Farewell to the Iron Lady

 

 

 

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, 

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