Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first female PM, dead at 87 - CNN.com Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first female PM, dead at 87 By Richard Allen Greene, CNN Updated 9:49 PM ET, Mon April 8, 2013 Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds. JUST WATCHED The life and legacy of the 'Iron Lady' 03:40 Story highlights Thatcher, Britain's "Iron Lady," died after suffering a stroke Monday, her spokeswoman said She retired from public life in 2002 after a stroke As British PM from 1975 to 1990, she played a key role in ending the Cold War But Thatcher opposed reunification of Germany Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a towering figure in postwar British and world politics and the only woman to become British prime minister, has died at the age of 87. She suffered a stroke Monday, her spokeswoman said. A British government source said she died at the Ritz Hotel in London. Thatcher's funeral will be at St.

Paul's Cathedral, with full military honors, followed by a private cremation, the British prime minister's office announced. Thatcher served from 1975 to 1990 as leader of the Conservative Party. She was called the "Iron Lady" for her personal and political toughness. She retired from public life after a stroke in 2002 and suffered several strokes after that. Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Margaret Thatcher , the first woman to become British prime minister, has died at 87 after a stroke, a spokeswoman said Monday, April 8. Known as the "Iron Lady," Thatcher, as Conservative Party leader, was prime minister from 1979 to 1990. Here she visits British Prime Minister David Cameron at 10 Downing Street in London in June 2010. Hide Caption 1 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher with her parents and sister Muriel in 1945.

Thatcher, born Margaret Hilda Roberts in 1925, studied chemistry at Oxford University and worked as a research chemist before becoming a barrister in 1954. Hide Caption 2 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Conservative Party candidate Margaret Roberts, the youngest candidate for any party in the 1950 general election, works in a laboratory where she was a research chemist. Hide Caption 3 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – The Conservative Party candidate for Dartford in Kent, England, meets some potential constituents in January 1950. Hide Caption 4 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher chats with a police officer outside the House of Commons, where she took a seat as a member of Parliament for Finchley in October 1959. Hide Caption Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher addresses a Conservative Party conference in October 1967. Hide Caption 6 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher in 1970.

Within five years, she would become leader of the Conservatives. Hide Caption 7 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Prime Minister Edward Heath with 13 of 15 newly elected Conservative women members of Parliament outside the House of Commons in June 1970. Thatcher became secretary of state for education and science under Heath. Hide Caption 8 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher plays the piano for her husband, Denis, and their twins, Mark and Carol, then 17, in September 1970. Hide Caption 9 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher takes over from Edward Heath as leader of the Conservative Party in 1975. Hide Caption 10 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher addresses Conservatives at the start of the 1979 election campaign. William Whitelaw, at her right, later became home secretary and deputy prime minister under Thatcher.

Hide Caption 11 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher, becoming the first female prime minister of a European country, stands with her husband, Denis, outside 10 Downing Street in May 1979 after her party's success in the general election. Hide Caption Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher with her new Cabinet in June 1979. Hide Caption 13 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and Thatcher at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in September 1982. They were holding meetings leading up to the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the future of Hong Kong in 1984. Hide Caption 14 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher meets personnel aboard the HMS Antrim during her trip to the Falkand Islands in January 1983. The United Kingdom fought a short war with Argentina over the Falklands in 1982, responding with force when Buenos Aires laid claim to the islands.

Hide Caption 15 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher and her husband, Denis, left, visit a school in the Falkland Islands in 1983. Hide Caption 16 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher secures her second term of office in June 1983. She won a landslide re-election on the heels of the Falklands victory, with her Conservative Party taking a majority of seats in Parliament with 42% of the vote. Hide Caption 17 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan share a joke in London in June 1984. The British politician enjoyed a close working relationship with Reagan, with whom she shared similar conservative views. Hide Caption 18 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher addresses a Conservative Party conference in Brighton, England, following an IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel, where many delegates were staying, in October 1984.

Hide Caption Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher addresses the Conservative Party in May 1985. Hide Caption 20 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher receives Spain's King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia at 10 Downing Street in April 1986. Hide Caption 21 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the start of talks at the Kremlin in Moscow in March 1987. Hide Caption 22 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher and her husband, Denis, wave to the crowd at a London polling station in June 1987. She was re-elected to another term as prime minister that year with a slightly reduced majority. Hide Caption 23 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher dances with Reagan in November 1988 following a state dinner given in her honor at the White House.

Hide Caption 24 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher greets Nelson Mandela on the steps of 10 Downing Street in July 1990. The anti-apartheid activist and future South African president had been freed that year after more than 25 years as political prisoner. Hide Caption 25 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher, flanked by her husband Denis, addresses the press for the last time at 10 Downing Street before her resignation as prime minister in November 1990 after an internal leadership struggle among Conservatives. Hide Caption 26 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – The former prime minister chats with President George H.W. Bush in March 1991 in the White House Oval Office before receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The award is the highest civilian honor bestowed in the United States.

Hide Caption 27 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher, with her son, Mark, and her daughter, Carol, watches the coffin of her husband, Denis, during his funeral in July 2003 in London. Denis Thatcher died at age 88. Hide Caption 28 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher touches the flag-draped coffin of Reagan as he lies in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in June 2004. In a prerecorded video at his funeral, she called Reagan "a great president, a great American and a great man." "And I have lost a dear friend," she said. Hide Caption 29 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher, from left, Cherie Blair, Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Tony Blair attend a church service at Pangbourne College in June 2007 to mark the 25th anniversary of victory in the Falklands War.

Hide Caption 30 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – An usher helps Thatcher, now a baroness, to her seat during the state opening of Parliament in November 2009. Hide Caption 31 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – The ex-prime minister helps unveil a portrait of herself at the opening of the Margaret Thatcher Infirmary at the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London in March 2009. Hide Caption 32 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Pope Benedict XVI greets Thatcher in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican in May 2009. Hide Caption 33 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher attends the House of Lords during the state opening of Parliament in May 2010. Hide Caption 34 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher waves from the door of her London home after a hospital stay to operate on a broken arm in June 2009.

She had a pin placed in her shoulder after suffering a fall. Hide Caption 35 of 36 Photos: Photos: Thatcher through the years Margaret Thatcher through the years – Thatcher waves to journalists from her London home after another hospital visit -- this time with a bout of flu -- in November 2010. Hide Caption 1 of 13 Photos: Photos: Thatcher and Reagan's friendship Thatcher and Reagan's friendship – Thatcher and Reagan chat at a British Embassy dinner in Washington in February 1981. Hide Caption 2 of 13 Photos: Photos: Thatcher and Reagan's friendship Thatcher and Reagan's friendship – Thatcher, right, and Reagan at the summit of the seven industrialized powers at Versailles in Paris in 1982. Hide Caption 3 of 13 Photos: Photos: Thatcher and Reagan's friendship Thatcher and Reagan's friendship – Thatcher reads a joint declaration in the Guildhall as Reagan and French President Francois Mitterand listen after a summit conference in London in May 1984.

Hide Caption 4 of 13 Photos: Photos: Thatcher and Reagan's friendship Thatcher and Reagan's friendship – Thatcher and Reagan listen to the American national anthem at Kensington Palace Gardens after Reagan's arrival from Ireland for a summit in London in June 1984. Hide Caption 5 of 13 Photos: Photos: Thatcher and Reagan's friendship Thatcher and Reagan's friendship – Thatcher and Reagan share a joke at her residence, No. 10 Downing St., in London in June 1984. Hide Caption 6 of 13 Photos: Photos: Thatcher and Reagan's friendship Thatcher and Reagan's friendship – Reagan and Thatcher take a golf cart around Camp David in December 1984. Hide Caption 7 of 13 Photos: Photos: Thatcher and Reagan's friendship Thatcher and Reagan's friendship – First lady Nancy Reagan meets Thatcher at No. 10 Downing St. in July 1986. Hide Caption 8 of 13 Photos: Photos: Thatcher and Reagan's friendship Thatcher and Reagan's friendship – Thatcher and Reagan meet in the garden of the Cipriani Hotel in Venice, Italy, during an economic summit in June 1987.

Hide Caption 9 of 13 Photos: Photos: Thatcher and Reagan's friendship Thatcher and Reagan's friendship – The two world leaders dance during a White House state dinner in November 1988. Hide Caption Photos: Photos: Thatcher and Reagan's friendship Thatcher and Reagan's friendship – Thatcher and Reagan attend a formal event in January 1989. Hide Caption 11 of 13 Photos: Photos: Thatcher and Reagan's friendship Thatcher and Reagan's friendship – Thatcher pays her respects at Reagan's casket during his viewing at the Capitol in June 2004. Hide Caption 12 of 13 Photos: Photos: Thatcher and Reagan's friendship Thatcher and Reagan's friendship – Thatcher sits behind Ronald Prescott Reagan as he comforts his mother, Nancy Reagan, during the late president's interment ceremony in Simi Valley, California, in June 2004. Hide Caption Margaret Thatcher | Facts Accomplishments Life View articles featuring Margaret Thatcher Margaret Thatcher Summary Margaret Thatcher was Great Britain’s first female prime minister, serving three consecutive terms in office 1979–1990.

Her economic and social policies evolved into a political philosophy known as Thatcherism, similar to Reaganomics in the United States, and part of a world-wide neoliberal movement in the 1980s. She was dubbed the Iron Lady by a Soviet newspaper following a speech she gave in 1976—a nickname that she proudly claimed. Margaret Thatcher’s Early Life Margaret Hilda Roberts was born October 13, 1925, to Alfred and Beatrice Roberts in the market town of Grantham, Lincolnshire, England. Her parents ran a grocery business and lived in an apartment above the shop. They were Methodists who were very involved in the local congregation, raising Margaret and her older sister Muriel in an atmosphere that emphasized self-help, charity, and personal truthfulness. Alfred Roberts was a local councilor in Grantham and a Conservative, and the family would often discuss current political issues. Margaret attended a local state school and won a place at Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied chemistry from 1943 to 1947. She was elected president of the student Conservative Association at Oxford in 1946 and met many prominent politicians.

Her final year, she studied x-ray crystallography with Dorothy Hodgkin, who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1964. After obtaining her degree, Margaret became a research chemist at BX Plastics near Colchester. She was still highly involved in politics, and in the 1950 and 1951 General Elections she ran as the Conservative candidate for Dartford. Although she lost both times, she received national publicity as the youngest female candidate in the country. She also met her husband, Denis Thatcher, in Dartford. He was a local businessman and oil industry executive. After their marriage, Thatcher was able to resign her position at BX Plastics and become a lawyer specializing in taxation. On August 15, 1953, she gave birth to twins Mark and Carol and six months later passed the bar exam. Thatcher Elected To Parliament In 1959, Thatcher was elected as Member of Parliament for Finchley. By 1961, she was given a junior office in the administration of Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister from January 1957 to October 1963.

When the Conservatives were in Opposition from 1964-1970, Thatcher served continuously in various shadow cabinet positions and was appointed Education Secretary when Edward Heath became Prime Minister in 1970. The Heath government was elected on promises of economic revival that would be spurred by introducing more free market policies and taming the trade unions but became one of the most interventionist governments in British history. Thatcher herself faced a difficult job as Education Secretary at the height of student radicalism, with protesters disrupting her speeches, harsh criticism in the opposition press for not being liberal enough, and criticism from Conservatives for veering too far to the left. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher When the Heath Government lost a second General Election in October 1974, Thatcher decided to run against Heath for the leadership of the Conservative Party and won in February 1975, becoming the first woman to lead a Western political party and to be Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons.

The economic difficulties experienced by the United Kingdom under the Labour government—requiring credit from the International Monetary Fund in 1976 and causing extensive trade union strikes over pay demands in the winter of 1978–1979—swung public opinion back to the favor of the Conservatives. In the General Election of May 1979, Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The Thatcher government had pledged to turn Britain’s economic decline around, mainly by increasing taxes and balancing the budget. By the spring of 1981, recovery had begun, followed by eight years of steady growth. Thatcher demonstrated her confidence, determination, and decisiveness again during the Falklands War—on April 2, 1982, Argentina invaded the British-held Falkland Islands and South Georgia Island. Although she first pursued a diplomatic resolution, a British military task force was on-hand when that effort failed. The Falklands were back under British control in 74 days, with Argentina surrendering on June 14, 1982. The Conservative government was reelected in June 1983 with its Parliamentary majority more than tripled to 144 seats.

The government faced as many challenges as it had during its first term. The labor movement resisted the government’s trade union reforms, with the miners’ union going on a violent, year-long strike beginning in 1984. The union was eventually defeated, and the Labour Opposition quietly accepted the success of the trade union legislation, pledging not to reverse key components. The IRA Bombing In October 1984, the Irish Republican Army bombed the hotel Thatcher and many of her cabinet were staying in during the Conservative Party annual conference. She had refused to meet their political demands, particularly during the 1980-1981 prison hunger strikes. Thatcher was unhurt although several colleagues were among the dead and injured, and she appeared the next morning, defiant and undeterred from continuing with the conference. In 1985, she signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement with Irish Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald. The treaty established the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, which gave the Irish government an advisory role in Northern Ireland’s government and confirmed Northern Ireland’s constitutional position. Although the agreement did not immediately end violence in Northern Ireland, it was crucial in the peace process by improving cooperation between the British and Irish governments.

Thatcher’s policies continued to help the economy improve. In the mid-1980s, the government began to privatize state assets by offering shares to the public and providing generous terms to small investors. It also encouraged people to buy their own homes, invest in private pensions, and save through the stock market. Divisions in the Conservative party became more apparent in the mid to late 1980s. The Westland Affair, a 1986 political scandal involving the buyout of financially troubled British helicopter manufacturer Westland, resulted in the resignation of two of Thatcher’s cabinet members. Thatcher was also heavily criticized for allowing US warplanes to fly from British bases to attack targets in Libya. Undaunted by the criticism, Thatcher intimated plans for additional reforms during the Conservative Party’s annual conference in October 1986 and, thanks to her economic policies that resulted in a strong British economy, the Conservative Party prevailed again in the General Election in June 1987. Thatcher’s Third Term Thatcher’s third term in office was marked by reforms to the education system, National Health Service, and the local government tax system or poll tax, as it became known.

At the same time, the end of the Cold War revived the project for a single European currency and long-standing divisions in the Conservative Party over this issue gave rise to a challenge to Thatcher’s leadership. In the ballot that followed, she won but by an insufficient margin and resigned as Prime Minister on November 28, 1990, choosing John Major as her successor. Margaret Thatcher’s Private Life She continued to be an active political figure, setting up the Margaret Thatcher Foundation to continue promoting her ideas, going on lecture tours, writing two memoirs and a book on international politics (Statecraft), and intervening in both domestic and international affairs. On June 30, 1992, she was elevated to the House of Lords to become Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven. In March 2002, she retired from public speaking after several small strokes. Just over a year later, in June 2003, her husband of more than 50 years died, a devastating loss. Although she has retired from public speaking, the economic crisis in 2008 revived the debate over Thatcher’s policies from the 1980s and their lasting impact on the British economy.

Articles Featuring Margaret Thatcher From British History Magazine [tabby title=’Featured Margaret Thatcher Article’] Margaret Thatcher: Iron Lady By Siân Ellis A Conservative minister later remarked that she “carried the authority of her office always with her. It was in her handbag….She was asserting it the whole time.” Just as Chamberlain had had his umbrella and Churchill his cigar, “Maggie’s” physical and metaphorical prop was her handbag. It contained crumpled notes full of facts and figures that could floor an interlocutor at 20 paces. “She cannot see an institution without hitting it with her handbag,” another observer wrote. The “handbagger”—prime minister for 11 years, six months and 24 days (1979-90)—turned around the ruinously ailing British economy of the 1970s and shook the nation out of its demoralized slough. She broke the mold—she was the first woman prime minister in Europe and the longest-serving head of government in Britain in the 20th century. She achieved iconic status in the Conservative Party and, as the country’s representative, internationally.

“Thatcherism” became a label not just for her aggressive “conviction” politics but also a byword for the changed spirit of the 1980s. It’s a paradox, then, how much Thatcher was an Establishment outsider. She herself noted, in her autobiography The Path to Power, “I was often portrayed as an outsider who by some odd mixture of circumstances had stepped inside and stayed there for eleven and a half years; in my case the portrayal was not inaccurate.” By virtue of her social and nonconformist religious background she was an outsider in the patrician Conservative Party. By her heretical economic views she was a minority voice. By her individualism in the notoriously clubby world of politics, she generated suspicion. By her behavior in the European arena, she made heads of state bristle. By her very handbag, that symbol of femininity, she stood out from the male crowd of politicians. And by the fact that she wielded it with such masculine force she seemed an aberration of genteel womanhood. What shaped such individualism? Margaret Hilda Roberts was born October 13, 1925.

Her father, Alfred, a self-made man, ran a grocery with his wife, Beatrice, in the provincial Lincolnshire market town of Grantham. They had an elder daughter, Muriel, born in 1921. Home was, Margaret recalled, “practical, serious and intensely religious.” Indeed life revolved around Methodism, with its churchgoing and music. Young Margaret became an accomplished pianist. This childhood living over the shop was “an idyllic blur,” with customers coming and going, Margaret helping to weigh out sugar, tea and coffee. The grocer’s daughter learned the basic tenets of economics, and from her mother she absorbed the efficient, make-good-and-mend housekeeping of the self-respecting middle class, virtues accentuated by World War II privations. Her father was an upstanding figure in the community, a lay preacher, an independent town councilor and later alderman. “Individual responsibility was his watchword and sound finance his passion,” Margaret remembered. From him she claimed her integrity—and a fondness for homespun aphorisms. “Never do things just because other people do them” was a favorite, and it was to stand the Grantham girl in good stead.

The family was “highly political,” and Margaret, aged just 10, could be found folding general election leaflets for a local Conservative candidate. At Kesteven and Grantham Girls’ (grammar) School she was a diligent but not star pupil; blessed with logic and determination, she shone in the debating society. She took elocution lessons—a pre-requisite for getting on in the world. Hers was also a dreamy nature. She loved Rudyard Kipling, the patriotic poet of British Empire, and the exotic worlds beyond Grantham that he portrayed. And when the cinema arrived in town, she was entranced by Hollywood romance, reflecting that maybe it was a “fortunate restraint” that she was not allowed to watch films too often. Margaret won a place to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, in 1943. She cut a rather serious, slightly lonely figure: work, religion and, increasingly, politics filled her time rather than socializing. In 1946 she became president of the Oxford University Conservative Association—only the second female to hold the post in its history. Strange, perhaps, that a middle-class grammar school girl should be drawn to an essentially public school-dominated party.

But its dicta, such as self-reliance, appealed to her. When she left Oxford with a second-class chemistry degree, she joined BX Plastics near Colchester to work in research and development. However, she knew her true ambition was to be a member of Parliament. She got her wish, after a struggle, in 1959 when she was elected Conservative MP for Finchley, north London. It had been a busy decade post-Oxford: in 1951 she wed Denis Thatcher, a well-to-do businessman and divorcé 10 years her senior. Early married life was “very heaven,” and in ensuing years in a series of homes in London and Kent she enjoyed interior decorating, gardening and collecting porcelain. Denis’ income meant Margaret no longer needed to earn a living, and she studied law. In 1953 she gave birth to twins, Mark and Carol; by the time they were 6 months old she had passed her bar exams. “While the home must always be the centre of one’s life, it should not be the boundary of one’s ambitions,” she liked to say. Fortunately, the Thatchers could afford a nanny to allow this.

The London Evening News heralded Margaret Thatcher’s entry into Parliament with the headline “Mark’s Mummy is an MP Now.” Women were a rarity at this level of politics—just 25 of 630 MPs—and Thatcher was given various shadow cabinet positions in “women’s” areas such as pensions. In the 1970 Conservative government under Edward Heath, she became secretary of state for education and science (1970-74). Sadly, neither her father nor her mother had lived to see this success. “The fifties marked the start of a major change in the role of women,” Thatcher reflected in her autobiography. In the male preserve of the House of Commons and in the cabinet she felt isolated. Her strident tone, perhaps an overcompensation as she tried to prove herself, further alienated male colleagues. Yet there were plus-points to being different. Blonde, attractive, always immaculately dressed and a zealous worker, she stood out and was for some while a media darling. The tide turned when as education secretary, forced to cut her budget, she stopped the provision of free milk to schoolchildren over the age of 7. Tabloid headlines raged “Mrs.

Thatcher, Milk Snatcher” and asked if she was the most hated woman in Britain. She was deeply upset. The Heath government fell in 1974 amid rising inflation and labor unrest. Keith Joseph, the right-wing intellectual who set up the Centre for Policy Studies to analyze Britain’s economic problems and devise a remedy, appeared set to challenge Heath as Conservative leader. He bungled his chances however, and unexpectedly Thatcher, one of his most ardent supporters, stepped into the breach. On February 11, 1975, she won the contest to head the Conservative Party. Reactions were mixed. None of the party heavyweights had voted for Thatcher, and the victory, “the Peasants’ Revolt,” was thought a brief seizure of power by the lower orders. She was “trade” after all. Others welcomed the rise of a grocer’s daughter, believing it would help redress the Conservatives’ stuffy image. Thatcher continued her lifelong makeover: changing hairstyle, clothes and, through further voice coaching, lowering her voice from its gratingly high pitch to a more commanding contralto.

But the greatest boost to her reputation came following a speech she made in 1976 criticizing the Soviet Union when the Red Army newspaper Jrasbata Zvezda (Red Star) dubbed her “the Iron Lady.” Instantly, an icon was born. She trumpeted the role, later addressing a public meeting, “I stand before you tonight in my Red Star chiffon evening gown, my face softly made up and my fair hair gently waved: the Iron Lady of the Western World!” When Thatcher was elected Britain’s first female prime minister on May 4, 1979, it was against a background of soaring inflation, bitter labor disputes, rising unemployment and declining trade figures—a result of the collectivist and consensus policies that both Labour and Conservative postwar governments had pursued. Influenced by her upbringing and, now, the ideas of Keith Joseph and American economist Milton Friedman, Thatcher was set on what became known as monetarism and, through her implementation, Thatcherism. This economic theory advocated individual enterprise and a reduction in state intervention. State-subsidized industry and jobs instilled no incentive to compete, put too much money into the economy and encouraged inflation.

Thatcherism valued individual responsibility: Taxes and government spending on state-provided welfare should be lower to allow individuals to use their money to support themselves as they choose. The state should be servant, not master. Thatcher ushered in a decade of painful reform, privatization, deregulation and tax cutting. At first inflation and unemployment rocketed, some businesses crumbled. But—“the lady’s not for turning”—the prime minister brazened it out over three historic terms of office, wrenching the economy back off its knees. At least one widely popular measure was the sale of council houses, allowing by 1982 a half-million people to become homeowners (and possibly Tory voters) for the first time. Paradigmatic of Thatcher’s ruthless resolve—and crucial to the success of monetarism—was her defeat of the National Union of Mine Workers, which, in March 1984, called a strike over plans to close unprofitable pits. The threat to the national fuel supply raised the specter of an ungovernable country. The strike lasted a year and saw police and miners in ugly pitched battles.

But Thatcher had stockpiled coal reserves, ready to defend democracy against her bête noire of socialism, the militant trade unions. She won. Whole mining communities suffered badly, yet the greater community of democratic Britain survived. Tougher legislation was later introduced to curb future union power. The general mood of the country, fed up with disruptive strikes, was with Thatcher on the need for change. The prime minister was equally tough in 1984 when an Irish Republican Army bomb meant for her exploded in the Brighton hotel where Tory Party members were staying overnight for their annual conference. Having hardly slept, she appeared on the conference platform the next day, neatly dressed and made up, defiant that democratic business should continue. The image went around the world. If defeating the unions epitomized Thatcher on the domestic front, then victory against Argentina in the Falkland Islands was a key event abroad. Few people had even heard of the tiny British dependency (population 1,800) near Cape Horn, but invasion by Argentina in April 1982 offended every patriotic fiber in Thatcher’s body. Raised on the Churchillian belief that Britain was capable of epic things on the world stage, she sent ships to retake the islands.

By mid-June the war was won—at a cost of 255 British lives. Principle had been upheld; a new sense of national confidence emerged. Thatcher’s flagging popularity ratings also benefited. Less spectacular but truly far-reaching was Thatcher’s role in bringing about the end of the Cold War and contributing to the demise of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. As an individualist and free market advocate, she had an innate and frequently voiced distrust of communism. In Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, however, she found a man she “could do business with,” and she helped to persuade President Ronald Reagan away from “evil Empire” rhetoric to do the same. The chemistry between Reagan and Thatcher made their alliance a high point of the special relationship between Britain and the United States in the 20th century. “She was warm, feminine, gracious and intelligent and it was evident from our first words that we were soul mates when it came to reducing government and expanding economic freedom,” Reagan remarked. Instinctively an Atlanticist, Thatcher was less easy about European union. She demanded—and got—a refund on Britain’s excessive contributions to the European Economic Community with a belligerence that set the tone for future negotiations.

While in favor of a common market, she resisted measures that could inch member countries toward a federalist super state and erode British sovereignty. Britain would stand aside from mainstream integration. Behind the scenes, Thatcher had an awesome work ethic. She slept only four hours a night and “living over the shop” at 10 Downing St. suited her (there’s a delicious irony in a grocer’s daughter running a “nation of shopkeepers”). She quickly mastered briefs in minute detail and was intolerant of “woolly” thinking. Yet, despite popular opinion to the contrary, she could be persuaded by others’ views—if well argued. Behind the hectoring caricatures—Attila the Hen, TBW (That Bloody Woman)—a far more charming, feminine side existed and was employed to get her own way. “Perhaps we were a little bit in love with her,” one young man who worked for her recalled. She enjoyed male company, female less so (the Queen was said to dislike their weekly meetings). Staff at No. 10 adored her for the thousand small kindnesses she showed, such as asking after the health of an ailing family member. This was not the uncaring tyrant of cartoonists.

On occasion she appeared blissfully unstreetwise, most famously when she declared in admiration of her faithful deputy, Willie Whitelaw, “Every prime minister needs a Willie.” Thatcher’s home life, indeed her career, had the firm anchor of her husband Denis. The media affectionately portrayed him as a gin-swilling, golf-playing buffoon, but he fulfilled his role of consort to perfection, content to support, a silent smile on his face. He had helped give the Grantham girl social confidence, and his money had allowed her to chase her ambition; his own success meant he felt unthreatened by her achievement. He encouraged, advised, gave the arm that consoled, and he alone could call late-night meetings to a close, tapping his watch and reminding, “Margaret, time for Bedfordshire.” In the morning, Margaret would cook his breakfast. She also doted on her son, Mark; relations with Carol seemed a little less close. The public rarely glimpsed any chinks in the Iron Lady’s armor, and in the end she stayed too long in power. She was perceived to be arrogant, dictatorial, contemptuously handbagging her cabinet colleagues.

She badly misjudged when she introduced the notorious poll tax despite advice against it; she openly clashed with her chancellor over monetary policy and with her foreign secretary on European policy. Both resigned, precipitating a party leadership battle, which concluded in Thatcher’s resignation on November 28, 1990. She was cast back outside. For once the tears were public as she left 10 Downing St. Elevated to the House of Lords, she styled herself Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven in honor of her roots. She set up the Margaret Thatcher Foundation to continue to promote her ideas and undertook lecture tours; she was particularly gratified by her welcome in the United States, “the seat of radical modern conservative thinking and almost my second home.” After a series of small strokes, doctors advised her in 2002 against public speaking. In 2003 Denis, her constant companion, died; they had been married 52 years. More than any political knocks, it was a devastating loss. Margaret Thatcher and Thatcherism often evoke visceral love or hate.

She was a role model for individualism and the success of the individual who worked hard—not always an easy trajectory in a nation of team players where traditionally it’s the playing, not the winning, that counts. Some said her policies legitimized selfishness. Feminists murmured that she failed to help other women break into public life—women were notably absent from high office in her governments. But that missed the point of her individualism, and she led by example. Her legacy, like her life, is one of paradox. A force for change, she saved her country from the economic mire and made it governable again, but threw the Conservative Party into turmoil. She altered national attitudes: After monetarism there has been no return to Keynesian economics, and Britain is no longer the sick country of Europe. She consolidated the Atlantic Alliance and helped create the dynamics of the post–Cold War world, but left the Tory Party—and the country—deeply divided on Europe and integration into its union. However these legacies play out, Margaret Thatcher will be seen as an icon of the 20th century and one of Britain’s outstanding peacetime prime ministers.

[tabby title=’More Margaret Thatcher Articles’][srp widget_title=”” widget_css_id=”testing-grid” post_type=”post” post_content_type=”content” post_content_length=”50″ post_content_length_mode=”words” post_title_length=”12″ post_title_length_mode=”words” post_date=”no” post_offset=”1″ category_include=”199″ string_break=” More…” layout_mode=”multi_column” srp post_limit=”200″ display_thumbnail=”no” vf_everything=”no”][tabbyending] Copyright 2014 British Heritage. Margaret Thatcher, U.K. ‘Iron Lady’ Prime Minister, Dies - Bloomberg Bloomberg the Company & Its Products Bloomberg Anywhere Remote LoginBloomberg Anywhere Login Bloomberg Terminal Demo Request Bloomberg Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world. Customer Support Advertising Bloomberg Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world. Customer Support Margaret Thatcher, U.K.

‘Iron Lady’ Prime Minister, Dies Robert Hutton Margaret Thatcher, the former U.K. prime minister who helped end the Cold War and was known as the “Iron Lady” for her uncompromising style, died yesterday. She was 87. Thatcher suffered a stroke on the morning of April 8 and died peacefully, according to her spokesman, Tim Bell. Thatcher was defined by the battles she won: she waged war against Argentina over the Falkland Islands, clashed with striking miners and forced fellow leaders to cut Britain’s financial contributions to the forerunner of the European Union. She survived an assassination attempt in 1984 when the Irish Republican Army bombed her hotel in Brighton during the Conservatives’ annual conference, killing five people. She stuck to her schedule and addressed party members the next day. “We can’t deny that Lady Thatcher divided opinion,” Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron said outside his No. 10 Downing Street residence, where flags flew at half staff. “For many of us, she was and is an inspiration. For others she was a force to be defined against.

But if there is one thing that cuts through all of this --- one thing that runs through everything she did --- it was her lion-hearted love for this country.” When Thatcher’s Conservative Party took office in 1979, Britain’s trade unions were strong enough to knock out party leaders, and key industries were state-owned. By the time she stepped down 11 years later, her arguments for free-market economics, lower taxes and deregulated financial markets had been adopted across the nation’s political spectrum. Unemployment Increase The transition was painful. Unemployment peaked at more than 3 million in the mid-1980s, and many places in the north of the country that had been world centers of manufacturing saw their decline accelerate. “Very few leaders get to change not only the political landscape of their country but of the world,” Tony Blair, whose Labour Party ousted the Tories from power in 1997, said in a statement on his website. “Margaret was such a leader. Her global impact was vast.

And some of the changes she made in Britain were, in certain respects at least, retained by the 1997 Labour government, and came to be implemented by governments around the world.” Thatcher will be given a ceremonial funeral with military honors, to be held at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. A similar funeral was held for the Queen Mother in 2002. No date was announced. ‘The Greatest’ “She did not just lead our country, she saved our country,” Cameron said in televised comments from Madrid. “I believe she’ll go down as the greatest British peacetime prime minister.” After winning three elections, Thatcher was forced out of office by her own party after she refused to compromise either on her policies toward Europe or on a property tax that had led to mass non-payment and violent riots. “Always a warrior rather than a healer, her deeply ideological determination alienated those who believed in consensus rather than in confrontation,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London and author of “The Conservative Party From Thatcher To Cameron” (2010).

“But her policies and her personality ushered in changes -- social, economic, political, diplomatic and even military -- so profound that the consequences will continue to play out for decades, even centuries, to come.” She formed a close bond with President Ronald Reagan, whose time in office and political ideology coincided with her own. ‘Political Soulmates’ “Ronnie and Margaret were political soulmates, committed to freedom and resolved to end Communism,” Nancy Reagan, the president’s widow, said in a statement. “As prime minister, Margaret had the clear vision and strong determination to stand up for her beliefs at a time when so many were afraid to ‘rock the boat.’ As a result, she helped to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberation of millions of people.” Though physically limited by a series of strokes, Thatcher attended the former president’s funeral service at the National Cathedral in Washington in June 2004.

“We have lost a great president, a great American and a great man, and I have lost a dear friend,” she said in a videotaped message played during the tribute, referring to Reagan as “Ronnie” and “the Great Liberator.” Nuclear Missiles Reagan and Thatcher were both closely involved with Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader who evolved from adversary to ally. In 1979, she agreed to place U.S. nuclear missiles in Britain amid protests across Western Europe. Her tough line on the Soviet Union earned her the Iron Lady nickname in the Soviet press. “If you lead a country like Britain, a strong country, a country which has taken the lead in world affairs in good times and in bad, a country that is always reliable, then you have to have a touch of iron about you,” she said. Gorbachev praised Thatcher yesterday, describing her as a “brilliant” individual. While their contacts were “difficult” at first, “gradually the relationship turned more human, becoming increasingly more friendly,” he said in a statement on his fund’s website.

“At the end we managed to reach a mutual understanding and that made a contribution to changing the atmosphere between our country and the west and ending the Cold War.” EU Relations Her relations with European leaders were strained. While contemporaries such as French President Francois Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl worked for a politically united Europe, Thatcher called for a network of individual states joined only as a free-trade area, like the North American Free Trade Agreement. The debate about whether Britain should stay part of an EU seeking an ever-closer union or leave has been a recurring theme in British politics since she left office. In 1984, she won a permanent rebate of Britain’s yearly contributions, telling European leaders, “I want my money back.” She later argued against Britain abandoning the pound for the European single currency. “She had an immovable willingness, an indomitable character -- that’s why we called her the Iron Lady,” former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing told journalists yesterday. “She didn’t have much consideration for the people she was talking to because she thought they were weaker than her.

With Helmut Schmidt we accepted the rebate so that was a success for Mrs Thatcher.” ‘Great Hurt’ Underscoring the bitterness she provoked among adversaries, Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s former political wing, yesterday recalled “great hurt” she’d caused. “In Ireland, her espousal of old draconian militaristic policies prolonged the war and caused great suffering,” he said in a statement. She predicted in the early 1970s that no woman would lead the country in her lifetime. Before the decade ended, she had become the country’s first -- and so far only -- female prime minister. Her rise from a grocer’s daughter to prime minister was dramatized in the 2011 film “The Iron Lady.” Meryl Streep won the best-actress Oscar for her portrayal of Thatcher both in office and in her declining years, as she began to suffer from dementia. “In politics if you want anything said, ask a man,” Thatcher said in 1975. “If you want anything done, ask a woman.” Born in Grantham Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on Oct.

13, 1925, in Grantham, a town in the east of England. She said her father’s small business was a seminal influence on her views, including her emphasis on prudent economic management. During World War II, she graduated with a chemistry degree from Somerville College at the University of Oxford and worked as a research chemist. In 1951, she married businessman Denis Thatcher and gave birth to twins, Carol and Mark, two years later. During the decade she trained as a tax lawyer while looking for a chance to get into Parliament. Denis Thatcher died in 2003, at age 88. After losing her first election in 1950 and again the following year, Thatcher entered parliament in 1959 representing Finchley, a north London suburb. At the time she was one of 25 women in Parliament, 4 percent of the total. Political Ladder After putting her foot on the lowest rung of government as a parliamentary bag-carrier in 1961, she rose through the ranks once the Conservatives lost power in 1964, becoming one of its leading spokesmen in 1967.

When the Conservatives returned to power in 1970, Thatcher, then 44, joined the Cabinet as secretary of state for education. She was the only woman around the Cabinet table, a situation she later perpetuated for all but one year of her 11 as prime minister. To cut costs, she abolished a government program that provided free milk in schools for children older than age 7, earning the nickname “Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher.” The 1974 general election defeat of Prime Minister Edward Heath after a series of policy reversals left Conservative lawmakers ready for an alternative. Thatcher had begun to deal with some of her deficiencies, including a voice that the journalist Clive James described as being “like a cat sliding down a blackboard.” She challenged Heath for the party’s leadership in 1975 and won. Car Bomb She served as opposition leader for four years, formulating free-market economic policies influenced by Austrian philosopher Friedrich Hayek and University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman.

Even in opposition she got a taste of the battles to come when, weeks before the 1979 general election, the Irish National Liberation Army used a car bomb to kill her friend, fellow lawmaker and former campaign manager Airey Neave. The start of 1979 was dubbed “the winter of discontent.” Much of the country was in chaos, with those on strike including water and rail workers, truckers and oil tanker drivers, ambulance personnel and gravediggers, teachers, dock workers and garbage collectors. Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan considered declaring a state of emergency until colleagues persuaded him not to. Under those circumstances, it wasn’t difficult for Thatcher to persuade voters it was time for a change in the May general election. Once in office, she faced the more difficult challenge of convincing government officials, and her own ministers, of the need to cut spending. Documents from the time show that while Cabinet members agreed in principle to the need for 10 percent staff reductions, when asked to deliver them in their own departments, most resisted. ‘Fire, Fury’ Reluctant ministers weren’t the only focus of her ire.

In 1980 she accused the governor of the Bank of England, Gordon Richardson, of blocking her policy of controlling money supply. One of his aides later recalled her “breathing fire and fury” during a meeting. The country fell into recession in 1980, with gross domestic product contracting for five consecutive quarters. As joblessness rose, Thatcher’s popularity plummeted. She didn’t flinch. Responding to calls from within her own party to change her policies, as Heath had done, she told the 1980 Conservative Party conference: “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.” Job Losses One of her main domestic policies involved reducing the state’s role in the economy by privatizing state-owned companies. This, with her rejection of Keynesian stimulus policies in favor of a focus on controlling inflation, and a desire to cut the public-sector workforce, drove up joblessness. Unemployment reached 11.9 percent in the middle of the decade, still its highest-ever rate. The Thatcher image of inflexibility, which has hardened into legend since she left office, isn’t borne out by government documents released in recent years.

They show that in 1981 she considered giving up British involvement in Northern Ireland in the face of terrorism and hunger strikes, and in 1982 was willing to discuss peace terms with Argentina over its invasion of the Falkland Islands. The Falklands War, over a group of islands in the South Atlantic populated by a few thousand people, could have cost Thatcher her job had Britain lost. Argentina had disputed Britain’s ownership of the islands for more than a century and in 1982 occupied them in the belief the U.K. wouldn’t attempt to retake them by force. In the face of doubts about whether such an operation could be successfully mounted, Thatcher dispatched a task force. Argentine Surrender After fighting that saw ships sunk on both sides and hand-to-hand fighting on the islands, the Argentine forces surrendered. The death toll included 255 British soldiers, 649 Argentinians and three women from the islands, killed accidentally by British fire. Thatcher’s popularity soared. In 1983, she won a national election with a 143-seat majority in the 650-seat House of Commons.

During her second term, she faced a new opponent in Arthur Scargill, the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, who had helped organize the strike a decade earlier that brought down Heath. In 1984, he called a national strike to protest mine closures. Thatcher didn’t waver, outlasting a violent, yearlong dispute. She then implemented rules to curb unions’ power. Privatization Program She also sold state-owned companies, making Britain the first European country to engage in a major privatization effort. British Airways Plc, Centrica Plc, British Telecommunications Plc, BP Plc and BAE Systems Plc all traced their origins as public companies to the Thatcher government. Ordinary people were encouraged to buy the shares. Thatcher also ordered the government to sell public housing units to its occupants, to create owner-occupiers, rather than tenants of the state. A third election victory came in 1987, a feat not achieved since women gained the vote on equal terms in 1928. Thatcher took it as an endorsement to continue what she now regarded as her revolution of British economic and social life.

The economy rebounded, with annual GDP growth peaking at 6.7 percent in the first quarter of 1988. Growth in the U.K. mirrored the activity in much of western Europe during Thatcher’s term of office. Poll Tax Buoyed by the successes of her previous policies, she moved to change local property taxes, producing a plan for the so-called poll tax, a flat-rate levy on every resident. The most important business stories of the day. Get Bloomberg's daily newsletter.

Question: Which British Prime Minister was nicknamed The Grocer in Private Eye?
Answer: Edward Heath