Margaret Thatcher -- the \"Iron\"

Margaret Thatcher -- the "Iron" Prime Minister

Margaret Hilda Thatcher was born on October 13, 1925, under the name Margaret Roberts, her parents being Alfred Roberts and Beatrice Ethel. Her father was the proud owner of two grocery stores in Grantham, the place where she grew up. Given that her father was also a political man, it is quite obvious where she got a taste for the politics from. Margaret attended the classes of Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School and throughout the entire years of school, she showed great improvement and continual hard work and her ambitions brought her to the position of President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946. Then, in 1951, Margaret Roberts met Denis Thatcher, during a dinner party thrown to celebrate her designation as a Conservative candidate for Dartford in February.

During the February 1950 and October 1951 general elections, Roberts won the attention of the entire public not only because she was the only female candidate, but also because she campaigned for the safe Labor seat of Dartford. In 1951, she married Thatcher, whose parents always sustained her in her political career and also paid for her campaigns. Her husband also paid for her law school, and, in 1953, she both qualified as a barrister and had Thatcher's twins, Carol and Mark.

From this point on, her political career could only flourish. Therefore, between 1959 and 1970, she was a Member of Parliament, between 1970 and 1974 she was the Education Secretary and she was also the leader of the Opposition between 1975 and 1979. On the May 4, 1979, Margaret Thatcher took office as the Prime Minister of Great Britain. The period in which Margaret Thatcher took the spot light on the political stage was a very rough one, especially due to the entire racial tension that was sweeping the entire Great Britain. She was one of the most loved and at the same time one of the most hated Prime Ministers that Britain has ever seen. Throughout her thought-out speeches, the Iron Lady gained many admirers and many enemies at the same time.

During the period she served as Prime Minister, Thatcher was apparently not be in very good relationships with Queen Elizabeth II. Newspapers always wrote that the two of them did not get along very well, especially because of their power. However, Thatcher wrote that she and the Queen got along just fine and all that was written in the papers was a result of the media world's tendency to fabricate news.

In what concerns economy and taxation, Margaret Thatcher succeeded in signficicantly assisting the recovery of the British economy, and, by 1983, the country experienced economic growth and inflation and mortgage rates were at their lowest levels since 1970. However, the international public remembers her not for more than the things she has done to improve the British economy, as her 1976 speech about the Soviet Union impressed people everywhere. This particular speech gained her the nickname "Iron Lady" and she even came to relate to the name a few months after the incident.

The nickname suited Margaret Thatcher very well, given that whatever she did, she did it with an iron fist. Although she was extremely elegant and very candid, all her political actions were firm and strong. Moreover, she demonstrated her strength of mind consequent to the 1984 incident, when an Irish Republican Army bomb exploded in the hotel where she was staying. The bomb was meant for her, but she got herself together and even though she had not slept the entire night, the following day she appeared before the crowds looking as neat as ever, without letting the world know that she was in a state of shock as a result of the gravity of this particular event.