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Thatcher redirects here. For other meanings see Thatcher (disambiguation).

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS (born 13 October 1925) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990.

She was the longest serving British Prime Minister in the 20th century, the longest since Gladstone, and had the longest continuous period in office since Lord Liverpool. She is also the only woman to be Prime Minister or elected leader of a major political party in the UK and, with Margaret Beckett, is one of only two women to hold any of the four great offices of state. Undoubtedly one of the most significant British politicians in recent political history, she is also one of the most divisive, being both loved and loathed in equal measure.

Her first cabinet post was Secretary of State for Education and Science in the government of Edward Heath from 1970 to 1974. In 1975 she successfully challenged Heath for the Conservative leadership, and was Leader of the Opposition from then until the next general election in 1979 when her party returned to power. As party Leader she was undefeated at the polls, winning three successive general elections (1979, 1983 and 1987) the only British politician to do so in the 20th century. However, although she had strong support from the largest minority of voters for most of her tenure she eventually resigned after failing to win outright a leadership election triggered by opponents within her own party, and was replaced by John Major in 1990.

She is an elder stateswoman of the Conservative Party and the figurehead of a political philosophy that became known as Thatcherism, which involves selectively reduced public spending in some areas, lower direct taxation, de-regulation, a monetarist policy, and a programme of privatisation of government-owned industries. Even before coming to power she was nicknamed the "Iron Lady" in Soviet media (because of her vocal opposition to communism), an appellation that stuck.

In foreign relations, she maintained the "special relationship" with the United States, and formed a close bond with Ronald Reagan. In 1982 her government dispatched a Royal Navy task force to retake the Falkland Islands from Argentina in the Falklands War.

The profound changes Thatcher set in motion as Prime Minister altered much of the economic and cultural landscape of the United Kingdom. She curtailed the power of the trade unions, attempted to cut back the role of the state in business, and dramatically expanded home ownership. She also aimed to cut back the welfare state and foster a more flexible labour market. She is particularly disliked in the old mining areas of Britain, such as South Wales, County Durham and the southern parts of Yorkshire. In a speech on 19th June, 1984, she had referred to the striking miners as "the enemy within", who had to be destroyed for the good of liberty and democracy.

Margaret Thatcher and Thatcherism were highly controversial and polarising. Some commentators contend that she was responsible for rejuvenating the British economy, while others argue that she was responsible for mass unemployment and a vast increase in inequality between rich and poor. Some have since argued that the hardships and disruption of the period were a regrettable but necessary phase in the modernisation of the British economy. Whatever the case, the perception that her Conservative party was unconcerned about and blind to these effects has contributed to the subsequent dominance of the Labour Party in government since 1997. It should be mentioned, though, that both Conservative and Labour governments since 1990 have maintained most of the economic reforms of the Thatcher period.

Her popularity declined when she replaced the unpopular local government rates tax with the even less popular Community Charge, more commonly known as the "Poll Tax". At the same time, the Conservative Party began to split over her sceptical approach to Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union. The resignation in November 1990 of her Deputy Prime Minister, Geoffrey Howe, seriously damaged her authority and undermined her party's confidence in her. Shortly afterwards she failed to gain the confidence of a clear majority of Conservative MPs during a leadership struggle, and she chose to resign and return to the back benches. Margaret Thatcher's defeat is attributable at least in part to inadequate advice and campaigning. In 1992 she was created Baroness Thatcher, and since then her direct political work has been as head of the Thatcher Foundation.

Early life and education

Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts in the town of Grantham in Lincolnshire in eastern England. Her father was Alfred Roberts, who ran a grocer's shop in the town and was active in local politics, serving as an Alderman and was also a Methodist local preacher (lay preacher). While officially described as 'Liberal Independent', in practice he supported the local Conservatives. He lost his post as Alderman after the Labour Party won control of Grantham Council in 1946. Her mother was Beatrice Roberts née Stephenson, and she had a sister, Muriel. Thatcher was brought up a staunch Methodist and has remained a Christian throughout her life.

She did well at school, going to a girls' grammar school (Kesteven) and then to Somerville College, Oxford from 1944, where she studied chemistry. She became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946, the third woman to hold the post. She graduated with a second-class degree, and worked as a research chemist for British Xylonite and then J. Lyons and Co. where she helped develop methods for preserving ice cream. She was a member of the team that developed the first soft frozen ice cream.

Political career between 1950 and 1970

At the 1950 and 1951 elections, Margaret Roberts fought the safe Labour seat of Dartford, and was the youngest woman Conservative candidate. Her activity in the Conservative Party in Kent brought her into contact with Denis Thatcher; they fell in love and were married later in 1951. Denis was a wealthy businessman, and he funded his wife to read for the Bar. She qualified as a barrister in 1953, the same year that her twin children, Carol and Mark, were born. On returning to work, she specialised in tax issues.

Thatcher had begun to look for a safe Conservative seat, and was narrowly rejected as candidate for Orpington in 1954. She had several other rejections before being selected for Finchley in April 1958. She won the seat easily in the 1959 election and took her seat in the House of Commons. Unusually, her maiden speech was in support of her Private Member's Bill to force local councils to hold meetings in public, which was successful. In 1961 she voted against her party's line by voting for the restoration of birching.

She was given early promotion to the front bench as Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in September 1961, keeping the post until the Conservatives lost power in the 1964 election. When Sir Alec Douglas-Home stepped down, Thatcher voted for Edward Heath in the leadership election over Reginald Maudling, and was rewarded with the job of Conservative spokesman on Housing and Land. She moved to the Shadow Treasury Team after 1966.

Thatcher was one of few Conservative MPs to support Leo Abse's Bill to decriminalise male homosexuality, and she voted in favour of David Steel's Bill to legalise abortion. However, she was opposed to the abolition of capital punishment and voted against making divorce more easily attainable. She made her mark as a conference speaker in 1966 with a strong attack on the taxation policy of the Labour Government as being steps "not only towards Socialism, but towards Communism". She won promotion to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Fuel Spokesman in 1967, and was then promoted to shadow Transport and, finally, Education before the 1970 election.

In Heath's Cabinet

When the Conservatives won the 1970 general election, Thatcher became Secretary of State for Education and Science. In her first months in office, forced to administer a cut in the Education budget, she decided to abolish universal free milk in schools.

This provoked a storm of public protest, earning her the nickname "Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher", coined by The Sun. Her term was marked by many proposals for more local education authorities to abolish grammar schools, of which she approved, and adopt comprehensive secondary education, even though this was widely perceived as a left-wing policy. Thatcher also defended the budget of the Open University from attempted cuts.

After the Conservative defeat in February 1974, she was promoted again, to Shadow Environment Secretary. In this job she promoted a policy of abolishing the rating system that paid for local government services, which proved a popular policy within the Conservative Party.

However, she agreed with Sir Keith Joseph that the Heath Government had lost control of monetary policy. After Heath lost the second election that year, Joseph decided to challenge his leadership but later dropped out. Thatcher then decided that she would enter the race. Unexpectedly she outpolled Heath on the first ballot and won the job on the second, in February 1975. She appointed Heath's preferred successor William Whitelaw as her deputy.

As Leader of the Opposition

On 19 January, 1976, she made a speech in Kensington Town Hall in which she made a scathing attack on the Soviet Union. The most famous part of her speech ran:

"The Russians are bent on world dominance, and they are rapidly acquiring the means to become the most powerful imperial nation the world has seen. The men in the Soviet Politburo do not have to worry about the ebb and flow of public opinion. They put guns before butter, while we put just about everything before guns."

In response, the Soviet Defence Ministry newspaper Red Star gave her the nickname "The Iron Lady", which was soon publicised by Radio Moscow world service. She took delight in the name and it soon became associated with her image as an unwavering and steadfast character. She acquired many other nicknames such as, "Tina" (from an acronym for "There Is No Alternative") "The Great She-Elephant", "Attila the Hen" and "The Grocer's Daughter". The last nickname was derived from her father's profession, but coined at a time when she was considered as Edward Heath's ally; he had been nicknamed "The Grocer" by Private Eye.

At first she appointed many Heath supporters in the Shadow Cabinet and throughout her administrations sought to have a cabinet that reflected the broad range of opinions in the Conservative Party. Thatcher had to act cautiously to convert the Conservative Party to her monetarist beliefs. She reversed Heath's support for devolved government for Scotland. In an interview she gave to Granada Television's World in Action programme in 1978, she spoke of her concerns about immigrants "swamping" the UK, arousing particular controversy at the time, and it has been viewed as having drawn supporters of the extreme right-wing British National Front back to the Conservative fold.

During the 1979 General Election, most opinion polls showed that voters preferred James Callaghan as Prime Minister even as the Conservative Party maintained a lead in the polls. The Labour Government ran into difficulties with industrial disputes during the winter of 1978-9, dubbed the 'Winter of Discontent'. The Conservatives used catchy campaign posters with slogans such as "Labour Isn't Working" (see) to attack the government's record over unemployment and what they perceived to be an over-regulated labour market.

The Callaghan government fell after a successful Motion of no confidence in spring 1979, and following the general election, the Conservatives won a working majority in the House of Commons and Thatcher became the United Kingdom's first female Prime Minister.

As Prime Minister

1979–1983

She formed a government on 4 May, 1979, with a mandate to reverse the UK's economic decline and to reduce the role of the state in the economy. Thatcher was incensed by one contemporary view within the Civil Service that its job was to manage the UK's decline from the days of Empire, and wanted the country to assert a higher level of influence and leadership in international affairs. She was a philosophic soulmate of Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980 in the United States, and to a lesser extent Brian Mulroney, who was elected in 1984 in Canada. It seemed for a time that conservatism might be the dominant political philosophy in the major English-speaking nations for the era.

In May 1980, one day before she was due to meet the Irish Taoiseach, Charles Haughey to discuss Northern Ireland, she announced in the House of Commons that "the future of the constitutional affairs of Northern Ireland is a matter for the people of Northern Ireland, this government, this parliament and no-one else."

In 1981 a number of Provisional IRA and INLA prisoners in Northern Ireland's Maze prison (known in Ireland as 'Long Kesh', its previous name) went on hunger strike to regain the status of political prisoners, which had been revoked five years earlier. Bobby Sands, the first of the strikers, was elected as an MP for the constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone a few weeks before he died.

Thatcher refused at first to countenance a return to political status for republican prisoners, famously declaring "Crime is crime is crime; it is not political." However, after nine more men had starved themselves to death and the strike had ended, and in the face of growing anger on both sides of the border and widespread civil unrest, some rights offered to paramilitary prisoners under political status were restored. This was a major propaganda coup for the IRA and is seen as the beginning of Sinn Féin's electoral rise, as they capitalised on the gains made during the hunger strikes.

Thatcher also continued the policy of "Ulsterisation" of the previous Labour government and its Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Roy Mason, believing that the unionists of Northern Ireland should be at the forefront in combating Irish republicanism. This meant relieving the burden on the mainstream British army and elevating the role of the Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Another noticeable foible of Thatcher's was her refusal to call Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, by his preferred Irish name, insisting on calling him "Cardinal Fee".

In economic policy, Thatcher started out by increasing interest rates to drive down the money supply. She had a preference for indirect taxation over taxes on income, and value added tax (VAT) was raised sharply to 15%, with a resultant rise in inflation. These moves hit businesses, especially in the manufacturing sector, and unemployment quickly passed two million. Interestingly, her early tax policy reforms were based on the monetarist theories of Friedman rather than the supply-side economics of Arthur Laffer and Jude Wanniski, which the government of Ronald Reagan espoused. There was a severe recession in the early 1980s, and the Government's economic policy was widely blamed.

Political commentators harked back to the Heath Government's "U-turn" and speculated that Mrs Thatcher would follow suit, but she repudiated this approach at the 1980 Conservative Party conference, famously telling the party: "To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catch-phrase—the U-turn—I have only one thing to say: you turn if you want to; the Lady's not for turning". That she meant what she said was confirmed in the 1981 budget, when, despite concerns expressed in an open letter from 364 leading economists, taxes were increased in the middle of a recession. In January 1982, the inflation rate dropped to single figures and interest rates were then allowed to fall. Unemployment continued to rise, reaching an official figure of 3.6 million — although the criteria for defining who was unemployed were amended allowing some to estimate that unemployment in fact hit 5 million. However, Lord Tebbit has suggested that, due to the high number of people claiming unemployment benefit whilst working, he doubts whether unemployment ever reached three million at all.

British defence budget cuts, applying in the South Atlantic, coupled with Thatcher's disregard of the Falkland Islands and the removal of the ice patrol ship Endurance, as well as immigration reform detrimental to the British citizenship rights of people i

• Natives of Lincolnshire
• Pan Am Flight 103
• Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
• Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom
• Women in war
• British female MPs