It was Buckingham Palace. Was she free to come and see Her Majesty? A few minutes later, a trim figure in royal blue, almost dwarfed by the crowd of photographers and supporters, pushed her way through to the car outside. Then the car eased through the great palace gates… and the rest is, more or less, a mystery. All her previous premiers had been men, and they had roughly fallen into two groups. Then there were the two Labour men, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan: socialists in theory, but deeply patriotic, even socially conservative in practice.
She was prime minister for 11 years, leading the Conservatives to three general election victories, before resigning in Read more about her premiership and legacy. But Mrs Thatcher was different. She saw herself as a radical, a moderniser, dragging Britain kicking and screaming into the s. Want to know even more about the real events from history that inspired the drama? Read more from the experts…. On top of that, there was also an unusual personal dimension.
Both the Queen and her prime minister were used to being the only woman in the room. Mrs Thatcher was not above a little discreet flirting with some of her male colleagues.
But dealing with another woman was something else entirely. Neither the Queen nor her new prime minister ever spoke publicly about the relationship. Later, the biographer Charles Moore described the awkwardness of their weekly Tuesday audiences, with Mrs Thatcher sitting nervously on the edge of her chair. People often imagined that she spent the time haranguing the Queen about economic policy. In other words, most of their meetings were probably immensely boring.
She then steadily moved up the ministerial ranks, becoming secretary of state for education and science when the Conservatives retook power in Nonetheless, she was able to keep her job, and in , with the Conservatives back in the opposition, she defeated former Prime Minister Edward Heath to take over leadership of the party.
Thatcher was now one of the most powerful women in the world. She rejected the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes, who advocated deficit spending during periods of high unemployment, instead preferring the monetarist approach of Chicago economist Milton Friedman.
In April , Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands , a sparsely populated British colony located miles from Argentina and 8, miles from the United Kingdom. Thatcher dispatched troops to the area. On May 2, a British submarine controversially sank an Argentine cruiser that was outside of an official exclusion zone, killing over people on board. Later in the month, British troops landed near San Carlos Bay in East Falkland and, despite persistent air attacks, were able to capture the capital of Port Stanley and end the fighting.
The war and an improving economy propelled Thatcher to a second term in In what became a key part of her legacy, Thatcher also privatized British Telecom, British Gas, British Airways, Rolls-Royce and a number of other state-owned companies. On the foreign policy front, Thatcher often found herself allied with U. In Asia, meanwhile, she negotiated the eventual transfer of Hong Kong to the Chinese.
In Africa she had a mixed record, facilitating the end of white minority rule in Zimbabwe but opposing sanctions against apartheid South Africa. After Thatcher was elected to a third term in , her government lowered income tax rates to a postwar low. On November 14, , former Defense Minister Michael Heseltine challenged her for leadership of the party, partly due to differences of opinion on the European Union.
Thatcher won the first ballot but by too small of a margin for outright victory. That night, her cabinet members visited her one by one and urged her to resign. She officially stepped down on November 28 after helping to assure that John Major and not Heseltine would replace her. Thatcher remained in parliament until , at which time she entered the largely ceremonial House of Lords and began to write her memoirs.
Though she stopped appearing in public after suffering a series of small strokes in the early s, her influence remained strong. Got it. Did she actually have a tense relationship with the royals? As Alwyn Turner writes in Rejoice! It was marked by conflict against the Establishment on all fronts — not just manor-born Tories and cultural elites, but also the civil service and the Church of England.
What about the Falklands? Probably not. Anyway, one doubts Thatcher would have needed a Freudian excuse to go to war for the islands. While other members of her party feared becoming embroiled in a South Atlantic quagmire, she leapt into the conflict with self-consciously Churchillian gusto. It also rose in , when Thatcher narrowly escaped being blown up by the IRA, an incident the show neglects to include.
If she was so unpopular, how did she stay in office for 11 years? Great question! It was a disaster. In the years that followed, Labour moderates would attempt to purge the party of its more militant tendencies — often literally. But her supporters were not limited to Essex day traders and Murdoch acolytes.
0コメント