Margaret Thatcher

The Right Honourable Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS (born 13 October, 1925), is a British stateswoman and was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, also Leader of the Opposition from 1975, and the only woman to date to hold the former position. She is also the only woman to be in the latter position officially, though another has been the Acting Leader. She won 3 successive general elections and was the last person to do this until Tony Blair in 2005. However, although she had strong support from most voters for most of her reign she was eventually elected out of leadership by her own party and replaced by John Major in 1990 who went on to be re-elected himself in 1992. She is an elder stateswoman of the Conservative Party and the figurehead of a political philosophy that became known as Thatcherism, which involves reduced public spending, lower direct taxation, de-regulation, a monetarist policy, and a programme of privatisation of government-owned industries. Even before coming to power she was nicknamed the Iron Lady in Soviet media (because of her vocal opposition to communism), an appellation that stuck.

As Prime Minister

1979–1983

She formed a government on May 4, 1979, with a mandate to reverse the UK's economic decline and to reduce the role of the state in the economy. Thatcher was incensed by one contemporary view within the Civil Service that its job was to manage the UK's decline from the days of Empire, and wanted the country to punch above its weight in international affairs. She was a philosophic soulmate with Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980 in the United States, and to a lesser extent Brian Mulroney, who was elected a little later in Canada. It seemed for a time that conservatism might be the dominant political philosophy in the major English-speaking nations for the era.

Related Topics:
May 4 - 1979 - Civil Service - Philosophic - 1980 - United States - Brian Mulroney - Canada

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In May 1980, one day before she was due to meet the Irish Taoiseach, Charles Haughey to discuss Northern Ireland, she announced in the House of Commons that "The future of the constitutional affairs of Northern Ireland is a matter for the people of Northern Ireland, this government, this parliament and no-one else."

Related Topics:
Taoiseach - Charles Haughey - Northern Ireland - House of Commons

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In 1981 a number of Provisional IRA and INLA prisoners in Northern Ireland's Maze prison (known in Ireland as 'Long Kesh', its previous name) went on hunger strike to regain the status of political prisoners, which had been revoked five years earlier. Bobby Sands, the first of the strikers, was elected as an MP for the constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone a few weeks before he died. Thatcher refused at first to countenance a return to political status for republican prisoners, famously declaring "Crime is crime is crime; it is not political." However, after 9 more men had starved themselves to death and the strike had ended, and in the face of growing anger on both sides of the Irish border and widespread civil unrest, political status was restored to all paramilitary prisoners. This was a major propaganda coup for the IRA and is seen as the beginning of Sinn Féin's electoral rise, as they capitalised on the gains made during the hunger strikes.

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Thatcher also continued the policy of "Ulsterisation" of the previous Labour government and its Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Roy Mason, believing that the unionists of Ulster should be at the forefront in combatting Irish republicanism. This meant relieving the burden on the mainstream British army and elevating the role of the Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Another noticeable foible of Thatcher's was her refusal to call Cardinal Tomas O'Fiach (pronounced Oh-fee-uk), the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, by his chosen name, insisting on calling him "Cardinal Fee", although, to be fair, his birth name was Thomas Fee and the names are pronounced similarly, but had the Cardinal (dubbed the "Sinn Fein Cardinal" by the British media) condemned republican violence as his successors would do, perhaps she would have made the effort to pronounce his name in the Gaelic fashion.

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In economic policy, Thatcher started out by increasing interest rates to drive down the money supply. She had a preference for indirect taxation over taxes on income, and value added tax (VAT) rose sharply to 15% with the result that inflation also rose. These moves hit businesses, especially in the manufacturing sector, and unemployment quickly passed two million. Interestingly, her early tax policy reforms were based on the monetarist theories of Friedman rather than the supply-side economics of Arthur Laffer and Jude Wanniski, which the government of Ronald Reagan espoused. There was a severe recession in the early 1980s, and the Government's economic policy was widely blamed. Political commentators harkened back to the Heath Government's "U-turn" and speculated that Mrs Thatcher would follow suit, but she repudiated this approach at the 1980 Conservative Party conference, telling the party: "To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catch-phrase - the U-turn - I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning". That she meant what she said was confirmed in the 1981 budget, when despite concerns expressed in an open letter from 364 economists, taxes were increased in the middle of a recession. In January 1982, the inflation rate dropped to single figures and interest rates were then allowed to fall. Unemployment continued to rise, reaching an official figure of 3.6 million (the criteria for defining who was unemployed was amended, and others estimate that unemployment hit 5 million), and it remained over 3 million for several years. By the time of the 1983 election the economy was in a mess.

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British defence budget cuts, applying in the South Atlantic, coupled with Thatcher's disregard of the Falkland Islands and the removal of the ice patrol ship Endeavour and immigration reform detrimental to the British citizenship rights of citizens of the British Empire's few remnants - which was motivated mainly against Hong Kong - provoked the arguably most difficult foreign policy decision of Thatcher's era. In Argentina an unstable military junta was in power and keen on reversing its huge economic unpopularity. On 2 April 1982, it invaded the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas to Argentines), the only invasion of a British territory since World War II. Argentina has claimed the islands ever since an 1830s dispute on their settlement. Within days, Thatcher sent a naval task force to recapture the Islands. The ensuing military campaign was successful, resulting in a wave of patriotic enthusiasm for her personally, at a time when her popularity had been at an all-time low for a serving Prime Minister.

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This Falklands Factor, as it came to be known, is regarded as crucial to the scale of the Conservative majority in the June 1983 general election. However, the economy was still in a deep recession associated with encouraging traditional heavy industries to come to an end. Continuing mass unemployment was explained as a consequence of this transition, implying it to be transitory, and alongside it new laws had given trade union members democratic powers to restrain militant union leaderships. Additionally, Thatcher's 'Right to Buy' policy, whereby council housing residents were permitted to buy their homes at a discount did much to increase her government's popularity in working-class areas.

Related Topics:
June 1983 general election - Right to Buy - Council housing - Working-class

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The 1983 election was also influenced by events in the opposition parties. Labour was increasingly dominated by its "hard left" wing that had emerged from the 1970s union militancy, and in opposition its policies were swung very sharply to the left. This drove a significant number of right wing Labour members and MPs to form a breakaway party in 1981, the Social Democratic Party. Labour fought the election on unilateral nuclear disarmament, which proposed to abandon the British nuclear deterrent despite the threat from a nuclear armed Soviet Union, withdrawal from the European Community, and total reversal of Thatcher's economic and trade union changes. Indeed, one Labour MP, Gerald Kaufman, has called the party's 1983 manifesto "the longest suicide note in history". Consequently upon the Labour split, there was a new centrist/moderate left challenge, the Alliance, from the Social Democrats in electoral pact with the Liberals, to break the major parties' dominance and win proportional representation. They were a grouping of uncertain cohesion and it is apparent from the result that they drew votes mainly away from Labour. This unbalanced splitting of the left of centre vote without a corresponding effect to the right, in combination with Britain's first past the post electoral system, where marginal changes in vote numbers and distribution have disproportionate effects on the number of seats won, also contributed to the Conservative landslide.

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1983–1987

Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the trade unions but, unlike the Heath government, adopted a strategy of incremental change rather than a single Act. Several unions launched strikes that were wholly or partly aimed at damaging her politically. The most significant of these was carried out by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). However, Thatcher had made preparations long in advance for an NUM strike by building up coal stocks, and there were no cuts in electric power, unlike 1972-1974. Police tactics during the strike concerned civil libertarians: stopping believed strike sympathisers travelling towards coalfields when they were still long distances from them, phone tapping as evidenced by Labour's Tony Benn, and a violent battle with mass pickets at Orgreave, Yorkshire. But images of massed militant miners using violence to prevent other miners from working, along with that (illegally under a recent Act) the NUM had not held a ballot to approve strike action, swung public opinion against the strike--especially in the south and the moderate Nottinghamshire coalfield. The Miners' Strike lasted a full year, 1984-85, before the drift of half the miners back to work forced the NUM leadership to give in without a deal. This aborted political strike marked a turning point in UK politics: no longer could militant unions remove a democratically elected government.

Related Topics:
Trade union - Strike - National Union of Mineworkers - Coal - 1972 - 1974 - Tony Benn - Nottinghamshire - Miners' Strike

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On the early morning of October 12, 1984, Thatcher escaped death (on the day before her 59th birthday) from the bomb planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Brighton's Grand Hotel during the Conservative Party conference. Five people died in the attack, including Roberta Wakeham (the first wife of the government's Chief Whip John Wakeham) and the Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry. A prominent member of the Cabinet, Norman Tebbit, was injured, along with his wife Margaret, who was left paralysed. Thatcher insisted that the conference open on time the next day and made her speech as planned.

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On November 15, 1985, Thatcher signed the Hillsborough Anglo-Irish Agreement, the first acknowledgement by a British government that the Republic of Ireland had an important role to play in Northern Ireland. The agreement was greeted with fury by Irish unionists. The Ulster Unionists and Democratic Unionists made an electoral pact and on January 23, 1986, staged an ad-hoc referendum by re-fighting their seats in by-elections, and won with 1 seat lost to the nationalist SDLP party. Then, unlike the Sunningdale Agreement in 1974, they found they could not bring the agreement down by a general strike. This was another effect of the changed balance of power in industrial relations. The agreement stood, and Thatcher "punished" the unionists for their non-cooperation by abolishing a devolved assembly she had created only four years before, although unionists have traditionally been of two minds about political devolution (witness the "Home Rule" crisis that led to the Anglo-Irish War), and the politicians most affected by the abolishment of the assembly were the constitutional nationalists, i.e. the SDLP, not it must be noted, Sinn Féin, which was not interested in a devolved assembly at that time, nor would it be for many years to come, so Thatcher's actions alienated the moderate nationalist party and did nothing regarding IRA violence, so it is a wonder what those who advised her imagined they were accomplishing, other than possibly solidifying support from Dublin, an unreliable ally since independence from Britain, which had (beginning with Eamon De Valera's government) adopted the strategy of making conciliatory gestures or minor concessions with one hand and undermining Britain with other action(s) by the other hand.

Related Topics:
November 15 - 1985 - January 23 - 1986 - Anglo-Irish War - Eamon De Valera

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Thatcher's political and economic philosophy emphasised free markets and entrepreneurialism. Since gaining power, she had experimented in selling off a small nationalised company, the National Freight Company, to its workers, with a surprisingly large response. After the 1983 election, the Government became bolder and sold off most of the large utilities which had been in public ownership since the late 1940s. Many in the public took advantage of share offers, although many sold their shares immediately for a quick profit. The policy of privatisation, while anathema to many on the left, has become synonymous with Thatcherism. Privatisation has since been exported across the globe; a testament to its success in rejuvenating moribund government controlled industries while substantially improving the government's balance sheet.

Related Topics:
Free market - Entrepreneur - Nationalised - 1940s - Share - Privatisation - Thatcherism

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In the Cold War Mrs Thatcher supported Ronald Reagan's policies of deterrence against the Soviets. This contrasted with the policy of détente which the West had pursued during the 1970s, and caused friction with allies still wedded to the idea of détente. US forces were permitted by Mrs. Thatcher to station nuclear cruise missiles at British bases, arousing mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. However, she later was the first Western leader to respond warmly to the rise of reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, declaring she liked him and "We can do business together" after a meeting 3 months before he came to power in 1985. This was a start in swinging the West back to a new détente with the Soviet Union in his era, as it proved to be an indication that the Soviet regime's power was decaying. Thatcher outlasted the Cold War, which ended in 1989, and voices who share her views on it credit her with a part in the West's victory, by both the deterrence and détente postures.

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She supported the US bombing raid on Libya from bases in the UK in 1986 when other NATO allies would not. Her liking for defence ties with the United States was demonstrated in the Westland affair when she acted with colleagues to prevent the helicopter manufacturer Westland, a vital defence contractor, from linking with the Italian firm Agusta in favour of a link with Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation of the United States. Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine, who had pushed the Agusta deal, resigned in protest at her style of leadership, and thereafter became a potential leadership challenger.

Related Topics:
Libya - Westland affair - Westland - Agusta - Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation - Michael Heseltine

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In 1985, the University of Oxford, as a deliberate snub, voted to refuse her an honorary degree in protest against her cuts in funding for education. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/low/dates/stories/january/29/newsid_2506000/2506019.stm This award had always previously been given to Prime Ministers that had been educated at Oxford.

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In 1986 her government controversially abolished the Greater London Council (GLC), led by left-winger Ken Livingstone, and six Metropolitan County Councils (MCCs). The government claimed this was an efficiency measure. However, it is widely believed to have been politically motivated, as all of the abolished councils were controlled by Labour, and had become powerful centres of opposition to her government and in favour of higher public spending by local government.

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Thatcher had two noted foreign policy successes in her second term. In 1984, she visited China and signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration with Deng Xiaoping on 19 December, stating the basic policies of the People's Republic of China regarding Hong Kong, to remain a "Special Autonomous Region" of China without economic change after the handover in 1997. At the Fontainebleau summit of 1984, Thatcher argued that the United Kingdom paid far more to the European Economic Community than it received in spending and negotiated a budget rebate. She was widely misquoted as saying, "I want my money", although her actual statement was: "We are not asking the Community or anyone else for money. We are simply asking to have our own money back".

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1987–1990

By winning the 1987 general election, on the economic boom and against a stubbornly anti-nuclear Labour opposition, she became the longest serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since Lord Liverpool, 1812 to 1827,and first to win 3 successive elections since Lord Palmerston in 1865. Most United Kingdom newspapers supported her—with the exception of The Daily Mirror and The Guardian—and were rewarded with regular press briefings by her press secretary, Bernard Ingham. She was known as "Maggie" in the tabloids, which inspired the well-known "Maggie Out!" protest song, sung throughout that period by some of her opponents. Her unpopularity on the left is evident from the lyrics of several contemporary popular songs: "Stand Down Margaret" (The Beat), "Tramp the Dirt Down" (Elvis Costello), and "Mother Knows Best" (Richard Thompson).

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Many opponents believed she and her policies created a significant North-South divide from the Bristol Channel to the Wash, between the "haves" in the economically dynamic south and the "have nots" in the northern rust belt. Hard welfare reforms in her third term created an adult Employment Training system that included full-time work done for the dole plus a £10 top-up, on the workfare model from the US. The "Social Fund" system that placed one-off welfare payments for emergency needs under a local budgetary limit and wherepossible changed them into loans, and rules for assessing jobseeking effort by the week, were breaches of social consensus unprecedented since the 1920s.

Related Topics:
Bristol Channel - Wash - Workfare - US - 1920s

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In the late 1980s, Thatcher, a former chemist, became concerned with environmental issues, which she had previously dismissed. In 1988, she made a major speech accepting the problems of global warming, ozone depletion and acid rain. In 1990, she opened the Hadley Centre for climate prediction and research. http://www.margaretthatcher.org/Speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=108102&doctype=1.

Related Topics:
1988 - Global warming - Ozone depletion - Acid rain - Hadley Centre

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At Bruges, Belgium in 1988, Thatcher made a speech in which she outlined her opposition to proposals from the European Communities for a federal structure and increasing centralisation of decision-making. Although she had supported British membership, Thatcher believed that the role of the EC should be limited to ensuring free trade and effective competition, and feared that new EC regulations would reverse the changes she was making in the UK. "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a new super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels". She was specifically against Economic and Monetary Union, through which a single currency would replace national currencies, and for which the EC was making preparations. The speech caused an outcry in most of Europe, and exposed for the first time the deep split that was emerging over European policy inside her Conservative Party.

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Thatcher's popularity once again declined in 1989 as the economy suffered from high interest rates imposed to stop an unsustainable boom. She blamed her Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, who had been following an economic policy which was a preparation for monetary union; Thatcher claimed not to have been told of this and did not approve. At the Madrid European summit, Lawson and Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe forced Thatcher to agree the circumstances under which she would join the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a preparation for monetary union. Thatcher took revenge on both by demoting Howe, and by listening more to her adviser Sir Alan Walters on economic matters. Lawson resigned that October, feeling that Thatcher had undermined him.

Related Topics:
1989 - Boom - Nigel Lawson - Madrid - Geoffrey Howe - Exchange Rate Mechanism - Alan Walters

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That November, Thatcher was challenged for the leadership of the Conservative Party by Sir Anthony Meyer. As Meyer was a virtually unknown backbench MP, he was viewed as a stalking horse candidate for more prominent members of the party. Thatcher easily defeated Meyer's challenge, but there were 60 ballot papers either cast for Meyer or abstaining, a surprisingly large number for a sitting Prime Minister.

Related Topics:
Anthony Meyer - Backbench - Stalking horse

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Thatcher's new system to replace local government rates was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales in 1990. Rates were replaced by the "Community Charge" (more widely known as the Poll Tax), which applied the same amount to every individual resident, with only limited discounts for low earners. This was to be the most universally unpopular policy of her premiership. The Charge was introduced early in Scotland as the rateable values would in any case have been reassessed in 1989. However, it led to accusations that Scotland was a 'testing ground' for the tax. Thatcher apparently believed that the new tax would be popular, and had been persuaded by Scottish Conservatives to bring it in early and in one go. Despite her hopes, the early introduction led to a sharp decline in the already low support for the Conservative party in Scotland.

Related Topics:
Scotland - England and Wales - Poll Tax

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Additional problems emerged when many of the tax rates set by local councils proved to be much higher than earlier predictions. Some have argued that local councils saw the introduction of the new system of taxation as the opportunity to make significant increases in the amount taken, assuming (correctly) that it would be the originators of the new tax system and not its local operators who would be blamed.

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A large London demonstration against the poll tax on March 31, 1990 -- the day before it was introduced in England and Wales--turned into a riot. Millions of people resisted paying the tax. Opponents of the tax banded together to resist bailiffs and disrupt court hearings of poll tax debtors. Mrs Thatcher refused to compromise, or change the tax, and its unpopularity was a major factor in Thatcher's downfall.

Related Topics:
March 31 - 1990 - Riot - Bailiff - Court - Debt

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One of her final acts in office was to pressure US President George H. W. Bush to deploy troops to the Middle East to drive Saddam Hussein's army out of Kuwait. Bush was somewhat apprehensive about the plan, but Thatcher famously told him that this was "no time to go wobbly!"

Related Topics:
George H. W. Bush - Middle East - Saddam Hussein - Kuwait

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On the Friday before the Conservative Party conference in October 1990, Thatcher persuaded her new Chancellor of the Exchequer John Major to reduce interest rates by 1%. Major persuaded her that the only way to maintain monetary stability was to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism at the same time, despite not meeting the 'Madrid conditions'. The conference that year saw a degree of unity break out within the Conservative Party. Few who attended could have realised that Mrs Thatcher had only a matter of weeks left in office.

Related Topics:
Chancellor of the Exchequer - John Major

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Fall from power

By 1990, opposition to Thatcher's policies on local government taxation, her Government's perceived mishandling of the economy (especially high interest rates of 15%, which were undermining her core voting base within the home-owning, entrepreneurial and business sectors), and the divisions opening within her party and in the broader political landscape over the appropriate handling of European integration due to Thatcher's Euroscepticism made her and her party seem increasingly politically vulnerable.

Related Topics:
Interest rates - European integration - Euroscepticism

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A challenge was precipitated by the resignation of Sir Geoffrey Howe, with whom Thatcher had for a long time had very bad personal relations, on November 1, 1990. The immediate pretext was a particularly combative answer she had given to a parliamentary question in the Commons on the October 30, 1990, in which she denounced the president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors.

Related Topics:
Geoffrey Howe - November 1 - 1990 - October 30 - Jacques Delors

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:"Yes, the Commission wants to increase its powers. Yes, it is a non-elected body and I do not want the Commission to increase its powers at the expense of the House, so of course we differ. The President of the Commission, Mr. Delors, said at a press conference the other day that he wanted the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the Community, he wanted the Commission to be the Executive and he wanted the Council of Ministers to be the Senate. No! No! No!"

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In his resignation speech Howe condemned Thatcher's policy on the European Community as being devastating to British interests, and openly invited "others to consider their own response", which led Michael Heseltine to announce his challenge for party leadership (and hence Prime Minister). In the first ballot, Thatcher was two votes short of winning automatic re-election, a small but critical margin. (The margin was 14.6%; and the necessary margin required to avoid a second ballot was 15%.)

Related Topics:
European Community - Michael Heseltine

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The results were:

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Margaret Thatcher: 204, Michael Heseltine: 152, Void/Spoiled: 16

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This was probably at least in part due to mismanagement; she had fatally decided to be out of the country for the CSCE summit (Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe) in Paris, and her advisors appear to have underestimated the seriousness of the matter and the need to campaign, and the need to cajole potentially wavering supporters and reassure them in order to achieve the necessary first round win and put paid to talk of doubts.

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Upon returning to London, Thatcher consulted her cabinet colleagues. A large majority believed that, the first round not being a clear win, she would lose the second run-off ballot.

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On November 22, at just after 9.30 am, Mrs. Thatcher announced to her cabinet that she would not be a candidate in the second ballot, thereby bringing her term of office to an end.

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:"Having consulted widely among colleagues, I have concluded that the unity of the Party and the prospects of victory in a General Election would be better served if I stood down to enable Cabinet colleagues to enter the ballot for the leadership. I should like to thank all those in Cabinet and outside who have given me such dedicated support."

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In defeat, Margaret Thatcher seized the opportunity of the debate on confidence in her government to deliver one of her most memorable performances:

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:"... a single currency is about the politics of Europe, it is about a federal Europe by the back door. So I shall consider the proposal of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner ). Now where were we? I am enjoying this."

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She supported John Major as her successor and retired from Parliament at the 1992 election.

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◄ Margaret Thatcher: As Leader of the Opposition

Margaret Thatcher: Post-political career ►

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