Britain's relative decline came to an end, although that was more due to slowdowns in countries such as France and Germany than an acceleration in UK productivity growth. deeply felt eulogy, filmed in advance and relayed by video link to screens in the National Cathedral in Washington. "I thought I'd be overjoyed, but really it's just another one bites the dust " This demonstrates, I suppose, that if you opposed Thatcher's ideas it was likely because of their lack of compassion, which is really just a word for love. "Comes here every week to water them flowers." And for all the tributes being paid by ministers this week, the issues at the topof the government's agenda are all to do with clearing up the mess she created. 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. Over the years, and through much re-telling, the story had it that Thatcher told Hitchens to bend over, and that she spanked him with her order papers. The three of us watched as the gentle horticultural ritual was feebly enacted, then regarded the Iron Lady being helped into the back of a car and trundling off. The Brixton rioters, the Argentinians, teachers; everyone actually. The proportion of children living in relative poverty more than doubled during the 80s, and the damage has never been undone. This is not the Highland way. And on the 11th June, we even won some nine seats we failed to gain in 1983. The result . Interview by Benedict King. The fact that the Thatcher question even gets asked confirms vividly just what an upas tree she remains for Scottish Toryism. 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." But there are less obvious manifestations of the same habit. Would we like her back? She will be for ever unforgiven by those who now see worse being done in her name to another generation. To enrich the global 1% she so brilliantly represented, our "entitlement" had to go and she was just the one to do it. 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. A longer version of this article appears on Gerry Adams' blog, Margaret Thatcher was good at destruction. She adopts an endearing and sentimental tone using ethos, repetition, and . All can agree that Margaret Thatcher changed the heart of British politics more than any politician since Clement Attlee. Fourthly, policy was aimed at those who, according to the prime minister, wanted to get on in life. The jobs that went during the 80s tended to be good, skilled jobs, delivering decent incomes and some security. It is not true that Thatcher didn't care about the media. Rhetorical Analysis Of Margaret Thatcher's Speech 722 Words | 3 Pages . Donning a starched coiff and padded shoulders out to there, Emmy Award winner Gillian Anderson of The X-Files is . Thatcher exposed the sharp edges of class division in Britain and the strike of 1984/5 was as much a clash of values as it was about pit closures. 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. If it ended in disaster, the seeds were only partly hers. A Tory party desperate for women helped Thatcher through the political foothills to early success as an MP. It came very hard, getting the words and paragraphs in the right order, a task for which, she eventually admitted, she had hired some help. There are still some great comics doing political material, with Mark Steel and Mark Thomas flying the flag of alternative comedy, while people such as Josie Long and Chris Coltrane find the funny in activism. Thatcher became prime minister because she was a woman, not despite it. Thanks to the comparison with Cameron, we are reminded that the Thatcher reign was more circumspect and well-managed than it seemed at the time. Conscious of being awoman, and incapable of pretending otherwise. 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. Since 1990 a selection of statements is listed. In the 2004 eulogy in honor of the late president, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher uses a series of rhetorical devices such as parallelism, repetition, and ethos to convey the message in which Reagan was much more than an excellent president. After all, the right began to refocus only after Tony Blair's second landslide, when people began to recognise they would not drift back into power. She was able to reach But look at this typical difference between her and her imitators: where Cameron has charged into Europe, taking his party out of the influential European People's party of natural allies, making enemies and building no useful coalitions, it was she who signed the Single European Act, understanding its importance for British trade, careful to make allies as well as swinging her handbag. Farewell, indeed, Baroness Thatcher. Great speeches: 'Orwellian nightmare' if Tories fail, claims Margaret Thatcher. in his defence during the IranContra affair, told Rishi Sunak 20 July 2022 9:30pm. Her Irish policy failed miserably. November 15, 2020 9:00 AM EST. defended Ronald Beleagured Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher makes pun during the 1981 Conservative Party conference speech: "the lady's not for turning" she says to her crit. It was a watershed moment in Irish politics. At its heart must be an active programme to create good jobs and raise living standards. In January 1976 she gave the Born: 21 June 1932 in Halifax. That was the daunting task Margaret Thatcher set herself when she arrived in Downing Street in May 1979 at the end of a traumatic decade that had seen a three-day week, inflation topping 25%, a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and the winter of discontent. And the miners. So look around this kingdom of ours, at a devolved Scotland contemplating independence a state of affairs that owes much to Thatcher's antagonistic relationship with that country. History will judge her, but not a country in Europe was untouched by Thatcher's example. On the day Thatcher died, the Daily Mail ran a piece claiming that Coco Chanel "was a feminist before the word existed". The impact that Hayek's writing had on Thatcher, her advisors, and her policies is undeniable. The price we all continue to pay for Thatcherite policies is to live in a less cohesive and more antisocial society, in which community life is weaker, people feel less able to trust each other and fewer of those in government have the experience and compassion to represent or understand the vast majority. No children excluded from school activities because mothers couldn't pay. So the woman I met in Curzon Street, dimpling elegantly, can now be seen in history with an unexpected achievement to her credit. talked of "Victorian Values". As working families in poverty now account for more than half of those below the poverty line, a government committed to "making work pay" should surely encourage this trend and raise the minimum wage. And nor could Thatcher, much to her relief as she allegedly abhorred the word, as doubtless Chanel did, too. It was only in the mid-80s that she became truly radical and remotely comparable to David Cameron in 2010. The authors show just how much . She would, say some who knew her, have a found a way to finesse a change of direction by now. Texts for listed statements are available on the site in almost 70 per cent of cases. to secure international action to repair the damaged ozone layer. My mate John and I were wandering there together, he expertly proselytising on the architecture and the history of the place, me pretending to be Rumpole of the Bailey (quietly in my mind), when we spied in the distant garden a hunched and frail figure, in a raincoat, scarf about her head, watering the roses under the breezy supervision of a masticating copper. The first is what changed in the temper of Britain and the British. . speech to the House of Lords in June 1993. Demanding that no criticisms be voiced to counter that hagiography is to enable false history and a propagandistic whitewashing of bad acts, distortions that become quickly ossified and then endure by virtue of no opposition and the powerful emotions created by death. Seeing as women aren't a minor Brit-flick grateful for even a bad review, that truism doesn't quite hold true here. That said, by the mid-1980s it was clear that the Conservative government's economic policy was based on a handful of core principles. announced that White Emery Evans . No homeless or disabled people need beg on the streets. Unquestionably, a major component of what Reagan achieved was mirrored in what Baroness Thatcher herself achieved. 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. Speech: 07:39-28:33 Q & A: 28:34-48:08 (Recording ends abruptly during Q&A) Topics of . They lived in close-knit communities built around and based on employment at the local colliery. Its impact on the streets of the north is evident in the statistics of death. The real comic nemeses of Thatcher were the puppets of Spitting Image. "Maggie! We might speculate that an adviser had offered Thatcher a selection of good lines, or that she had asked to see some. Draining down those 11 years to their memorable essence, what does one light upon? 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. Here is a selection of the best writing from commentators, politicians and journalists on the legacy of Margaret Thatcher's 11 years in power - and on her continuing impact in the time following her downfall, as figures from across the political spectrum examine the legacy of one of the most important political figures from the last half-century, this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama, key role not only in bringing about the first Gulf War, publicly advocate for the 2003 attack on Iraq, the Guardian reported upon the death last month of Hugo Chavez, the Daily Mail has morefemale bylines than any other UK paper, Alan Krueger, chair of Obama's council of economic advisers, nor does the balance of research evidence suggest that greater inequality acts as a spur to growth, decline in trade union membership and the rise in inequality, intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich, the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy, Rik Mayall's student rants in The Young Ones, wicked, incompetent mindset that was the spirit of the 80s, "very fashionable in the Guardian for a few months before the financial crisis". But this didn't come without a price. 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. In October 1984 she survived an IRA bomb during the Conservative Conference The set text is still Thatcher's declaration quoted in The Audience that "There is no such thing as society". In the 80s, she was the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy and is now simply called "comedy". At Bruges in September 1988 she outraged European orthodoxy by declaring: 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. 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 was part of her conspicuous virtue, her indifference to familiar political conventions. Buy the CD-ROM from this link or find one To the victors we saycongratulations. She became harder than hard. Getting the record straight. Author: Margaret Thatcher Year: 1979 Location: London, the UK Occasion: Address to the Parliament. Sir Bernard Ingham was Margaret Thatcher writ large. TRIBUTES were paid last night to Sir Bernard Ingham, the longstanding press secretary to Margaret Thatcher and a columnist in The Yorkshire Post until just a few weeks ago. Later that year she introduced the broadcasting ban on Sinn Fin, which prevented viewers and listeners hearing my voice. It knew what Thatcher wanted. The government's job was to keep inflation low, not to boost growth through demand management. (Interestingly, Currie also recalled that when she approached Thatcher in 1988 to get approval for the world's first national breast-screening programme, she tried to appeal to the PM initially "as a woman" but that swiftly proved unsuccessful. There's still the rage, still the unfairness, so where is the comedy? Yet, as the heated benefits debate showed last week, Labour is trapped by history bereft of fresh ideas and, when tentatively offering proposals, strangled by the most stifling conservatism. Action. 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. Thatcher came to power when the economy was approaching a moment of truth after three decades of poor performance relative to other western countries. Where once we stood within a recognisable postwar social democratic European tradition, after Thatcher the country had rowed halfway across the Atlantic, psychologically imbued with US neoliberal individualism. Above all has been the hollowing out of the labour market. A Soviet . When I was a kid, Thatcher was the headmistress of our country. Maybe it was the sound of the estuary pronunciation robbing her of her aspirational airs, a prototype of the Bouquet/Bucket joke. Thatcher is gone, but Thatcherism has infected and discredited all mainstream parties, depriving us of a chance to turn it down. Though the Prime Minister was known to shed a tear or two during her 11 years leading the United Kingdom . Miners were a hardy race of people who faced constant danger in the cause of mining coal but underneath that they were caring, sensitive individuals with a commitment to the communities in which they lived. Throw the Lib Dems into the mix and it becomes highly combustible. In fact, several countries have adopted these ideas with startlingly successful results; just changing the wording on some forms raised an extra 200m income tax in Britain, while personalised text messages drastically reduced the use of bailiffs to recover court fines. Margaret Thatcher's most popular book is The Downing Street Years. And when I and several other Sinn Fin leaders were elected to the Assembly in 1982 we were barred from entry to Britain. When she took over in 1979, the bottom of that device would have carried the legend, "Property of the GPO." It was a Charles I moment in British history. There was always an element of the erotic in the national obsession with her. successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to As she said in her memoirs: "There was no one else." She was lucky in surviving the IRA's bomb. as far as can be known. She lavished praise on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, then in its infancy, and laid out the . Farewelling Baroness Margaret Thatcher in a proper fashion is a difficult task: she left such a deep imprint upon the world that assessing its importance demands volumes analyzing her beliefs and paying proper tribute. 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 is no coincidence the three most influential centre-right thinktanks were all conceived over the following months. In the north of Ireland she had the army and the Diplock courts which reached their peak in the mid 1980s. People would denounce them unequivocally, often in graphic terms. Maybe my memory is fanciful. 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. She was an ardent pro-European, and her 1979 manifesto made no mention of radical union reform or privatisation. But on the subject of Europe, Thatcher became a contradictory figure. And then, perversely, would come the throwaway, sign-off remark to the effect of: "At least you know where you stand with Maggie she hates us and we hate her.". 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. She became leader of the Conservatives the year I was born and prime minister when I was four. The first time I met Margaret Thatcher, I swear she was wearing gloves. Exactly the same is true of Thatcher. You can get the Turnitin report from the writer on request along with the final deliverable. September 25, 2020. The centralised statism that dominated politics for much of the 20th century, given its last pathetic gasp under the profligate government of Gordon Brown, ultimately failed the poor while proving financially unsustainable and unsuited to modern times. The day before she died I passed through Greenock on the train. speech in the House of Commons on 5 February 1960 and gave her Reagan would often hasten to remind those paying tribute to his cold war strategy that it was, in the strictest sense of the term, a team effort. Perhaps Labour would benefit from another defeat, given the danger of taking power unprepared and turning into a zombie government, like the tragedy unfurling in France. I am, it's safe to say, one of Thatcher's children. It destroyed the public's power to determine via parliament the services and prices of gas, electricity, telephone. "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.". Talk to a Labour MP and you end up discussing politics and positioning; talk to a Tory, and it tends to be about policy. three press interviews (15-17 November) when Howe's resignation speech for turning. "Respecting the grief" of Thatcher's family members is appropriate if one is friends with them or attends a wake they organize, but the protocols are fundamentally different when it comes to public discourse about the person's life and political acts. But as weand others (including Alan Krueger, chair of Obama's council of economic advisers) have shown, wider income differences reduce social mobility and make it harder for people with poorer backgrounds to do so. Ingham's rough redraft of my speech with very little success. 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. Many whom Reagan encountered in public life thought of him in this way, but most politicians would love to reach even "Grade B" status. Perhaps it is more simple for all the iniquities of capitalism, the tide of history favours the right. 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." can do business together". It fell to Blair to do something about the latter, while giving free rein to the former. Many hated her. which revealed a good deal as to her political The core of this site is a massive database of MT's public statements of all kinds across the years (speeches, interviews, press conferences, etc), searchable by date, subject, importance, and keyword. Modern comedians complain that they don't have personalities, they don't really stand for anything. I'd unthinkingly imbibed enough doctrine to know that, troubled as I was, there was little point looking elsewhere for support. Trying to trim back spending in her department, she ended the milk subsidies for all children over the age of seven. How then do I feel on the day of this matriarchal mourning? 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. "What's going on there, mate?" 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 papers date from Margaret Thatcher's childhood to the end of her life, and include tens of thousands of photographs, as well as a vast collection of press cuttings, and many audio and video tapes of public and private events. Margaret Thatcher was not known for her sense of humour. Any such objections would have been invalid. and She lost seven cabinet ministers on the Europe question, a record that permeated the party for years afterwards. The eulogy is a good illustration of Thatcher's feelings for . They're happy to share big windfall bonuses with their cronies, they'll stick up for deposed dictator chums when they're down on their luck, they'll find opportunities in business for people they care about. A couple of days later on the 11th, Margaret Thatcher the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, wrote an eulogy for Ronald Reagan. Reagan had sought to meet with then Prime Minister James Callaghan, but the request was rejected, and bucked to then Foreign Minister David Owen. There were sporadic resurrections. But there were also cuts for basic-rate taxpayers: the 1988 budget, for example, cut the top rate of tax from 60% to 40% and the standard rate from 27% to 25%.
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