Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...
's term as the
prime minister of the United Kingdom
The prime minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government of the United Kingdom. The prime minister advises the sovereign on the exercise of much of the royal prerogative, chairs the Cabinet and selects its ministers. As modern pr ...
began on 4 May 1979 when she accepted an invitation of Queen
Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...
to form a government, and ended on 28 November 1990 upon her resignation. She was elected to the position in
1979
Events
January
* January 1
** United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim heralds the start of the ''International Year of the Child''. Many musicians donate to the ''Music for UNICEF Concert'' fund, among them ABBA, who write the song ...
, having led the
Conservative Party
The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right.
Political parties called The Conservative P ...
since 1975, and won landslide re-elections in
1983
The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call.
Events January
* January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to Internet protocol suite, TCP/IP is officially completed (this is consid ...
and
1987
File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, k ...
. She gained intense media attention as Britain's first female prime minister, and was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century.
Her premiership ended when she withdrew from the
1990 Conservative leadership election.
In domestic policy, Thatcher implemented sweeping reforms concerning the
affairs of the economy, eventually including the
privatisation of most nationalised industries, as well as weakening of trade unions. She emphasised reducing the government's role and letting the marketplace decide in terms of the
neoliberal ideas pioneered by
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the ...
and
Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek ( , ; 8 May 189923 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian–British economist, legal theorist and philosopher who is best known for his defense of classical liberalism. Haye ...
, promoted by her mentor
Keith Joseph
Keith Sinjohn Joseph, Baron Joseph, (17 January 1918 – 10 December 1994), known as Sir Keith Joseph, 2nd Baronet, for most of his political life, was a British politician, intellectual and barrister. A member of the Conservative Party, he ...
, and promulgated by the media as
Thatcherism.
In foreign policy, Thatcher decisively defeated Argentina in the
Falklands War
The Falklands War ( es, link=no, Guerra de las Malvinas) was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and its territorial de ...
in 1982. In longer-range terms she worked with
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
to wage a war against communism during the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
. However, she also promoted collaboration with Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...
in
ending the Cold War.
In her first years she had a deeply divided cabinet. As the leader of the
"dry" faction she purged most of the
One Nation "wet" Conservatives and took full control.
By the late 1980s, however, she had alienated several senior members of her Cabinet with her opposition to greater economic integration into the
European Economic Community
The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organization created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957,Today the largely rewritten treaty continues in force as the ''Treaty on the functioning of the European Union'', as renamed by the Lisb ...
, which she argued would lead to a federalist Europe and surrender Britain's ability to self govern. She also alienated many Conservative voters and parliamentarians with the imposition of a
local poll tax. As her support ebbed away, she was
challenged for her leadership and persuaded by Cabinet to withdraw from the second round of voting – ending her eleven-year premiership. She was succeeded by
John Major
Sir John Major (born 29 March 1943) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997, and as Member of Parliament ...
, her
Chancellor of the Exchequer
The chancellor of the Exchequer, often abbreviated to chancellor, is a senior minister of the Crown within the Government of the United Kingdom, and head of His Majesty's Treasury. As one of the four Great Offices of State, the Chancellor is ...
.
After retiring from the
Commons in 1992, she was given a
life peerage as Baroness Thatcher (of
Kesteven
The Parts of Kesteven ( or ) are a traditional division of Lincolnshire, England. This division had long had a separate county administration (quarter sessions), along with the two other Parts of Lincolnshire, Lindsey and Holland.
Etymology
Th ...
in the
County of Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-we ...
) which entitled her to sit in the
House of Lords
The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...
. In 2013, she
died of a stroke at
the Ritz Hotel, London
The Ritz London is a Grade II listed 5-star hotel in Piccadilly, London, England. A symbol of high society and luxury, the hotel is one of the world's most prestigious and best known. The Ritz has become so associated with luxury and elegance ...
, at the age of 87. Domestically, Thatcher remains a highly controversial and polarising figure; notwithstanding this, historians and political scientists usually
rank her as an above-average prime minister. Her tenure constituted a
realignment towards
neoliberal
Neoliberalism (also neo-liberalism) is a term used to signify the late 20th century political reappearance of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism after it fell into decline following the Second World War. A prominent fa ...
policies in Britain, with the complicated legacy attributed to Thatcherism debated into the 21st century.
First term (1979–1983)
![House of Commons elected members, 1979](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/House_of_Commons_elected_members%2C_1979.svg)
Thatcher was Britain and Europe's first female prime minister. She appointed few women to high office and did not make women's issues a priority,
but her pioneering election was widely hailed as an achievement for women in general.
Thatcher, having to share the media spotlight with
Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, her death in 2022. She was queen ...
and
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales (born Diana Frances Spencer; 1 July 1961 – 31 August 1997) was a member of the British royal family. She was the first wife of King Charles III (then Prince of Wales) and mother of Princes William and Harry. Her ac ...
, increasingly assumed regal poses, such as taking the salute at the victory parade after the
Falklands War
The Falklands War ( es, link=no, Guerra de las Malvinas) was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and its territorial de ...
, and becoming the centre of attraction on foreign visits.
Tensions between the two were kept hidden until 1986, when ''the Sunday Times'' reported on the Queen's alleged criticism of Thatcher's policies, especially regarding the people of the Commonwealth, as "uncaring, confrontational and socially divisive." Thatcher often ridiculed the Commonwealth, which the Queen held in very high esteem.
Economic affairs
![Annual U](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Annual_U.K._GDP_Growth%2C_1948_to_2012_%28Thatcher%29_%28alt%29.png)
Biographer
John Campbell reports that in July 1978, before Thatcher became prime minister, when asked by a Labour MP in the Commons what she meant by socialism:
Deflationary strategy
Under Margaret Thatcher's government, the taming of inflation displaced high employment as the primary policy objective.
As a
monetarist
Monetarism is a school of thought in monetary economics that emphasizes the role of governments in controlling the amount of money in circulation. Monetarist theory asserts that variations in the money supply have major influences on national ...
, Thatcher started out in her economic policy by increasing interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply and thus lower inflation. She had a preference for
indirect tax
An indirect tax (such as sales tax, per unit tax, value added tax (VAT), or goods and services tax (GST), excise, consumption tax, tariff) is a tax that is levied upon goods and services before they reach the customer who ultimately pays the i ...
ation over taxes on income, and
value-added tax (VAT) was raised sharply to 15%, with a resultant actual short-term rise in inflation. The fiscal and monetary squeeze, combined with the
North Sea oil effect, appreciated the
real exchange rate. These moves hit businesses—especially the manufacturing sector—and unemployment exceeded 2 million by the autumn of 1980, up from 1.5 million at the time of Thatcher's
election
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...
just over a year earlier.
Political commentators harked back to the
Edward Heath government's "U-turn" and speculated that Thatcher would follow suit, but she repudiated this approach at the 1980 Conservative Party conference, telling the party: "To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to.
The lady's not for turning
"The lady's not for turning" was a phrase used by Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, in her speech to the Conservative Party Conference on 10 October 1980. The term has thus been applied as a name to the speech in its entirety. It is conside ...
". That she meant what she said was confirmed in the 1981 budget, when, despite concerns expressed in an open letter from 364 leading economists, taxes were increased in the middle of a recession, leading to newspaper headlines the following morning of "Howe it Hurts", a reference to the Chancellor
Geoffrey Howe.
Unemployment
In 1981, as unemployment soared (exceeding 2.5 million by the summer and heading towards 3 million before Christmas) and the Government's popularity plunged, the party chairman,
Lord Thorneycroft, and two cabinet ministers,
Lord Carrington
Peter Alexander Rupert Carington, 6th Baron Carrington, Baron Carington of Upton, (6 June 1919 – 9July 2018), was a British Conservative Party politician and hereditary peer who served as Defence Secretary from 1970 to 1974, Foreign Secret ...
and
Humphrey Atkins, confronted the Prime Minister and suggested she should resign; according to her adviser,
Tim Bell
Timothy John Leigh Bell, Baron Bell (18 October 1941 – 25 August 2019), was a British advertising and public relations Executive (management), executive, best known for his advisory role in Margaret Thatcher's three successful general elect ...
, "Margaret just told them to go away". Thatcher's key ally in the party was
Home Secretary
The secretary of state for the Home Department, otherwise known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The home secretary leads the Home Office, and is responsible for all national ...
, and later Deputy Prime Minister,
William Whitelaw. His
moral authority Moral authority is authority premised on principles, or fundamental truths, which are independent of written, or positive, laws. As such, moral authority necessitates the existence of and adherence to truth. Because truth does not change, the princi ...
and support allowed her to resist the internal threat from the "
Heathite"
wets.
After the
Brixton riot in West London in April 1981, employment secretary
Norman Tebbit
Norman Beresford Tebbit, Baron Tebbit (born 29 March 1931) is a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he served in the Cabinet from 1981 to 1987 as Secretary of State for Employment (1981–1983), Secretary of State for Trad ...
, responding to a suggestion that rioting was caused by unemployment, observed that the unemployment of the 1930s was far worse than that of the 1980s—and that his father's generation never reacted by rioting. "I grew up in the 1930s with an unemployed father", Tebbit said. "He did not riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he went on looking until he found it."
Over two million manufacturing jobs were ultimately lost in the recession of 1979–81. This labour-shedding helped firms deal with long-standing
X-inefficiency from over-manning, enabling the British economy to catch up to the productivity levels of other advanced capitalist countries.
The link between the money supply and inflation was proven accurate, and by January 1982, the inflation rate had dropped back to 8.6% from earlier highs of 18%. Interest rates were then allowed to fall. Unemployment continued to rise, passing 3 million by January 1982 and remaining this high until early 1987. However, Tebbit later suggested that, due to the high number of people claiming unemployment benefit while working, unemployment never reached three million.
By 1983, manufacturing output had dropped by 30% from 1978, although economic growth had been re-established the previous year. The productivity turnaround from labour-shedding proved to be a one-off and was not matched by growth in output. The industrial base was so reduced that thereafter the balance of payments in manufactured goods was in deficit. Chancellor
Nigel Lawson
Nigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby, (born 11 March 1932) is a British Conservative Party politician and journalist. He was a Member of Parliament representing the constituency of Blaby from 1974 to 1992, and served in the cabinet of Margaret ...
told the Lords'
Select Committee on Overseas Trade
The Select Committee on Overseas Trade was a select committee of the House of Lords that sat from 1984 to 1985. The Committee was chaired by Lord Aldington and was described by one peer as "the most comprehensive survey of the British industrial ...
: "There is no adamantine law that says we have to produce as much in the way of manufactures as we consume. If it does turn out that we are relatively more efficient in world terms at providing services than at producing goods, then our national interest lies in a surplus on services and a deficit on goods."
Defence spending
In her first six months as prime minister, Thatcher repeatedly prioritised defence spending over economic policy and financial control. However, in 1980, she reversed this priority and tried to cut the defence budget. The 1981 Defence Review by
John Nott
Sir John William Frederic Nott (born 1 February 1932) is a former British Conservative Party politician. He was a senior politician of the late 1970s and early 1980s, playing a prominent role as Secretary of State for Defence during the 1982 in ...
, the defence minister, dramatically cut the capabilities of the Royal Navy's surface fleet. She replaced
Francis Pym
Francis Leslie Pym, Baron Pym, (13 February 1922 – 7 March 2008) was a British Conservative Party politician who served in various Cabinet positions in the 1970s and 1980s, including Foreign, Defence and Northern Ireland Secretary, and Leader ...
as defence secretary because he wanted more funding. The cuts were cancelled when the ships destined for cuts proved essential in the Falklands War.
Housing and urban enterprise
One of Thatcher's largest and most successful policies assisted council tenants in public housing to purchase their homes at favourable rates. The "Right to Buy" had emerged in the late 1940s, but was too great a challenge to the
post-war consensus
The post-war consensus, sometimes called the post-war compromise, was the economic order and social model of which the major political parties in post-war Britain shared a consensus supporting view, from the end of World War II in 1945 to the ...
to win Conservative endorsement. Thatcher from her earliest days in politics favoured the idea because it would lead to a "property-owning democracy". By the 1970s, many working-class people had ample incomes for home ownership, and eagerly accepted Thatcher's invitation to purchase their homes at a sizeable discount. The new owners were more likely to vote Conservative, as Thatcher had hoped. The downside to this was that it eventually led to council house shortages, as the share of the money from the sale of the houses to be used to construct more council properties gradually fell by the end of the 1980s, and saw fewer councils building affordable housing.
To deal with economic stagnation in the inner cities, the Government introduced "enterprise zones" starting in 1981; the idea began in Britain and was adopted by the United States and some EU countries. It targeted designated small, economically depressed neighbourhoods and exempted them from some regulations and taxes. The goal was to attract private capital and new business activity that would bring jobs and progress to declining areas. Important projects included those in
London Docklands
London Docklands is the riverfront and former docks in London. It is located in inner east and southeast London, in the boroughs of London Borough of Southwark, Southwark, London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Tower Hamlets, London Borough of ...
, Salford and Gateshead.
Foreign relations
Rhodesia, 1979
Before the 1979 election Thatcher was on record as supporting the all-white government of
Ian Smith in Rhodesia.
Under intense world pressure it held elections that included some black voters. One of them, Methodist Bishop
Abel Muzorewa, became prime minister of "Zimbabwe-Rhodesia" in June 1979 with Smith's support. Thatcher, new to 10 Downing Street, praised the bishop. White Rhodesians expected Britain to recognise the Muzorewa regime and end crippling sanctions. However, Thatcher reversed herself. She withheld recognition and manoeuvred the Muzorewa government into accepting new elections. They had to include
Joshua Nkomo
Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo (19 June 1917 – 1 July 1999) was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and Matabeleland politician who served as Vice-President of Zimbabwe from 1990 until his death in 1999. He founded and led the Zimbabwe African People's ...
and his
Zimbabwe African People's Union
The Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) is a Zimbabwean political party. It is a militant organization and political party that campaigned for majority rule in Rhodesia, from its founding in 1961 until 1980. In 1987, it merged with the Zimba ...
as well as
Robert Mugabe and his
Zimbabwe African National Union
The Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) was a militant organisation that fought against white minority rule in Rhodesia, formed as a split from the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU). ZANU split in 1975 into wings loyal to Robert Muga ...
. These were revolutionary movements that Rhodesian security forces had been trying to suppress for years. Under her direction, foreign secretary Lord Carrington brokered the
Lancaster House Agreement of December 1979. It resumed British control of Rhodesia, declared a ceasefire, ended guerrilla action, and quickly led to the creation of the
Republic of Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...
. Thus Thatcher's refusal to recognise the Muzorewa government ultimately allowed Mugabe to take power, an outcome that outraged whites in Rhodesia but which satisfied British opinion and was applauded internationally.
Hugo Young () states, "She had been instrumental in creating another Third World country."
According to
Robert Matthews, the success of the Lancaster House negotiations can be explained by four factors:
Iranian Embassy siege, 1980
![Zz embassy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Zz_embassy.jpg)
Thatcher's determination to face down political violence was first demonstrated during the 1980 siege of the
Embassy of Iran, London, when the armed forces were for the first time in 70 years authorised to use lethal force on the British mainland. For six days in May, 26 hostages were held by six gunmen; the siege came to a dramatic end with a successful raid by
SAS
SAS or Sas may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* ''SAS'' (novel series), a French book series by Gérard de Villiers
* ''Shimmer and Shine'', an American animated children's television series
* Southern All Stars, a Japanese rock ba ...
commandos. Later that day, Thatcher went to congratulate the SAS men involved and sat among them watching a re-run of the attack.
The breaking of the siege by the SAS was later ranked by the public as one of television's greatest moments.
Her decisiveness—christened the "resolute approach" by the Prime Minister herself—became Thatcher's trademark and a source of her popularity. In the words of one historian:
Commenting on the SAS's action, social services secretary
Norman Fowler agreed: "Mrs Thatcher attracted public support because she seemed to be taking action which the public overwhelmingly thought was right but never thought any government would have the nerve to carry out".
Afghanistan and Poland
When the
Soviet Union troops entered Afghanistan in December 1979, Thatcher saw it as a typical example of "relentless Communist imperialism". However, the foreign ministry said the Kremlin was desperately trying to save its failing ally there. Thatcher supported the American plan to boycott the Moscow Olympics, as did Parliament. However, the athletes disagreed, and they went to Moscow anyway.
Thatcher gave the go ahead for Whitehall to approve
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
(and the SAS) to undertake 'disruptive action' in Afghanistan. Supporting the
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
(CIA) in
Operation Cyclone, they also supplied weapons, training and intelligence to the
mujaheddin
''Mujahideen'', or ''Mujahidin'' ( ar, مُجَاهِدِين, mujāhidīn), is the plural form of ''mujahid'' ( ar, مجاهد, mujāhid, strugglers or strivers or justice, right conduct, Godly rule, etc. doers of jihād), an Arabic term th ...
. Thatcher visited Pakistan in October 1981 meeting with Pakistan leader General
Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq
General officer, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq Hilal-i-Imtiaz, HI, Order of the Star of Jordan, GCSJ, Order of the Rajamitrabhorn, ร.ม.ภ, (Urdu: ; 12 August 1924 – 17 August 1988) was a Pakistani four-star rank, four-star General (Pakis ...
. She visited some of the many hundreds of thousands of Afghans gathered in refugee camps there giving a speech stating that the 'hearts of the free world were with them'. Five years later two of the Mujaheddin warlords
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and
Abdul Haq ʻAbd al-Ḥaqq (ALA-LC romanization of ar, عبد الحقّ) is an Arabic male given name, and in modern usage, surname. It is built from the Arabic words '' ʻabd'' and ''al-Ḥaqq'', one of the names of God in the Qur'an, which give rise to the ...
met Thatcher in Downing Street.
The Polish crisis of 1980 and 1981 involved large-scale anti-Communist protests in the heartland of Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe. Thatcher recognised that Soviet hegemony was vulnerable in Poland and offered public support for
Lech Wałęsa and his
Solidarity labour union, in close co-operation with the United States and
Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...
(a long-time leader of Polish Catholicism). Thatcher considered Poland as a key centre of Soviet vulnerability. She offered limited help to Solidarity in tandem with the United States. Success came with the thaw in superpower relations, the consolidation of Thatcherism at home and the march of neo-liberal ideas internationally.
Falklands War, 1982
On 2 April 1982, the ruling Argentine military junta
invaded the Falkland Islands, and on 3 April
invaded South Georgia, British
Crown Colonies
A Crown colony or royal colony was a colony administered by The Crown within the British Empire. There was usually a Governor, appointed by the British monarch on the advice of the UK Government, with or without the assistance of a local Counci ...
that Britain had always ruled but which Argentina had
claimed
"Claimed" is the eleventh episode of the The Walking Dead (season 4), fourth season of the Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, post-apocalyptic Horror fiction, horror television series ''The Walking Dead (TV series), The Walking Dead'', wh ...
.
Thatcher had not previously shown concern for the islands and had proposed large-scale cuts to
her naval forces. Thatcher listened primarily to Admiral
Henry Leach
Admiral of the Fleet (Royal Navy), Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry Conyers Leach, (18 November 1923 – 26 April 2011) was a Royal Navy officer who, as First Sea Lord, First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff during the early 1980s, was instru ...
, the
First Sea Lord; and to Admiral
Sir Terence Lewin, the
Chief of the Defence Staff. She immediately decided to expel the invaders. She replaced foreign minister Lord Carrington with Francis Pym and rounded up diplomatic support. The
United Nations Security Council
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the Organs of the United Nations, six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international security, international peace and security, recommending the admi ...
denounced Argentina's aggression, and France and other allies provided diplomatic and military support. In the United States, Reagan was supportive, but he also launched diplomatic initiatives to resolve the crisis without a war. Thatcher assembled and sent a
naval task force to take back control in three days.
![ARA](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/ARA.Belgrano.sunk.svg)
In the six weeks it took to arrive, she engaged in diplomatic efforts moderated by Reagan's secretary of state
Alexander Haig, but Argentina rejected all compromise proposals. Public opinion, and both major parties, backed Thatcher's aggressive response. The task force sank an
Argentine cruiser, forcing the
Argentine Navy
The Argentine Navy (ARA; es, Armada de la República Argentina). This forms the basis for the navy's ship prefix "ARA". is the navy of Argentina. It is one of the three branches of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic, together with the ...
back to its home harbours. However, it had to deal with a nearby land-based
Argentine Air Force, using primarily surface-to-air heat-seeking missiles,
Harriers, and V bombers, the last to crater the Port Stanley runway. Argentine forces in the Falklands
surrendered on 14 June; the operation was hailed as a great triumph, with only 258 British casualties.
Victory brought a wave of patriotic enthusiasm and contributed to Thatcher's re-election, with one poll showing that 84% of the electorate approved of the Prime Minister's handling of the crisis.
Restoring British control over a small colony was a response to aggression, but it also represented a sensibility that Britain had a responsibility to protect its "
kith and kin." Thatcher saw the issue as freedom versus oppression and dictatorship. Her sensibility was widely shared in the UK. Historian Ezequiel Mercau argues that the islanders' demands for
decolonisation
Decolonization or decolonisation is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on separatism, in ...
were weak. Instead their predominant sentiment was a close "kith and kin" identification with the people of Great Britain that gave the Falklanders a "loyalty to
the Crown
The Crown is the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their subdivisions (such as the Crown Dependencies, overseas territories, provinces, or states). Legally ill-defined, the term has different ...
."
Northern Ireland
In May 1980, one day before Thatcher was due to meet the Irish
Taoiseach
The Taoiseach is the head of government, or prime minister, of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. The office is appointed by the president of Ireland upon the nomination of Dáil Éireann (the lower house of the Oireachtas, Ireland's national legisl ...
,
Charles Haughey, to discuss Northern Ireland, she announced in Parliament that "the future of the constitutional affairs of Northern Ireland is a matter for the people of Northern Ireland, this government, this parliament, ".
![Rockmore road 1984](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Rockmore_road_1984.jpg)
In 1981, a number of
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army (IRA; ), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reun ...
(IRA) and
Irish National Liberation Army
The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA, ga, Arm Saoirse Náisiúnta na hÉireann) is an Irish republican socialist paramilitary group formed on 10 December 1974, during the 30-year period of conflict known as "the Troubles". The group seek ...
prisoners in Northern Ireland's
Maze Prison
Her Majesty's Prison Maze (previously Long Kesh Detention Centre, and known colloquially as The Maze or H-Blocks) was a prison in Northern Ireland that was used to house alleged paramilitary prisoners during the Troubles from August 1971 to Sept ...
(also known in Northern Ireland as ''Long Kesh'', its previous official name) went on
hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke a feeling of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most ...
to regain the status of
political prisoner
A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention.
There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although n ...
s, which had been revoked five years earlier under the preceding Labour government.
Bobby Sands
Robert Gerard Sands ( ga, Roibeárd Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh; 9 March 1954 – 5 May 1981) was a member (and leader in the Maze prison) of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who died on hunger strike while imprisoned at HM Prison Maze ...
, the first of the strikers, was elected as an MP for the constituency of
Fermanagh and South Tyrone a few weeks before he died of starvation. Thatcher refused to countenance a return to political status for republican prisoners, famously declaring "Crime is crime is crime; it is not political". After nine more men had died, most rights were restored to paramilitary prisoners, but official recognition of their political status was not granted. Thatcher later asserted: "The outcome was a significant defeat for the IRA."
Thatcher also continued the "
Ulsterisation
Ulsterisation refers to one part – "primacy of the police" – of a three-part strategy (the other two being "normalisation" and "criminalisation") of the British government during the conflict known as the Troubles.Kevin Kelly, ''The Longest War ...
" policy of the previous Labour government and its
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
A secretary, administrative professional, administrative assistant, executive assistant, administrative officer, administrative support specialist, clerk, military assistant, management assistant, office secretary, or personal assistant is a w ...
,
Roy Mason, believing that the
Unionists of Northern Ireland should be at the forefront in combating
Irish republicanism
Irish republicanism ( ga, poblachtánachas Éireannach) is the political movement for the unity and independence of Ireland under a republic. Irish republicans view British rule in any part of Ireland as inherently illegitimate.
The develop ...
. This meant relieving the burden on the mainstream
British Army
The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...
and elevating the role of the
Ulster Defence Regiment and the
Royal Ulster Constabulary
The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) was the police force in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 2001. It was founded on 1 June 1922 as a successor to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC)Richard Doherty, ''The Thin Green Line – The History of the Royal ...
.
1983 general election
![House of Commons elected members, 1983](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/House_of_Commons_elected_members%2C_1983.svg)
The "
Falklands Factor
The aftermath of the 1982 Falklands War between the United Kingdom and Argentina affected world geopolitics, the local political culture in Argentina and the UK, military thought, medical treatment, and the lives of those who were directly invol ...
", along with the resumption of economic growth by the end of 1982, bolstered the Government's popularity and led to Thatcher's victory in the most decisive landslide since the
general election of 1945.
The Labour Party at this time had split, and there was a new challenge in the
SDP–Liberal Alliance
The SDP–Liberal Alliance was a centrist and social liberal political and electoral alliance in the United Kingdom.
Formed by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Liberal Party, the SDP–Liberal Alliance was established in 1981, contestin ...
, formed by an electoral pact between the
Social Democratic Party
The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology.
Active parties
For ...
and the
Liberal Party. However, this grouping failed to make its intended breakthrough, despite briefly holding an
opinion poll
An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a survey or a poll (although strictly a poll is an actual election) is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions ...
lead.
In the June 1983 general election, the Conservatives won 42.4% of the vote, the Labour Party 27.6% and the Alliance 25.4%. Though the gap between Labour and the Alliance was narrow in terms of votes, the Alliance vote was scattered, and they won only a fraction of the seats that Labour held, with its concentrated base. The Conservatives' share of the vote fell slightly (1.5%) since 1979. Labour's vote had fallen by far more (9.3%), and the Conservatives now had an overall majority of 144 MPs.
Second term (1983–1987)
The second term saw Thatcher in full charge.
Domestic affairs
Contaminated blood scandal
Thatcher was prime minister during what ''The Guardian'' described as "the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS." Thousands of
haemophilia
Haemophilia, or hemophilia (), is a mostly inherited genetic disorder that impairs the body's ability to make blood clots, a process needed to stop bleeding. This results in people bleeding for a longer time after an injury, easy bruising, ...
cs were infected with HIV,
Hepatitis C
Hepatitis C is an infectious disease caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV) that primarily affects the liver; it is a type of viral hepatitis. During the initial infection people often have mild or no symptoms. Occasionally a fever, dark urine, a ...
, or both, via the clotting-agent
Factor VIII. Britain had imported infected supplies of Factor VIII from risky overseas commercial sources; it is generally thought that this was because the Thatcher government had not made public funding available for the NHS sufficient in creating its own supplies.
It has been alleged that the Thatcher cabinet attempted to "cover up" the events of the scandal. In 2017, the
Infected Blood Inquiry was announced into the scandal and a group legal action (Jason Evans & Ors) was brought at the High Court.
Strikes; miners and newspaper printers
![UK Coal Mining Jobs](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/UK_Coal_Mining_Jobs.png)
Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the trade unions but, unlike the Heath government, adopted a strategy of incremental change rather than a single Act. Several unions launched strikes in response, but these actions eventually collapsed. Gradually, Thatcher's reforms reduced the power and influence of the unions. The changes were chiefly focused upon preventing the recurrence of the large-scale industrial actions of the 1970s but were also intended to ensure that the consequences for the participants would be severe if they took any future action. The reforms were also aimed, Thatcher claimed, to democratise the unions and return power to the members. The most significant measures were to make secondary
industrial action
Industrial action (British English) or job action (American English) is a temporary show of dissatisfaction by employees—especially a strike action, strike or slowdown or working to rule—to protest against bad working conditions or low pay a ...
illegal, to force union leadership to first win a ballot of the union membership before calling a strike, and to abolish the closed shop. Further laws banned workplace ballots and imposed postal ballots.
Coal miners were highly organised and had defeated Prime Minister Heath. Thatcher expected a major confrontation, planned ahead for one, and avoided trouble before she was ready. In the end the miners' strike of 1984–85 proved a decisive victory for her—one that permanently discouraged trade unionists.
The
National Coal Board received the largest amount of public subsidies going to any nationalised industry: by 1984 the annual cost to taxpayers of uneconomic pits had reached £1 billion. The year-long confrontation over strikes carried out from April 1984 by the
National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), in opposition to proposals to close a large number of unprofitable mines, proved a decisive victory for Thatcher. The Government had made preparations to counter a strike by the NUM long in advance by building up coal stocks, keeping many miners at work, and co-ordinating police action to stop massive picketing. Her policies defeated the NUM strategy of causing severe cuts in the electricity supply—the legacy of the industrial disputes of 1972 would not be repeated.
The images of crowds of militant miners attempting to prevent other miners from working proved a shock even to some supporters of the strikes. The NUM never held a strike vote, which allowed many miners to keep working and prevented other unions from supporting the strike. The mounting desperation and poverty of the striking families led to divisions within the regional NUM branches, and a breakaway union, the
Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM), was soon formed. More and more frustrated miners resigned to the impending failure of the strike and, worn down by months of protests, began to defy the union's rulings, starting splinter groups and advising workers that returning to work was the only viable option.
The miners' strike lasted a full year before the NUM leadership conceded without a deal. Conservative governments proceeded to close all but 15 of the country's pits, with the remaining 15 being sold off and privatised in 1994. Since then, private companies have acquired licences to open new pits and
open-cast
Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow.
This form of mining ...
sites, with the majority of the original mines destroyed and the land redeveloped.
The defeat of the miners' strike led to a long period of demoralisation in the whole of the trade union movement.
The 51-week miners' strike of 1984–85 was followed a year later by the 54-week
Wapping dispute
The Wapping dispute was a lengthy failed strike by print workers in London in 1986.
Print unions tried to block distribution of ''The Sunday Times'', along with other newspapers in Rupert Murdoch's News International group, after production wa ...
launched by newspaper printers in London.
It resulted in a second major defeat for unions and another victory for Thatcher's union policies, especially her assurance that the police would defend the plants against pickets trying to shut them down. The target was Britain's largest privately owned newspaper empire,
News International
News Corp UK & Ireland Limited (trading as News UK, formerly News International and NI Group) is a List of newspapers in the United Kingdom, British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the American mass media Conglomerate (c ...
(parent of ''The Times'' and ''News of the World'' and others, all owned by
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including ...
). He wanted to introduce technological innovations that would put 90% of the old-fashioned typesetters out of work. The company offered redundancy payments of £2,000 to £30,000 to each printer to quit their old jobs. The union rejected the offer, and on 24 January 1986, its 6,000 members at Murdoch's papers went on strike. Meanwhile, News International had built and clandestinely equipped a new printing plant in the London district of
Wapping. The principal print unions—the
National Graphical Association
The National Graphical Association (NGA) was a trade union representing typographers and related workers in the United Kingdom.
History
The union was formed in 1964 by the merger of two long-term rival unions, the Typographical Association and ...
(NGA), the
Society of Graphical and Allied Trades
The Society of Graphical and Allied Trades (SOGAT) was a British trade union in the printing industry.
History
SOGAT was formed in 1966 by the National Union of Printing, Bookbinding and Paper Workers and the National Society of Operative Pr ...
(SOGAT 82) and the
Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (AUEW)—ran closed shops: only union members could be hired at the old Fleet Street plants; most were sons of members. However, the new plant in Wapping did not have a closed shop contract. The company activated its new plant with the assistance of another union, the
Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union
The Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union, known as the EETPU, was a British trade union formed in 1968 as a union for electricians and plumbers, which went through three mergers from 1992 to now be part of Unite the Un ...
(EETPU). Most journalists (members of the
National Union of Journalists) moved to Wapping, and NUJ Chapels continued to operate. However, the NUJ urged them not to work there; the "
refuseniks" refused to go to Wapping. Enough printers did come—670 in all—to produce the same number of papers that it took 6,800 men to print at the old shop. The efficiency was obvious and frightened the union into holding out an entire year. Thousands of union pickets tried to block shipments out of the plant; they injured 574 policemen. There were 1,500 arrests. The pickets failed. The union tried an illegal secondary boycott and was fined in court, losing all its assets which had been used for pensions. In the next two years, Britain's national newspapers opened new plants and abandoned Fleet Street, adopting the new technology with far fewer employees. They had even more reason to support Thatcherism.
Privatisation
Thatcher's political and economic philosophy emphasised reduced state intervention,
free market
In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any o ...
s, and
entrepreneurialism. Since gaining power, she had experimented in selling off a small
nationalised
Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to pri ...
company, the National Freight Company, to its workers, with a positive response. One critic on the left dismissed privatisation as "the biggest electoral bribe in history". After the 1983 election, the Government became bolder and, starting with
British Telecom
BT Group plc (trade name, trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is th ...
, sold off most of the large utilities which had been in public ownership since the late 1940s. Many people took advantage of
share offers, although many sold their shares immediately for a quick profit; therefore, the proportion of shares held by individuals rather than institutions did not increase. The policy of
privatisation
Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when ...
, while anathema to many on the left, has become synonymous with Thatcherism and was also followed by
Tony Blair
Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of th ...
's government. Wider share-ownership and council house sales became known as "popular" capitalism to its supporters (a description coined by
John Redwood
Sir John Alan Redwood (born 15 June 1951) is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Wokingham in Berkshire since 1987. A member of the Conservative Party, he was Secretary of State for Wales in the Major government ...
).
According to
Jacob Ward, the privatisation of British Telecom was a "landmark moment for neoliberalism." It became a model for other countries that sold their state utilities. Planners in the Long Range Planning Department used new computer models to support the transition of telecommunications and, more generally, the dramatic move from social democracy to neoliberalism, from monopoly to market. The telecommunications network was essential to plans for the digitalisation of the economy. Computer simulations were needed to support neoliberalism, both as a managerial tool that could simulate free markets, as well as a technology that enabled the contraction of the government's role in the private sector.
Establishment criticism
In February 1985, in what was generally viewed as a significant snub from the centre of the British establishment, the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
voted to refuse Thatcher an honorary degree in protest against her cuts in funding for higher education. This award had previously been given to all prime ministers since the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. Although the Government's counter-claim of increased expenditure was also challenged, the decision of the Oxford dons was widely condemned as "petty" and "vindictive". The chancellor of the university, former prime minister
Harold Macmillan
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative statesman and politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Caricatured as "Supermac", he ...
(now Lord Stockton), noted that the decision represented a break with tradition, and predicted that the snub would rebound on the university.
In December 1985 Thatcher was criticised from another former
Tory
A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. Th ...
bastion when the
Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...
report ''
Faith in the City
''Faith in the City: A Call for Action by Church and Nation'' was a report published in the United Kingdom in autumn 1985, authored by the authored by Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie's Commission on Urban Priority Areas. The report create ...
'' blamed decay of the
inner cities on the Government's financial stringency and called for a redistribution of wealth. However, the Government had already introduced special employment and training measures, and ministers dismissed the report as "muddle-headed" and uncosted.
The breach with the Church and its liberal bishops remained unhealed until
William Hague called for renewed co-operation in 1998.
Soon after, Thatcher suffered her government's only defeat in the House of Commons, with the failure of the
Shops Bill 1986
The Shops Bill 1986 was a parliamentary bill in the United Kingdom that would have ended government regulation of Sunday shopping in England and Wales. Introduced by the Government of Margaret Thatcher, it was defeated in the House of Commons at ...
. The bill, which would have legalised
Sunday shopping, was defeated by a
Christian right backbench rebellion, with 72 Conservatives voting against the Government Bill.
As well as Thatcher's only defeat, it was the last occasion on which a government bill fell at
second reading
A reading of a bill is a stage of debate on the bill held by a general body of a legislature.
In the Westminster system, developed in the United Kingdom, there are generally three readings of a bill as it passes through the stages of becoming, ...
. The defeat was immediately overshadowed by the US intervention in Libya.
Westland affair
Thatcher's preference for defence ties with the United States was demonstrated in the Westland affair when, despite ostensibly maintaining a neutral stance, she and Trade and Industry secretary
Leon Brittan allowed the helicopter manufacturer
Westland, a vital defence contractor, to link with the
Sikorsky Aircraft
Sikorsky Aircraft is an American aircraft manufacturer based in Stratford, Connecticut. It was established by aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky in 1923 and was among the first companies to manufacture helicopters for civilian and military use.
Pre ...
Corporation of the United States. Defence secretary
Michael Heseltine had organised a consortium of European and British firms, including the Italian firm
Agusta
Agusta was an Italian helicopter manufacturer. It was based in Samarate, Northern Italy. The company was founded by Count Giovanni Agusta in 1923, who flew his first airplane in 1907. The MV Agusta motorcycle manufacturer began as an offshoot o ...
, to make a rival bid. He claimed that Thatcher had prevented proper discussion by cancelling a promised meeting of the Cabinet Economic Affairs Committee early in December 1985. Cabinet eventually (19 December 1985) forbade any minister from actively campaigning for either option.
Thatcher thought Heseltine too powerful and popular a figure to sack. After a period in early January 1986 in which Heseltine and the Thatcher/Brittan camp leaked material damaging to each other's case to the press, Cabinet agreed (9 January) that all statements on the matter, including repetitions of those already made, must be cleared through the Cabinet Office. Heseltine resigned and walked out of the meeting in protest, claiming that Thatcher had broken the conventions of
cabinet government
A cabinet is a body of high-ranking state officials, typically consisting of the executive branch's top leaders. Members of a cabinet are usually called cabinet ministers or secretaries. The function of a cabinet varies: in some countrie ...
. He remained an influential critic and potential leadership challenger and would eventually prove instrumental in Thatcher's fall in 1990. Brittan was then forced to resign for having, earlier that month and with the agreement of Thatcher's press adviser
Bernard Ingham
Sir Bernard Ingham (born 21 June 1932) is a British journalist and former civil servant. He was Margaret Thatcher's chief press secretary throughout her time as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. He was knighted in Thatche ...
, ordered the leak of a confidential legal letter critical of Heseltine. For a time, Thatcher's survival as prime minister seemed in doubt, but her involvement in the leak remained unproven, and she survived after a poor debating performance in the Commons (27 January) by Opposition leader
Neil Kinnock.
Local government
In April 1986, Thatcher, enacting a policy set out in her party's 1983 manifesto, abolished the
Greater London Council
The Greater London Council (GLC) was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council (LCC) which had covered a much smaller area. The GLC was dissolved in 198 ...
(GLC) and six top-tier
metropolitan county
The metropolitan counties are a type of county-level administrative division of England. There are six metropolitan counties, which each cover large urban areas, with populations between 1 and 3 million. They were created in 1974 and are each di ...
Councils (MCCs):
![Map of the Rate-Capping Rebellion](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Map_of_the_Rate-Capping_Rebellion.svg)
*
Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority, combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: City of Manchester, Manchester, City of Salford, Salford ...
*
Merseyside
Merseyside ( ) is a metropolitan county, metropolitan and ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North West England, with a population of List of ceremonial counties of England, 1.38 million. It encompasses both banks of the Merse ...
(including
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
)
*
South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire is a ceremonial and metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. The county has four council areas which are the cities of Doncaster and Sheffield as well as the boroughs of Barnsley and Rotherham.
In N ...
(including
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is Historic counties o ...
)
*
Tyne and Wear
Tyne and Wear () is a metropolitan county in North East England, situated around the mouths of the rivers Tyne and Wear. It was created in 1974, by the Local Government Act 1972, along with five metropolitan boroughs of Gateshead, Newcastl ...
(including
Newcastle and
Sunderland
Sunderland () is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is the City of Sunderland's administrative centre and in the Historic counties of England, historic county of County of Durham, Durham. The city is from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is on t ...
)
*
West Midlands
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...
(including
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
and
Coventry
Coventry ( or ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its ...
)
*
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...
(including
Leeds
Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...
)
The GLC was the biggest council in Europe; under the leadership of the
Labour
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
socialist
Ken Livingstone
Kenneth Robert Livingstone (born 17 June 1945) is an English politician who served as the Leader of the Greater London Council (GLC) from 1981 until the council was abolished in 1986, and as Mayor of London from the creation of the office i ...
it had doubled its spending in three years, and Thatcher insisted on its abolition as an efficiency measure, transferring most duties to the boroughs, with veto power over major building, engineering and maintenance projects being given to the
environment secretary.
The Government also argued that the transfer of power to local councils would increase electoral accountability.
Critics contended that the "excesses" of a few "
loony left" councils helped Mrs Thatcher to launch a party-political assault', as all the eliminated councils were controlled by the Labour Party, favoured higher local government taxes and public spending, and were vocal centres of opposition to her government. The GLC also warned that the break-up of the county councils would lead to the creation of "endless joint committees and over 60 quangos". Several of the councils including the GLC had however rendered themselves vulnerable by committing scarce public funds to controversial causes such as Babies Against the Bomb, the Antiracist Year, and lesbian mothers seeking custody of their children; the Save the GLC campaign itself was estimated to have cost ratepayers £10 million, climaxing in a final defiant week of festivities that cost ratepayers £500,000.
Economic boom, 1984–1988
During the 1980s there was a great improvement in the United Kingdom's productivity growth relative to other advanced capitalist countries.
Chancellor of the Exchequer
The chancellor of the Exchequer, often abbreviated to chancellor, is a senior minister of the Crown within the Government of the United Kingdom, and head of His Majesty's Treasury. As one of the four Great Offices of State, the Chancellor is ...
Nigel Lawson identified inflation as "the judge and jury of a government's record", but while the country also improved its
OECD
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...
inflation ranking from fifteenth in 1979 to tenth in the
Lawson Boom
The Lawson Boom was the macroeconomic conditions prevailing in the United Kingdom at the end of the 1980s, which became associated with the policies of Margaret Thatcher's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson.
The term ''Lawson Boom'' was ...
year of 1987, when inflation had fallen to 4.2%, in the decade as a whole the country still had the second highest inflation rate of the
G7 countries
The Group of Seven (G7) is an intergovernmental political forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States; additionally, the European Union (EU) is a "non-enumerated member". It is official ...
. Unemployment had peaked at nearly 3,300,000 in 1984, but had fallen below 3,000,000 by June 1987, in early 1989 it fell below 2,000,000 and by December 1989 it stood at just over 1,600,000.
The United Kingdom's growth rate was more impressive, ranking first in the OECD-16 in 1987, a statistical achievement that Thatcher and her government exploited to the full in the general election campaign of that year. However, the balance of payments record had deteriorated, faring even worse than those of non-oil-exporting countries, and there was a decline in the country's relative standing in terms of unemployment. The resulting welfare payments meant that even though Thatcher and her ministers in 1979 had taken the view that "public expenditure is at the heart of Britain's present economic difficulties", it was not until the boom year of 1987 that the expenditure ratio fell below the 1979 level. For most of the 1980s, the average tax take was higher than in 1979.
Ireland and Northern Ireland issues
Brighton bombing
![Grand-Hotel-Following-Bomb-Attack-1984-10-12](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Grand-Hotel-Following-Bomb-Attack-1984-10-12.jpg)
On the early morning of 12 October 1984, the day before her 59th birthday, Thatcher escaped injury in the
Brighton hotel bombing during the Conservative Party Conference when the hotel was bombed by the
Provisional IRA
The Irish Republican Army (IRA; ), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republicanism, Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, fa ...
. Five people died in the attack, including Roberta Wakeham, wife of the Government's Chief Whip
John Wakeham, and Conservative MP
Sir Anthony Berry. A prominent member of the Cabinet, Norman Tebbit, was injured, and his wife Margaret was left paralysed. Thatcher herself escaped assassination by sheer luck. She insisted that the conference open on time the next day and made her speech as planned in defiance of the bombers, a gesture which won widespread approval across the political spectrum.
Anglo-Irish Agreement
On 15 November 1985, Thatcher signed the Hillsborough
Anglo-Irish Agreement with Irish Taoiseach
Garret FitzGerald
Garret Desmond FitzGerald (9 February 192619 May 2011) was an Irish Fine Gael politician, economist and barrister who served twice as Taoiseach, serving from 1981 to 1982 and 1982 to 1987. He served as Leader of Fine Gael from 1977 to 1987, and ...
, the first time a British government gave the Republic of Ireland a say (albeit advisory) in the governance of Northern Ireland. The agreement was greeted with fury by Northern Irish unionists. The
Ulster Unionists
The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule movem ...
and
Democratic Unionists made an electoral pact and, on 23 January 1986, staged an ad hoc referendum by resigning their seats and contesting the subsequent by-elections, losing only one, to the nationalist
Social Democratic and Labour Party
The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) ( ga, Páirtí Sóisialta Daonlathach an Lucht Oibre) is a social-democratic and Irish nationalist political party in Northern Ireland. The SDLP currently has eight members in the Northern Ireland ...
(SDLP). However, unlike the
Sunningdale Agreement of 1974, they found they could not bring the agreement down by a general strike. This was another effect of the changed balance of power in
industrial relations
Industrial relations or employment relations is the multidisciplinary academic field that studies the employment relationship; that is, the complex interrelations between employers and employees, labor/trade
unions, employer organizations, ...
.
Foreign affairs
Cold War
In the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, Thatcher supported US president
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
's policies of
rollback against the Soviets, which envisioned the end of Communism in Europe (which happened in 1989–91). This contrasted with the policy of ''
détente
Détente (, French: "relaxation") is the relaxation of strained relations, especially political ones, through verbal communication. The term, in diplomacy, originates from around 1912, when France and Germany tried unsuccessfully to reduc ...
'' (or "live and let live") which the West had pursued during the 1970s. In a decision that came under heavy attack from the Labour Party, American forces were permitted by Thatcher to station nuclear
cruise missile
A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhe ...
s at British bases, arousing mass protests by the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. A critical factor was Thatcher's idea that
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...
was the key to the solution. She convinced Reagan that he was "a man we can do business with. " This was a start of a move by the West to force a dismantling of Soviet control over Eastern Europe, which Gorbachev realised was necessary if he was to reform the weak Soviet economy. Those who share her views on it credit her with a part in the West's victory, by both the deterrence and ''détente'' postures. According to Thatcher, the West won the Cold War "without firing a shot" because the Kremlin would not risk confrontation with NATO's superior forces.
Thatcher played a major role as a broker between Reagan and Gorbachev in 1985–87, with the successful negotiation of the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty, formally the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles; / ДРСМ ...
(INF). The INF Treaty of December 1987, signed by Reagan and Gorbachev, eliminated all nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, with ranges of (short-range) and (intermediate-range). The treaty did not cover sea-launched missiles of the sort Britain possessed. By May 1991, after on-site investigations by both sides, 2700 missiles had been destroyed.
US bombing of Libya
![USF-111 Libya1986](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/USF-111_Libya1986.JPG)
In the aftermath of a series of terrorist attacks on US military personnel in Europe, which were believed to have been executed at
Colonel Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, . Due to the lack of standardization of transcribing written and regionally pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi's name has been romanized in various ways. A 1986 column by ''The Straight Dope'' lists 32 spelling ...
's command, President Reagan decided to carry out a bombing raid on Libya. Both France and Spain refused to allow US aircraft to fly over their territory for the raid. Thatcher herself had earlier expressed opposition to "retaliatory strikes that are against international law" and had not followed the US in an embargo of Libyan oil. However, Thatcher felt that as the US had given support to Britain during the Falklands and that America was a major ally against a possible Soviet attack in Western Europe, she felt obliged to allow US aircraft to use bases situated in Britain.
Later that year in America, President Reagan persuaded Congress to approve of an extradition treaty which closed a legal loophole by which IRA members and
Volunteers
Volunteering is a voluntary act of an individual or group freely giving time and labor for community service. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergency rescue. Others serve ...
escaped extradition by claiming their killings were political acts. This had been previously opposed by Irish-Americans for years but was passed after Reagan used Thatcher's support in the Libyan raid as a reason to pass it.
US invasion of Grenada
Grenada was a former colony and current independent Commonwealth nation under the Queen. The British government exercised no authority there and did not object when
Maurice Bishop took control in a coup in 1979. The small Caribbean island had been ruled by Bishop, a radical Marxist with close ties to Cuba. In October 1983 he was overthrown by dissident Marxists and killed. This alarmed other small countries in the region who had a regional defence organisation, the
Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), which formally asked the United States for help in removing the new regime. Reagan promptly agreed and almost overnight ordered a major invasion of Grenada. He notified Thatcher a few hours before the invasion, but he did not ask her consent. She was privately highly annoyed, but in Cabinet and Parliament she announced that Britain supported the Americans, saying "We stand by the United States". When it became clear that the American rollback of the upstart Communist regime had been a striking success, Thatcher "came to feel that she had been wrong to oppose it".
Apartheid in South Africa
Thatcher resisted international pressure to impose
economic sanctions
Economic sanctions are commercial and financial penalties applied by one or more countries against a targeted self-governing state, group, or individual. Economic sanctions are not necessarily imposed because of economic circumstances—they may ...
on South Africa, where the United Kingdom was the biggest foreign investor and principal trading partner. This meant that the status quo remained, and British companies continued to operate in South Africa, although other European countries continued trading to a lesser degree. According to Geoffrey Howe, one of her closest allies, Thatcher regarded the
African National Congress
The African National Congress (ANC) is a Social democracy, social-democratic political party in Republic of South Africa, South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when ...
(ANC), which fought to end apartheid, as a "typical terrorist organisation" as late as 1987.
At the end of March 1984, four South Africans were arrested in Coventry, remanded in custody, and charged with contravening the
UN arms embargo, which prohibited exports to South Africa of military equipment. Thatcher took a personal interest in the
Coventry Four
Four South African alleged arms smugglers were arrested by HM Customs & Excise officers in Coventry in March 1984 and charged with conspiring to export arms from Britain to apartheid South Africa in contravention of the mandatory United Nations ar ...
, and
10 Downing Street
10 Downing Street in London, also known colloquially in the United Kingdom as Number 10, is the official residence and executive office of the first lord of the treasury, usually, by convention, the prime minister of the United Kingdom. Along wi ...
requested daily summaries of the case from the prosecuting authority,
HM Customs and Excise. Within a month, the Coventry Four had been freed from jail and allowed to travel to South Africa, on condition that they return to England for their trial later that year. However, in August 1984, South African foreign minister
Pik Botha decided not to allow the Coventry Four to return to stand trial, forfeiting £200,000 bail money put up by the South African embassy in London.
In April 1984, Thatcher sent senior British diplomat,
Sir John Leahy, to negotiate the release of 16 Britons who had been taken hostage by the Angolan rebel leader,
Jonas Savimbi
Jonas Malheiro Savimbi (; 3 August 1934 – 22 February 2002) was an Angolan revolutionary politician and rebel military leader who founded and led the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). UNITA waged a guerrilla war agai ...
. At the time, Savimbi's
UNITA
The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola ( pt, União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola, abbr. UNITA) is the second-largest political party in Angola. Founded in 1966, UNITA fought alongside the Popular Movement for ...
guerrilla movement was financed and supported militarily by the
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
regime of South Africa. On 26 April 1984 Leahy succeeded in securing the release of the British hostages at the UNITA base in
Jamba, Cuando Cubango
Jamba is a town in Angola, located in the southeastern province of Cuando Cubango, just north of the Namibian border along the Caprivi Strip.
The town is best known as the former military headquarters of UNITA, a rebel movement supported by ...
, Angola.
In June 1984, Thatcher received a visit from
P. W. Botha, the first South African premier to come to Britain since his nation had left the
Commonwealth
A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically, it has been synonymous with "republic". The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the ...
in 1961.
Neil Kinnock,
Leader of the Labour Party, condemned the visit as a "diplomatic coup" for the South African government,
and Labour MEP
Barbara Castle rallied European Socialists in an unsuccessful attempt to stop it. In talks at
Chequers
Chequers ( ), or Chequers Court, is the country house of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. A 16th-century manor house in origin, it is located near the village of Ellesborough, halfway between Princes Risborough and Wendover in Bucking ...
, Thatcher told Botha the policy of racial separation was "unacceptable".
She urged him to free jailed ANC leader
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (; ; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist who served as the President of South Africa, first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1 ...
; to halt the harassment of black dissidents; to stop the bombing of ANC guerrilla bases in
front-line states
The Frontline States (FLS) were a loose coalition of African countries from the 1960s to the early 1990s committed to ending ''apartheid'' and white minority rule in South Africa and Rhodesia. The FLS included Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, ...
; and to comply with UN Security Council resolutions and withdraw from Namibia.
Thatcher defended Botha's visit as an encouragement to reform, but he ignored her concern over Mandela's continued detainment, and although a new constitution brought coloured people of mixed race and Indians into a tricameral assembly, 22 million blacks continued to be excluded from the representation. After the outbreak of violence in September 1984, Thatcher granted temporary sanctuary to six African anti-apartheid leaders in the British consulate in
Durban
Durban ( ) ( zu, eThekwini, from meaning 'the port' also called zu, eZibubulungwini for the mountain range that terminates in the area), nicknamed ''Durbs'',Ishani ChettyCity nicknames in SA and across the worldArticle on ''news24.com'' from ...
.
In July 1985, Thatcher, citing the support of
Helen Suzman, a South African anti-apartheid MP, reaffirmed her belief that economic sanctions against
Pretoria
Pretoria () is South Africa's administrative capital, serving as the seat of the Executive (government), executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to South Africa.
Pretoria straddles the Apies River and extends ...
would be immoral because they would make thousands of black workers unemployed; instead she characterised industry as the instrument that was breaking down apartheid.
She also believed sanctions would disproportionately injure Britain and neighbouring African countries,
and argued that political and military measures were more effective.
Thatcher's opposition to economic sanctions was challenged by visiting anti-apartheid activists, including South African bishop
Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu (7 October 193126 December 2021) was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then Archbishop ...
, whom she met in London, and
Oliver Tambo
Oliver Reginald Kaizana Tambo (27 October 191724 April 1993) was a South African anti-apartheid politician and revolutionary who served as President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1967 to 1991.
Biography
Higher education
Oliv ...
, an exiled leader of the outlawed
ANC guerrilla movement, whose links to the Soviet bloc she viewed with suspicion, and whom she declined to see because he espoused violence and refused to condemn guerrilla attacks and mob killings of black policemen, local officials and their families.
![Rajiv Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher (1985)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Rajiv_Gandhi_and_Margaret_Thatcher_%281985%29.jpg)
At a Commonwealth summit in
Nassau
Nassau may refer to:
Places Bahamas
*Nassau, Bahamas, capital city of the Bahamas, on the island of New Providence
Canada
*Nassau District, renamed Home District, regional division in Upper Canada from 1788 to 1792
*Nassau Street (Winnipeg), ...
in October 1985, Thatcher agreed to impose limited sanctions and to set up a contact group to promote a dialogue with Pretoria, after she was warned by
Third World
The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the " First ...
leaders, including Indian prime minister
Rajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Gandhi (; 20 August 1944 – 21 May 1991) was an Indian politician who served as the sixth prime minister of India from 1984 to 1989. He took office after the 1984 assassination of his mother, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to beco ...
and Malaysian prime minister
Mahathir Mohamad
Mahathir bin Mohamad ( ms, محاضير بن محمد, label= Jawi, script=arab, italic=unset; ; born 10 July 1925) is a Malaysian politician, author, and physician who served as the 4th and 7th Prime Minister of Malaysia. He held the office ...
, that her opposition threatened to break up the 49-nation Commonwealth. In return, calls for a total embargo were abandoned, and the existing restrictions adopted by member states against South Africa were lifted. ANC president Tambo expressed disappointment at this major compromise.
China and Hong Kong
Hong Kong was ceded to the British Empire following the
First Opium War
The First Opium War (), also known as the Opium War or the Anglo-Sino War was a series of military engagements fought between Britain and the Qing dynasty of China between 1839 and 1842. The immediate issue was the Chinese enforcement of the ...
and in 1898, Britain obtained a 99-year lease on the
New Territories
The New Territories is one of the three main regions of Hong Kong, alongside Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula. It makes up 86.2% of Hong Kong's territory, and contains around half of the population of Hong Kong. Historically, it ...
. In 1984 Thatcher visited China intending to resolve the difficulties that would inevitably be encountered as the New Territories were due to be returned to the Chinese in 1997. She signed an agreement with
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping (22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese revolutionary leader, military commander and statesman who served as the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from December 1978 to November 1989. After CC ...
to hand back not simply the New Territories, but the whole colony, in exchange for China awarding the colony the special status within China of a "Special Administrative Region". Under the terms of the agreement, China was obliged to leave Hong Kong's economic status unchanged after the handover on 1 July 1997, for at least fifty years.
European rebate
At the Dublin European Council in November 1979, Thatcher argued that the United Kingdom paid far more to the
European Economic Community
The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organization created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957,Today the largely rewritten treaty continues in force as the ''Treaty on the functioning of the European Union'', as renamed by the Lisb ...
(EEC) than it received in spending. She famously declared at the summit: "We are not asking the Community or anyone else for money. We are simply asking to have our own money back". Her arguments were successful, and at the June 1984
Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau (; ) is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the ''arrondissement ...
Summit, the EEC agreed on an annual rebate for the United Kingdom, amounting to 66% of the difference between Britain's EU contributions and receipts. Although Labour prime minister Tony Blair later agreed to reduce the rebate size significantly, this would remain in effect. It periodically caused political controversy among the
member states of the European Union.
Channel Tunnel
Thatcher, like many Britons, had long been fascinated by the idea of
a tunnel under the
English Channel
The English Channel, "The Sleeve"; nrf, la Maunche, "The Sleeve" (Cotentinais) or ( Jèrriais), (Guernésiais), "The Channel"; br, Mor Breizh, "Sea of Brittany"; cy, Môr Udd, "Lord's Sea"; kw, Mor Bretannek, "British Sea"; nl, Het Kana ...
linking to France. The idea had been tossed around for over a century but was always vetoed, usually, by insularity-minded Englishmen. Opposition to the tunnel over the decades reflected the high value the British placed on their insularity, and their preference for imperial links that they controlled directly. By the 1960s, circumstances had changed radically. The British Empire collapsed, and the
Suez crisis
The Suez Crisis, or the Second Arab–Israeli war, also called the Tripartite Aggression ( ar, العدوان الثلاثي, Al-ʿUdwān aṯ-Ṯulāṯiyy) in the Arab world and the Sinai War in Israel,Also known as the Suez War or 1956 Wa ...
made clear that Britain was no longer a superpower and had to depend on its military allies on the continent. The Conservatives could more carefully consider the long-term economic value to business and strategic value, and also the new sense of a European identity. Labour was worried that a tunnel would bring new workers and lower wage rates. Britain's prestige, security and wealth now seemed safest when tied closely to the continent.
Thatcher and
François Mitterrand
François Marie Adrien Maurice Mitterrand (26 October 19168 January 1996) was President of France, serving under that position from 1981 to 1995, the longest time in office in the history of France. As First Secretary of the Socialist Party, he ...
agreed on the project and set up study groups. Mitterrand as a socialist said the French government would pay its share. Thatcher insisted on private financing for the British share, and the City assured her that private enterprise was eager to fund it. Final decisions were announced in January 1986.
Third term (1987–1990)
Thatcher's third term started well but the economic boom faltered. Her mistakes multiplied and her enemies in her party and the general public multiplied.
1987 general election
![House of Commons elected members, 1987](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/House_of_Commons_elected_members%2C_1987.svg)
Thatcher led her party to a landslide victory in the 1987 general election with a 102-seat majority.
Her resolute personality played a key role in overcoming the well-organised, media-wise Labour campaign led by Neil Kinnock, who was weakened by his party's commitment to unilateral
nuclear disarmament at a time Thatcher was helping to end the Cold War. Fleet Street (the national newspapers) mostly supported her and were rewarded with regular press briefings by her
press secretary, Bernard Ingham.
Polls showed that Thatcher's leadership style was more important for voters than party identification, economic concerns, and indeed all other issues. She entered the record books, becoming the longest continuously-serving prime minister since
Lord Liverpool (1812–1827), and the first to win three successive elections since
Lord Palmerston in 1865. On New Year's Day 1988, Thatcher became the longest-serving Prime Minister of the 20th century, having bested
H.H. Asquith
Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, (12 September 1852 – 15 February 1928), generally known as H. H. Asquith, was a British statesman and Liberal Party (UK), Liberal Party politician who served as Prime Minister of ...
and
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
's records.
Despite her third straight victory she remained a polarising figure. Performative hatred from the far left motivated scores of songs that "expressed anger, amusement, defiance and ridicule" towards her. A common chant among protestors was "
Maggie Out
"Maggie Out" was a chant popular during the Miners' Strike, student grant protests, Poll Tax protests and other public demonstrations that fell within the time when Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Lyrics
The ch ...
!"
Domestic policies
Economics and welfare reforms
With the battle against inflation and strikes long won, an economic boom was in its early stages. Unemployment had fallen below 3,000,000 during the spring of 1987, and the
tax cut
A tax cut represents a decrease in the amount of money taken from taxpayers to go towards government revenue. Tax cuts decrease the revenue of the government and increase the disposable income of taxpayers. Tax cuts usually refer to reductions in ...
s by chancellor Nigel Lawson sent the economy into overdrive. By early 1988, unemployment was below 2,500,000. A year later, it fell below 2,000,000. By the end of 1989, it was down to 1,600,000. A residential property price surge saw the average home price in Britain double between 1986 and 1989.
However, this led to the government doubling interest rates during 1988 and it chose to increase these further during 1989 and 1990
as inflation increased.
In 1988, Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson reacted to a market fall with a reflationary budget, stoking inflation and precipitating a slide in the Government's fortunes. By the time of Thatcher's resignation in 1990, inflation had again hit 10%, the same level she had found it in 1979.
As early as September 1988, economists warned that the economic boom would soon be over and that 1989 could see a recession set in. For the moment, the economy defied these predictions; it continued to grow throughout 1989, and unemployment continued to fall, despite the United States entering recession that year.
Employment was booming by the late 1980s, above all in the financial and retail sectors, particularly on new commercial developments built on old industrial sites. For example, the
Merry Hill Shopping Centre in the
West Midlands
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...
saw 6,000 retail jobs created between 1984 and 1989 on the former
Round Oak Steelworks site that had shed just over 1,200 jobs when it closed in 1982. The comparable
MetroCentre was built at
Gateshead
Gateshead () is a large town in northern England. It is on the River Tyne's southern bank, opposite Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle to which it is joined by seven bridges. The town contains the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, Millennium Bridge, Sage ...
, Tyne and Wear, around the same time.
On 29 March 1988, the
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister of Trade and Industry,
Kenneth Clarke, announced the sale to
British Aerospace
British Aerospace plc (BAe) was a British aircraft, munitions and defence-systems manufacturer. Its head office was at Warwick House in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre in Farnborough, Hampshire. Formed in 1977, in 1999 it purchased Marconi ...
of the
Rover Group, the new name of
British Leyland
British Leyland was an automotive engineering and manufacturing conglomerate formed in the United Kingdom in 1968 as British Leyland Motor Corporation Ltd (BLMC), following the merger of Leyland Motors and British Motor Holdings. It was partl ...
, which had been nationalised in 1975 by the government of
Harold Wilson
James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from October 1964 to June 1970, and again from March 1974 to April 1976. He ...
.
The threat of recession finally became a reality in October 1990, when it was confirmed that the economy had declined during the third quarter of the year. Unemployment started to rise again. Inflation, which the first Thatcher government had conquered by 1983, was touching 10% for the first time in eight years.
Overall, the economic record of Thatcher's government is disputed. In relative terms, it could be held there was a modest revival of British fortunes. Real gross domestic product (GDP) had grown by 26.8% over 1979–89 in the United Kingdom as against 24.3% for the
EC-12 average. Measured by
total factor productivity
In economics, total-factor productivity (TFP), also called multi-factor productivity, is usually measured as the ratio of aggregate output (e.g., GDP) to aggregate inputs. Under some simplifying assumptions about the production technology, growt ...
, labour, and capital, British productivity growth between 1979 and 1993 compared favourably with the OECD average.
However, under Thatcherite management, the macro-economy was unstable, even by the standards of the
Keynesian era of stop-go. The amplitude of fluctuations in GDP and real gross private non-residential fixed capital formation was greater in the United Kingdom than for the OECD.
In the Thatcher years the top 10% of earners received almost 50% of the tax remissions, but there proved to be no simple trade-off between equality and efficiency. The receipts ratio did not fall below the 1979 level until 1992. The expenditure ratio rose again after Thatcher's resignation in 1990, even climbing for a time above the 1979 figure. The cause was the heavy budget charge of the recessions of 1979–81 and 1990–92 and the extra funding required to meet the higher level of unemployment.
In Thatcher's third term, welfare reforms created an adult Employment Training system that included full-time work done for the dole plus a £10 top-up, on the
workfare
Workfare is a governmental plan under which welfare recipients are required to accept public-service jobs or to participate in job training. Many countries around the world have adopted workfare (sometimes implemented as "work-first" policies) to ...
model from the United States.
Section 28
Though an early backer of
decriminalisation of male homosexuality, at the 1987 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher's speech read: "Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay". Backbench Conservative MPs and peers had already begun a backlash against the "promotion" of homosexuality and, in December 1987, the controversial "
Section 28
Section 28 or Clause 28While going through Parliament, the amendment was constantly relabelled with a variety of clause numbers as other amendments were added to or deleted from the Bill, but by the final version of the Bill, which received R ...
" was added as an amendment to what became the
Local Government Act 1988
The United Kingdom Local Government Act 1988 is an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament. It was famous for its controversial section 28. This section prohibited local authorities from promoting, in a specified category of schools, "the teaching ...
. This legislation was eventually repealed by the Blair government between 2000 and
2003
File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...
.
Environment
Thatcher, a trained chemist, became publicly concerned with environmental issues in the late 1980s. In 1988, she made a major speech accepting the problems of
global warming
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
,
ozone depletion
Ozone depletion consists of two related events observed since the late 1970s: a steady lowering of about four percent in the total amount of ozone in Earth's atmosphere, and a much larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone (the ozone l ...
, and
acid rain
Acid rain is rain or any other form of precipitation that is unusually acidic, meaning that it has elevated levels of hydrogen ions (low pH). Most water, including drinking water, has a neutral pH that exists between 6.5 and 8.5, but acid ...
. In 1990, she opened the
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. In her book ''
Statecraft'' (2003), she described her later regret in supporting the concept of human-induced global warming, outlining the negative effects she perceived it had upon the policy-making process. "Whatever international action we agree upon to deal with environmental problems, we must enable our economies to grow and develop, because without growth you cannot generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment".
Foreign affairs
European integration
![Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F075760-0010, Brüssel, Sitzung des Europarates](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bild-F075760-0010%2C_Br%C3%BCssel%2C_Sitzung_des_Europarates.jpg)
At
Bruges
Bruges ( , nl, Brugge ) is the capital and largest City status in Belgium, city of the Provinces of Belgium, province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium, in the northwest of the country, and the sixth-largest city of the countr ...
in 1988, Thatcher made
a speech in which she outlined her opposition to proposals from the
European Community
The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organization created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957,Today the largely rewritten treaty continues in force as the ''Treaty on the functioning of the European Union'', as renamed by the Lisbo ...
for a federal structure and increasing centralisation of decision-making. Although she had supported British membership, Thatcher believed that the role of the EC should be limited to ensuring free trade and effective competition, and feared that new EC regulations would reverse the changes she was making in the UK, stating that she had "not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain" only to see her reforms undermined by "a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels". She was specifically against
Economic and Monetary Union, through which
a single currency would replace national currencies, and for which the EC was making preparations. The speech caused an outcry from other European leaders and exposed for the first time the deep split that was emerging over European policy inside her Conservative Party.
In 1987–88, Chancellor Nigel Lawson had been following a policy of "shadowing the
Deutschmark
The Deutsche Mark (; English: ''German mark''), abbreviated "DM" or "D-Mark" (), was the official currency of West Germany from 1948 until 1990 and later the unified Germany from 1990 until the adoption of the euro in 2002. In English, it was ...
", ''i.e.'' cutting interest rates and selling pounds to try to prevent the pound rising above DM 3.00 (as a substitute for joining the European
Exchange Rate Mechanism which Thatcher had vetoed in 1985); in an interview for the ''Financial Times'', in November 1987, Thatcher claimed not to have been told of this and disapproved. By 1989 the economy was suffering from high interest rates (they peaked at 15% in autumn 1989) imposed to temper a potentially
unsustainable boom, which she believed had been exacerbated by Lawson's policies. Thatcher's popularity once again declined.
At a meeting before the European Community summit in Madrid in June 1989, Lawson and foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe forced Thatcher to agree to the circumstances under which she would join the
Exchange Rate Mechanism. At the meeting, they both threatened they would resign if Thatcher did not meet their demands. Thatcher responded by moving Howe to
Leader of the House of Commons
The leader of the House of Commons is a minister of the Crown of the Government of the United Kingdom whose main role is organising government business in the House of Commons. The leader is generally a member or attendee of the cabinet of the ...
(despite giving him the title Deputy Prime Minister he was now effectively removed from decision-making over Europe) and by listening more to her adviser
Sir Alan Walters on economic matters. Lawson resigned that October, feeling that Thatcher had undermined him.
South Africa and release of Mandela
Thatcher continued to be the leading international advocate of a
policy of contact with apartheid South Africa,
and the most forthright opponent of economic sanctions against the country, which a white minority government ruled.
Her stand had divided the Commonwealth 48–1 at three conferences since 1985, but had brought her influence in South Africa's white community. Rejecting the US policy of disinvestment as a mistake, she argued a prosperous society would be more receptive to change.
In October 1988, Thatcher said she would be unlikely to visit South Africa unless black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela was released from prison. In March 1989 she stressed the need to release him for multi-party talks to take place, urging that the ANC's promise to suspend violence should be enough to permit his release and that the "renunciation of violence" should not be an absolute condition for negotiations for a settlement. At the end of March 1989, Thatcher's six-day, 10,000-mile tour through southern Africa—a follow-up to her "look and learn" exercise in Kenya and Nigeria in 1988—did not include South Africa because Mandela had not yet been released.
![South Africa House anti apartheid London 1989](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/South_Africa_House_anti_apartheid_London_1989.jpg)
Thatcher met reformist
F. W. de Klerk
Frederik Willem de Klerk (, , 18 March 1936 – 11 November 2021) was a South African politician who served as state president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994 and as deputy president from 1994 to 1996 in the democratic government. As South A ...
in London in June 1989 and stressed that Mandela must be freed and reforms put in place before she would visit the country. In July 1989 she called for the release not only of Mandela but also
Walter Sisulu and
Oscar Mpetha
Oscar Mafakafaka Mpetha was born in Mount Fletcher 5 August 1909 and died on 15 November 1994. He was a South African trade unionist and political activist.
Personal life
Mpetha was educated at local schools and at Adams College. In the 1930s, he ...
before all-group talks could continue.
Thatcher, therefore, welcomed de Klerk's decision in February 1990 to release Mandela and lift the ban on the ANC, and said the change vindicated her positive policy: "We believe in carrots as well as sticks". However Thatcher had also set the freeing of Mandela as a condition of friendship with the white government.
Thatcher said the European Community's voluntary ban on new investment should be lifted when Mandela was released. However her call to the world to reward reforms was countered by Mandela himself, who while still in jail argued sanctions must be maintained until the end of white rule, and criticised her decision to lift a ban on new investment unilaterally. Mandela declared: "We regard the attitude of the British Government on the question of sanctions as of primary importance ... My release from prison was the direct result of the people inside and outside South Africa. It was also the result of the immense pressure exerted on the South African Government by the international community, in particular from the people of the UK."
However, foreign secretary
Douglas Hurd was adamant: "We needed to make a practical response to a man, President F. W. de Klerk, who has taken his political life into his hands". Nevertheless, as a gesture of goodwill Thatcher agreed to begin aid to the ANC, which until its suspension of violence she had criticised as "a typical terrorist organisation", her disapproval reinforced by her anti-socialism.
Thatcher's opposition to sanctions left her isolated within the Commonwealth and the European Community, and Mandela did not take up an early offer to meet her, opposing her proposed visit to his country as premature. Mandela rejected all concessions to the South African government, which he accused of seeking the easing of sanctions before it had offered "profound and irreversible change".
Mandela delayed meeting Thatcher until he had gathered support for sanctions from other world leaders in the course of a four-week, 14-nation tour of Europe and the United States. Their first meeting failed to resolve differences over her unilateral lifting of sanctions and his refusal to renounce armed struggle until existing conditions for the black majority in South Africa changed.
In their economic discussions, Mandela initially favoured nationalisation as a preferred method for redistributing wealth between blacks and whites, but with British investment in South Africa in 1989 accounting for half of the total, and with bilateral trade worth just over $3.2 billion, Thatcher successfully urged him to adopt free-market solutions, arguing they were necessary to maintain the kind of growth that would sustain a
liberal democracy
Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under an indirect democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into diff ...
.
German reunification and the Gulf War
![President George H](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/President_George_H._W._Bush_and_Prime_Minister_Margaret_Thatcher_addresses_the_Aspen_Institute_Symposium.jpg)
The NATO nations were in general agreement on delicately handling the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, the reunification of Germany in 1990–91, and the end of communism and the Soviet Union in 1991. There was no gloating or effort to humiliate Gorbachev. While US president
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; pr ...
wanted to make NATO more of a political than a military alliance, Thatcher spoke out for the importance of the military role. Like
Mitterrand in France, she was nervous about the
reunification of Germany
German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...
, repeating the quip from
Lord Ismay
Hastings Lionel Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay (21 June 1887 – 17 December 1965), was a diplomat and general in the British Indian Army who was the first Secretary General of NATO. He also was Winston Churchill's chief military assistant during th ...
, NATO's first secretary-general: "The purpose of NATO is to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down."
Thatcher and Mitterrand had a more specific worry. Bush said: "Margaret still feared the worst from reunification and, like Mitterrand, worried that the Germans might "go neutral" and refuse to permit stationing nuclear weapons on their soil." That is, Chancellor Kohl might trade neutralisation of united Germany as part of the price the Kremlin wanted to approve unification. In the event, Germany was reunited and there was no neutralisation.
Thatcher pushed President Bush to take strong military action in reversing Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait in 1990, to which she sent over 45,000 troops. In the following year, they saw combat under her successor
John Major
Sir John Major (born 29 March 1943) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997, and as Member of Parliament ...
in
Operation Granby
Operation Granby, commonly abbreviated Op Granby, was the code name given to the British military operations during the 1991 Gulf War. 53,462 members of the British Armed Forces were deployed during the conflict. The total cost of operations wa ...
.
Decline and fall
1989 leadership challenge
In November 1989, Thatcher was challenged for the Conservative Party's leadership by
Sir Anthony Meyer
Sir Anthony John Charles Meyer, 3rd Baronet (27 October 1920 – 24 December 2004) was a British soldier, diplomat, and Conservative Party (UK), Conservative and later Liberal Democrats (UK), Liberal Democrat politician, best known for standing ...
, a 69-year-old back-bencher. As Meyer was a virtually unknown backbench MP, he was viewed as a "
stalking horse
A stalking horse is a figure used to test a concept or mount a challenge on behalf of an anonymous third party. If the idea proves viable or popular, the anonymous third party can then declare its interest and advance the concept with little risk o ...
" candidate for more prominent members of the party. Thatcher easily defeated Meyer's challenge, but there were sixty ballot papers either cast for Meyer or abstaining, a surprisingly large number for a sitting prime minister. However, her supporters in the Party viewed the results as a success, claiming that after ten years as prime minister and with approximately 370 Conservative MPs voting, the opposition was surprisingly small.
Poll tax
Thatcher was fiercely committed to a new tax—commonly called the "poll tax"—that would apply in equal amounts to rich and poor alike, despite intense public opposition. Her inability to compromise undermined her leadership in the Conservative Party, which turned decisively against her. Thatcher sought to relieve what she considered the unfair burden of
property tax
A property tax or millage rate is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property.In the OECD classification scheme, tax on property includes "taxes on immovable property or net wealth, taxes on the change of ownership of property through inheri ...
on the property-owning section of the population and outlined a fundamental solution as her flagship policy in the Conservative manifesto for the 1987 election. Local government
rates
Rate or rates may refer to:
Finance
* Rates (tax), a type of taxation system in the United Kingdom used to fund local government
* Exchange rate, rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another
Mathematics and science
* Rate (mathema ...
(taxes) were replaced by the community charge, popularly known as the "poll tax", which levied a flat rate on all adult residents.
Almost every adult, irrespective of income or wealth, paid the same, which would heavily redistribute the tax burden onto the less well-off.
She defended the poll tax, firstly, on the principle of marginality, that all voters should bear the burden of extra spending by local councils; secondly, on the benefit principle, that burdens should be proportional to benefits received. Ministers disregarded political research which showed potential massive losses for marginal Conservative-voting households.
The poll tax was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and
England and Wales
England and Wales () is one of the three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. The substantive law of the jurisdiction is Eng ...
in 1990. This highly visible redistribution of the tax burden onto the less well-off proved to be one of the most controversial policies of Thatcher's premiership. Additional problems emerged when many of the tax rates set by local councils proved to be much higher than earlier predicted. Opponents organised to resist bailiffs and disrupt court hearings of community charge debtors. One Labour MP,
Terry Fields
Terence Fields (8 March 1937 – 28 June 2008) was a British politician and firefighter. A member of the Militant group, he was the Labour Member of Parliament for Liverpool Broadgreen from 1983 to 1992. He was expelled from the Labour Party ...
, was jailed for 60 days for refusing to pay.
An indication of the unpopularity of the policy was given by a
Gallup poll in March 1990 that put Labour 18.5 points ahead. As the crisis deepened and the Prime Minister stood her ground, opponents claimed that up to 18 million people were refusing to pay. Enforcement measures became increasingly draconian. Unrest mounted and
culminated in a number of riots. The most serious of these happened on 31 March 1990, during a protest at
Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square ( ) is a public square in the City of Westminster, Central London, laid out in the early 19th century around the area formerly known as Charing Cross. At its centre is a high column bearing a statue of Admiral Nelson commemo ...
, London. More than 100,000 protesters attended and more than 400 people were arrested.
Labour continued to benefit from the situation as their lead in the
opinion polls
An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a survey or a poll (although strictly a poll is an actual election) is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions ...
widened, and they made gains from the Tories in local council elections and more than once in by-elections. The new
Liberal Democrats, after a weak start, were starting to gain ground in the opinion polls and seized the safe Eastbourne seat in its
by-election
A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...
in October.
Constitutional commentators concluded from the tax fiasco that "the British state
ecamedangerously centralised, to an extent that important policy developments can now no longer be properly debated". The unpopularity of the poll tax came to be seen as an important factor in Thatcher's downfall,
by convincing many Conservative backbenchers to vote against her when she was later challenged for the leadership by Michael Heseltine.
Following Thatcher's departure, her former chancellor Nigel Lawson labelled the poll tax as "the one great blunder of the Thatcher years". The succeeding
Major government announced the abolition of the tax in spring 1991 and, in 1993, replaced it with
Council Tax, a banded property tax similar in many respects to the older system of rates. Former trade-and-industry secretary
Nicholas Ridley agreed that Thatcher had suffered a massive defeat over the poll tax, but he argued that Major's repeal "vindicated the rioters and those who had refused to pay. Lawlessness seemed to have paid off".
1990 leadership challenge and resignation
Thatcher's political "assassination" was, according to witnesses such as
Alan Clark
Alan Kenneth Mackenzie Clark (13 April 1928 – 5 September 1999) was a British Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), author and diarist. He served as a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher's governments at the Departments of Employment, Tra ...
, one of the most dramatic episodes in British political history. The idea of a long-serving prime minister, undefeated at the polls, being ousted by an internal party ballot might, at first sight, seem bizarre. However, by 1990, opposition to Thatcher's policies on local government taxation, her Government's perceived mishandling of the economy (in particular the high interest rates of 15% that eroded her support among homeowners and business people), and the divisions opening in the Conservative Party over
European integration
European integration is the process of industrial, economic integration, economic, political, legal, social integration, social, and cultural Regional integration, integration of states wholly or partially in Europe or nearby. European integrat ...
made her seem increasingly politically vulnerable and her party increasingly divided. A Gallup poll in October 1990 showed that while Thatcher remained personally respected, there was overwhelming opposition towards her final initiatives, while various polls suggested the party was trailing Labour by between 6 and 11 points. Moreover, the Prime Minister's distaste for "consensus politics" and willingness to override colleagues' opinions, including that of her Cabinet, emboldened the backlash against her when it did occur.
On 1 November 1990, Sir Geoffrey Howe, one of Thatcher's oldest allies and longest-serving Cabinet member, resigned from his position as Deputy Prime Minister in protest at Thatcher's open hostility both to moves towards European federalism and to her own government's policy advocating a "hard wikt:ecu#English, ecu", ''i.e.'' a new European currency which competed alongside existing national currencies. In his resignation speech in the House of Commons two weeks later, he likened having to negotiate against what he called the "background noise" of her rhetoric to trying to play cricket despite the team captain having broken her own team's bats. He ended by suggesting that the time had come for "others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties", with which he stated that he had wrestled "for perhaps too long".
Thatcher's former cabinet colleague Michael Heseltine then challenged her for the leadership of the party; she led the first round of voting by Conservative MPs (20 November) with just under 55% of the vote but fell four votes short of the 15% margin needed to win outright. Though she initially stated that she intended to contest the second ballot, most of Thatcher's Cabinet colleagues offered her at best lukewarm support, and many warned her that she would very likely lose a second ballot to Heseltine. On 22 November, at just after 9.30 am, she announced to the Cabinet that she would not be a candidate in the second ballot after all. Shortly afterwards, her staff made public what was, in effect, her resignation statement, in which she stated that she had "concluded that the unity of the Party and the prospects of victory in a General Election would be better served" if she stood down as prime minister.
Leader of the Opposition (United Kingdom), Leader of the Opposition Neil Kinnock proposed a motion of no confidence in the Government, and
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...
seized the opportunity this presented on the day of her resignation to deliver one of her most memorable performances. Among other quips, she famously noted: "a single currency is about the politics of Europe, it is about a federal Europe by the back door. So I shall consider the proposal of Dennis Skinner, the Honourable Member for Bolsover . Now where were we? I am enjoying this".
She supported John Major as her successor, and after he had won the leadership contest, she formally resigned as prime minister on 28 November. In the years to come, her approval of Major would fall away. After her resignation, a MORI poll found that 52% agreed with the proposition that "On balance she had been good for the country", while 48% disagreed thinking she had been bad.
In 1991, she was given a long and unprecedented standing ovation at the party's annual conference, although she politely rejected calls from delegates for her to make a speech. She "all but shunned" the House of Commons after losing power and gave no clue as to her future plans. She retired from the House at the 1992 United Kingdom general election, 1992 general election, at the age of 66 years.
Record in perspective
Altogether, the eleven-year duration of her three terms in office make up the third to have outlasted a decade from start to finish, following Robert Walpole in the 1730s and William Pitt the Younger, William Pitt in the 1790s. Despite her electoral success in accumulating tens of millions of votes throughout Great Britain, only in Southern England and the Midlands did she ever win a majority of the popular vote. The misery index (economics), misery index—the addition of the unemployment rate to the inflation rate—in the UK in November 1990 was "13.92",
an 11.8% decrease from the rate of "15.57" in April 1979.
Foreign policy overview
![President Ronald Reagan talking on the telephone with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom in the Oval Office](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/President_Ronald_Reagan_talking_on_the_telephone_with_Prime_Minister_Margaret_Thatcher_of_the_United_Kingdom_in_the_Oval_Office.jpg)
Thatcher had broadened her interest in foreign policy since she became Conservative Party leader and would work with five foreign secretaries.
As prime minister, she cautiously moved closer to the European Community, tried to limit disinvestment from South Africa and agreed to return British Hong Kong, Hong Kong to China. Having long denounced Soviet communism, she escalated her attacks when it invaded Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, Afghanistan.
However, Thatcher would seek ''détente'' with the reformist Gorbachev; she later welcomed the Revolutions of 1989, collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe during 1989. She went to war with Argentina to recover the Falkland Islands and was a leader in the coalition opposing Iraq's occupation of Kuwait.
Information released
From the National Archives
Under the thirty-year rule, various government documents relating to Thatcher's premiership have been declassified and released by the The National Archives (United Kingdom), National Archives. These include:
GCSEs
Papers released in December 2014 show that Thatcher completely disapproved of GCSEs which, in 1986, Sir
Keith Joseph
Keith Sinjohn Joseph, Baron Joseph, (17 January 1918 – 10 December 1994), known as Sir Keith Joseph, 2nd Baronet, for most of his political life, was a British politician, intellectual and barrister. A member of the Conservative Party, he ...
was trying to introduce in the face of fierce opposition from teaching unions. At very least she wanted a two-year delay to ensure rigorous syllabuses and adequate teacher training. However, when the unions who had been involved in a pay dispute for two years further criticised reforms at their conference, Joseph persuaded her to go ahead immediately to avoid appearing to take their side. According to Dominic Cummings, special advisor to Michael Gove, it was a catastrophic decision which led to a collapse in the integrity of the exam system.
Cocaine production
In July 1989, Thatcher called for research on the use of biological weapons against cocaine producers in Peru, in the context of the feared crack cocaine epidemic among black British people. Carolyn Sinclair, a policy adviser, suggested that Thatcher proceed cautiously in working with black communities because she believed they gave cannabis (drug), cannabis to babies.
From inquiries
In February 2020, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse reported that Thatcher was made aware of child abuse allegations against Conservative MP Peter Morrison.
See also
* List of ministers under Margaret Thatcher
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Thatcherism
* Wets and dries
* Post-industrial society
* Presidency of Ronald Reagan
Notes
References
Further reading
Surveys and politics
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Biographies
* Bale, Tim. ed. ''Margaret Thatcher'' (4 vol, Routledge, 2015) 1,624 pp of republished excerpts by many writers; review by Robert Saunders, "The Many Lives of Margaret Thatcher" ''English Historical Review''132#556 (2017), pp 638–658.
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Foreign and defence policy
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* Bennett, Harry. "Lord Carrington, 1979–82." in ''British Foreign Secretaries Since 1974'' (Routledge, 2004) pp. 131–154.
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* Bruni, Domenico Maria. "A leader at war: Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands crisis of 1982." ''Observatoire de la société britannique'' 20 (2018): 135–157 online.
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* Donaghy, Aaron. "Margaret Thatcher's Private Secretaries for Foreign Affairs, 1979–1984." in ''Private Secretaries to the Prime Minister'' (Routledge, 2017) pp. 166–186.
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* Stoddart, Kristan. ''Facing Down the Soviet Union: Britain, the USA, NATO and Nuclear Weapons, 1976–1983'' (Springer, 2014).
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* Urban, G. R. ''Diplomacy and Disillusion at the Court of Margaret Thatcher: An Insider's View'' (1996)
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External links
Essentialsfrom th
Margaret Thatcher FoundationMargaret Thatcher and the Privatization Movementfrom th
Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives
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