margaret thatcher speech writer

No children excluded from school activities because mothers couldn't pay. see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising April 25, 2020. Margaret Thatcher has 43 books on Goodreads with 14026 ratings. All can agree that Margaret Thatcher changed the heart of British politics more than any politician since Clement Attlee. It always struck me as peculiar, too, when the Spice Girls briefly championed Thatcher as an early example of girl power. Selling off the family silver Harold Macmillan and later Labour called it, as Margaret Thatcher set about reversing the 1945 nationalisations that had put oil, gas, coal, electricity and an airline as well as a house removal company in public hands. This zest for ideas was boosted by the 2010 intake, which comprises just under half the parliamentary party. The Cameron and Osborne circle are crude copies carried away with the dangerous idea that conviction is all it takes to run a country. Norman Tebbit, one of Thatcher's acolytes and fellow "Munsters evacuee", said when the National Union of Mineworkers eventually succumbed to the military onslaught and starvation over which she presided: "We didn't just break the strike, we broke the spell." 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." When John Lennon was told of Elvis Presley's death, he famously responded: "Elvis died when he joined the army," meaning of course, that his combat clothing and clipped hair signalled the demise of the thrusting, Dionysian revolution of which he was the immaculate emblem. speaking in March 2002.). Thinking about it now, when I was a child she was just a strict woman telling everyone off and selling everything off. But growth rates in the decades since her period in office have been lower than during those that preceded her; nor does the balance of research evidence suggest that greater inequality acts as a spur to growth. The Crown's Version of Margaret Thatcher's 1990 Downfall Takes a Lot of Liberties with . She was among the first Western leaders to Any attempts at revisionism do no favours to her, women or feminism. My dad, I suspect, did. She fervently believed the market would soon repair their loss. Mrs Thatcher told the assembly: "It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.". I think by far her greatest virtue, in retrospect, is how little she cared if people liked her. On the contrary, consumerism and materialism have been the norm ever since, rising inequality the consistent trend as the rich soar ever further away from the rest. At countless demonstrations throughout the 80s, it expressed a curious ambivalence a first name intimacy as well as a furious rejection of all she stood for. Mikhail Gorbachev, for one, learned the hard way. The leading feminist Natasha Walter called Thatcher "the great unsung heroine of British feminism". Maybe my memory is fanciful. Critical Commentary: Margaret Thatcher outlined the British policy in relation to various world issues. The US academic Cass Sunstein was in Britain at the end of last month. press to rejoice at the capture of South Georgia on 25 April 1982, announced that White In the north of Ireland she had the army and the Diplock courts which reached their peak in the mid 1980s. Witness the steady downgrading of local government or the persistent assumption that the private sector will always be better than the public. Typifying these highly dubious claims about Thatcher was this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama: "The world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend." North sea oil was squandered when it should have seeded new industries. was an Oxford student home for the university holidays. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979. The south of England and the City of London were the future; the revenues from North Sea oil would pay for the unemployed in the old zones of manufacturing industry. "She had been offered the chance to get on and effectively she then refused to offer it to otherpeople. announced that White 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." If you have a . By 1990 it was transformed. A big decline in traditional industries took place across Europe and the US in the 80s and 90s. She was lucky in surviving the IRA's bomb. Too timid, too in thrall, the 13-year Labour government rarely dared challenge the attitudes she planted in the national psyche. Few would argue that they have not endured. one Only in the sense that all the women beneath her were blinded by falling shards. Not all writers were against her. Margaret Thatcher was not known for her sense of humour. But we have one beacon to guide us that Ronald Reagan never had. Full employment had been ditched in 1976, while Labour had introduced monetary targets and cash limits for Whitehall departments while Denis Healey was at the Treasury. Ingham's rough redraft of my speech with very little success. Before the real Thatcher's election in 1979 she took lessons with a speech coach at the Royal National Theatre, hoping to make her voice more commanding and less "shrill" in broadcasts. . Prime Minister Thatcher inherited a settled state of British Europeanness, in which Brussels and the [European] Community began to influence, and often determine, the British way of doing things. The late Benazir Bhutto later gave me much the same account. Reagan, who had recently left office as governor of California, was in London to deliver a speech to the Pilgrim Society. Oil helped Thatcher paper over the cracks, but Britain's age-old problem finding a way to pay its way in the world remains. She was a gentle and peaceable woman my mother, that is and said few hard words about anyone, but in certain parts of the United Kingdom, and among certain social classes, Mrs T was detested, and not just for what people thought were her policies but for her persona for what she was. 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. We were wary of this. Not even the Falklands war would push it off the tracks or damage it in any way. That gives them the nerve to set about cutting benefits and the public realm with a glee they don't bother to hide. Margaret Thatcher's speech writer will miss funeral but 'shed a tear' When the mourners gather for Baroness Thatcher's funeral tomorrow, one important figure from her political past will be . I don't know if they ever voted for her, I don't know if they liked her. Their target was "the enemy within" working-class power and the so-called culture of entitlement. In 11 years, Thatcher promoted only one woman to her cabinet, preferring instead to elevate men whom Spitting Image memorably and, in certain instances, accurately, described as "vegetables". Hats. Materialistic individualism was blessed as a virtue, the driver of national success. of times. 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.". Please activate cookies in order to turn autoplay off. Gloves. declared that she wanted our money back. 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 . She wrecked her own party, while promoting, via many a tortuous turn, Labour's resurrection. What saved Thatcher's bacon, and revolutionised her leadership, was Labour's unelectable Michael Foot and the Falklands war. Perhaps my early apathy and indifference are a result of what Thatcher deliberately engendered, the idea that "there is no such thing as society", that we are alone on our journey through life, solitary atoms of consciousness. She showed that modern prime ministers can still mark out room for individual manoeuvre. But for others, the change in landscape is all too real. On her return to London, she sent me a warm and complimentary letter, a prize in my personal archives. A Tory party desperate for women helped Thatcher through the political foothills to early success as an MP. For she changed the ethos of Britain as well as its landscape. The great contradiction in her politics was that someone who yearned for the certainties of small-town shopkeeper economics helped create the amoral yuppiedom of 80s excess and an explosion of cultural resistance that is still an ironic positive legacy of her time in power. It's interesting, though, that even when comedians try to be political, they can never really land a punch on David Cameron, Nick Clegg or George Osborne. The core ideas that underpinned her government endured through 13 years of Labour and are being extended by the coalition. press to rejoice at the capture of South Georgia on 25 April 1982 and Many of today's more controversial benefits, such as disability, date back to the 80s. To her detractors, Thatcher is the prime minister who wiped out more than 15% of Britain's industrial base with her dogmatic monetarism, squandered the once-in-a-lifetime windfall of North Sea oil on unemployment pay and tax cuts, and made the UK the unbalanced, unequal country it is today. Charles Powell was a senior foreign policy . 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. Thatcher has said that negotiation, and not strong economic sanctions, is the way to persuade South Africa's white-minority government to dismantle apartheid. I didn't know what to think of this fearsome woman. By raising the pay of their own staff to a minimum of the living wage, they have set an example which a growing number of large private-sector employers have followed. The first three speeches were by Winston Churchill. It was not yours, but belonged to the Post Office: in effect, the government. There is a paradox. She worked to enhance its corporate power. Everything was justified as long as it made money andthis, too, isstill with us. Reagan had sought to meet with then Prime Minister James Callaghan, but the request was rejected, and bucked to then Foreign Minister David Owen. successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to On the day Thatcher died, the Daily Mail ran a piece claiming that Coco Chanel "was a feminist before the word existed". In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon. "Margaret Thatcher was not a natural communicator. Today's Tories walk in Thatcher's footsteps, battling with their estranged cousins in Ukip over who is the rightful heir to her Eurosceptic legacy. But it was the killing of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane in February 1989 that reveals the depth of the Thatcher government's state collusion policy. The passing of Chvez is mourned by the many millions who loved him in Latin America and everywhere. And when I and several other Sinn Fin leaders were elected to the Assembly in 1982 we were barred from entry to Britain. At the time, Thatcher was the education secretary her first major political role. The spell of community. She preferred markets, and a strong but minimal central state that backed their rule. In 1984 Britain had 186 working coalmines and approximately 170,000 coalminers. Draining down those 11 years to their memorable essence, what does one light upon? While Labour was now "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich", ambitious feminism wanted to be let in to the boardroom and every corridor of power that and little else is what they mean by changing the world. 'It's a wonder nobody has taken a gun to that woman.' Lady Thatcher, you honor us by coming to the site of Sir Winston's pivotal speech, an event Westminster College has immortalized with the beautiful Winston Churchill Memorial. She was "outraged" when the programmes went ahead. Yet, at that last encounter, her tone was different. Keith Joseph was her guru. I was a professional writer. Margaret Thatcher. Those gushing depictions can be quite consequential, as it was for the week-long tidal wave of unbroken reverence that was heaped on Ronald Reagan upon his death, an episode that to this day shapes how Americans view him and the political ideas he symbolized. For years, in fact, she despised writers, except those who did her speeches. This site follow the same rules (and shares an editor). To the extent that there was an industrial strategy, it was to sell Britain as a destination for Japanese car companies and to shift the focus of the economy away from manufacturing towards financial services. I wouldn't say I have got myself a Kennedy-type speech-writer yet . And on the 11th June, we even won some nine seats we failed to gain in 1983. 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. Thatcher was a divisive woman who created discord, not harmony. Rather, she was a classic example of a certain kind of conservative woman who believed that all women should pull themselves up just as she had done, conveniently overlooking that not all women are blessed with the privileges that had been available to her, such as a wealthy and supportive husband and domestic help. There are more than 8,000. Peggy Noonan. Like John Major in her wake, Thatcher was convinced that she understood the Scots yet couldn't understand why we remained so stubbornly resistant towards the notion of understanding her. The most important thing Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did for British politics was to understand the significance of Thatcherism and to decide not to reverse it, indeed to carry it forward. 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. If you want anything done, ask a woman.". In a break with tradition and protocol, Reagan decided he'd also attend the "return dinner" at the British Embassy the next evening. Reversing Britain's long-term economic decline. Look at the trains on the track, the phone in your house, the trio of 1980s teenagers who lead the three main parties. As I spread my wings in politics, I discovered many Thatcher voters down south who were the same kind of people who loathed her in Scotland. Many are children of the Thatcher age. The remainder are listed without a text because . What is really left by Thatcher to history? The Thatcher government believed that the criminalisation of the republican prisoners would break the republican struggle. One also can't forget what happened to the agency that made Thatcher worldfamous: the Conservative party, of which she seemed such an improbable leader. Sharp definition, hard edges, no effort at fuzzy contours (David Cameron, take note). The Crown Season 4 brings with it a whole lot of change for Queen Elizabeth II's family and, more importantly, the United Kingdom. Reagan's decision to bomb Libya, spoke with concern about global warming, having done more than any other politician But the left also needs to look beyond the turbulent events in Europe to appreciate the speed of global change and the complications this creates for welfare-laden economies: the dynamos and innovators are increasingly found in Africa, Asia and Latin America rather than France, Germany and Spain. But the choice captures her perfectly. This legacy remains intact with a party that places a premium on radical thinking and, for all its flaws, sets the political agenda. In January 1983 she If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one's enemies. Then they discovered that they could make money, so they dropped all that. I am, it's safe to say, one of Thatcher's children. She failed to replace those jobs with well-paid equivalents. . The relative wealth of the UK 1% had been falling steadily for 50 years when Thatcher took power in 1979; since then it has climbed steeply and is almost back to 1918 levels. But Margaret Thatcher did not hesitate, and the long, substantive lunch seemed to energize both future world leaders. For a national matriarch she is oddly unmaternal. Thatcher's Spitting Image puppet was different from the others; while other characters, such as Ronald Reagan and the pope, were exaggerated into fantasy versions of themselves, the rubber Maggie was just like the one who appeared on the news a stern, cold, matronly figure who had a slightly oedipal relationship with her cabinet. The state retained control of some nationalised industries the railways, for example but BT, British Airways, British Steel, British Gas and the British Airports Authority were among the big companies sold off. Was it cruelty? There were sporadic resurrections. Her defenders always insisted that sentence had been misunderstood, but it stuck because it seemed to capture something essential about the Thatcherite creed: its embrace of individualism and apparent disdain for the collective. Neither shift of ownership and power would have happened without a leader prepared to take risks with her life. In a eulogy by the former prime minister of Great Britain, Margret Thatcher honors the legacy of Ronald Reagan, the late president. Born: 21 June 1932 in Halifax. She had just finished the first volume of her memoirs, which she insisted was all her own work. As I scan the statements of my memory bank for early deposits (it'd be a kid's memory bank account at a neurological NatWest where you're encouraged to become a greedy little capitalist with an escalating family of porcelain pigs), I see her in her hairy helmet, condescending on Nationwide, eviscerating eunuch MPs and baffled BBC fuddy duddies with her General Zodd stare and coldly condemning the IRA. Buy the CD-ROM from this link or find one Just look around. 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". This was a historic step, and resulted in further reinforcing the US-UK alliance. Former Tory MP Louise Mensch, with no apparent sense of irony, invoked precepts of propriety to announce: "Pygmies of the left so predictably embarrassing yourselves, know this: not a one of your leaders will ever be globally mourned like her.". talked of "Victorian Values". The latest pit to close, Maltby in Yorkshire, still has a death and general purpose fund to help fellow miners and their families in times of hardship. Margaret Thatcher's most popular book is The Downing Street Years. As the coalition sets about shrinking the welfare state, it's still embarked on Thatcher's project of rolling back the frontiers of the state, dismantling the settlement that held from 1945 until it unravelled in the 1970s. She said "there is no such thing as society", and set out to prove it by promoting individual greed and competition for everything. "Yes and that was one of the many weird things about her," smirked Alexei Sayle. And that made it easy to mock her. I will know that we have finally broken from the kind of capitalism that she championed and which died in 2008 when we see workers elected on to company boards. camps were revealed in August 1992. first television interview the following day. They had a point, but they had no idea how fascinating she was so powerful, successful, popular, omniscient, irritating and, in our view, wrong. The lady was too shrewd to try that, and barely succeeded in reducing the share of the national income taken by the public sector. Nicknamed the "Iron Lady," Thatcher served as the prime minister of England from 1979 to 1990. The word "free" is used to help the audience This reverie only occurred when the car was out of view. Whatever else may be true of her, Thatcher engaged in incredibly consequential acts that affected millions of people around the world. Unquestionably, a major component of what Reagan achieved was mirrored in what Baroness Thatcher herself achieved. Are there, even, things we look back on with regret for their passing? It may be wrong to imagine that she intended to de-industrialise Britain, but the policies followed by her government had that effect. At a party leaders' meeting in Washington, DC in 1985, Prime Minister Thatcher spent all day in the House of Commons, then boarded Concorde and flew to Washington to participate until late into the evening; she took such policy co-operation very seriously. her maiden She pointed out that she was only 10 years old when she ceased to be prime minister. This, too, we still live with. Superlatives can be agreed: a remarkable first woman PM; the first winner of three elections in a row; brave; tough; relentless; clever; sleeplessly driven by a self-confident conviction that overawed her enemies. bowling at the Lord Mayor's Banquet (12 November) and gave Above all, they lack her competence at running the machinery of government. Somesay she revolutionised British politics certainly never again could people say nobody would vote for a woman but it served a reactionary end. I'd become a delinquent, living on heroin and benefit fraud. And we won back three we lost at by-elections. While some remember her as a national saviour, others only see her ruthless demolition of flailing state-owned industries. International studies of OECD countries suggest a close relationship between the decline in trade union membership and the rise in inequality. Yet I wrote columns of pretty unremitting hostility to most of what she did. It led to riots that nobody needed. of her best Parliamentary speeches in a debate on the strikes, prayed on the As a result, Labour authorities in eight or so British cities have set up fairness commissions to reduce income differences locally. The blunt, pathetic reality today is that a little old lady has died, who in the winter of her life had to water roses alone under police supervision. "Thatcher as mother" seemed, to my tiddly mind, anathema. 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. But former speechwriter Trevor Reeves can no longer . The most widely used measure of income differences shows inequality increasing by more than a third during her period in office. drew an important moral from the Falklands war: "We have ceased to If I become PM, I will deliver the radical set of reforms need to unleash growth. She was the first prime minister to be more accountable to the international market than to the British economy. Many hated her. In the 80s, she was the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy and is now simply called "comedy". During the speech, . The battle with the miners and leftwing councils lay ahead, as did the trauma of an IRA assassination bid. The set text is still Thatcher's declaration quoted in The Audience that "There is no such thing as society". Now it was the turn of the words, and no one, of course, would, against all the odds, do them better than the lady who, 25 years before, once thought the sky was beyond her limit. Margaret Thatcher, the "Iron Lady" of British politics who died Monday at the age of 87, is being lionized as the woman who tilted British domestic and economic policy to the right. No gloves, or hats, except for royalty or at funerals, but feet on the table, whisky glass at hand, into the small hours of solitude, for want of male cronies in the masculine world she dominated for all her 11yearsin power. At a banquet in Belgrade the press sat next to the so-called "Garden Girls", who were the secretaries at No 10. Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home, Heath: they seem, by comparison, evanescent figures. For the most part, it has not been undone. For a start, she had a superb memory for a brief, and she would have had no problem memorising quickly any number of lines. Literature had nothing to do with politics, the Italian writers said. Demonising unions and stripping the great mass of private-sector workers of a voice and power in the workplace is still the root of the great living standards crisis that saw the share of wealth going to wages slide long before Lehman Brothers failed. Modern comedians complain that they don't have personalities, they don't really stand for anything.

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