That speech was a rare instance of a politician saying something tangible. As she cut local housing budgets, she sent housing benefit soaring in compensation. Few would argue that they have not endured. It's true that whenever there's a major news story, millions of people immediately begin strip-mining it for puns and bon mots, making it harder for professional comics to develop focused, funny material that nobody's heard before. Look at the cars on the road, none made by the old, nationally-owned British Leyland and only few by the British marques that once dominated but which went the way of much of British industry unable to survive the chill wind of "market forces", another phrase which filled the air back then. Under Heath and Jim Callaghan the question was widely asked: had democracies become "ungovernable"? The welfare state set out to ensure that no one, in the UK at least, would starve or freeze to death, or suffer or die for lack of medical or other care. Thatcher's most baleful influence on government was not on industries and services she privatised but those she did not. Dignity and decorum ruled the day - except in the poisoned anonymity of the internet. . It is not true that Thatcher didn't care about the media. Everyone knows where they were when they heard. She remained in power till I was 15. The south of England and the City of London were the future; the revenues from North Sea oil would pay for the unemployed in the old zones of manufacturing industry. Thatcher was never insensitive to the impact of her policies on the poor. This was hardly the first or even the worst example of a dig at Thatcher tinged so needlessly with sexism. In her speech, Thatcher used rhetorical techniques to show the strength and principles of Reagan and project those values onto the American people. I am, it's safe to say, one of Thatcher's children. Which raises the question: why isn't this happening now? The time was 1973. A decade later they were wiped out in terms of Scotland-based Westminster constituency representation. Scottish and by extension UK politics has been skewed ever since. Nations need to know the big picture of where they belong and, coinciding with the Thatcher appearance at the top, clarity had apparently broken through the clouds of historic ambivalence. I know from my own indulgence in selfish behaviour that it's much easier to get what you want if you remove from consideration the effect your actions will have on others. Sayle recorded the song Get Me Mrs Thatcher, but says that in general he felt Thatcher jokes were a bit too easy, although he still shudders at the memory of a "wicked, incompetent mindset that was the spirit of the 80s". Thatcher's threat to butcher the mining industry, destroy the fabric of mining communities and in particular the trade union to which miners had a bond of loyalty, was met with the fiercest resistance any government has met in peacetime. It made minor savings at best and was, as the . If a leader's record is to be measured by the willingness of the other side to decide itcannot turn back the clock, then Thatcher bulks big in history. Beleagured Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher makes pun during the 1981 Conservative Party conference speech: "the lady's not for turning" she says to her crit. True, Labour, James Callaghan and the unions played their part by blocking Barbara Castle's In Place of Strife attempt to create German or Nordic co-operation between unions and industry that might have rescued unions from Thatcher's crushing. She may have got it slightly wrong. Having no social or political connection with the class most affected, she gave a very good impression of not caring. Reagan would often hasten to remind those paying tribute to his cold war strategy that it was, in the strictest sense of the term, a team effort. Hayek was appointed a Companion of Honour in the 1984 Birthday honours for "services to the study of Economics". He was listened to with rapt attention, unsurprisingly, since in both Washington and Westminster his "nudge" theories are saving significant sums of taxpayers' money. Public Statements of Margaret Thatcher on CD-ROM, 1945-90, edited Christopher departing Downing Street on 28 November. When all the public amenities were flogged, the adverts made it seem to my childish eyes fun and positive, jaunty slogans and affable British stereotypes jostling about in villages, selling people companies that they'd already paid for through tax. In 1976 it still did not help and in the same year they had to take a loan in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) [] . Rhetorical Analysis Of Margaret Thatcher's Speech 722 Words | 3 Pages . Since 1990 a selection of statements is listed. The former reporter, who was 90, died with his family around him yesterday lunchtime, a statement said. Perhaps this is unsurprising: four years ago Ed Miliband sneered at "nudge" economics as something "very fashionable in the Guardian for a few months before the financial crisis". But she became a very effective one. Reagan's decision to bomb Libya, spoke September 25, 2020. Rows with Lawson and Geoffrey Howe over a European currency (where she was right) presaged the final shambles of the poll tax. When I was a kid, Thatcher was the headmistress of our country. Animals and Pets Anime Art Cars and Motor Vehicles Crafts and DIY Culture, Race, and Ethnicity Ethics and Philosophy Fashion Food and Drink History Hobbies Law Learning and Education Military Movies Music Place Podcasts and Streamers Politics Programming Reading, Writing, and Literature Religion and Spirituality Science Tabletop Games . It accounted for a large part of the mark Thatcher left on Britain. Any such objections would have been invalid. But awoman who, at the time, thought that chancellor was the top mark at which she might aim. I was a professional writer. Thatcher became a supremely self-confident leader. I was on my own. Following in the footsteps of Santa Claus, Steve Hynd quickly compiled a list of all the naughty boys and girls "on the left" who dared to express criticisms of the dearly departed Prime Minister, warning that he "will continue to add to this list throughout the day". If you want anything done, ask a woman.". Reagan was received coolly, and the discussion was highly superficial, if only because the British side clearly did not care to engage on substance: meet for a serious discussion with a movie actor and a "Grade B" actor at that? One thinks now of the closing words of her splendid 2004 eulogy of Ronald Reagan, and how those words so perfectly speak a tribute to her life and works: "We here still move in twilight. No such alarms ring in Cameron's ears. I'd become a delinquent, living on heroin and benefit fraud. But unlike Thatcher, president Hugo Chvez of Venezuela, the "president of the poor", fought for a caring economy and against the rule of the market. speech to the House of Lords in June 1993. When I think of this memorial, I think of the words of Rupert Brooke, "that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.". Selling off the family silver Harold Macmillan and later Labour called it, as Margaret Thatcher set about reversing the 1945 nationalisations that had put oil, gas, coal, electricity and an airline as well as a house removal company in public hands. He'd been a bully, she said, whereas Mrs T was warm and understanding. The late Benazir Bhutto later gave me much the same account. Britain's record on innovation and investment have been extremely poor, while the hollowing out of manufacturing left the economy over-dependent on the de-regulated City. Interview by Benedict King. The machinery of modern political management polls, consulting, focus groups is deployed mainly to discover what will make aparty and politician better liked, or worse, disliked. Thatcher's title is Baroness. In the 80s, she was the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy and is now simply called "comedy". So it suggests the anachronistic and unaffordable return to a contributory welfare system, while opposing the further opening up of education and health provision; some even float the renationalisation of railways. The appointment was a 20-minute audience with the . Reagan was especially interested in Mrs Thatcher's domestic policy initiatives, and it was quickly established that the foreign policy views ran along parallel lines. To the victors we saycongratulations. The challenge for the left is to fashion new and genuinely progressive policies in an age of austerity, when more money is not the answer to any question. Thatcher's use of rhetorical devices supports her eulogy because the concept of Reagan being more. Steely, certainly. It still does. And nor could Thatcher, much to her relief as she allegedly abhorred the word, as doubtless Chanel did, too. Hire writer now Order. Or perhaps it was just because I was a little kid and more interested in them Weetabix skinheads, Roland Rat and Knight Rider. Thatcher exposed the sharp edges of class division in Britain and the strike of 1984/5 was as much a clash of values as it was about pit closures. If I become PM, I will deliver the radical set of reforms need to unleash growth. Although the "right to buy" and the privatisation of utilities by selling shares to new small investors was often justified as giving rights to "the little people", the reality is that the less well-off fell ever further behind the rich. She made one She hurled herself into NHS reform, changes to schools and universities, utilities privatisation and, eventually, local government reform. The romantic image of the lady in the tank spurs them on. Reagan, who had recently left office as governor of California, was in London to deliver a speech to the Pilgrim Society. Prime Minister Thatcher inherited a settled state of British Europeanness, in which Brussels and the [European] Community began to influence, and often determine, the British way of doing things. In the north of Ireland she had the army and the Diplock courts which reached their peak in the mid 1980s. She was a prime minister who happened to be a woman. at The Hague in May 1992. He had enough Del Boy about him to admire her coiffured virility but in a way Thatcher was so omnipotent; so omnipresent, so omni-everything that all opinion was redundant. Far from "smashing the glass ceiling", she was the aberration, the one who got through and then pulled the ladder up right after her. When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms. We might speculate that an adviser had offered Thatcher a selection of good lines, or that she had asked to see some. In the pantheon of this comedian's attacks on Thatcher, it was a retort that probably won't be treasured longer than the best lines from The Young Ones. to his resignation letter on 1 November, defended herself against rough Your local electricity "board" could be a very unfriendly place. This book shows how. She, and Blair after her, brought an unprecedented dirigisme to the NHS, education, police and local government. Not until well out of office, angry and lacking her old judgment, did she lead the rabidly Eurosceptic renegades. Author: Margaret Thatcher Year: 1979 Location: London, the UK Occasion: Address to the Parliament. June 5, 1992 - Is named a life peer on the Queen's honor list. Trying to trim back spending in her department, she ended the milk subsidies for all children over the age of seven. And as my Guardian colleague Seumas Milne detailed last year, "across Britain Thatcher is still hated for the damage she inflicted and for her political legacy of rampant inequality and greed, privatisation and social breakdown.". Her vision for Britain made a lot of people feel like outsiders, which made them the ideal audience for comedy. Government policy during the 1980s was little more than a war policy, aimed at defeating or isolating republicanism. After being carried through the streets of London in a flag-draped coffin aboard a gun carriage, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was laid to rest this . Her gender led her into government and the shadow cabinet, despite Edward Heath's aversion to her. . "The News" was the pompous conduit through which we suckled at the barren baroness through newscaster wet-nurses, naturally; not direct from the steel teat. They are acolytes of a raw Thatcher cult they have rough-hewn and exaggerated in their own image. But on their catastrophic economic policy, it's full-speed ahead into the concrete wall. From 1987 to 1988, he was a senior policy writer and speechwriter in 10 Downing Street for Margaret Thatcher when she was British prime minister and remained close to her up to her death.. O'Sullivan served from 2008-2012 as vice-president and executive editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio . speech in the House of Commons on 5 February 1960 and gave her Watch a million words pour out today placing her anywhere from Boudicca to the wicked witch of the west. Thatcher did not believe in "picking winners"; instead she preferred to rely on market forces to ensure the survival of the fittest. On her return to London, she sent me a warm and complimentary letter, a prize in my personal archives. The set text is still Thatcher's declaration quoted in The Audience that "There is no such thing as society". Scotland was her mission impossible. As working families in poverty now account for more than half of those below the poverty line, a government committed to "making work pay" should surely encourage this trend and raise the minimum wage. to secure international action to repair the damaged ozone layer. The fact that the Thatcher question even gets asked confirms vividly just what an upas tree she remains for Scottish Toryism. One also can't forget what happened to the agency that made Thatcher worldfamous: the Conservative party, of which she seemed such an improbable leader. Keith Joseph was her guru. Gaze at the telephone. Large parts of society never recovered, while Germany and other countries managed the transition without such brutality. But there were also cuts for basic-rate taxpayers: the 1988 budget, for example, cut the top rate of tax from 60% to 40% and the standard rate from 27% to 25%. She fervently believed the market would soon repair their loss. Speech: 07:39-28:33 Q & A: 28:34-48:08 (Recording ends abruptly during Q&A) Topics of . Somesay she revolutionised British politics certainly never again could people say nobody would vote for a woman but it served a reactionary end. the British Embassy in Paris and stated She forced us to decide what was truly important. Either way, I'm an adult now and none of those things are on telly any more so there's no excuse for apathy. In the three years prior to receiving these weapons the loyalist death squads killed 34 people. Two especially forceful and committed leaders on the world stage at the same time: this was critical and key to ending the cold war, permitting the reunification of Germany, the consolidation of the EU and drawing our two nations together in a historic cooperation. After the Dublin European Council in November 1979 she began a long battle The left misleads us and maybe itself when it says that Thatcher's policies, extended by New Labour and then by the coalition, have failed. There are pangs of nostalgia, yes, because for me she's all tied up with Hi-De-Hi and Speak and Spell and Blockbusters and "follow the bear". Britain's relative decline came to an end, although that was more due to slowdowns in countries such as France and Germany than an acceleration in UK productivity growth. Cameron's crew crudely imagine she intended it. They are a more energetic and impressive group than their predecessors, often with experience outside politics that makes them impatient and independent-minded. As a physician, she has been a vocal advocate for a single-payer healthcare system that would . still being scolded for the remark.You can read here exactly what she said, When the late Christopher Hitchens was a political reporter for the New Statesman, he corrected the prime minister on a point of fact, and she was quick to correct Hitchens in turn. in his defence during the IranContra affair, told Howe's "broken cricket bats" speech in the Commons was the killer blow. All Rights Reserved. The events of that awful summer of '81 polarised Irish society, north and south. This report of the Conservative party conference ran in the Guardian on Saturday October 11 1980, Edited and full versions of Margaret Thatcher's 'The lady's not for turning' speech, delivered at the Conservative party conference in Brighton on 10 October 1980, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every which revealed a good deal as to her political My dad, I suspect, did. Yet by the autumn of 1981 they had made her so unpopular that bets were being taken at the October party conference that she would be "gone by Christmas". The core of this site is a massive database of MT's public statements of all kinds across the years (speeches, interviews, press conferences, etc), searchable by date, subject, importance, and keyword. Gloves. Jan Leeming, Sue Lawley, Moira Stuart delivering doctrine with sterile sexiness, like a butterscotch-scented beige vapour. Now she would more likely have been beaten to the Tory leadership by one of the Etonians in cabinet. When Heath fell, her promoters ran her as a stalking horse because, as a woman, they thought she could not win. Thatcher was the Prime Minister of Great Britain during Reagan's presidency, and was close with him which There are more than 8,000. Collins (Oxford University Press, 1998-2000). Such seminars are regular events in Downing Street under the coalition. Promises. She had just finished the first volume of her memoirs, which she insisted was all her own work. Charles Powell was a senior foreign policy . Then they discovered that they could make money, so they dropped all that. Police charges against picketing union printers in Wapping enabled the Murdoch empire to flourish, ensuring their power and hers. But if today's Guardian readers time-travelled to the late 70s they might be irritated to discover that tomorrow's TV listings were a state secret not shared with daily newspapers. Margaret Thatcher, Signed Speech on Hayek, 2003, Estimate 1,500-2,000 . An Inconvenient Truth About Margaret Thatcher: She Was a Climate Hawk. As a child she unnerved me but we are not children now and we are free to choose our own ethical codes and leaders that reflect them. There are many reasons for this. We still live in the land Margaret built. 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. It is my view that Thatcher authorised the killings at Gibraltar. Thatcher's reputation never recovered from the ruthless budgets of 1980 and 1981, or her insensitivity to colleagues. Nelson travelled to South Africa where he helped negotiate a deal that saw the UDA, UVF and Ulster Resistance acquire AK-47 automatic rifles, pistols, grenades, and RPG rocket launchers in late 1987 or early 1988. She was propped up by police who were encouraged to brutality against not only strikers but communities of colour, already hardest hit by unemployment: police powers were enhanced and their racism given free rein, especially with stop and search; CS gas was used on the mainland for the first time. On 30 October 1990 she made the first of the In 1979 she inherited a nation that was the "sick man of Europe", an object of constant transatlantic ridicule. of the 1600 libraries around the world which hold the CD-ROM. first television interview the following day. outlook at the time. She preferred markets, and a strong but minimal central state that backed their rule. Norman and Margaret hold, and will always hold, a unique place in our esteem and affection. Perhaps, though, Thatcher "the monster" didn't die yesterday from a stroke, perhaps that Thatcher died as she sobbed self-pitying tears as she was driven, defeated, from Downing Street, ousted by her own party. Had Jim Callaghan won the 1979 election, he too would have faced the challenge of how to modernise an economy beset by high inflation, weak management and poor industrial relations. But look at this typical difference between her and her imitators: where Cameron has charged into Europe, taking his party out of the influential European People's party of natural allies, making enemies and building no useful coalitions, it was she who signed the Single European Act, understanding its importance for British trade, careful to make allies as well as swinging her handbag. There's something distinctively creepy - in a Roman sort of way - about this mandated ritual that our political leaders must be heralded and consecrated as saints upon death. But it was overlaid by the supposedly masculine virtues, sometimes more manly than the men could ever assemble. . We must reduce the inequality that has seen a super-rich elite, openly contemptuous of the flag and family values Thatcher proclaimed, float free from the rest of us. Their reckless private finance of public investment and services went beyond anything she dared dream of. Demonising unions and stripping the great mass of private-sector workers of a voice and power in the workplace is still the root of the great living standards crisis that saw the share of wealth going to wages slide long before Lehman Brothers failed. Union in a speech Each was characterised by her attention to detail. At the time, Thatcher was the education secretary her first major political role. verbatim and in context. Texts for listed statements are available on the site in almost 70 per Though the Thatcher years could also be called the Saatchi years, reaching a new level of presentational sophistication in the annals of British politics, they weren't about getting the leader liked. Yet a leader that a wide cross-section of Scots had come to despise. The remainder are listed without a text because sometimes no record survives Between 1945-90 every statement made by Margaret Thatcher is listed, as far as can be known. As coal, steel and shipbuilding fell under her wrecking ball, whole communities were destroyed. I met her just once, as a reporter in the press pack that followed her tour around Greece and Yugoslavia in 1980. see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising Meryl Streep's depiction of a shuffling figure, stricken and isolated by the death of her husband, Denis, may have softened memories, or formed them in the minds of a younger generation. Yet the Daily Mail has morefemale bylines than any other UK paper and is not exactly a totem of gender equality andfemale-friendliness. There had been Churchill and his defiance; there had been Kipling and his If; there had been her father in his grocer's shop in Grantham. Emma Dibdin is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles who writes about culture . It was perfectly justified to note that, particularly as the Guardian also explained that "to the millions who revered him a third of the country, according to some polls a messiah has fallen, and their grief will be visceral." John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013), who in 1979 would become Great Britain's first female Prime Minister, traveled to the United States and Canada in September 1975, seven months after becoming the leader of Britain's Conservative Party, then out of power. But she regarded rightwing causes as an intellectual hobby. Government will respond to clear leadership if it knows what a leader wants. For a national matriarch she is oddly unmaternal. MT gave her first Certainly, in 1983, it did not occur to me to criticise Harold Macmillan or Alec Douglas-Home on the doorstep as a sure-fire vote turner. making her big speech the following day as scheduled. To project the ideas of strength and . Margaret Thatcher had planned to attack Labour's unwillingness to condemn picket-line violence in her 1984 conference speech but changed her mind when an IRA bomb hit The Grand Hotel in Brighton. But she also provided great material. Therein, 30 years ago, lay the great Thatcher asset and the electorally lethal Thatcher impact in Scotland. Behind "omnishambles" headlines, her revolution is being pushed forward on new fronts in schools, health, planning, policing, probation and welfare. The pomp and circumstance that will crown her funeral was proffered by Brown, to some shudders from his own side. Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher's attack was wholesale. with concern about global warming, having done more than any other politician Died: 24 February 2023, aged 90 Sir Bernard Ingham was Margaret Thatcher writ large. Throw the Lib Dems into the mix and it becomes highly combustible. A friend of South African apartheid and mass murderers from Kissinger and Pinochet to the Khmer Rouge after they had killed two million Cambodians she was a zealous saleswoman for the arms industry. Meanwhile, you struggle to identify deep thinkers in party ranks beyond a couple of veteran stalwarts; even the left's thinktanks appear moribund or merely harking back to an idealised past. Still plumbing for the essence, we have to examine other bits of residue. From then on she disregarded her critics and became intolerant of any who were "not one of us". Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. She was among the first Western leaders to Opponents and supporters of Margaret Thatcher will never agree about the value of her legacy, but as for her importance, her hypnotic hold on us, they are bound to find common ground. Eventually, the Italian contingent, largely existential or postmodern, rose up against us. The number of days lost through strikes tumbled. The financial crash of 2008 was a direct result of the policies Thatcher championed. Great speeches: 'Orwellian nightmare' if Tories fail, claims Margaret Thatcher. No single mother raising children was to be called "workless", skipping meals to feed them and forced to ditch them to submit to "workfare" or a starvation wage. If they have no bread, let them eat from food banks that's Thatcherism, the legacy we are still to bury before it buries us. What is really left by Thatcher to history? In his usual slightly dishevelled style, he went to Downing Street to discuss his pioneering concepts of behavioural economics and attempts to implement them under Barack Obama. Typifying these highly dubious claims about Thatcher was this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama: "The world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend." I will know that we have finally broken from the kind of capitalism that she championed and which died in 2008 when we see workers elected on to company boards. Handbag. To the extent that there was an industrial strategy, it was to sell Britain as a destination for Japanese car companies and to shift the focus of the economy away from manufacturing towards financial services. But these concrete achievements do not wholly explain why she still looms so large, large enough that not one but two current West End plays The Audience and Billy Elliot grant Thatcher a pivotal, if largely unsympathetic, role, whether seen or unseen. And, of course, Nelson provided the intelligence. It was under her leadership that in 1982 that the Force Research Unit (FRU) was established within the British Army Intelligence Corps. I am reminded of this every time the debate comes up about whether more female bylines would reduce sexism in the media. Was it cruelty? Thatcher jokes were big business, from Rik Mayall's student rants in The Young Ones, to Harry Enfield's satire of Thatcher's children with his Loadsamoney character. No sign they learned from her that markets don't move in to fill the gaps when the state is rolled back not then, not now. Thatcher's social instincts were always nostalgic conservative. Nissan's arrival in the north-east showed that Britain was no longer the west's industrial pariah. The great contradiction in her politics was that someone who yearned for the certainties of small-town shopkeeper economics helped create the amoral yuppiedom of 80s excess and an explosion of cultural resistance that is still an ironic positive legacy of her time in power. The Cameron and Osborne circle are crude copies carried away with the dangerous idea that conviction is all it takes to run a country. He was a political and historical figure and the need to accurately portray his legacy and prevent misleading hagiography easily outweighed precepts of death etiquette that prevail when a private person dies. talked of "Victorian Values". It fell to Blair to do something about the latter, while giving free rein to the former. Peggy Noonan. The evidence shows that greater equality provides the foundation on which higher standards of social wellbeing can be built. Witness the steady downgrading of local government or the persistent assumption that the private sector will always be better than the public. What saved Thatcher's bacon, and revolutionised her leadership, was Labour's unelectable Michael Foot and the Falklands war. The poll-tax rioters. Had pollsters and the 24/7 media forced leaders to follow opinion, not lead it? We can't blame (or credit) her for all of this, of course. The London mayor regretted that usage, but he surely understood its origins. Chavez was indeed a divisive and controversial figure, and it would have been reckless to conceal that fact out of some misplaced deference to the grief of his family and supporters.