Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher  (13 October 19258 April 2013) was a British stateswoman. She served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (UK) from 1979 until her resignation in 1990, longer than any other British prime minister in the 20th century. She led the UK's Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. Thatcher was the first female British prime minister and was often known by the nickname "The Iron Lady", given to her by a journalist from the Soviet Union. Her birth name was Margaret Hilda Roberts.

Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, and worked briefly as a research chemist, before becoming a barrister. She was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath made her a Secretary of State in his government of 1970 to 1974. In 1975, she beat Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition and the first woman to lead a major British political party. In 1979, she was elected Prime Minister, and won a landslide re-election in 1983 after victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a revival of support.

Thatcher was re-elected for a third term with another landslide in 1987, but her following support for the Community Charge ("poll tax") was very unpopular, and her more Eurosceptic views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after a challenge was made by Michael Heseltine to her leadership. After retiring from the House of Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, which gave her the right to sit in the House of Lords. In 2013, she died of a stroke in London, at the age of 87.

Thatcher is a controversial figure in British political culture, but is still viewed positively in most opinion polls of British prime ministers. The debate over her neoliberal policies and legacy continues in the UK into the 21st century.

Early life 

Margaret Roberts was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, on 13 October 1925. Her father was Alfred Roberts, a tobacconist originally from Northamptonshire. Her mother was Beatrice Ethel Stephenson, from Lincolnshire.

Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford. In her final year, she studied X-ray crystallography under Dorothy Hodgkin, who later won the Nobel Prize. She was already interested in politics, and became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946. Roberts read political works such as Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944), which said  economic intervention by government was wrong, because it gave too much power to the state. After graduating, Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics.

She was elected an MP in 1959. She became Education Secretary in 1970.

As Prime Minister
Thatcher directed British troops in 1982 to get back the Falkland Islands from Argentina. Argentina had taken the Falklands for a short time during the Falklands War. She had the second longest single prime ministerial term in history. She married Denis Thatcher; they had twins: son Mark  and daughter Carol.

She suffered from strong opposition during a coal miner's strike in 1984 and 1985. The strike took away political power from the miners' union. There was also controversy when she introduced a poll tax to Britain. This caused rioting across the country.

She was forced to resign by her own party in 1990. She was replaced by John Major. In 1992, she stood down as PM. She then joined the House of Lords. From then on, she was known as "Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven".

During Thatcher's years as prime minister, unemployment rose a lot. It doubled during her first term. In 1982, 3 million people were unemployed. Unemployment started to decline again only in the mid- to late-1980s.  Since the mid-1990s, Britain has consistently had lower unemployment than most of continental Europe. Thatcher's supporters claim this is the result of her reform of the labour market. This is disputed by her opponents.

She was the subject of an assassination attempt when the Grand Brighton Hotel was bombed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in October 1984.

During the near end of the Cold War, Thatcher became one of the closest friends of Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States.

She is remembered in the UK for reducing the trade union movement's power. Trade unions were much more powerful in the 1970s. Thatcher did much to reduce their influence on British industry.

Thatcher was the first woman to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. She was also the first woman to be Conservative Party leader.

Personal life
In February 1949, she met Denis Thatcher. They met at a Paint Trades Federation event in Dartford. They married on 13 December 1951, at a chapel in City Road, London; the Robertses, Margaret's parents, were Methodists. Margaret and Denis had twin children, Carol and Mark, who were born on 15 August 1953, six weeks prematurely by Caesarean section.

Later life
Her husband Denis died in 2003 from pancreatic cancer. She attended Ronald Reagan's funeral service in 2004. In the later years of her life, she suffered from dementia and withdrew from public engagements in 2002. In 2006, Thatcher attended the official Washington memorial service to mark the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States (US). She was a guest of Vice President Dick Cheney, and met Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit. She would also visit several times for ceremonies that honoured Reagan.

Death

Thatcher died from a stroke on 8 April 2013 at her hotel room in London, aged 87. She had bladder cancer and dementia at the time of her death. In line with her wishes she received a ceremonial funeral, with full military honours, and a church service at St Paul's Cathedral on 17 April. Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip attended the funeral, only the second time in the Queen's reign that she had attended the funeral of a former prime minister.

References

Other websites
 
 Margaret Thatcher Foundation
 Her obituary (a life story) on the BBC News website
 Margaret Thatcher in Citizendium

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