To enrich the global 1% she so brilliantly represented, our "entitlement" had to go and she was just the one to do it. deeply felt eulogy, filmed in advance and relayed by video link to screens in the National Cathedral in Washington. The impact that Hayek's writing had on Thatcher, her advisors, and her policies is undeniable. She usually knew the limits to public tolerance, gauging how much of the spirit of '45 abided, so even if it was between gritted teeth, she forced herself to say, "The NHS is safe in our hands": she reorganised but did not privatise it. Since 1990 a selection of statements is listed. Sunstein worked for a Democratic president, but did not meet the Labour leader or key advisers. By John Cassidy. In 1979 it had a mile or so of shipyards, a sugar works and factories that still made rope and ship's fittings. When Margaret Hilda Thatcher took over as Prime Minister, in May, 1979, I was sixteen. But these concrete achievements do not wholly explain why she still looms so large, large enough that not one but two current West End plays The Audience and Billy Elliot grant Thatcher a pivotal, if largely unsympathetic, role, whether seen or unseen. Thatcher's opposition to a positive role for the state in industrial policy caused her grief even during her time in office, but a cross-party consensus newly shaped by Michael Heseltine's report has given him the last word. And as my Guardian colleague Seumas Milne detailed last year, "across Britain Thatcher is still hated for the damage she inflicted and for her political legacy of rampant inequality and greed, privatisation and social breakdown.". Yet her long-term effect seems to have been to destroy it. Yes, QI can report that a newspaper called the Evening News on . Trying to trim back spending in her department, she ended the milk subsidies for all children over the age of seven. If you behave like there's no such thing as society, in the end there isn't. She would not have been half the . . Margaret Thatcher's Strong Stance on Climate Change As coal, steel and shipbuilding fell under her wrecking ball, whole communities were destroyed. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979, she When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms. Capitalism flourishes on debt, but she insisted that economics were best understood as Mr Micawber's formula in which happiness and misery were separated by a shilling. It was not yours, but belonged to the Post Office: in effect, the government. Still plumbing for the essence, we have to examine other bits of residue. There were big tax cuts for those on the highest incomes, driven by the belief that this would encourage entrepreneurship. She adopts an endearing and sentimental tone using ethos, repetition, and . But every prime minister since has bowed to her legacy, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown eager to be snapped with her on their doorstep. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.". That one should not speak ill of the dead is arguably appropriate when a private person dies, but it is wildly inappropriate for the death of a controversial public figure, particularly one who wielded significant influence and political power. In November 1978, Hannaford and I organized a European fact-finding tour for Reagan, and the first stop was London. The Yale Book of Quotations also states, "Thatcher is said to have used this in a 1965 speech.". . The Political Rhetoric and Oratory of Margaret Thatcher During Margaret Thatcher's rise to the top, he was one of the backroom figures whose words helped create her reputation as the Iron Lady. In short, miners believed in society. Mrs T shared the same reductionism. In this eulogy, Thatcher uses rhetorical strategies to convince her readers into believing what she states. Meryl Streep's depiction of a shuffling figure, stricken and isolated by the death of her husband, Denis, may have softened memories, or formed them in the minds of a younger generation. Nicknamed the "Iron Lady," Thatcher served as the prime minister of England from 1979 to 1990. Peggy Noonan. talked of "Victorian Values". Second was the particular hostility towards Margaret Thatcher and her local ministerial spear-carrier, energy minister and incumbent MP of 13 years' standing, Hamish Gray. She lost seven cabinet ministers on the Europe question, a record that permeated the party for years afterwards. Another head of government died recently who, like Thatcher, was called divisive. Reagan, for one, recognized the importance of Margaret Thatcher's presence as British prime minister, but would caution any discussionpartnerthat Pope John Paul played an equally important role. All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people's pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. From 1979 to 1990, Margaret Thatcher held the office of Prime . in his defence during the IranContra affair, told performance at a Press Conference afterwards, the At Bruges in September 1988 she outraged European orthodoxy by declaring: Thinking about it now, when I was a child she was just a strict woman telling everyone off and selling everything off. making her big speech the following day as scheduled. November). one Margaret Thatcher Quotes (Author of The Downing Street Years) - Goodreads Thatcherism failed to destroy the welfare state. We were wary of this. Her effect was to force a deeper consideration of priorities, sometimes expressed in a variety of dystopias. Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. "The original alternative comics just did it because they had to," he says. Every quality had its obverse, but she had a myth-making charisma to capture the world's imagination. Three aspects of it never completely leave my head. And for the people of Ireland, and especially the north, the Thatcher years were among some of the worst of the conflict. You would need to wait six weeks for an engineer. Asked to report on the "state of things" in our country, we could barely see past her. They are acolytes of a raw Thatcher cult they have rough-hewn and exaggerated in their own image. Thatcher and Reagan went on to facilitate a colossal transfer of wealth from poor to rich, leading to the world economic crash we now witness. Margaret Thatcher Essay: Health Category. Meanwhile, you struggle to identify deep thinkers in party ranks beyond a couple of veteran stalwarts; even the left's thinktanks appear moribund or merely harking back to an idealised past. We still live in the land Margaret built. Thatcher's social instincts were always nostalgic conservative. But what bound all opposition to Margaret Thatcher's programme was a suspicion that the grocer's daughter was intent on monetising human value, that she had no heart and, famously, cared little for the impulses that bind individuals into a society. Shoot-to-kill actions by British forces also significantly increased. Police charges against picketing union printers in Wapping enabled the Murdoch empire to flourish, ensuring their power and hers. In his usual slightly dishevelled style, he went to Downing Street to discuss his pioneering concepts of behavioural economics and attempts to implement them under Barack Obama. MT gave her first The woman, however, changed. Her political antennae refused to allow her to privatise the coal industry, British Rail or the post office. The remainder are listed without a text because sometimes no record survives Opponents and supporters of Margaret Thatcher will never agree about the value of her legacy, but as for her importance, her hypnotic hold on us, they are bound to find common ground. When Margaret Thatcher won the general election in 1979, she became Prime Minister of a land in chaos. This site follow the same rules (and shares an editor). She was a radical conservative, known for dismantling nationalized industries and social services, weakening union power.She was also the first incumbent prime minister in the UK removed on a vote of their own party. Whathappened at the hands of this woman's indifference to sentiment andgood sense in the early 1980s brought unnecessary calamity to the lives of several million people who losttheir jobs. Curiously, the phrase does not sound as dated as it should. Even the nasty politics of "welfare reform" is driven by the high cost of subsidising low pay through in-work benefits, and indifference to the plight of jobless communities who have never recovered from de-industrialisation. The Thatcher government was across all the details of this shipment. "Fatcha" was an instant punchline back then: simply saying it was enough to get a laugh. Sayle recorded the song Get Me Mrs Thatcher, but says that in general he felt Thatcher jokes were a bit too easy, although he still shudders at the memory of a "wicked, incompetent mindset that was the spirit of the 80s". Philip Larkin visited Downing Street where the prime minister quoted approvingly one of his lines to him "Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives." Neither shift of ownership and power would have happened without a leader prepared to take risks with her life. The credit boom both here and in the USA may have gone against her Grantham roots but was an equally inevitable result of deregulation and the temptation of easy loans for people hungry to improve living standards. That gives them the nerve to set about cutting benefits and the public realm with a glee they don't bother to hide. However, for almost a decade Sinn Fin had been patently trying to build a peace process and unfolding events on the world stage including the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, and the release of Mandela were evidence that governments, and apparently intractable situations, could change. The Winter of Discontent in 1978-79 brought rhetorical as well as political Arthur Scargill and the miners represented the only opposition to the prime minister and her destructive and divisive values and, after the strike, the way was open for the most aggressive neoliberal policies. That chanted demand of the left has been fully and finally met. Margaret Thatcher's Speech to Congress - Hillsdale College All rights reserved. Until her final poll-tax hubris, she knew when swerving was the better part of valour and despite that famous one-liner, she was sometimes for turning. Talk to a Labour MP and you end up discussing politics and positioning; talk to a Tory, and it tends to be about policy. Absurd or not, it does indeed seem alien not least to those born in the 1980s, the generation we shall always call Thatcher's children. It'd be disingenuous to omit that there were a fair number of ding-dong-style celebratory messages amidst the pensive reflections on the end of an era. Not for Turning: The Life of Margaret Thatcher - Amazon Each was characterised by her attention to detail. Thirdly, industrial policy was all but abandoned. She made one Original, independent voices such as BBC director general Alasdair Milne were brutally silenced. at Brighton, insisting that the Conference go on and She considered European Commission president Jacques Delors a campaigner for . She was catapulted into the Conservative leadership by a small group of ideologues centred around a thinktank, determined to roll back the statist ideas that dominated Britain after the postwar Attlee government. Donning a starched coiff and padded shoulders out to there, Emmy Award winner Gillian Anderson of The X-Files is . She hated what she called "that French phrase laissez faire". She refused to reform social security, or even curb its abuse. The remainder are listed without a text because . Reagan and Thatcher first met in 1975, as my friend and colleague Peter Hannaford reminded me just today. Would we like her back? drew an important moral from the Falklands war: "We have ceased to But the choice captures her perfectly. decision to resign. The Iron Lady had a green thumband a surprisingly green philosophy. ", This was the great leader in her favourite pose as Samuel Smiles: human beings didn't need to be helped they needed to help themselves. A friend of South African apartheid and mass murderers from Kissinger and Pinochet to the Khmer Rouge after they had killed two million Cambodians she was a zealous saleswoman for the arms industry. In the three years after the shipment they killed 224 and wounded scores more. No one noticed, but she was Blair's first guest at Downing Street in 1997. This is an especially pertinent problem given its heartfelt desire for redistribution of wealth. Viewed from today, that past Britain is indeed a foreign country. A massive programme of social housing would be a good place to start, stimulating the economy. There is a paradox. Promises. History will judge her, but not a country in Europe was untouched by Thatcher's example. A decade later they were wiped out in terms of Scotland-based Westminster constituency representation. If I become PM, I will deliver the radical set of reforms need to unleash growth. In former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's eulogy speech for President Ronald Reagan (2004), she elucidates what a kind and powerful man he was. So we agreed to reactivate the back channel. The best books on Margaret Thatcher - Five Books Or perhaps it was just because I was a little kid and more interested in them Weetabix skinheads, Roland Rat and Knight Rider. Watch a million words pour out today placing her anywhere from Boudicca to the wicked witch of the west. The party she led three times to electoral triumph became unelectable for a generation. The prime minister was intensely interested in the campaign, and asked many penetrating questions. I grew up in Essex with a single mum and a go-getter Dagenham dad. Her imitators swerve all over the place, with 37 U-turns at the Telegraph's latest count on matters from forests and pasties to buzzard nests and caravans. MT won election as Conservative leader on 11 February 1975 and gave a euphoric During the speech, . Great speeches: Margaret Thatcher | World | The Guardian Margaret Thatcher was Britain's most significant leader since Churchill. When all the public amenities were flogged, the adverts made it seem to my childish eyes fun and positive, jaunty slogans and affable British stereotypes jostling about in villages, selling people companies that they'd already paid for through tax. The Independent has the story. Scotsman Obituaries: Bernard Ingham, press secretary who ensured Alexei Sayle blames Twitter and the "multiplicity of voices" in the modern world. The resignation was announced Later that year she introduced the broadcasting ban on Sinn Fin, which prevented viewers and listeners hearing my voice. Women aren't always good for other women because the gender of a person matters a lot less than that person's actual beliefs. It's kind of a luxury rent-controlled ghetto for lawyers and barristers, and there is a beautiful tailors, a fine chapel, established by the Knights Templar (from which the compound takes its name), a twee cottage designed by Sir Christopher Wren and a rose garden; which I never promised you. "No, no, no". or copyright prevents reproduction on the site. Rhetorical Analysis Of Margaret Thatcher's Eulogy Speech | ipl.org It never was. Analysis Of Ronald Reagan's Eulogy By Margaret Thatcher Being a woman is undoubtedly one of the features, possibly the most potent, that makes her ascent to power memorable, 25 years on, in a way that applied to no man. As far as her supporters are concerned, this radical transformation worked. Edited text: This speech was delivered to the Conservative party conference in Brighton on October 10 1980. In truth, Thatcher is one of the clearest examples of the fact that a successful woman doesn't always mean a step forward for women. The Thatcher government believed that the criminalisation of the republican prisoners would break the republican struggle. Farewell, indeed, Baroness Thatcher. I was on my own. In 1976 it still did not help and in the same year they had to take a loan in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) [] . Take the larger view. Gaze at the telephone. In the current wall-to-wall media welter, I caught the current leader of the Scottish Tories, Ruth Davison MSP, being asked if Thatcher was an electoral asset for her. September 25, 2020. This demand for respectful silence in the wake of a public figure's death is not just misguided but dangerous. Any attempts at revisionism do no favours to her, women or feminism. delivered an outstanding defence of the Government in the Commons. Reagan had sought to meet with then Prime Minister James Callaghan, but the request was rejected, and bucked to then Foreign Minister David Owen.
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