The result . Materialistic individualism was blessed as a virtue, the driver of national success. For the most part, there's no material there. Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. The Cameron and Osborne circle are crude copies carried away with the dangerous idea that conviction is all it takes to run a country. Though the Thatcher years could also be called the Saatchi years, reaching a new level of presentational sophistication in the annals of British politics, they weren't about getting the leader liked. Queen Elizabeth is widely assumed . Thatcher was a divisive woman who created discord, not harmony. Ed Miliband, a policy wonk himself, claims to be a conviction politician like Thatcher. It was only in the mid-80s that she became truly radical and remotely comparable to David Cameron in 2010. Privatisation was the single most massive attack on democracy we have seen. We might speculate that an adviser had offered Thatcher a selection of good lines, or that she had asked to see some. The resignation was announced In 1968 she gave a lecture asking What's We were not unique in such a response but she failed to appreciate that Scots are balanced, canny folk insofar as we have a well-developed chip on each shoulder. People would denounce them unequivocally, often in graphic terms. Original, independent voices such as BBC director general Alasdair Milne were brutally silenced. The government's welfare bill has been swollen by tax credits and housing benefit caused by the labour market reforms and council house sales of the 1980s. For she changed the ethos of Britain as well as its landscape. The pomp and circumstance that will crown her funeral was proffered by Brown, to some shudders from his own side. M argaret Thatcher does an awful lot of crying in The Crown. Her refusal to stand against apartheid, her civil war against the unions, her aggression towards our neighbours in Ireland and a taxation system that was devised in the dark ages, the bombing of a retreating ship it's just not British. The Big Bang of City deregulation, the Tell Sid scramble for buying and selling shares, the sense that money is the highest value, wealth the greatest sign of worth all these were hallmarks of the Thatcher era in its mid-80s pomp. At an international conference in Lisbon in the late 80s, the British faction, among whom were Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Malcolm Bradbury and myself, referred back to Thatcher constantly in our presentations. make the case for intervention to protect Bosnia when Serb concentration The fact that the Thatcher question even gets asked confirms vividly just what an upas tree she remains for Scottish Toryism. During the speech, . Much of any leader's record is unremarkable dross, and Thatcher was no exception. The last time the UK ran a trade surplus was the year of the Falklands war. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979. She wrecked her own party, while promoting, via many a tortuous turn, Labour's resurrection. That 1983 general election contained the telltale seeds of eventual Scottish Tory self-destruction. Contrary to an increasingly common belief, "a woman who is successful" is not synonymous with "a feminist". . You knew exactly what Maggie stood for. This, too, we still live with. The appointment was a 20-minute audience with the . Witness the steady downgrading of local government or the persistent assumption that the private sector will always be better than the public. They are acolytes of a raw Thatcher cult they have rough-hewn and exaggerated in their own image. The welfare state, with its unemployment and housing benefits and free healthcare, actually protected wages: employers could not force workers to accept low pay or unpaid overtime because of the job's healthcare provision, as they do in the US. From 1987 to 1988, he was a senior policy writer and speechwriter in 10 Downing Street for Margaret Thatcher when she was British prime minister and remained close to her up to her death.. O'Sullivan served from 2008-2012 as vice-president and executive editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio . This book shows how. In short, miners believed in society. Texts for listed statements are available on the site in almost 70 per cent of cases. at Brighton, insisting that the Conference go on and Are there, even, things we look back on with regret for their passing? In January 1983 she Such items have an camps were revealed in August 1992. When I awoke today on LA time my phone was full of impertinent digital eulogies. And he would credit the contribution of Helmut Kohl, who rose to power in Germany in part because of the influence of Thatcher and Reagan. "Maggie Thatcher," he said. Draining down those 11 years to their memorable essence, what does one light upon? Ronald Reagan, the former 40th president of the United States died on June 5th of 2004. But now the history was what mattered. As coal, steel and shipbuilding fell under her wrecking ball, whole communities were destroyed. I was just behind her at the civic museum in Dubrovnik when the local guide explained a model showing the elaborate system of ancient wells and tunnels that had provided the city with fresh water no matter how fierce the siege. It's like a whimsical live-action episode of Postman Pat where his cat is craftily carved up and sold back to him. A senior civil servant said, "It worked because we all knew exactly what she wanted.". Both were successful women who could play the flirt card when it suited them, but ultimately had little interest in being kind to their own sex; Thatcher especially resented being defined by her gender. The romantic image of the lady in the tank spurs them on. She undoubtedly rescued the prestige of the country from its postwar nadir, but at a high cost to the generosity of its political and social culture. Thatcher jokes were big business, from Rik Mayall's student rants in The Young Ones, to Harry Enfield's satire of Thatcher's children with his Loadsamoney character. In the early 1980s, the Republican party joined with other moderate and conservative parties in the world to form the International Democrat Union. A meeting in Downing Street had left the Pakistan leader besotted with the older woman's wisdom and generosity: '"I tell you, she's such a kind person.". But at its crudest, the Thatcher ethos translated into the get-rich-quick, greed-is-good spirit of the 1980s, satirised by Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney creation. Government will respond to clear leadership if it knows what a leader wants. The Bruges speech was given by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to the College of Europe at the Belfry of Bruges, Belgium, on 20 September 1988.Thatcher was opposed to any moves to transition the European Economic Community (EEC) into a federal Europe that would take powers away from its members. For a start, she had a superb memory for a brief, and she would have had no problem memorising quickly any number of lines. Where copyright is the problem, the full text can be found on the Complete Thatcher is remembered for her achievements, but more for a presence, which was wrapped up with being a woman. Under this heading, Thatcher left a dark legacy that, like her successes, has still not disappeared behind the historical horizon. her intention to allow her name to go forward to the second ballot, she When she returned from Paris many cabinet colleagues showed that The poll tax showed the opposite, the weakness of Thatcher's strength. her maiden Since 1990 a selection of statements is listed. There are more than 8,000. announced that White On Sunday, looking down at the waterfront, I could see how these had been replaced by a housing estate, a supermarket, and sometimes by nothing at all. Understandably, less cohesive societies with more drugs, more crime and lower mobility waste talent, and are not good places to do business. In this eulogy, Thatcher uses rhetorical strategies to convince her readers into believing what she states. The left misleads us and maybe itself when it says that Thatcher's policies, extended by New Labour and then by the coalition, have failed. There is a paradox. Cameron's crew crudely imagine she intended it. No elderly person would be deprived of the dignity of spectacles, dentures or a hearing aid because they couldn't afford them. Although the "right to buy" and the privatisation of utilities by selling shares to new small investors was often justified as giving rights to "the little people", the reality is that the less well-off fell ever further behind the rich. Knocking up a flan for Denis or helping Carol with her algebra or Mark with his gun-running, are jarring distractions from the main narrative; woman as warrior queen. November 15, 2020 9:00 AM EST. Every quality had its obverse, but she had a myth-making charisma to capture the world's imagination. In her 1982 party conference speech, Margaret Thatcher offered a prediction for the future: "How absurd it will seem in a few years' time that the state ran Pickfords removals and Gleneagles Hotel." led Michael Heseltine to run against her for the party leadership. History will judge her, but not a country in Europe was untouched by Thatcher's example. "What's going on there, mate?" 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. They're not Thatcher. Thatcher's social instincts were always nostalgic conservative. Nations need to know the big picture of where they belong and, coinciding with the Thatcher appearance at the top, clarity had apparently broken through the clouds of historic ambivalence. The Thatcher government believed that the criminalisation of the republican prisoners would break the republican struggle. A Soviet . What is really left by Thatcher to history? Thatcher will be especially remembered for her shameful role during the epic hunger strikes of 1980 and 81. Luckily, a longer paper means you get a bigger discount! Margaret Thatcher was Britain's most significant leader since Churchill. Donning a starched coiff and padded shoulders out to there, Emmy Award winner Gillian Anderson of The X-Files is . It may be wrong to imagine that she intended to de-industrialise Britain, but the policies followed by her government had that effect. This is not the Highland way. Margaret Thatcher was a hugely divisive figure in British politics. As a child she unnerved me but we are not children now and we are free to choose our own ethical codes and leaders that reflect them. Yet a leader that a wide cross-section of Scots had come to despise. By John Cassidy. All of the Tory edicts that bludgeoned our nation, as my generation squirmed through ghoulish puberty, were confusing. The news last week that they are instead considering cutting or freezing the minimum wage surely undermines any pretence that the government is acting either coherently or in the public interest. Peggy Noonan. Which raises the question: why isn't this happening now? Sunstein worked for a Democratic president, but did not meet the Labour leader or key advisers. From then on she disregarded her critics and became intolerant of any who were "not one of us". The author uses this idea of freedom in her writing to allow the audience to feel and understand the mission of Reagan--"to restore the strength of the free world, and to free the slaves of communism" (6-7). It's true that whenever there's a major news story, millions of people immediately begin strip-mining it for puns and bon mots, making it harder for professional comics to develop focused, funny material that nobody's heard before. Oil helped Thatcher paper over the cracks, but Britain's age-old problem finding a way to pay its way in the world remains. Bob Slayer, one of the genuine alternative comedians on the scene, likes to note the irony of what's become of comedy. I can't articulate with the skill of either of "the Marks" Steel or Thomas why Thatcher and Thatcherism were so bad for Britain but I do recall that even to a child her demeanour and every discernible action seemed to be to the detriment of our national spirit and identity. The passing of Chvez is mourned by the many millions who loved him in Latin America and everywhere. She was unashamed about this, loathing localism and rejecting calls to diminish the "strong state". But awoman who, at the time, thought that chancellor was the top mark at which she might aim. (MT gave up public speaking in March 2002.) From the invention of the term "sado-monetarism" through to the way her powerful ministers seemed to swoon before her, and the constant negative reiteration by her critics of her femininity, or lack of it, she exerted a glacial hold over the (male) nation's masochistic imagination. If it ended in disaster, the seeds were only partly hers. First was the sheer depth of hostility towards the Tories in general. Since 1990 a selection of statements is listed. At her first conference speech, she chastised the Labour Party on economic . Thatcher's unwavering belief in the invisible hand of the market meant that she did not believe it was part of her job description to put anything in its place. The Lady forced the opposition party to accommodate itself to the new, Thatcherite settlement in which the market would rule unless stated otherwise. I made this argument at length last year when Christopher Hitchens died and a speak-no-ill rule about him was instantly imposed (a rule he, more than anyone, viciously violated), and I won't repeat that argument today; those interested can read my reasoning here. The author Nassim Taleb traded equations on a whiteboard with Gus O'Donnell, then head of the civil service, as they debated econometrics; at another, I watched entranced as Lord Heseltine argued urban policies with Harvard's Ed Glaeser. But for others, the change in landscape is all too real. Yet, at that last encounter, her tone was different. "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.". One thinks now of the closing words of her splendid 2004 eulogy of Ronald Reagan, and how those words so perfectly speak a tribute to her life and works: "We here still move in twilight. This is the area where we need to make progress not just in restoring strong local government, but in understanding that democracy means more than a Westminster vote. 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. Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013), the United Kingdom's first female prime minister, served from 1979 until 1990. . They are a more energetic and impressive group than their predecessors, often with experience outside politics that makes them impatient and independent-minded. and Your local electricity "board" could be a very unfriendly place. Rhetorical Analysis Of Margaret Thatcher's Speech 722 Words | 3 Pages . She all but erased his political legacy to stamp her own image on the nation, so Britain before and after Thatcher were two different countries. "Labour is stuck because they do not want to carry on the slimming down of the state and devolution of power but nor do they really want to reverse it," said one central Tory figure. April 25, 2020. But we reckoned we got Thatcher only too well and didn't like what we saw, far less what we heard. The last time I met her was after all this was over. In a break with tradition and protocol, Reagan decided he'd also attend the "return dinner" at the British Embassy the next evening. 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. One turns with gratitude to Alan Clark's diaries for a fine description of being summoned to No 10 and being subjected to just such an examination.
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