margaret thatcher speech writer

September 25, 2020. She lavished praise on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, then in its infancy, and laid out the . The last time I met her was after all this was over. Large parts of society never recovered, while Germany and other countries managed the transition without such brutality. 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. As I see it, and as one who had the pleasure of knowing both, they would recognize the huge opportunity created by the presence of each in the respective national and international policy-making role. But on the subject of Europe, Thatcher became a contradictory figure. "The original alternative comics just did it because they had to," he says. 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. "Comes here every week to water them flowers." 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. 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry. one Margaret Thatcher formally tendered her resignation to the Queen early this morning after leaving Downing Street for the last time. But on their catastrophic economic policy, it's full-speed ahead into the concrete wall. I think on balance Thatcher did for Britain what was needed at the time. And on the 11th June, we even won some nine seats we failed to gain in 1983. with concern about global warming, having done more than any other politician Her onslaught on the trade unions left those movements pale imitations of their former selves, too weak to resist the drive to the "flexible labour market" which has seen Britain become the home of what one senior Labour figure calls "crappy jobs", with low pay and no protection. It came to a head over her most egregious policy failure, Europe. It accounted for a large part of the mark Thatcher left on Britain. "Don't follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.". Above all has been the hollowing out of the labour market. It got over a deep, instinctive hostility to women at the top of anything, and put her there. Out! Thatcher's 11 years of dictating British policy in Ireland was a legacy of bitterness and entrenched division. It was a watershed moment in Irish politics. ", As Matthew Parris evocatively put it in Monday's Times, "She rather liked men (preferring our company, perhaps, to that of women), [but] she thought us the weaker sex. Margaret Thatcher might seem to some like an unlikely pioneer of the need for climate action but, in the late 1980s, she made a series of remarkable speeches and interventions on the subject and . It's telling that Tony Blair's domestic legacy amounts to two responses to Thatcherism: forcing Labour to accept it and then compensating for the damage the Tories had wreaked through sustained underinvestment in the public realm. She wanted to win, but did not put much faith in the quick smile. "Maggie! "We have not Each was characterised by her attention to detail. We liked disliking her. All Rights Reserved. There's something distinctively creepy - in a Roman sort of way - about this mandated ritual that our political leaders must be heralded and consecrated as saints upon death. 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. The current crop of leaders are so dull, so ill-defined, so lacking in personality that it's almost impossible for comedians to rage against them. Gloves. There are more than 8,000. 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. Yet despite the attempts of some columnists to claim otherwise, Thatcher can't really be seen as "a warrior in the sex war", let alone as "the ultimate women's libber". 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. It never was. Hugo Young was a political columnist forthe Guardian from 1984 until 2003 and biographer of Margaret Thatcher. In this eulogy, Thatcher uses rhetorical strategies to convince her readers into believing what she states. 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. If you want anything done, ask a woman.". The truth lies somewhere between these extremes. Bob Slayer, one of the genuine alternative comedians on the scene, likes to note the irony of what's become of comedy. But we reckoned we got Thatcher only too well and didn't like what we saw, far less what we heard. 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. That did the trick.). Critical Commentary: Margaret Thatcher outlined the British policy in relation to various world issues. Sunstein worked for a Democratic president, but did not meet the Labour leader or key advisers. They're not Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher had planned to attack Labour's unwillingness to condemn picket-line violence in her 1984 conference speech but changed her mind when an IRA bomb hit The Grand Hotel in Brighton. She was an ardent pro-European, and her 1979 manifesto made no mention of radical union reform or privatisation. In the 80s, she was the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy and is now simply called "comedy". Arguably, it was not the sale of council houses that was the problem, but the failure to replace the stock and maintain a sufficient supply of affordable homes. I was on my own. These developments set a benchmark. Which raises the question: why isn't this happening now? John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. Of course, it's in politics that the shadow looms most clearly. 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. The poll-tax rioters. She would, say some who knew her, have a found a way to finesse a change of direction by now. Margaret Thatcher's most important long-term legacy is likely to be the huge rise in inequality that she caused. She will be for ever unforgiven by those who now see worse being done in her name to another generation. But these concrete achievements do not wholly explain why she still looms so large, large enough that not one but two current West End plays The Audience and Billy Elliot grant Thatcher a pivotal, if largely unsympathetic, role, whether seen or unseen. Gillian Anderson's portrayal of the Iron Lady in "The Crown" is pretty spot-on. in his defence during the IranContra affair, told 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. The novel may thrive in adversity and it was a general sense of dismay at the new world she was showing us that lured many writers into opposition. For some, the only consequence of that shift, still visible today, will be a changed brand name or higher bills. For she changed the ethos of Britain as well as its landscape. Thatcher is gone, but Thatcherism has infected and discredited all mainstream parties, depriving us of a chance to turn it down. By the 1983 election she had sold off only Britoil and some council houses. Where copyright is the problem, the full text can be found on the Complete There were rumours of a different philosophy, at least in personal relationships. Well, everything really, even her name. 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. Faced down trade union leaders after her early years apprentice years, when Jim Callaghan's Britain was falling apart in which the commonest fear was that the little lady would not be able to deal with them across the table. Its impact on the streets of the north is evident in the statistics of death. But for others, the change in landscape is all too real. She gave it her best shot. The stance was often in broadest terms, more moral than political. Without it, she would have been nothing. Following in the footsteps of Santa Claus, Steve Hynd quickly compiled a list of all the naughty boys and girls "on the left" who dared to express criticisms of the dearly departed Prime Minister, warning that he "will continue to add to this list throughout the day". Absurd or not, it does indeed seem alien not least to those born in the 1980s, the generation we shall always call Thatcher's children. In January 1983 she Three aspects of it never completely leave my head. It's how she would have, if pressed, put it herself. She is an anomaly; a product of the freak-onomy of her time. All of the Tory edicts that bludgeoned our nation, as my generation squirmed through ghoulish puberty, were confusing. Copyright Margaret Thatcher Foundation 2023. She was, of course, the first and so far only female British prime minister, Jon Snow reiterated on Monday night, insinuating that this achievement should in general be celebrated, never mind the specifics of her leadership. When she took over in 1979, the bottom of that device would have carried the legend, "Property of the GPO." One of the few direct hits scored in the modern era was when Alex Ross and James Herring remixed Nick Clegg's bizarre "I'm sorry" speech and turned it into a hilarious R&B tune. April 17, 2013, 6:40 PM. Leaving aside the detail that the word "feminist" came into existence in 1895, comfortably in Chanel's lifetime, the woman who valued femininity above all other qualities in a woman and was heavily involved with the Nazis, including a wartime relationship with German officer Hans Gunther von Dincklage, could not, in any circumstances, be described as a feminist. at The Hague in May 1992. These include, "We have to show them that we're better than they are", and "Women can get into corners that men can't reach!" Chavez was indeed a divisive and controversial figure, and it would have been reckless to conceal that fact out of some misplaced deference to the grief of his family and supporters. morning, Available for everyone, funded by readers. Moreover, it's hard not to see the roots of the 2008 crash in the unshackling of the City two decades earlier. It was mostly foreigners who could not understand why she fell. In the pantheon of this comedian's attacks on Thatcher, it was a retort that probably won't be treasured longer than the best lines from The Young Ones. 1971 was the year of Ted Heath's Conservative government, which was trying to make huge savings to the budget. 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. The prime minister was intensely interested in the campaign, and asked many penetrating questions. Thatcher's most baleful influence on government was not on industries and services she privatised but those she did not. Dignity and decorum ruled the day - except in the poisoned anonymity of the internet. That's history, but what matters to us is her legacy now that her heirs and imitators rule in her wake. Perhaps she had just come inside. In former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's eulogy speech for President Ronald Reagan (2004), she elucidates what a kind and powerful man he was. In 1976 it still did not help and in the same year they had to take a loan in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) [] . Under Heath and Jim Callaghan the question was widely asked: had democracies become "ungovernable"? of her best Parliamentary speeches in a debate on the strikes, prayed on the That said, by the mid-1980s it was clear that the Conservative government's economic policy was based on a handful of core principles. 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. Her effect was to force a deeper consideration of priorities, sometimes expressed in a variety of dystopias. the British Embassy in Paris and stated Born: 21 June 1932 in Halifax. Edited text: This speech was delivered to the Conservative party conference in Brighton on October 10 1980. The authors show just how much . Those strikes were confusing to me as a child. . After being asked to deliver a eulogy for the late Ronald Reagan on June 11, 2004, Margaret Thatcher gave a speech about her dear friend, and highlighted his best qualities through her writing. 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 eulogy is a good illustration of Thatcher's feelings for . She continued for some reason to consider me worth talking to.

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