Margret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher has the distinction of being the longest serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in over 150 years. While she is credited with being instrumental in reinstating Britain as major economic power in the world, there are strong and ambivalent options about her tenure as Prime Minister. While many laud her for some of the economic policies that she implemented, others criticize her for these same policies. "Her harsh economic policies caused social friction and divided the nation." (Margaret Thatcher site). Thatcher was also England's first female Prime Minister.

Her influence was felt not only in the United Kingdom but also in other parts of the world through her effect on and participation in international politics. The following extract points to the effect that her policies and opinions had on global events. She was the catalyst who set in motion a series of interconnected events that gave a revolutionary twist to the 20th Century's last two decades and helped mankind end the millennium on a note of hope and confidence.

The triumph of capitalism, the almost universal acceptance of the market as indispensable to prosperity, the collapse of Soviet imperialism, the downsizing of the state on nearly every continent and in almost every country in the world -- Margaret Thatcher played a part in all those transformations, and it is not easy to see how any would have occurred without her. Some of her more controversial and important decisions during her three terms of office include the following.

Her order in 1982 for British troops to retake the Falkland Islands from Argentina. Her strong stand against the British trade unions - especially during the miner's strike. (1984 -85) Her part in moving the British economy towards privatization. The introduction of the policy of "rate capping," which were part of her central policy of reducing the influence of government in the economic arena. The Introduction of the infamous community poll tax in 1990, which was part of the reason for her resignation.

Early Years Margaret Roberts was born on the 13th of October, 1935 in Grantham, a town in the North of England. She did not come from a wealthy or prestigious background; her father was a grocery store owner who was self-educated. He had left school at the age of fourteen. Her mother, Beatrice, was a seamstress. Her early family life was steeped in middle-class English values of hard work, practicality and religion. She was educated at Kesteven & Grantham Girl's School, after which she studied chemistry at Oxford University.

One of the characteristics for which she is remembered was her industrious nature. This was evident from an early age and she succeed in taking two degrees at Oxford - in Chemistry and Law. It is noteworthy that her father was active in local politics. He was a Liberal Independent and supported the local Conservative party. The influence of her father in her life and political career was important: When Thatcher first took office as Prime Minister at No.

10 Downing Street in London, she confided, "I owe almost everything to my father." Thatcher's father, a pious and thrifty grocer, was a lay preacher with a shrewd economic philosophy and a decisive character. As biographer Hugo Young writes in The Iron Lady, when asked what she owed to her father, Thatcher swiftly replied, integrity. He taught me that you can first sort out what you believe in. You then apply it.

You don't compromise on things that matter." (Crabtree and Danitz) After obtaining here degree in chemistry, Margaret worked as a research chemist for British Xylonite and then Lyons & Company. She was also instrumental in developing a method for preserving ice cream. She was later to work as an attorney, specializing in Tax Law. Her political ambitions were evident even at this early stage of her life and in 1943 she was elected President of the Oxford University Conservative Association. She was the first women to attain this position.

Her initial attempts to become a member of parliament were unsuccessful. In 1951 she married Denis Thatcher, a successful and wealthy businessman in the chemical industry. He proved to be a supportive element in both her private and political life. In 1953 she gave birth to twins, Mark and Carol. Political career Thatcher's determination in politics resulted in her becoming a member of parliament at the age of 34. A when she argued her way into one of the best Tory seats in the country, Finchley in north London.

Her quick mind (and faster mouth) led her up through the Tory ranks, and "by age 44 she got settled into the 'statutory woman's place in the Cabinet as Education Minister." (TIME 100) Prior to this she was narrowly rejected as candidate for Orpington in 1954. She also suffered several other rejections before her election for Finchley in 1958. She won the seat in the 1959 election and took her seat in the House of Commons.

She also made some astute political moves in her early political career and "parliamentarians took favor to the bill proposed in her maiden speech in the House of Commons (1960), which duly became legislation." (ibid) Within just two years, in William Heath's cabinet, she had been appointed Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Pensions. Further appointments were to follow and she became Secretary of State for Education and Science in the early 1970's.

It is perhaps indicative of the forceful and controversial political figure that she was to become that in her first months in office she abolished free milk in schools as a measure to reduce the education budget. "...this provoked a storm of public protest, earning her the nickname "Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher." Wikipedia: Margaret Thatcher) On the other hand her strong belief in the value of education was shown in her defense of the budget of the Open University policy, which she refused to reduce.

It is also noteworthy that in her early years Thatcher was one of the few conservative MPs who supported the Bill to decriminalize male homosexuality. She also voted in favor of the Bill to legitimize abortion. However, she was strongly opposed to the Bill that proposed the abolition of capital punishment. Some commentators claim that her rise to power was achieved with a certain amount of luck. Her case is awesome testimony to the importance of sheer chance in history.

In 1975 she challenged Edward Heath for the Tory leadership simply because the candidate of the party's right wing abandoned the contest at the last minute. Thatcher stepped into the breach. When she went into Heath's office to tell him her decision, he did not even bother to look up. "You'll lose," he said. "Good day to you." (TIME 100) dispute with the trade unions in 1974 resulted in William Heath's election loss. Margaret Thatcher was subsequently elected leader of the Conservative party in February 1975.

In this position she began to question the errors and fault lines in the British economy, which was in a poor state. The policies that she promoted to combat the economic downturn consisted essentially in a reversal of socialistic tendencies in government and, one of her most important political decisions, the reduction of state intervention coupled with lower taxation and public expenditure. She also promoted ideas of greater individual power and responsibility as well as greater competition and the encouragement of private ownership.

During her period as leader of opposition she received the name "the Iron lady." This was based in her assertive and outspoken opinions about the Soviet Union. "She declared that 'The Russians are bent on world dominance' and that they 'put guns before butter'. In response, the Soviet Defence Ministry newspaper Red Star gave her the nickname The Iron Lady." (Wikipedia: Margaret Thatcher) Her forceful character and dominating methods also led to other lesser known nicknames such as The Great She-Elephant, Attilla the Hen, and The Grocer's Daughter.

During this period she was never far from controversy. "In an interview she gave to Granada Television's World in Action programme in 1978 she spoke of her concern of immigrants 'swamping' Britain, which aroused particular controversy. (ibid) In 1979, with the Britain in economic turmoil and with industrial strife in the country, she was elected as Britain's first woman Prime Minister, with a Conservative majority of 44 in the House of Commons.

Her rise to power proved to be one of the most influential and controversial terms of office in British history and was to have a profound affect on world politics Without question, the decade of the 1980s in Great Britain was the era of Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher dominated British politics and government in a fashion not witnessed since Churchill's leadership of Britain during World War II. Furthermore, it now appears that Thatcher has emerged as the most influential European leader since Charles de Gaulle.

Thatcher's economic and social philosophy, her personal determination and shrewdness, and her political instincts combined to make her a political phenomenon in Britain. (Geelhoed and Hobbs xi) One of the issues that propelled her to power was the problem of trade unions. The fight against the unions had become a central issue in British government and Thatcher used this issue to maintain her position of control.

Thatcher turned the nation's anti-union feeling into a handsome parliamentary majority and a mandate to restrict union privileges by a series of laws that effectively ended Britain's trade-union problem once and for all. "Who governs Britain?" she famously asked as unions struggled for power. By 1980, everyone knew the answer: Thatcher governs." (The TIME 100) Margaret Thatcher faced a myriad of problems at the outset of her tenure as Prime Minister.

Collectively the ills of the British economy and internal industrial strife were known as the 'British disease' and represented the challenges she had to face. In the late 1970s, high inflation, trade union arrogance and violence, and a social malaise infected the British body politic. Britain was rightfully viewed as the pathetic "sick man" of Europe and political commentators in both Europe and the United States referred contemptuously to the "British Disease," that combination of lagging economic productivity, inefficient burgeoning state bureaucracy, social decadence, and political gridlock.

(Geelhoed and Hobbs xii) However, many of her early policies aimed at rectifying this situation were neither popular nor successful and in her first few years as Prime Minister she encountered numerous difficulties. Some of these included the harsh monetary policy of high interest rates, which had been implemented to reduce the rampant inflation level. The high interest rates were damaging to business in the country, particularly the manufacturing sector, and worsened the recession by the international oil crisis in 1970.

As a result of this decision there was a concomitant rise in unemployment. Her government was also blamed for the recession in the 1980's. Albeit, initially her policies to remedy the economic plight of the country were seen to have some marginal success but were widely judged as having generally failed. The conservative economic policies that Thatcher and the Tory government pursued in the early 1980s were phenomenally unsuccessful. Inflation in Britain reached almost 22% in 1980 and by the beginning of 1982 unemployment stood at three million.

In fact, Thatcherism became a pejorative political term during the early 1980s, a code word for an economic policy that produced only marginal success in controlling inflation while at the same time bringing higher unemployment and low economic growth. (ibid) Another issue that was an obstacle to Thatcher's attempts to rectify the economic and social plights of the country was the high unemployment rate. This was at an unprecedented high of more than three million and her policies in this regard resulted in cabinet dissention and some resignations.

However, her determination and resolution in the face of all these problems added to her esteem in the public eye. The image of Thatcher as the "Iron lady" was further established in the popular view by the decisive actions during the Falkland War. In 1982 Argentina invaded the neighboring Falkland Islands, which had been considered British territory for 150 years. When diplomatic attempts to resolve the crisis failed to stop the invasion of the Islands, Thatcher resorted to military force and dispatched a task force of the Royal British Navy.

It should be realized that this was politically a risky decision as failure would almost certainly have resulted in the fall of her government. After ten weeks the Argentinean government surrendered and the Islands were reclaimed by Britain. However, there were many controversial decisions made by Thatcher during the war that showed her determined character, even in the face of censure. One of these was the order she gave to sink the submarine, the General Belgrano, in which 368 sailors drowned.

However, the press and the public supported her decisions and this served to raise her public popularity ratings. With her high ratings and a divided labor at the time, the conservatives won a landslide election victory in 1945. Caspar Weinberger, defense secretary for U.S. President Reagan, stated that Thatcher's decision on the Falkland Islands was a test of her resolve and determination. Thatcher defied all of the military advice and expert opinion that said Britain couldn't possibly send a military expedition some 7,000 miles away, says Weinberger.

"But she was determined to go ahead and do it because she thought it was the right thing to do," he tells Insight. And she acted as if the possibility of military defeat did not exist." (Crabtree and Danitz) Central to the aims of her first term in office was the deep need that she felt to re-establish Britain as a viable economic and political force in the world.

To this end she was very opposed to previous policies, which in effect undermined the potential strength and influence of the United Kingdom. "Thatcher was incensed by one contemporary view within the Civil Service that its job was to manage Britain's decline from the days of Empire, and wanted the country to punch above its weight in international affairs.

(Wkipedia: Margaret Thatcher) One of the most important and far-reaching policies during her term in office was her conviction of the necessity to reduce governmental involvement and interference in the economic process. She was an ardent believer in lessening government control over Britain's economy. This led her to implement strategies that would lead to a privatization of industry and local government. This was one of the issues that possibly led to ambivalent views about her domestic policies.

However, this policy in particular went a long way towards reinstating Britain as an economic force in the world. Even as the rest of Europe toyed with socialism and state ownership, she set about privatizing the nationalized industries, which had been hitherto sacrosanct, no matter how inefficient. It worked. British Airways, an embarrassingly slovenly national carrier that very seldom showed a profit, was privatized and transformed into one of the world's best and most profitable airlines.

British Steel, which lost more than a billion pounds in its final years as a state concern, became the largest steel company in Europe.

Her privatization policies were, from an economic point-of-view, enormously successful and were imitated by many other counties By the mid-1980s, privatization was a new term in world government, and by the end of the decade more than 50 countries, on almost every continent, had set in motion privatization programs, floating loss-making public companies on the stock markets and in most cases transforming them into successful private-enterprise firms. Her resolve and steadfastness on important home issues was to show itself in her unbending policies on Irish terrorism.

This was to be tested when, in 1984, a bomb, intended for Mrs. Thatcher, killed five of her colleagues. This act was in apparent retaliation for Thatcher's stance on the IRA Hunger Strikes during 1980/81. After two terms in office Thatcher's policies had proven to provide a wide range of positive effects and "To some extent, Thatcher and the Conservatives could claim credit for much of the good news about the economy.

www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=15091370" (Geelhoed and Hobbs xiv) During her two terms in office Thatcher had succeeded in reducing personal taxes as well as privatized a portion of the government's ownership in nationalized companies. Importantly, she had also passed laws that curtailed the power of trade unions and made some headway in reducing the budget deficit and also reduced public spending. "Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Thatcher appeared to have whipped inflation.

In 1986, inflation held steady at a rate of 3.4%" The Fall from Power In her third term of office Margaret Thatcher was determined to make effective changes in the country. Her introduction of the infamous "poll tax" was one of the central issues of this term that would lead to her fall from power. Determined that her third term in office should have a more purposeful drive than the second, Mrs. Thatcher pressed on with an increasingly radical agenda.

The Community Charge - better known as 'Poll Tax' - was an attempt to replace the old rates system. Its introduction in Scotland in 1989 was highly unpopular, yet it became the government's flagship policy. Riots broke out in London in 1990 following its introduction in England and Wales. Unease amongst many Conservative MPs, fearful of loosing their seats in the 1991 general election, sparked deep divisions within the party.

Margaret Thatcher: A short Biography) Another factor that was to create tensions within her government and eventually lead to dissolution of her power base was the question of economic and political relations with Europe. This was, and still is to a large degree, a very divisive issue in British politics and in Thatcher's time it created serious divisions in government. Thatcher was determined in her rejection of political or economic integration with the rest of Europe.

She believed that this integration would "pose a threat to the economic success her government had achieved in the previous decade." (ibid) Her attitude and unending stance on this issue also led to a division in the party. The result was disastrous for Thatcher. In November 1990, following a high-profile resignation from Commons Leader Geoffrey Howe, former cabinet member Michael Heseltine stood against the Prime Minister in the Conservative Party leadership ballot.

Only just surviving the first round, and persuaded that a second attempt would result in a humiliating defeat, Margaret Thatcher resigned on 22nd November 1990." (ibid) Thatcher's influence on International Politics True to form, Margaret Thatcher's foreign policies have provoked both praise and criticism. The Falkland's war succeeded in making Thatcher much more visible in terms of international affairs. A very significant part of her foreign affairs policy was the inculcation of good relationships between Britain and the United States of America.

To this end she established a close relationship with the then President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. These two political figures shared many similar views and agreed on most international objectives. This relationship did not go without criticism from within the British establishment though.

Against a great deal of vocal sentiment in her own country, Thatcher emerged as Ronald Reagan's most ardent supporter in Europe, standing behind the President on deployment of Pershing II missiles in Britain, arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union, and American policy toward the North Atlantic. (Geelhoed and Hobbs xv) Thatcher supported many of America's policies and actions, especially in the Middle East.

One action which she supported and resulted in protests in Britain was when "American F-111 aircraft stationed in Britain carried out a retaliatory strike against Libya in response to Libya's recent acts of terrorism." (ibid) However, as usual she did not desist in the face to criticism and continued to support Reagan and American actions and policies. Margaret Thatcher was instrumental in the demise of communism.

She felt that she could "do business" with the Mikhail Gorbachev, who was at that time in line to be the next general secretary of the Soviet Union's Communist Party. Historians point out that Thatcher was attempting to ally herself with the United States and act as mediator in the cold war between the Americans and the Soviet Union.

Thatcher appeared to be positioning herself for a role roughly equivalent to that sought by one of her Conservative predecessors, Harold Macmillan, who between 1957 and 1963 had savored his dual role as at once America's closest ally and supporter and a mediator of disagreements between the United States and the Soviet Union. To many it became apparent that Margaret Thatcher was in the process of playing a major role in international relations. This also bolstered her popularity and standing in the eyes of the British public.

Many historians are also of the opinion that the dual pressure exerted by both Thatcher and Reagan on the Soviet Union was instrumental in the political changes that were to occur in that country. "Together with Reagan she pushed Mikhail Gorbachev to pursue his perestroika policy to its limits and so fatally to undermine the self-confidence of the Soviet elite." (Time 100) While it is difficult to establish her exact contribution to the fall of communism, many commentators believe that she played an important role in the process.

"Historians will argue hotly about the precise role played by the various actors who brought about the end of Soviet Communism. But it is already clear that Thatcher has an important place in this huge event." (ibid) The final appreciation of Thatcher's contribution to international politics is clearly echoed in the following quotation. It was the beginning of a new historical epoch.

All the forces that had made the 20th century such a violent disappointment to idealists-- totalitarianism, the gigantic state, the crushing of individual choice and initiative -- were publicly and spectacularly defeated. Ascendant instead were the values that Thatcher had supported in the face of sometimes spectacular opposition: free markets.