On the foreign policy front, Thatcher often found herself allied with U. In Asia, meanwhile, she negotiated the eventual transfer of Hong Kong to the Chinese.
In Africa she had a mixed record, facilitating the end of white minority rule in Zimbabwe but opposing sanctions against apartheid South Africa. After Thatcher was elected to a third term in , her government lowered income tax rates to a postwar low. On November 14, , former Defense Minister Michael Heseltine challenged her for leadership of the party, partly due to differences of opinion on the European Union.
Thatcher won the first ballot but by too small of a margin for outright victory. That night, her cabinet members visited her one by one and urged her to resign. She officially stepped down on November 28 after helping to assure that John Major and not Heseltine would replace her. Thatcher remained in parliament until , at which time she entered the largely ceremonial House of Lords and began to write her memoirs. Though she stopped appearing in public after suffering a series of small strokes in the early s, her influence remained strong.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Born Margaret Hilda Roberts, the future prime minister was the daughter of a grocer and local alderman who later became mayor of Grantham, England. Businesses were failing, and inflation and unemployment were rising.
Thatcher immediately set out to turn the economic situation around, Britain's first female prime minister was facing sharp criticism from both her cabinet and the public in response to her Cultural anthropologist and writer Margaret Meade was born in Philadelphia and graduated from Barnard College in Appointed assistant curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History in , she embarked on two dozen trips to the South Pacific to Margaret Taylor was an American first lady and the wife of Zachary Taylor, an American military hero and the 12th president of the United States.
Margaret supported her husband throughout his long military career, repeatedly uprooting her family to follow Still, the poverty figures don't look good: the number of children in poverty almost doubled under Thatcher, from 1. Pensioner poverty in the same period increased too, from 3. Those numbers rise still further if housing costs are factored in. The headline poverty figures have both since fallen back from those levels — particularly pensioner poverty.
In today's Britain, 2 million pensioners live below the poverty line — half the figure — while child poverty has dropped more modesty to 2. Incomes, of course, only tell a small part of the story when it comes to Thatcher and the workforce — not to mention the shape of the economy. Thatcher is perhaps most associated with the death of Britain's mining industry.
There is no doubt that the figures show the number of miners collapsed under Thatcher and afterwards: in , the UK had , coal miners.
By , only 57, remained. By , the figure was below 6, But what may be missed is that even more mining jobs were lost before Thatcher ever came into power. Over the course of the s and 70s, more than , coal mining jobs disappeared, while around a million vanished between and Thatcher was the coal industry's most visible foe, but not the one who lost it the most jobs.
The root of residual anger at Thatcher lies, perhaps, in that Thatcher was the first post-war prime minister to cut such jobs without finding or creating replacement roles. That isn't to say that manufacturing and mining communities didn't feel devastating change — from which some have not recovered to this day.
The consequences of deindustrialisation hit huge swaths of the UK, particularly Wales and northern England, hard. Unemployment soared from 5.
In , the year of Thatcher's departure, it stood slightly higher than when her era began, at 6. This, though, hides the plight of millions of Britons who would never work again — those who were listed as ill, rather than unemployed. In , , people classed themselves as being out of the labour force because they were "permanently sick". A decade later, this figure had risen to 1. In numerous towns across the country, the increases were markedly higher — with those signed off sick tripling or even quadrupling in a decade.
Twenty years later, in the census, the figure remained largely unchanged, despite the UK's growing population: 1. The issue around the welfare bill for supporting people with disabilities, chosen as a priority by the current coalition, owes its genesis far more to Thatcher than to either John Major or New Labour.
Elsewhere in the workforce, Thatcherism did what might be expected. It was certainly bad for union membership, which fell from Overall, strikes were busted too, through the use of laws that unions still condemn today: in , 6m working days were lost to strikes. This peaked at a massive By , whether thanks to diminished union power or improved industrial relations, fewer than , working days were lost to industrial action. Thatcher also leaves an unclear legacy when it comes to public spending.
When she entered office, public spending made up After initially rising, this was sharply cut to Publicly, Thatcher voiced her support for Reagan's air raids on Libya in and allowed U.
Returning for a third term in , Thatcher sought to implement a standard educational curriculum across the nation and make changes to the country's socialized medical system. However, she lost a lot of support due to her efforts to implement a fixed rate local tax—labeled a poll tax by many since she sought to disenfranchise those who did not pay it.
Hugely unpopular, this policy led to public protests and caused dissension within her party. Thatcher initially pressed on for party leadership in , but eventually yielded to pressure from party members and announced her intentions to resign on November 22, In a statement, she said, "Having consulted widely among colleagues, I have concluded that the unity of the Party and the prospects of victory in a General Election would be better served if I stood down to enable Cabinet colleagues to enter the ballot for the leadership.
I should like to thank all those in Cabinet and outside who have given me such dedicated support. Not long after leaving office, Thatcher was appointed to the House of Lords, as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, in She wrote about her experiences as a world leader and a pioneering woman in the field of politics in two books: The Downing Street Years and The Path to Power In , she published the book Statecraft , in which she offered her views on international politics.
Around this time, Thatcher suffered a series of small strokes. She then suffered a great personal loss in , when her husband of more than 50 years, Denis, died. The following year, Thatcher had to say goodbye to an old friend and ally, Ronald Reagan. In fragile health, Thatcher gave a eulogy at his funeral via video link, praising Reagan as a man who "sought to mend America's wounded spirit, to restore the strength of the free world, and to free the slaves of communism.
In , Thatcher celebrated her 80th birthday. A huge event was held in her honor and was attended by Queen Elizabeth II , Tony Blair and nearly other friends, family members and former colleagues. Two years later, a sculpture of the strong conservative leader was unveiled in the House of Commons.
Thatcher's health made headlines in , when she missed a celebration at 10 Downing Street, held in honor of her 85th birthday by David Cameron. Later, in November , Thatcher spent two weeks in the hospital for a condition that was later revealed to cause painful muscle inflammation.
In , she sat out such a number of major events, including the wedding of Prince William in April, and the unveiling of the Ronald Reagan sculpture in London in July. Additionally, in July , Thatcher's office in the House of Lords was permanently closed. The closure has been seen by some to mark the end of her public life. Battling memory problems in her later years due to her strokes, Thatcher retreated from the spotlight, living in near seclusion at her home in London's Belgravia neighborhood.
Thatcher died on April 8, , at the age of She was survived by her two children, daughter Carol and son Sir Mark. Thatcher's policies and actions continue to be debated by detractors and supporters alike, illustrating the indelible impression that she has left on Britain and nations worldwide.
Gillian Anderson portrayed the former prime minister in season 4 of The Crown. We strive for accuracy and fairness.
If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Margaret Mead was a cultural anthropologist and writer best known for her studies and publications on the subject.
0コメント