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. Flags were flying over Port Stanley on 14 June. The young men were those whose childhood was blighted by the effects of relative poverty and inequality on family life. Jan Leeming, Sue Lawley, Moira Stuart delivering doctrine with sterile sexiness, like a butterscotch-scented beige vapour. On Sunday, looking down at the waterfront, I could see how these had been replaced by a housing estate, a supermarket, and sometimes by nothing at all. speech which caused the Soviets to dub her "the Iron Lady". Real Analysis Solved Problems, Synthesis Essay Freedom Of Speech, Photography Dissertation Titles, Reflective Essay Writers Service Usa, Sample Of The Resume 4423 . As working families in poverty now account for more than half of those below the poverty line, a government committed to "making work pay" should surely encourage this trend and raise the minimum wage. successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to Let us give thanks today for a life that achieved so much for all of God's children.". series of famous statements that marked the end of her premiership, replied Was it cruelty? She was catapulted into the Conservative leadership by a small group of ideologues centred around a thinktank, determined to roll back the statist ideas that dominated Britain after the postwar Attlee government. I have few recollections of Thatcher after the slowly chauffeured, weepy Downing Street cortege. Thirdly, industrial policy was all but abandoned. Meryl Streep's depiction of a shuffling figure, stricken and isolated by the death of her husband, Denis, may have softened memories, or formed them in the minds of a younger generation. In November 1978, Hannaford and I organized a European fact-finding tour for Reagan, and the first stop was London. 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. successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to She worked to enhance its corporate power. Mrs Thatcher told the assembly: "It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.". I don't know if they ever voted for her, I don't know if they liked her. Three separate pieces of legislation between 1980 and 1984 attacked the closed shop, toughened up the laws on picketing and imposed secret strike ballots. She hated what she called "that French phrase laissez faire". 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. 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. Asked to report on the "state of things" in our country, we could barely see past her. Large parts of society never recovered, while Germany and other countries managed the transition without such brutality. It was a watershed moment in Irish politics. bowling at the Lord Mayor's Banquet (12 November) and gave Sue Gray used to be my boss. They're happy to share big windfall bonuses with their cronies, they'll stick up for deposed dictator chums when they're down on their luck, they'll find opportunities in business for people they care about. If I become PM, I will deliver the radical set of reforms need to unleash growth. . This zest for ideas was boosted by the 2010 intake, which comprises just under half the parliamentary party. Thatcher became a supremely self-confident leader. And for all the tributes being paid by ministers this week, the issues at the topof the government's agenda are all to do with clearing up the mess she created. They are aggressively exploiting the emotions generated by the person's death to create hagiography. Texts for listed statements are available on the site in almost 70 per The papers date from Margaret Thatcher's childhood to the end of her life, and include tens of thousands of photographs, as well as a vast collection of press cuttings, and many audio and video tapes of public and private events. The pomp and circumstance that will crown her funeral was proffered by Brown, to some shudders from his own side. 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. A growing body of research now shows that the quality of social relations is among the most powerful influences on the happiness, health and wellbeing of populations in the rich countries. The Brixton rioters, the Argentinians, teachers; everyone actually. 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. 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 . There is a paradox. We had had a strange relationship. recommended by Simon Heffer. 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. But every prime minister since has bowed to her legacy, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown eager to be snapped with her on their doorstep. 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. her maiden On 30 October 1990 she made the first of the Reagan was especially interested in Mrs Thatcher's domestic policy initiatives, and it was quickly established that the foreign policy views ran along parallel lines. She was 87. It was all very well for me to write books. 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. At the Citizen's Theatre in Glasgow, the pantomime featured the Wicked Witch of the South; everyone knew her real identity. Just look around. During Margaret Thatcher's rise to the top, he was one of the backroom figures whose words helped create her reputation as the Iron Lady. On the contrary, consumerism and materialism have been the norm ever since, rising inequality the consistent trend as the rich soar ever further away from the rest. Yet the Daily Mail has morefemale bylines than any other UK paper and is not exactly a totem of gender equality andfemale-friendliness. She gave Nigel Lawson at the Treasury his head and was genuinely alarmed when he cut income tax to 40%. Contrary to an increasingly common belief, "a woman who is successful" is not synonymous with "a feminist". She made her maiden 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. The main names associated with Fatcha-bashing Ben Elton and Alexei Sayle deny that they relied so heavily on her for material. To her detractors, Thatcher is the prime minister who wiped out more than 15% of Britain's industrial base with her dogmatic monetarism, squandered the once-in-a-lifetime windfall of North Sea oil on unemployment pay and tax cuts, and made the UK the unbalanced, unequal country it is today. The south of England and the City of London were the future; the revenues from North Sea oil would pay for the unemployed in the old zones of manufacturing industry. camps were revealed in August 1992. was an Oxford student home for the university holidays. Lady Thatcher, you honor us by coming to the site of Sir Winston's pivotal speech, an event Westminster College has immortalized with the beautiful Winston Churchill Memorial. This does lead to divisions. She was the daughter of a prosperous civic leader who merely began life as a "grocer". This is an especially pertinent problem given its heartfelt desire for redistribution of wealth. It's how she would have, if pressed, put it herself. That said, by the mid-1980s it was clear that the Conservative government's economic policy was based on a handful of core principles. She was "outraged" when the programmes went ahead. I hope I'm not being reductive but it seems Thatcher's time in power was solely spent diminishing the resources of those who had least for the advancement of those who had most. The word "free" is used to help the audience British Labour MP Tom Watson decreed: "I hope that people on the left of politics respect a family in grief today." Her political antennae refused to allow her to privatise the coal industry, British Rail or the post office. She will be for ever unforgiven by those who now see worse being done in her name to another generation. Thatcher was the Prime Minister of Great Britain during Reagan's presidency, and was close with him which I think on balance Thatcher did for Britain what was needed at the time. This is what we mean by the Thatcher revolution, imposing on Britain, for better or for worse, some of the liberalisation that the major continental economies know,20 years later, they still need. her intention to allow her name to go forward to the second ballot (20 From the valleys of Wales to the far reaches of Scotland, miners were, by and large, socialists by nature but this was tempered by strong Christian beliefs. ", This was the great leader in her favourite pose as Samuel Smiles: human beings didn't need to be helped they needed to help themselves. This was her last important public statement. Police charges against picketing union printers in Wapping enabled the Murdoch empire to flourish, ensuring their power and hers. Typically, this distinction is mapped onto the ideas that Conservatives hold about equality. The party she led three times to electoral triumph became unelectable for a generation. Nor, contrary to myth, did Thatcherism emerge fully formed in May 1979. The result . Perhaps we suspected that reality had created a character beyond our creative reach. Yet her long-term effect seems to have been to destroy it. The battle with the miners and leftwing councils lay ahead, as did the trauma of an IRA assassination bid. September 25, 2020. It led to riots that nobody needed. "What's going on there, mate?" But, as the prince in Lampedusa's The Leopard says: "For things to remain the same, everything must change.". The passing of Chvez is mourned by the many millions who loved him in Latin America and everywhere. Those abandoned places are also landmarks in Thatcher's Britain. I will be the heir to Margaret Thatcher. But former speechwriter Trevor Reeves can no longer . Margaret Thatcher's most popular book is The Downing Street Years. 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. It always irks when rightwing folk demonstrate in a familial or exclusive setting the values that they deny in a broader social context. Oxford CD-ROM explains how the statements were assembled and edited For some, the only consequence of that shift, still visible today, will be a changed brand name or higher bills. People would denounce them unequivocally, often in graphic terms. While "one nation" Conservatives condone some forms of redistribution, their libertarian . Many whom Reagan encountered in public life thought of him in this way, but most politicians would love to reach even "Grade B" status. Prime Minister Thatcher delivered the fourth speech to Congress by a British prime minister. There are more than 8,000. Typifying these highly dubious claims about Thatcher was this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama: "The world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend." Dignity and decorum ruled the day - except in the poisoned anonymity of the internet. As I spread my wings in politics, I discovered many Thatcher voters down south who were the same kind of people who loathed her in Scotland. Sir Bernard died after a short illness, his family said. If it ended in disaster, the seeds were only partly hers. Are there, even, things we look back on with regret for their passing? first television interview the following day, euphoric When Margaret Hilda Thatcher took over as Prime Minister, in May, 1979, I was sixteen. The late Benazir Bhutto later gave me much the same account. The former reporter, who was 90, died with his family around him yesterday lunchtime, a statement said. She made one And the single mums. Thatcher became prime minister because she was a woman, not despite it. An Inconvenient Truth About Margaret Thatcher: She Was a Climate Hawk. Alamat kami. Any attempts at revisionism do no favours to her, women or feminism. an interviewer "there is no such thing as society", "We have not Under this heading, Thatcher left a dark legacy that, like her successes, has still not disappeared behind the historical horizon. This is a political style, an aesthetic even, that has disappeared from view. Second, it's now easier to see the scale of the setback she inflicted on Britain's idea of its own future. be a nation in retreat". Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. She would, say some who knew her, have a found a way to finesse a change of direction by now. speech in July 1945, delivered in a town close to Grantham while she The resignation was announced Take the larger view. If you have a . All can agree that Margaret Thatcher changed the heart of British politics more than any politician since Clement Attlee. CD icon next to them in the second column of the results list. The Independent has the story. Thatcherism failed to destroy the welfare state. 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. 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. 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. In her thoughtful and prescient remarks, the Prime Minister reached back into history to recall how far the English-Speaking Peoples had come since victory in . 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. Original, independent voices such as BBC director general Alasdair Milne were brutally silenced. We Americans will not see you again in our time, but we will never forget you. Margaret Thatcher's most important long-term legacy is likely to be the huge rise in inequality that she caused. I'd unthinkingly imbibed enough doctrine to know that, troubled as I was, there was little point looking elsewhere for support. Between 1945-90 every statement made by Margaret Thatcher is listed, 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. still being scolded for the remark.You can read here exactly what she said, And the miners. Too timid, too in thrall, the 13-year Labour government rarely dared challenge the attitudes she planted in the national psyche. One might even credit Thatcher with a willingness to jettison the old rules and conventions that used to prevent individuals deciding their own destiny. Margaret Thatcher, Signed Speech on Hayek, 2003, Estimate 1,500-2,000 . Feminists disowned her by insisting that though she was a woman, she was not a sister. Mikhail Gorbachev, for one, learned the hard way. The eulogy is a good illustration of Thatcher's feelings for . Thatcher's reputation never recovered from the ruthless budgets of 1980 and 1981, or her insensitivity to colleagues. Later, when the BBC and ITV scheduled two programmes about Gibraltar, Thatcher tried to stop them. In 1990 Thatcher authorised the then British secretary of state Peter Brooke to reopen back-channel negotiations with republicans. The first is what changed in the temper of Britain and the British. (Interestingly, Currie also recalled that when she approached Thatcher in 1988 to get approval for the world's first national breast-screening programme, she tried to appeal to the PM initially "as a woman" but that swiftly proved unsuccessful. Reagan was a highly influential president during his time in office, and had a lot of responsibility concerning the Cold War. drew an important moral from the Falklands war: "We have ceased to 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. 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 . Until then Thatcher had shown the strength of her weakness: a dislike of consensus and aversion to debate, leading to decisive action. Sent Bobby Sands to an Irish hero's grave without a blink. Words. April 8, 2013. Somesay she revolutionised British politics certainly never again could people say nobody would vote for a woman but it served a reactionary end. Either way, I'm an adult now and none of those things are on telly any more so there's no excuse for apathy. But it was overlaid by the supposedly masculine virtues, sometimes more manly than the men could ever assemble. Perhaps it is more simple for all the iniquities of capitalism, the tide of history favours the right. The spell of community. 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. 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. Draining down those 11 years to their memorable essence, what does one light upon? And when I and several other Sinn Fin leaders were elected to the Assembly in 1982 we were barred from entry to Britain.