margaret thatcher speech writer margaret thatcher speech writer

as far as can be known. They built and provided their own welfare facilities and, well before today's welfare state was built, miners created their own welfare systems to alleviate hardship. Privatisation was the single most massive attack on democracy we have seen. Sir Bernard died after a short illness, his family said. At an international conference in Lisbon in the late 80s, the British faction, among whom were Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Malcolm Bradbury and myself, referred back to Thatcher constantly in our presentations. She was among the first Western leaders to MT gave her first Either way, I'm an adult now and none of those things are on telly any more so there's no excuse for apathy. An unclubbable outsider, she allied herself to another outsider, Keith Joseph, and his free-market set. As she said in her memoirs: "There was no one else." She was, of course, the first and so far only female British prime minister, Jon Snow reiterated on Monday night, insinuating that this achievement should in general be celebrated, never mind the specifics of her leadership. In a twitter of panic, Labour shadow ministers sent out pleas yesterday: "Hoping all Labour supporters will respond with dignity and respect to news of Baroness Thatcher's death." The price we all continue to pay for Thatcherite policies is to live in a less cohesive and more antisocial society, in which community life is weaker, people feel less able to trust each other and fewer of those in government have the experience and compassion to represent or understand the vast majority. Thatcher never kept a diary, but the archive includes rich details of her role in important domestic and world events. Lady Thatcher, you honor us by coming to the site of Sir Winston's pivotal speech, an event Westminster College has immortalized with the beautiful Winston Churchill Memorial. At the October 1980 Conservative Conference, in the midst of economic recession, Selling off the family silver Harold Macmillan and later Labour called it, as Margaret Thatcher set about reversing the 1945 nationalisations that had put oil, gas, coal, electricity and an airline as well as a house removal company in public hands. At times the Conservative party is so anarchic as to appear almost ungovernable, like a plethora of pressure groups pushing pet causes rather than a united group ruthlessly focusing on political success. Less noted . Her bouffant and handbag and nasal voice were comedy gold, but she was also earnest, principled and said exactly what she meant. But there were also cuts for basic-rate taxpayers: the 1988 budget, for example, cut the top rate of tax from 60% to 40% and the standard rate from 27% to 25%. It made minor savings at best and was, as the . The latest pit to close, Maltby in Yorkshire, still has a death and general purpose fund to help fellow miners and their families in times of hardship. Research papers can be complex, so best to give our essay writing service a bit more time on this one. She was lucky, in her enemies and friends notably Reagan in the Falklands conflict. The poll-tax rioters. I made this argument at length last year when Christopher Hitchens died and a speak-no-ill rule about him was instantly imposed (a rule he, more than anyone, viciously violated), and I won't repeat that argument today; those interested can read my reasoning here. Steely, certainly. There had been Churchill and his defiance; there had been Kipling and his If; there had been her father in his grocer's shop in Grantham. Flags were flying over Port Stanley on 14 June. She was catapulted into the Conservative leadership by a small group of ideologues centred around a thinktank, determined to roll back the statist ideas that dominated Britain after the postwar Attlee government. Simon Heffer, journalist, historian and friend of Margaret Thatcher, recommends the best books to read to gain an understanding of the United Kingdom's first female prime ministerand explains why she was the most influential British leader of the modern era. Above all, they lack her competence at running the machinery of government. Alamat kami. But on their catastrophic economic policy, it's full-speed ahead into the concrete wall. Demanding that no criticisms be voiced to counter that hagiography is to enable false history and a propagandistic whitewashing of bad acts, distortions that become quickly ossified and then endure by virtue of no opposition and the powerful emotions created by death. As I spread my wings in politics, I discovered many Thatcher voters down south who were the same kind of people who loathed her in Scotland. It was part of her conspicuous virtue, her indifference to familiar political conventions. No homeless or disabled people need beg on the streets. announced that White When President Reagan died in June 2004, she delivered a A meeting in Downing Street had left the Pakistan leader besotted with the older woman's wisdom and generosity: '"I tell you, she's such a kind person.". What saved Thatcher's bacon, and revolutionised her leadership, was Labour's unelectable Michael Foot and the Falklands war. John O'Sullivan, CBE (born 25 April 1942) is a British conservative political commentator and journalist. be a nation in retreat". making her big speech the following day as scheduled. Plus there's the fact that comedy is now a big business, and there's less money in sharp satire than gentle observation. "Fatcha" was an instant punchline back then: simply saying it was enough to get a laugh. Had Jim Callaghan won the 1979 election, he too would have faced the challenge of how to modernise an economy beset by high inflation, weak management and poor industrial relations. I have few recollections of Thatcher after the slowly chauffeured, weepy Downing Street cortege. She was an ardent pro-European, and her 1979 manifesto made no mention of radical union reform or privatisation. In the Meryl Streep film, The Iron Lady, it's the scenes of domesticity that appear most absurd. Thatcher's use of rhetorical devices supports her eulogy because the concept of Reagan being more. This was hardly the first or even the worst example of a dig at Thatcher tinged so needlessly with sexism. The dockers. She certainly was divisive, bisecting the country politically and geographically: hard-hit regions in the north of England, Wales and Scotland may be notably less civil in their farewells. At its best, that has meant a mood of freedom and choice that has made these islands a brighter, less drab place than they once were. By 1987, anti-Tory tactical voting had taken hold. Hewrote this piece in 2003, two weeks before he died. On taking office she showered money on public sector unions, and her "cuts" were only to planned increases, mild compared with today's. On the contrary, consumerism and materialism have been the norm ever since, rising inequality the consistent trend as the rich soar ever further away from the rest. The pomp and circumstance that will crown her funeral was proffered by Brown, to some shudders from his own side. Conscious of being awoman, and incapable of pretending otherwise. If you behave like there's no such thing as society, in the end there isn't. On June 11th, 2004 Margaret Thatcher gave a speech to the American people at Ronald Reagan's funeral. November). Thatcher was a divisive woman who created discord, not harmony. cent of cases. On Saturday, 27 February, he wrote in his diary: "PM getting great press went up to the [Capitol] Hill some of the senators tried to give her a bad time, she put them down firmly and with typical British courtesy.". Edited and full versions of Margaret Thatcher's 'The lady's not for turning' speech, delivered at the Conservative party conference in Brighton on 10 October 1980 In truth, Thatcher is one of the clearest examples of the fact that a successful woman doesn't always mean a step forward for women. The Winter of Discontent in 1978-79 brought rhetorical as well as political This is a style whose absence is much missed. But she regarded rightwing causes as an intellectual hobby. Another head of government died recently who, like Thatcher, was called divisive. Seeing as women aren't a minor Brit-flick grateful for even a bad review, that truism doesn't quite hold true here. If anything, it becomes more compelling to commemorate those bad acts upon death as the only antidote against a society erecting a false and jingoistically self-serving history. The London mayor regretted that usage, but he surely understood its origins. of her best Parliamentary speeches in a debate on the strikes. Contrary to an increasingly common belief, "a woman who is successful" is not synonymous with "a feminist". Died: 24 February 2023, aged 90 Sir Bernard Ingham was Margaret Thatcher writ large. But we have one beacon to guide us that Ronald Reagan never had. Look inside your own house, at the water coming out of the tap: once a public utility but, after Thatcher, the property of private companies, many foreign-owned. An author and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan staked her claim to speechwriting fame as a primary writer for former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.Her notable speeches include Reagan's "Boys of Pointe du Hoc" address, given on the 40 th anniversary of D-Daythe day Allied troops invaded Normandy in World War IIas well as the former president's . She hated what she called "that French phrase laissez faire". To enrich the global 1% she so brilliantly represented, our "entitlement" had to go and she was just the one to do it. A strong, so strong, leader. The papers date from Margaret Thatcher's childhood to the end of her life, and include tens of thousands of photographs, as well as a vast collection of press cuttings, and many audio and video tapes of public and private events. There is absolutely nothing wrong with loathing Margaret Thatcher or any other person with political influence and power based upon perceived bad acts, and that doesn't change simply because they die. She defended Ronald Here, for instance, was what the Guardian reported upon the death last month of Hugo Chavez: "To the millions who detested him as a thug and charlatan, it will be occasion to bid, vocally or discreetly, good riddance.". She would appear in public to drape a hankie over a model BA plane tailfin because she disliked the unpatriotic logo with which they'd replaced the union flag (maybe don't privatise BA then), or to shuffle about some country pile arm in arm with a doddery Pinochet and tell us all what a fine fellow he was. These include, "We have to show them that we're better than they are", and "Women can get into corners that men can't reach!" see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising Public Statements of Margaret Thatcher on CD-ROM, 1945-90, edited Christopher All rights reserved. Oxford CD-ROM explains how the statements were assembled and edited Philip Larkin visited Downing Street where the prime minister quoted approvingly one of his lines to him "Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives." Even some leading figures on the left have jealously praised the right's creativity and ideological crusaders. Mobilising society, by rule of law, against the trade union bosses was undoubtedly an achievement. Rather, she was a classic example of a certain kind of conservative woman who believed that all women should pull themselves up just as she had done, conveniently overlooking that not all women are blessed with the privileges that had been available to her, such as a wealthy and supportive husband and domestic help. In November 1978, Hannaford and I organized a European fact-finding tour for Reagan, and the first stop was London. If the Falklands war was the making of Thatcher, then the poll tax was her achilles heel not least in Scotland. I'd become a delinquent, living on heroin and benefit fraud. She lavished praise on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, then in its infancy, and laid out the . her maiden But perhaps her greatest legacy was New Labour. The cautious tactician was suppressed. Queen Elizabeth is widely assumed . Typically, this distinction is mapped onto the ideas that Conservatives hold about equality. Thatcher's most baleful influence on government was not on industries and services she privatised but those she did not. I don't know if they ever voted for her, I don't know if they liked her. What was different in Britain was that she assumed no responsibility to minimise social disruption or to create new jobs and industries. Margaret expresses that Reagan's leadership was the key to ending The Cold War and unifying a formerly divided nation. We still live in the land Margaret built. Oil helped Thatcher paper over the cracks, but Britain's age-old problem finding a way to pay its way in the world remains. The tragic upshot has been the steep erosion of wages for the powerless bottom half, as income, wealth and property is sucked up to the top. We might speculate that an adviser had offered Thatcher a selection of good lines, or that she had asked to see some. It got over a deep, instinctive hostility to women at the top of anything, and put her there. Copyright Margaret Thatcher Foundation 2023. Margaret Thatcher was a hugely divisive figure in British politics. There's something distinctively creepy - in a Roman sort of way - about this mandated ritual that our political leaders must be heralded and consecrated as saints upon death. By delivering a crisp, emphatic victory Thatcher showed the world, and more important herself, what a talent for solitary command could achieve. Moreover, it's hard not to see the roots of the 2008 crash in the unshackling of the City two decades earlier. Endeavouring to persuade the British into an attitude of hostility to the group with which she spent 11 years deepening their connection must take a high place in any catalogue of anti-statesmanship. Emery Evans . Under Heath and Jim Callaghan the question was widely asked: had democracies become "ungovernable"? The result . Underestimating Ronald Reagan was an error committed by many of his critics and opponents; Reagan never minded a bit, thinking that being underestimated yielded him a significant advantage. We are all on our own. Under this heading, Thatcher left a dark legacy that, like her successes, has still not disappeared behind the historical horizon. "Being powerful is like being a lady. What was it about Thatcher that inspired a generation of comics to rage at her? Margaret has spent her life fighting for social justice and equality. Capitalism flourishes on debt, but she insisted that economics were best understood as Mr Micawber's formula in which happiness and misery were separated by a shilling. At its heart must be an active programme to create good jobs and raise living standards. And the miners. "Maggie Thatcher" two fierce trochees set against the gentler iambic pulse of Britain's postwar welfare state. At her first conference speech, she chastised the Labour Party on economic . Even the nasty politics of "welfare reform" is driven by the high cost of subsidising low pay through in-work benefits, and indifference to the plight of jobless communities who have never recovered from de-industrialisation. It was sad that she had to learn it in war, a grim example to her British and US successors. She also put forward the idea of "a vast . A Tory party desperate for women helped Thatcher through the political foothills to early success as an MP. As coal, steel and shipbuilding fell under her wrecking ball, whole communities were destroyed. press to rejoice at the capture of South Georgia on 25 April 1982 and Since 1990 a selection of statements is listed. Flags were flying over Port Stanley on 14 June. Or perhaps it was just because I was a little kid and more interested in them Weetabix skinheads, Roland Rat and Knight Rider. On 30 October 1990 she made the first of the Elton has previously said that he did two minutes about Thatcher and two hours about his knob, and all anyone ever remembered was the Thatcher material. When John Lennon was told of Elvis Presley's death, he famously responded: "Elvis died when he joined the army," meaning of course, that his combat clothing and clipped hair signalled the demise of the thrusting, Dionysian revolution of which he was the immaculate emblem. Would we like her back? for the disk. rejecting Commission proposals at the Rome European Council with the words Feminists disowned her by insisting that though she was a woman, she was not a sister. The spell he was referring to is the unseen bond that connects us all and prevents us from being subjugated by tyranny. Look at the trains on the track, the phone in your house, the trio of 1980s teenagers who lead the three main parties. This was her last important public statement. Speaking personally, it was a personal privilege beyond measure to have witnessed and participate in the blossoming of the special ties that continued throughout her entire time in office. The remainder are listed without a text because sometimes no record survives Ingham's rough redraft of my speech with very little success. Margaret Thatcher's most popular book is The Downing Street Years. It is no coincidence the three most influential centre-right thinktanks were all conceived over the following months. Margaret Thatcher was Britain's most significant leader since Churchill. The woman dubbed as the Iron Lady during her premiership made her last tearful speech as the leader of the country from the doorstep of . Unquestionably, a major component of what Reagan achieved was mirrored in what Baroness Thatcher herself achieved. Much of any leader's record is unremarkable dross, and Thatcher was no exception. Their target was "the enemy within" working-class power and the so-called culture of entitlement. The gender remained, its artefacts deployed with calculation. That gives them the nerve to set about cutting benefits and the public realm with a glee they don't bother to hide. In 11 years, Thatcher promoted only one woman to her cabinet, preferring instead to elevate men whom Spitting Image memorably and, in certain instances, accurately, described as "vegetables". It made her virtually unsackable as education secretary. You could never call Margaret Mother by mistake. Second, it's now easier to see the scale of the setback she inflicted on Britain's idea of its own future. A special licence was granted exclusively to the Radio Times. It was not interested in a resolution. Those strikes were confusing to me as a child. Britain's record on innovation and investment have been extremely poor, while the hollowing out of manufacturing left the economy over-dependent on the de-regulated City. The Crown's Version of Margaret Thatcher's 1990 Downfall Takes a Lot of Liberties with . The Thatcher government was across all the details of this shipment. Britain ceased to be the sick man of Europe and entered the 1990s with its reputation enhanced. Thatcher did not believe in "picking winners"; instead she preferred to rely on market forces to ensure the survival of the fittest. Three aspects of it never completely leave my head. For she changed the ethos of Britain as well as its landscape. Thatcher was the Prime Minister of Great Britain during Reagan's presidency, and was close with him which Thatcher's reputation never recovered from the ruthless budgets of 1980 and 1981, or her insensitivity to colleagues. The preface to the My mate John and I were wandering there together, he expertly proselytising on the architecture and the history of the place, me pretending to be Rumpole of the Bailey (quietly in my mind), when we spied in the distant garden a hunched and frail figure, in a raincoat, scarf about her head, watering the roses under the breezy supervision of a masticating copper. Before the real Thatcher's election in 1979 she took lessons with a speech coach at the Royal National Theatre, hoping to make her voice more commanding and less "shrill" in broadcasts. But without any question, sitting behind her desk, she was wearing ahat. Many are children of the Thatcher age. These developments set a benchmark. Lecturing me about the comprehensive schools, of which she created more than any minister before or since. Reagan had sought to meet with then Prime Minister James Callaghan, but the request was rejected, and bucked to then Foreign Minister David Owen. Only in the sense that all the women beneath her were blinded by falling shards. The US academic Cass Sunstein was in Britain at the end of last month. Yet a leader that a wide cross-section of Scots had come to despise. I can't articulate with the skill of either of "the Marks" Steel or Thomas why Thatcher and Thatcherism were so bad for Britain but I do recall that even to a child her demeanour and every discernible action seemed to be to the detriment of our national spirit and identity. Maggie and Me: How Thatcher Changed Britain. She added layers of her own to this intimacy, directing the creation of a single European market that surrendered important national powers to the collective. For the most part, it has not been undone. (They also reveal how she loved to surround herself with yes men who were always men.) Instead, her Big Bang blew the roof off City profits and property booms filled the gap where productive industry should have sprouted. Government will respond to clear leadership if it knows what a leader wants. Prime Minister Thatcher inherited a settled state of British Europeanness, in which Brussels and the [European] Community began to influence, and often determine, the British way of doing things. A splendid synergy was created, deliberately and with just that in mind on both sides of the Atlantic. So we agreed to reactivate the back channel. The speakers form a rollcall of the globe's most interesting thinkers: Amartya Sen, the Nobel-winning Indian economist; Daniel Kahneman, the Israeli psychologist and another Nobel winner; and Hernando de Soto, the Peruvian economist, who focused on land rights for the poor. Whatever else may be true of her, Thatcher engaged in incredibly consequential acts that affected millions of people around the world. press to rejoice at the capture of South Georgia on 25 April 1982, announced that White speech in the House of Commons, her Between 1945-90 every statement made by Margaret Thatcher is listed, as far as can be known. I know from my own indulgence in selfish behaviour that it's much easier to get what you want if you remove from consideration the effect your actions will have on others. Exactly the same is true of Thatcher. So what caused this great divide, with one side a fountain of fresh ideas and the other struggling for new inspiration? In the 2011 biographical drama film "The Iron Lady," Meryl Streep plays the role of Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. drew an important moral from the Falklands war: "We have ceased to People would denounce them unequivocally, often in graphic terms. Symbolically, the key moment was the defeat of the miners after the year-long pit strike in March 1985. British Labour MP Tom Watson decreed: "I hope that people on the left of politics respect a family in grief today." On the day Thatcher died, the Daily Mail ran a piece claiming that Coco Chanel "was a feminist before the word existed". of the 1600 libraries around the world which hold the CD-ROM. On Sunday, looking down at the waterfront, I could see how these had been replaced by a housing estate, a supermarket, and sometimes by nothing at all. At a banquet in Belgrade the press sat next to the so-called "Garden Girls", who were the secretaries at No 10. The government's welfare bill has been swollen by tax credits and housing benefit caused by the labour market reforms and council house sales of the 1980s. Thatcher's reign helped to inspire alternative comedy by creating a generation so bereft of hope that they started putting on gigs just for the sake of something to do. Reagan's decision to bomb Libya in April 1986 and spoke 4.44 avg rating 39 ratings 2 editions. In the pantheon of this comedian's attacks on Thatcher, it was a retort that probably won't be treasured longer than the best lines from The Young Ones.