all of them must first attend to, because there's nobody else to do it. "Maggie Thatcher" two fierce trochees set against the gentler iambic pulse of Britain's postwar welfare state. They are a more energetic and impressive group than their predecessors, often with experience outside politics that makes them impatient and independent-minded. 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. Less noted . MT gave her first Quotation being the warmest form of praise, Larkin was naturally touched. After the Dublin European Council in November 1979 she began a long battle 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. Respected, viewed with awe, a conviction politician, but if liking came into it, that was an accident. She will be for ever unforgiven by those who now see worse being done in her name to another generation. But the choice captures her perfectly. It was not interested in a resolution. 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. It was only in the mid-80s that she became truly radical and remotely comparable to David Cameron in 2010. Large parts of society never recovered, while Germany and other countries managed the transition without such brutality. speech in the House of Commons, her She made her maiden 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. (No wonder it sold 7m copies a week). While some remember her as a national saviour, others only see her ruthless demolition of flailing state-owned industries. 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. I just now watched the British Gas one again. Of course, it's in politics that the shadow looms most clearly. 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. November 15, 2020 9:00 AM EST. As she cut local housing budgets, she sent housing benefit soaring in compensation. 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. Everything has its season. The cautious tactician was suppressed. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry. She led Britain further into Europe, while talking us further out. A massive programme of social housing would be a good place to start, stimulating the economy. 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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. Was it cruelty? Getting the record straight. The leading feminist Natasha Walter called Thatcher "the great unsung heroine of British feminism". 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. The former reporter, who was 90, died with his family around him yesterday lunchtime, a statement said. 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. But Labour is no less in thrall. 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. International studies of OECD countries suggest a close relationship between the decline in trade union membership and the rise in inequality. She pointed out that she was only 10 years old when she ceased to be prime minister. which revealed a good deal as to her political She became harder than hard. To Britons of my generation, she . in a statement the following morning (22 November), hours before she 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. The first is what changed in the temper of Britain and the British. Only today are we facing the cost. This is a style whose absence is much missed. The 1978 meeting was their last in person until Mrs Thatcher became Reagan's first state visitor, 26-28 February 1981. After the 1987 election, Thatcher cut an increasingly isolated figure. Speaking personally, it was a personal privilege beyond measure to have witnessed and participate in the blossoming of the special ties that continued throughout her entire time in office. From the invention of the term "sado-monetarism" through to the way her powerful ministers seemed to swoon before her, and the constant negative reiteration by her critics of her femininity, or lack of it, she exerted a glacial hold over the (male) nation's masochistic imagination. I made this argument at length last year when Christopher Hitchens died and a speak-no-ill rule about him was instantly imposed (a rule he, more than anyone, viciously violated), and I won't repeat that argument today; those interested can read my reasoning here. Promises. Neither shift of ownership and power would have happened without a leader prepared to take risks with her life. The blunt, pathetic reality today is that a little old lady has died, who in the winter of her life had to water roses alone under police supervision. We might speculate that an adviser had offered Thatcher a selection of good lines, or that she had asked to see some. The Tories triumphed, of course, and lost only two sitting MPs Hamish Gray and the social-security scrounger-bashing Iain Sproat, who vacated his marginal Aberdeen seat and headed for the Scottish Borders, only to suffer defeat there at the hands of the Alliance. Today we have four coalmines and around 2,000 miners. But she also provided great material. In 1968 she gave a lecture asking What's Ed Miliband, a policy wonk himself, claims to be a conviction politician like Thatcher. 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. Public Statements of Margaret Thatcher on CD-ROM, 1945-90, edited Christopher Margaret Thatcher Essay: Health Category. Margaret Thatcher formally tendered her resignation to the Queen early this morning after leaving Downing Street for the last time. What Is Wrong With Margaret Thatcher's Voice On 'The Crown - Esquire This was hardly the first or even the worst example of a dig at Thatcher tinged so needlessly with sexism. Climate, freedom and denial: What "Green Thatcherism" teaches us today My dad, I suspect, did. This is an especially pertinent problem given its heartfelt desire for redistribution of wealth. A Tory party desperate for women helped Thatcher through the political foothills to early success as an MP. Died: 24 February 2023, aged 90 Sir Bernard Ingham was Margaret Thatcher writ large. North sea oil was squandered when it should have seeded new industries. None present eyed her meanly or spoke with vitriol and it wasn't until an hour later that I dreamt up an Ealing comedy-style caper in which two inept crooks kidnap Thatcher from the garden but are unable to cope with the demands of dealing with her, and finally give her back. She was a prime minister who happened to be a woman. When Margaret Hilda Thatcher took over as Prime Minister, in May, 1979, I was sixteen. The evidence shows that greater equality provides the foundation on which higher standards of social wellbeing can be built. Peggy Noonan. 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. Margaret Thatcher: Foreign Policy of Great Britain | Speech-Guru 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. She was the first prime minister to be more accountable to the international market than to the British economy. Yet I wrote columns of pretty unremitting hostility to most of what she did. 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. Thatcher refused to recognise the right of citizens to vote for representatives of their choice. Adam Smith's invisible hand ended up raising two fingers to her moral project. "No, no, no". Here is an excerpt from People [PMT]: "In politics," Margaret Thatcher once acidly observed, "if you want anything said, ask a man. Perhaps, though, Thatcher "the monster" didn't die yesterday from a stroke, perhaps that Thatcher died as she sobbed self-pitying tears as she was driven, defeated, from Downing Street, ousted by her own party. The credit boom both here and in the USA may have gone against her Grantham roots but was an equally inevitable result of deregulation and the temptation of easy loans for people hungry to improve living standards. "She had been offered the chance to get on and effectively she then refused to offer it to otherpeople. at The Hague in May 1992. And that made it easy to mock her. Sent Bobby Sands to an Irish hero's grave without a blink. If a leader's record is to be measured by the willingness of the other side to decide itcannot turn back the clock, then Thatcher bulks big in history. It's true that whenever there's a major news story, millions of people immediately begin strip-mining it for puns and bon mots, making it harder for professional comics to develop focused, funny material that nobody's heard before. For a national matriarch she is oddly unmaternal. Accounts vary. It was perfectly justified to note that, particularly as the Guardian also explained that "to the millions who revered him a third of the country, according to some polls a messiah has fallen, and their grief will be visceral." "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. Contrary to an increasingly common belief, "a woman who is successful" is not synonymous with "a feminist". 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. Thatcher's passing is marked by street parties in Brixton, Belfast, Bristol, Derry, Glasgow and Liverpool, and seething bitterness among the mining families and communities she was allowed (including by scab union and Labour leaders) to destroy. Reagan was a highly influential president during his time in office, and had a lot of responsibility concerning the Cold War. Thatcher was the Prime Minister of Great Britain during Reagan's presidency, and was close with him which Steely, certainly. 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. March 7, 1991 - Receives the US Medal of Freedom from President George Bush. to his resignation letter on 1 November, stated Another head of government died recently who, like Thatcher, was called divisive. She went to a fee-paying school and to Oxford at her father's expense, gliding easily into the upper echelons of student politics. She may have got it slightly wrong. She wasn't a feminist icon and she wasn't an icon for women. The items stored in this section of the site are texts, but many of the most important statements are also available in audio or video form in the separate Multimedia section. In her speech, Thatcher used rhetorical techniques to show the strength and principles of Reagan and project those values onto the American people. In retrospect, in much dissenting commentary there was often a taint of unexamined sexism. 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. She was "outraged" when the programmes went ahead. They rallied around each other when times were hard. recommended by Simon Heffer. 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." To claim that any woman's success is a boon for feminism is like saying all publicity is good publicity. She hurled herself into NHS reform, changes to schools and universities, utilities privatisation and, eventually, local government reform. of her best Parliamentary speeches in a debate on the strikes, prayed on the She gave it her best shot. 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. Thatcher is remembered for her achievements, but more for a presence, which was wrapped up with being a woman. November). The gender remained, its artefacts deployed with calculation. 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. Throw the Lib Dems into the mix and it becomes highly combustible. Emma Dibdin is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles who writes about culture . Out! Margaret Thatcher's speech writer will miss funeral but 'shed a tear' When the mourners gather for Baroness Thatcher's funeral tomorrow, one important figure from her political past will be . Defending The Venezuelan Embassy, Organizing Peace for Ukraine with He had enough Del Boy about him to admire her coiffured virility but in a way Thatcher was so omnipotent; so omnipresent, so omni-everything that all opinion was redundant. The Iron Lady had a green thumband a surprisingly green philosophy. 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 . Later, when the BBC and ITV scheduled two programmes about Gibraltar, Thatcher tried to stop them. Cabinet rank in 1970 without appearing on television more than a handful We can't blame (or credit) her for all of this, of course. Sir Bernard Ingham was Margaret Thatcher writ large. Where she privatised state-owned industries, they go much further, seeking to dismantle the state itself. When all the public amenities were flogged, the adverts made it seem to my childish eyes fun and positive, jaunty slogans and affable British stereotypes jostling about in villages, selling people companies that they'd already paid for through tax. Alamat kami. Reversing Britain's long-term economic decline. It accounted for a large part of the mark Thatcher left on Britain. There were rumours of a different philosophy, at least in personal relationships. 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. announced that White She was immensely brisk. Lady Thatcher's New Threats for Old - National Churchill Museum We were wary of this. And by my own firsthand experience, it was genuine to the core. On the day Thatcher died, the Daily Mail ran a piece claiming that Coco Chanel "was a feminist before the word existed". Sunstein worked for a Democratic president, but did not meet the Labour leader or key advisers. It was under her leadership that in 1982 that the Force Research Unit (FRU) was established within the British Army Intelligence Corps. The prime minister was intensely interested in the campaign, and asked many penetrating questions.