Margaret Thatcher: Biography, Government and Phrases

Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013) was British Prime Minister and the first woman to hold this post.

Thatcher's government lasted eleven years, from 1979 to 1990, and was characterized by the implantation of neoliberalism in the United Kingdom.

Biography

Margaret Thatcher was born on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, UK, into a middle-class family.

Her father was a Methodist merchant and pastor, in addition to being a councilor and mayor of the city where he was born, instilling in his daughter a taste for politics.

She graduated in Chemistry from Oxford University where she also participated in the student movement at the Conservative Association. There, she was influenced by readings by Friedrich Hayek advocating the economic liberalism and condemned state intervention in the economy.

Later, she would be invited to join the Conservative Party lists and would study law. After suffering a defeat in the 1955 elections, she managed to be elected a deputy in 1959.

From then on, she would join conservative governments as Secretary of State at the Ministry of Pensions and Social Security and Minister of Education.

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In 1979 she was nominated to be the Conservative Party candidate for the British government and would emerge victorious in the elections. She would be re-elected and would only leave office in 1990, when she would receive the title of baroness.

Margaret Thatcher married in 1951 and had two twins. After leaving the government, she led a quiet life and wrote her memoirs. She passed away on April 8, 2013 in Westminster, UK.

Feminism

The British Prime Minister claimed that she did not like the feminism and that she owed nothing of her political trajectory to this movement. When she was education minister, Thatcher even claimed that she would not see a woman as British premier.

She was the first woman to occupy a prominent position in politics, defended the liberation of abortion and the decriminalization of homosexuality.

She did not give up being well dressed and made up in order to be able to stand out during the meetings of representatives.

However, even so she did not earn a place in the modern feminist pantheon because she was a person from a right-wing party.

Indeed, as much as the Labor Party fought for equality between men and women, it was the Conservative Party that launched a candidate to run for election and came out the winner.

Government

Margaret Thatcher's government consisted in applying liberal measures to recover the British economy.

Thus, it set in motion an ambitious program of public privatizations where companies like the British Airways, telephony, energy and transport.

She faced a 15-month strike in British coal mines and showed all her steadfastness by not negotiating with the miners.

Likewise, she was intolerant of the nationalism Irish and responded to terrorist attacks by sending more soldiers to Ireland.

Ronald Reagan

Margaret Thatcher had in the American president Ronald Reagan her best and most faithful ally.

President of the United States for the republican party from 1981 to 1989, coinciding with almost the entire term of Margaret Thatcher's term.

The vision of both was similar: to promote free enterprise, reduce the State's actions and fight socialism.

Reagan's support and non-intervention in the Falklands War was essential to the UK's victory during the war.

Falklands War

Thatcher faced a war against Argentina over the Falklands Islands in a conflict that lasted about two months. In Brazil, this incident is known as Falklands War.

It was widely criticized by the international community, as it was the first confrontation in centuries between an American and a European country. Likewise, she was accused of using disproportionate force that caused the deaths of thousands of Argentine soldiers.

Domestically, however, the prime minister took advantage of the nationalist wave and guaranteed her re-election.

European Union

In the 90s, when the European Union becoming a reality, Thatcher made a historic speech in the House of Commons in 1990, rejecting that the European Commission had more powers than national parliaments:

“The President of the (European Commission), Mr. Delors, the other day said in a press conference that he wanted the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the (European) Community, he wanted the Commission to be the Executive and the Council of Ministers to be the Senate. Do not. Do not. No."

At the same time, he stated that the UK it would not be part of a European monetary union. She claimed that the pound sterling had served the British people and the world satisfactorily and did not want to relinquish its control over the economy.

Socialism

Margaret Thatcher was deeply anti-socialist. It rejected that the State should occupy itself in areas where free enterprise should act and believed that a large State was the path to a totalitarian regime.

She dismantled the British unions and helped the countries of Iron Curtain, like Poland, who wanted more freedom within the socialist regime.

When she was an opposition leader in 1976 she made a speech against the USSR and for this reason the Soviets nicknamed her the "Iron Lady".

However, she recognized in Mikhail Gorbachev a leader open to new ideas and willing to negotiate with the West.

In this way, she supported her policies for Perestroika and Glasnot. But she was not enthusiastic about the nuclear weapons reduction policies pursued by the United States and the USSR.

Sentences

“If you want them to say something, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”
“For those who are waiting for that famous phrase so popular in the media, the change of opinion, I have only one thing to say: this lady is not one for change..” (In 1980, when pressed to adopt a consensus policy).
“No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he had only good intentions. he had money too.”
“The problem with communism is that one day other people's money runs out..”
“It pays to know the enemy... among other things by the possibility that someday he will become a friend.”
“Let me say what I believe in: man's right to work as he pleases, to spend what he earns, to own his property and have the state to serve him and not as his owner. This is the essence of a free country, and on these freedoms depend all the others.”

Curiosities

Margaret Thatcher's life yielded a film starring actress Mery Streep, "The iron Lady" by Phyllida Lloyd, in 2011.
Margaret Thatcher visited Chilean general and dictator Augusto Pinochet when he was in England for health treatment. The interview, filmed and broadcast on television, sparked controversy among human rights defenders.