The remainder are listed without a text because sometimes no record survives of her best Parliamentary speeches in a debate on the strikes, prayed on the That's because, 23 years after she was ejected from Downing Street by her own party in a move whose psychic wounds linger on, the country we live in remains Thatcher's Britain. Much of any leader's record is unremarkable dross, and Thatcher was no exception. Is that what made her so formidable, her ability to ignore the suffering of others? Her heirs have not learned that lesson, with no sign of their promised "rebalancing". This was heightened by the suspicion that this power was not consciously deployed. wrong with politics? Still plumbing for the essence, we have to examine other bits of residue. Margaret Thatcher, the "Iron Lady" of British politics who died Monday at the age of 87, is being lionized as the woman who tilted British domestic and economic policy to the right. Well, everything really, even her name. 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. When Sir Geoffrey Howe resigned in consequence, she replied 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. declared that she wanted our money back. For the most part, there's no material there. . She was a gentle and peaceable woman my mother, that is and said few hard words about anyone, but in certain parts of the United Kingdom, and among certain social classes, Mrs T was detested, and not just for what people thought were her policies but for her persona for what she was. After leaving office, MT widened and deepened her criticism of the European Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher's attack was wholesale. Tasteless." Her gender led her into government and the shadow cabinet, despite Edward Heath's aversion to her. 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. The gender remained, its artefacts deployed with calculation. That bonuses and top incomes continue to rise while the incomes of the rest of the population struggle to keep up with inflation tells us that what we needed was legislation to ensure employee representation on company boards and remuneration committees as many of our European partners have. These values were the exact opposite of those Margaret Thatcher espoused. But these concrete achievements do not wholly explain why she still looms so large, large enough that not one but two current West End plays The Audience and Billy Elliot grant Thatcher a pivotal, if largely unsympathetic, role, whether seen or unseen. What is really left by Thatcher to history? Though she recognised the dangers of global warming, Thatcher's industrial and economic policies prioritised economic growth. Any attempts at revisionism do no favours to her, women or feminism. Thatcher's 11 years of dictating British policy in Ireland was a legacy of bitterness and entrenched division. She needed followers, as long as they went in her frequently unpopular directions. Adam Smith's invisible hand ended up raising two fingers to her moral project. Margaret Thatcher has 43 books on Goodreads with 14026 ratings. Charles Powell was a senior foreign policy . The stance was often in broadest terms, more moral than political. In a twitter of panic, Labour shadow ministers sent out pleas yesterday: "Hoping all Labour supporters will respond with dignity and respect to news of Baroness Thatcher's death." 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. 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. Across Yorkshire or south Wales, Kent or Nottinghamshire, there are villages that have never recovered from the closure of coal mines, ordered by a Thatcher who ruled there was no place for pits that were not "economically viable", regardless of the social consequences. What you see is a nation ruled for 11 turbulent years by a remarkable woman and which still lives in her image. Getting the record straight. 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. All of the Tory edicts that bludgeoned our nation, as my generation squirmed through ghoulish puberty, were confusing. There turned out to be no such thing as society, at least in the sense we used to understand it. Alexei Sayle blames Twitter and the "multiplicity of voices" in the modern world. It is odd to reflect that in Thatcher's time, the British novel enjoyed a comparatively lively resurgence. 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. M argaret Thatcher does an awful lot of crying in The Crown. To the extent that there was an industrial strategy, it was to sell Britain as a destination for Japanese car companies and to shift the focus of the economy away from manufacturing towards financial services. You can get the Turnitin report from the writer on request along with the final deliverable. Each was characterised by her attention to detail. There are pangs of nostalgia, yes, because for me she's all tied up with Hi-De-Hi and Speak and Spell and Blockbusters and "follow the bear". The Yale Book of Quotations also states, "Thatcher is said to have used this in a 1965 speech.". March 7, 1991 - Receives the US Medal of Freedom from President George Bush. It destroyed the public's power to determine via parliament the services and prices of gas, electricity, telephone. They married the personality and belief to action. For those miners and their families to be referred to as the "enemy within" by Thatcher was something they would never forgive and, if there is rejoicing at her death in those communities she set out to destroy, it can only be understood against this background. Margaret Thatcher. She was, of course, the first and so far only female British prime minister, Jon Snow reiterated on Monday night, insinuating that this achievement should in general be celebrated, never mind the specifics of her leadership. Demanding that no criticisms be voiced to counter that hagiography is to enable false history and a propagandistic whitewashing of bad acts, distortions that become quickly ossified and then endure by virtue of no opposition and the powerful emotions created by death. 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. She will be for ever unforgiven by those who now see worse being done in her name to another generation. In this moment she inspired only curiosity, a pale phantom, dumbly filling her day. 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. 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 his usual slightly dishevelled style, he went to Downing Street to discuss his pioneering concepts of behavioural economics and attempts to implement them under Barack Obama. A big decline in traditional industries took place across Europe and the US in the 80s and 90s. In the 80s, she was the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy and is now simply called "comedy". The first is what changed in the temper of Britain and the British. But as weand others (including Alan Krueger, chair of Obama's council of economic advisers) have shown, wider income differences reduce social mobility and make it harder for people with poorer backgrounds to do so. In the Meryl Streep film, The Iron Lady, it's the scenes of domesticity that appear most absurd. Draining down those 11 years to their memorable essence, what does one light upon? see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising 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. If it ended in disaster, the seeds were only partly hers. November). The virtual state funeral will rehearse again our extravagant fixations. This is a style whose absence is much missed. What was it about Thatcher that inspired a generation of comics to rage at her? Thatcher is often credited with showing that you could get to the top whatever your background. Author: Margaret Thatcher Year: 1979 Location: London, the UK Occasion: Address to the Parliament. Without the Falklands/Malvinas war, which exploited nationalism (as Argentinian dictator Galtieri did) and which Labour would not oppose, she would never have been re-elected in 1983. She was "outraged" when the programmes went ahead. In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon. Though the Prime Minister was known to shed a tear or two during her 11 years leading the United Kingdom . Thatcher refused to recognise the right of citizens to vote for representatives of their choice. The endemic worklessness of her era was never repaired now her successors blame the victims. These developments set a benchmark. Second, it's now easier to see the scale of the setback she inflicted on Britain's idea of its own future. . Her bouffant and handbag and nasal voice were comedy gold, but she was also earnest, principled and said exactly what she meant. I have few recollections of Thatcher after the slowly chauffeured, weepy Downing Street cortege. Her political antennae refused to allow her to privatise the coal industry, British Rail or the post office. By 1990 it was transformed. Margaret Flowers is a leading activist, doctor, teacher, and co-founder of PopularResistance.org, a website that aims to inform and inspire grassroots movements around the world. 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. At Bruges in September 1988 she outraged European orthodoxy by declaring: three press interviews (15-17 November) when Howe's resignation speech It was a watershed moment in Irish politics. 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. But awoman who, at the time, thought that chancellor was the top mark at which she might aim. It was illegal to put an extension lead on your phone. 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. . drew an important moral from the Falklands war: "We have ceased to The appointment was a 20-minute audience with the . "Thatcher as mother" seemed, to my tiddly mind, anathema. Public Statements of Margaret Thatcher on CD-ROM, 1945-90, edited Christopher Only in the sense that all the women beneath her were blinded by falling shards. 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. But there were also cuts for basic-rate taxpayers: the 1988 budget, for example, cut the top rate of tax from 60% to 40% and the standard rate from 27% to 25%. An author and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan staked her claim to speechwriting fame as a primary writer for former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.Her notable speeches include Reagan's "Boys of Pointe du Hoc" address, given on the 40 th anniversary of D-Daythe day Allied troops invaded Normandy in World War IIas well as the former president's . Real Analysis Solved Problems, Synthesis Essay Freedom Of Speech, Photography Dissertation Titles, Reflective Essay Writers Service Usa, Sample Of The Resume 4423 . This zest for ideas was boosted by the 2010 intake, which comprises just under half the parliamentary party. rejecting Commission proposals at the Rome European Council with the words She would, say some who knew her, have a found a way to finesse a change of direction by now. That, plus (inevitable) de-industrialisation, coupled to her perceived overbearing and patronising manner. Later that year she introduced the broadcasting ban on Sinn Fin, which prevented viewers and listeners hearing my voice. Her vision for Britain made a lot of people feel like outsiders, which made them the ideal audience for comedy. Or maybe audiences just really, really hated her and wanted to blow off some steam. Texts for listed statements are available on the site in almost 70 per cent of cases. But the key point is this: those who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics) aren't silent at all. In the north of Ireland she had the army and the Diplock courts which reached their peak in the mid 1980s. 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. The day before she died I passed through Greenock on the train. But Thatcher was still cautious. Hire a Writer. The 1978 meeting was their last in person until Mrs Thatcher became Reagan's first state visitor, 26-28 February 1981. On one visit, our campaign chairman, William J Casey, later director of the CIA, came along, and we had a fruitful meeting at 10 Downing Street. At the October 1980 Conservative Conference, in the midst of economic recession, She worked to enhance its corporate power. Today we have four coalmines and around 2,000 miners. Edited text: This speech was delivered to the Conservative party conference in Brighton on October 10 1980. Its impact on the streets of the north is evident in the statistics of death. an interviewer "there is no such thing as society" and is 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. This does lead to divisions. The 70s was Britain's most equal decade. It fell to Blair to do something about the latter, while giving free rein to the former. The novel may thrive in adversity and it was a general sense of dismay at the new world she was showing us that lured many writers into opposition. The government's job was to keep inflation low, not to boost growth through demand management. The Crown's Version of Margaret Thatcher's 1990 Downfall Takes a Lot of Liberties with . Oxford CD-ROM explains how the statements were assembled and edited Former Tory MP Louise Mensch, with no apparent sense of irony, invoked precepts of propriety to announce: "Pygmies of the left so predictably embarrassing yourselves, know this: not a one of your leaders will ever be globally mourned like her.". 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. Under this heading, Thatcher left a dark legacy that, like her successes, has still not disappeared behind the historical horizon. A week later she spoke She fervently believed the market would soon repair their loss. 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. 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. . In fact, several countries have adopted these ideas with startlingly successful results; just changing the wording on some forms raised an extra 200m income tax in Britain, while personalised text messages drastically reduced the use of bailiffs to recover court fines. For those of us who were dismayed by her brisk distaste for that cosy state-dominated world, it was never enough to dislike her. Scotland was her mission impossible. Far from "smashing the glass ceiling", she was the aberration, the one who got through and then pulled the ladder up right after her. She remained in power till I was 15. She refused to reform social security, or even curb its abuse. She was propped up by police who were encouraged to brutality against not only strikers but communities of colour, already hardest hit by unemployment: police powers were enhanced and their racism given free rein, especially with stop and search; CS gas was used on the mainland for the first time. MT won election as Conservative leader on 11 February 1975 and gave a euphoric defended Ronald Reagan was a highly influential president during his time in office, and had a lot of responsibility concerning the Cold War. of the 1600 libraries around the world which hold the CD-ROM. Women aren't always good for other women because the gender of a person matters a lot less than that person's actual beliefs. Above all, they lack her competence at running the machinery of government. More insidiously, it fathered amood of tolerated harshness. As leader she was initially hyper-cautious. Born: 21 June 1932 in Halifax. And by my own firsthand experience, it was genuine to the core. 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. This was most evident in the shooting dead of three unarmed IRA activists in Gibraltar in March 1988. Her voice, a bellicose yawn, somehow both boring and boring I could ignore the content but the intent drilled its way in. If you want anything done, ask a woman.". An unclubbable outsider, she allied herself to another outsider, Keith Joseph, and his free-market set. I do not yet know what effect Margaret Thatcher has had on me as an individual or on the character of our country as we continue to evolve. It knew what Thatcher wanted. 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. And that made it easy to mock her. 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. At the time, Thatcher was the education secretary her first major political role. Trying to trim back spending in her department, she ended the milk subsidies for all children over the age of seven. 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. Conscious of being awoman, and incapable of pretending otherwise. To use a less bizarre analogy: if Thatcher was the headmistress, they were junior teachers, authoritative but warm enough that you could call them "mum" by accident. 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. 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. Thatcher became prime minister because she was a woman, not despite it. After the Dublin European Council in November 1979 she began a long battle When the late Christopher Hitchens was a political reporter for the New Statesman, he corrected the prime minister on a point of fact, and she was quick to correct Hitchens in turn. Handbag. Mobilising society, by rule of law, against the trade union bosses was undoubtedly an achievement. Elton has previously said that he did two minutes about Thatcher and two hours about his knob, and all anyone ever remembered was the Thatcher material. minecraft but enchants are infinite datapack,