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.

See also

• Republican Senatorial Medal of Freedom
• Thatcherism
• Euroscepticism
• Thatcher effect
• Thatcher Ministry
• Sermon on the Mound