Thatcher, Margaret

Thatcher, Margaret (b. 1925). Prime minister. Britain's first woman prime minister and one of the most controversial, she won three resounding election victories in a row for the Conservatives (1979, 1983, and 1987), before they rejected her as party leader and premier in 1990, a ruthless act of political ingratitude.

Mrs Thatcher was educated at Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School and Somerville College, Oxford, and entered Parliament in 1959. Beforehand she had been a research chemist (1947–54) and a lawyer (she was called to the bar in 1954). Between 1970 and 1974 she was secretary of state for education, a position in which she earned the sobriquet of ‘ Margaret Thatcher, milk snatcher’ for abolishing the free supply of milk to schoolchildren. This was mild compared to the abuse she endured later.

As leader of the opposition, between 1975 and 1979, she repudiated the legacy of her predecessor as Tory leader, Edward Heath, and, under the influence of Sir Keith Joseph, a former colleague in Heath's cabinet, moved towards that ideal of political patriotism, low taxes, private ownership, balanced budgets, and individual initiative which later became known as Thatcherism. However, if the goal was financial stability, permanently low inflation, reduced government spending, and lower taxes, it proved illusory. Her record as prime minister began and ended with severe recessions (the worst since the 1930s) leading to a reduced industrial base and very low overall growth rates. She failed to reverse Britain's relative decline, although for a few years, until Nigel Lawson and John Major threw it away, it looked as if she had established the right conditions for doing so. The trade unions were tamed; Arthur Scargill's miners went down to defeat after a year-long strike aimed at overthrowing the government; most state-owned companies were privatized; and income tax was significantly lowered. However, rising indirect taxes, rising interest rates, rising inflation, plus the introduction of the hugely unpopular poll tax, meant that when a crisis erupted over Europe in 1990, Mrs Thatcher lacked the political support needed to survive.

Just as she had not been expected to win the Tory Party leadership in 1975, her rapid rise to international fame took many by surprise. There had been little in her record to suggest that she had any talent for diplomacy, yet from the start of her premiership, she made her mark in international affairs. In 1979 a peace settlement was negotiated at Lancaster House which ended the Rhodesian question and paved the way for an independent Zimbabwe. Such a settlement had eluded international negotiators since 1965, although it must be conceded that events in Africa, plus Lord Carrington's diplomacy, had more to do with the success than Mrs Thatcher's personal input. Her own triumph, which made her an international celebrity, came with victory over Argentina in the Falklands War of 1982, when, having been taken by surprise by the Argentine invasion (Carrington resigned), Mrs Thatcher dispatched a battle fleet to the South Atlantic, which recaptured the colony. The bravery and efficiency displayed by the armed forces, the collapse of the reactionary Argentine dictatorship, and the leadership provided by the prime minister, enabled Mrs Thatcher to win a remarkable triumph in the 1983 general election. Thereafter she developed a ‘very, very special relationship’ with the US president, Ronald Reagan, and despite some differences (the Soviet oil pipeline, Grenada, nuclear disarmament) worked very closely with him to end the Cold War. She also managed to develop a close relationship with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, of whom she remarked, after they first met: ‘That is a man I can do business with.’ British contacts with eastern Europe intensified and Gorbachev, like western leaders, used Mrs Thatcher as an intermediary with President Reagan. When she finally visited Moscow, she received a triumphal welcome. Other aspects of her diplomacy were more controversial. These included the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985, the joint agreement with Peking over the future of Hong Kong (1984), her resistance to economic sanctions against South Africa, and the scepticism with which she greeted the prospect of German re-unification.

Her policy towards the European Community was, however, most controversial of all. Her first instincts had been conventional. She had campaigned enthusiastically for a Yes vote in the 1975 referendum and always believed that her approach was constructive. She helped achieve closer co-operation on foreign policy, and the Single European Act which was signed in 1986 received her full backing as a means of extending Thatcherite free enterprise across a European single market, despite the concessions involved to majority voting. On the other hand, she had had to battle mightily in order to secure the annual British rebates agreed on in the Fontainebleau accord (1984) and was horrified by Jacques Delors's ideas regarding a European Social Charter, and even more so by European economic and monetary union. In her famous Bruges speech (1988), she declared her opposition to future integration, although she was persuaded by her cabinet colleagues Sir Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson to promise to enter the exchange rate mechanism, a move which came under John Major as chancellor and which proved a disaster. By 1990, however, after having rejected economic and monetary union at a summit in Rome, she was deserted by Sir Geoffrey Howe, who, bitter at having been dismissed as foreign secretary, and fearful lest his long-standing federalism be rendered futile, resigned from her government and challenged Michael Heseltine to contest the party leadership. In the ensuing contest, Mrs Thatcher won the first round, but was deserted by her cabinet—over whom she had never exercised full control and who were weary of her autocratic style—and withdrew from the leadership race. She was succeeded by John Major as Tory leader.

She was accused by many of having broken with the post-war consensus in British politics and, indeed, she herself regularly denounced the concept. In fact, she had responded to a changing consensus and had influenced that change by her personality and policies. The high unemployment of her years in power had not been intended. The welfare state had grown under her as never before. Her defence and foreign policies had been totally conventional. She had made no constitutional innovations and had if anything been slow to dismiss her cabinet critics. Privatization had proved popular. So too had trade union reform. In the end she contributed to her own undoing by retaining key ministers whose policies, priorities, and philosophies were fundamentally different from her own. In this sense, the Iron Lady proved an unexpectedly weak prime minister.

Andrew Sanders

Bibliography

Campbell, J. , Margaret Thatcher (2000);
Harris, K. , Thatcher (1988).