Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher – the first female

British Prime Minister, leader of the Conservative

Party governing from 1979 – 1990

Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher

«What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose».

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher (Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven) was born on October 13th 1925 in Grantham to Alfred and Beatrice Roberts. The Roberts family ran a grocery business, bringing up two daughters in a flat over the shop.

Margaret Thatcher's home

and early life in Grantham played a large part in forming her political convictions. Her parents were Methodists and her father was a local councilor.

EducationMargaret Roberts

attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School.

From there won a place at Oxford, where she studied chemistry at Somerville College (1943-47). Her tutor was Dorothy Hodgkin, a pioneer of X-ray crystallography who won a Nobel Prize in 1964.

The beginning of political career After graduating,

Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist. She joined the local Conservative Association.

In her mid-twenties she ran as the Conservative candidate for the strong Labour seat of Dartford (1950 and 1951), winning national publicity as the youngest woman candidate in the country.

She lost both times, but cut the Labour majority sharply enjoyed the experience of campaigning.

Marriage and motherhood In Dartford she met Denis Thatcher, a successful

and wealthy businessman, whom she married in December 1951. Denis funded his wife's studies for the bar; she qualified as a barrister in 1953 and specialized in taxation. The same year her twins, Carol and Mark, were born.

Secretary of State for Education and Science

Margaret Thatcher

was elected to Parliament in 1959 as Member of Parliament for Finchley, a north London constituency, which she continued to represent until she was made a member of the House of Lords (as Baroness Thatcher) in 1992.

The Conservative party under Edward Heath won the 1970 general election, and Thatcher was subsequently appointed Secretary of State for Education and Science.

The Heath government experienced difficulties with oil embargoes and union demands for wage increases in 1973, and lost 1974 general election. Labour went on to win a majority in 1974 general election. Heath's leadership of the Conservative Party looked increasingly in doubt. Thatcher became party leader in 1975.

The Labour government faced public unease about the direction of the country and a damaging series of strikes during the winter of 1978–79. A general election was called after James Callaghan's government lost a motion of no confidence in early 1979.

The leader of the Opposition 1975–1979

The Conservatives won a majority in the House of Commons, and Margaret Thatcher became the UK's first female Prime Minister.

«If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman».

Margaret Thatcher

The new government

pledged to check and reverse Britain's economic decline. Direct taxes were cut, indirect taxes were increased. By the end of Thatcher's first term, unemployment in Britain was more than three million and it began to fall only in 1986.

Inflation was checked and the government created the expectation that it would do whatever was necessary to keep it low.

1979-1983: Prime Minister – First Term

1983-1987: Prime Minister – Second Term

The economy continued to improve during the 1983-87 Parliament and the policy of economic liberalization was extended. The government began to pursue a policy of selling state assets.

The British privatizations of the 1980s were the first of their kind and proved influential across the world.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement

In October 1984 the Irish Republican Army attempted to

murder Margaret Thatcher and many of her cabinet by bombing her hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party annual conference.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 was an attempt to improve security cooperation between Britain and Ireland and to give some recognition to the political outlook of Catholics in Northern Ireland, an initiative which won warm endorsement from the Reagan administration and the US Congress.

Margaret Thatcher & Ronald Reagan at Camp David, 22 December 1984.

1987-1990: Prime Minister – Third Term

The legislative platform of the third-term Thatcher Government was among the most ambitious ever put forward by a British administration.

There were measures to reform the education system (1988). There was a new tax system for local government (1989), the Community Charge. And there was legislation to separate purchasers and providers within the National Health Service (1990).

Best-selling volumes of memoirs

After 1990 Lady Thatcher remained a potent political figure. She wrote two best-selling volumes of memoirs - The Downing Street Years (1993) and The Path to Power (1995) - while continuing for a full decade to tour the world as a lecturer. A book of reflections on international politics - Statecraft - was published in 2002.

«I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near».

Links

http://www.margaretthatcher.org/essential/biography.asp

http://www.biography.com/people/margaret-thatcher-9504796

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/margaret_thatcher.html

http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/margaret-thatcher/as-prime-minister.html