Farewell to the Iron Lady
Nearly everyone, anywhere in the world, will know that
Margaret Thatcher died in London last week.
Her face has dominated the UK media since that day much as she dominated
UK politics from 1979. Since she left office in 1990, having been unseated by
her own party, there have been four different Prime Ministers and five leaders
of the Conservative party. Why was she such a dominant figure in British
politics? And why has her death led to such an outpouring of love and hate?
Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party in
1975. She was the first woman to lead a political party in the UK. In 1979 she
became Prime Minister – the first female to do so in any Western country.
Thatcher took over a country that had just suffered the ‘winter of discontent’,
characterised for many voters by images of rubbish piled high on pavements
after a long strike by refuse collectors, and which was in economic difficulty
with inflation running at over 20% and the major industries and utilities run
(badly) by the State. It took, for example, a minimum of six weeks to get a new
telephone connected by the state-run telecoms firm and there were similarly
long waiting times for installation of basic products such as gas fires and
cookers. Thatcher turned this upside down, she put the market rather than the
government at the heart of the economy and proceeded to liberalise and
privatise the UK economy. In the words of one former Prime Minister, she ‘sold
off the family silver’ through an ambitious, and arguably successful, privatisation
campaign and liberalised the financial sector, freeing it from regulation, through the ‘big bang’ which many claim put
in place the conditions which allowed for the 2008 financial crisis.
Many judge her economic policies to have been successful yet
they had social consequences which divided the UK in the 1980s and which are
still highly visible today. She reduced the power of the unions, most notably
through the year-long Miner’s Strike in 1984, which divided communities and saw
violent battles between the police and striking miners. Her economic policies,
and the subsequent decline in British manufacturing, led to a significant rise
in unemployment and social unrest in major cities in the UK. The impact of
these policies was felt throughout the country but not evenly – the South and
London generally benefitted whereas the rest of the country went through
difficult times. A look at recent electoral maps show the long term impact of
these changes with the country still divided by a Conservative south and a
Labour north.
Margaret Thatcher’s funeral will be a ceremonial one. Only
Winston Churchill has received a higher honour with a State Funeral in 1965.
Churchill united the country during the Second World War and was seen, by
nearly all, as a great Prime Minister. Margaret Thatcher will, for a large
number of Britons, never receive such recognition, yet her lasting impact on
the UK is probably just as significant.
Written by Kate Daubney,
Like
many Focus members, I have lived in other countries; however in my opinion, the Brits always give
the world a master class in organizing public events. Last Wednesday, I woke up early and took the
tube to St Paul’s cathedral for Baroness Thatcher’s funeral. It was 8:30am by
the time I arrived at the front of the Cathedral and as you can imagine, I was
not alone; some people had arrived the night before in order to have a good
view of this historic event. Television crews, journalists, and photographers
from all over the world were already busy making preparations for this grand event.
All of us stood in an orderly fashion behind the barriers. There was small talk
between people in the crowd, explaining their reason for being there, while others
stood in silence. 
