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.

Political career between 1950 and 1970

In the 1950 election she was the youngest woman Conservative candidate, and fought the safe Labour seat of Dartford. She fought the seat again in the 1951 election. Her activity in the Conservative Party in Kent brought her into contact with Denis Thatcher; they fell in love and were married later in 1951. Denis was a wealthy businessman, and he funded his wife to read for the Bar. She qualified as a Barrister in 1953, the same year that her twin children, Carol and Mark, were born. On returning to work, she specialised in tax issues.

Related Topics:
1950 - Safe - Dartford - 1951 - Kent - Denis Thatcher - Bar - Barrister - 1953 - Carol - Mark

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Thatcher had begun to look for a safe Conservative seat, and was narrowly rejected as candidate for Orpington in 1954. She had several other rejections before being selected for Finchley in April 1958. She won the seat easily in the 1959 election and took her seat in the House of Commons. Unusually, her maiden speech was in support of her Private Member's Bill to force local councils to hold meetings in public, which was successful. In the same year, the only occasion she was to ever to resist her party's line was to vote against the abolition of the birch as corporal punishment.

Related Topics:
Orpington - 1954 - Finchley - 1958 - 1959 - House of Commons - Maiden speech - Private Member's Bill

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She was given early promotion to the front bench as Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in September 1961, keeping the post until the Conservatives lost power in the 1964 election. When Sir Alec Douglas-Home stepped down, Thatcher voted for Edward Heath in the leadership election over Reginald Maudling, and was rewarded with the job of Conservative spokesman on Housing and Land. She moved to the Shadow Treasury Team after 1966.

Related Topics:
Parliamentary Secretary - Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance - 1961 - 1964 - Sir Alec Douglas-Home - Edward Heath - Reginald Maudling - Treasury - 1966

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Thatcher was one of few Conservative MPs to support the Bill to decriminalise male homosexuality, and she voted in favour of David Steel's Bill to legalise abortion. However she was opposed to the abolition of capital punishment. She made her mark as a conference speaker in 1966 with a strong attack on the taxation policy of the Labour Government as being steps "not only towards Socialism, but towards Communism". She won promotion to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Fuel Spokesman in 1967, and was then promoted to shadow Transport and finally Education before the 1970 election.

Related Topics:
Homosexuality - David Steel - Abortion - Capital punishment - Socialism - Communism - Shadow Cabinet - 1967 - 1970 election

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