margaret thatcher speech writer

This was the feminine creature who, two years later, was leader of the Conservative party. Where once we stood within a recognisable postwar social democratic European tradition, after Thatcher the country had rowed halfway across the Atlantic, psychologically imbued with US neoliberal individualism. Selling public housing to the tenants who occupied it was another, on top of the denationalisation of industries and utilities once thought to be ineluctably and for ever in the hands of the state. The Independent has the story. "Fatcha" was an instant punchline back then: simply saying it was enough to get a laugh. But she regarded rightwing causes as an intellectual hobby. But Labour is no less in thrall. series of famous statements that marked the end of her premiership, Indeed a person with achemistry that repelled almost all thesignificant males in Edward Heath's cabinet who could never become theparty leader. She undoubtedly rescued the prestige of the country from its postwar nadir, but at a high cost to the generosity of its political and social culture. In 1990, Margaret Thatcher emerged as one of the first world leaders to champion climate science, issuing a call to action to fight manmade global warming at the Second World Climate Conference hosted at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. 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." What's more, it was moulded to the wall as one commentator recalled and you had no right to change it, not without becoming entangled in a state-managed bureaucracy. On 30 October 1990 she made the first of the On the other hand, growth has been depressed because weak trade unions can no longer ensure wage increases keep pace with inflation. Yet a leader that a wide cross-section of Scots had come to despise. Margaret Thatcher had planned to attack Labour's unwillingness to condemn picket-line violence in her 1984 conference speech but changed her mind when an IRA bomb hit The Grand Hotel in Brighton. speech in July 1945, delivered in a town close to Grantham while she She was right, he was wrong. Queen Elizabeth is widely assumed . Thatcher refused to recognise the right of citizens to vote for representatives of their choice. Her vision for Britain made a lot of people feel like outsiders, which made them the ideal audience for comedy. But, as the prince in Lampedusa's The Leopard says: "For things to remain the same, everything must change.". Though the Thatcher years could also be called the Saatchi years, reaching a new level of presentational sophistication in the annals of British politics, they weren't about getting the leader liked. 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. Thatcher was a divisive woman who created discord, not harmony. Many of the effects of inequality have long lag periods. She became leader of the Conservatives the year I was born and prime minister when I was four. Miners were a hardy race of people who faced constant danger in the cause of mining coal but underneath that they were caring, sensitive individuals with a commitment to the communities in which they lived. A friend of South African apartheid and mass murderers from Kissinger and Pinochet to the Khmer Rouge after they had killed two million Cambodians she was a zealous saleswoman for the arms industry. But as weand others (including Alan Krueger, chair of Obama's council of economic advisers) have shown, wider income differences reduce social mobility and make it harder for people with poorer backgrounds to do so. Maybe it was the sound of the estuary pronunciation robbing her of her aspirational airs, a prototype of the Bouquet/Bucket joke. We can't blame (or credit) her for all of this, of course. What was it about Thatcher that inspired a generation of comics to rage at her? Her policy decisions entrenched sectarian divisions, handed draconian military powers over to the securocrats, and subverted basic human rights. What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neo-liberal inculcation begins. Sue Gray used to be my boss. If I become PM, I will deliver the radical set of reforms need to unleash growth. delivered an outstanding defence of the Government in the Commons. Perhaps it is more simple for all the iniquities of capitalism, the tide of history favours the right. She needed followers, as long as they went in her frequently unpopular directions. she warned that she was not Thatcher did not believe in "picking winners"; instead she preferred to rely on market forces to ensure the survival of the fittest. Her onslaught on the trade unions left those movements pale imitations of their former selves, too weak to resist the drive to the "flexible labour market" which has seen Britain become the home of what one senior Labour figure calls "crappy jobs", with low pay and no protection. Handbag. On one visit, our campaign chairman, William J Casey, later director of the CIA, came along, and we had a fruitful meeting at 10 Downing Street. of her best Parliamentary speeches in a debate on the strikes, prayed on the The truth lies somewhere between these extremes. The author uses this idea of freedom in her writing to allow the audience to feel and understand the mission of Reagan--"to restore the strength of the free world, and to free the slaves of communism" (6-7). You knew exactly what Maggie stood for. But without any question, sitting behind her desk, she was wearing ahat. For the most part, there's no material there. The task of representing the White House usually was the role of the vice-president, but in this special case, the Reagans and the Bushes both attended. In 1984 Britain had 186 working coalmines and approximately 170,000 coalminers. Whatever Tory historians like to claim, this was the critical turning point. for turning. Great speeches: 'Orwellian nightmare' if Tories fail, claims Margaret Thatcher. The news last week that they are instead considering cutting or freezing the minimum wage surely undermines any pretence that the government is acting either coherently or in the public interest. Under this heading, Thatcher left a dark legacy that, like her successes, has still not disappeared behind the historical horizon. The young men were those whose childhood was blighted by the effects of relative poverty and inequality on family life. Fourthly, policy was aimed at those who, according to the prime minister, wanted to get on in life. John Major was elected her successor yesterday by Conservative Party members. At the Citizen's Theatre in Glasgow, the pantomime featured the Wicked Witch of the South; everyone knew her real identity. It was thoroughly "wet". Tasteless." If you want anything done, ask a woman.". Unquestionably, a major component of what Reagan achieved was mirrored in what Baroness Thatcher herself achieved. It is no coincidence the three most influential centre-right thinktanks were all conceived over the following months. There were rumours of a different philosophy, at least in personal relationships. In the north of Ireland she had the army and the Diplock courts which reached their peak in the mid 1980s. By 1987, anti-Tory tactical voting had taken hold. Here is an excerpt from People [PMT]: "In politics," Margaret Thatcher once acidly observed, "if you want anything said, ask a man. It was sad that she had to learn it in war, a grim example to her British and US successors. The woman, however, changed. At a party leaders' meeting in Washington, DC in 1985, Prime Minister Thatcher spent all day in the House of Commons, then boarded Concorde and flew to Washington to participate until late into the evening; she took such policy co-operation very seriously. In 1980, I made several fast round trips to London, Paris and Bonn, and, on each occasion, had the opportunity to meet with Prime Minister Thatcher. Thatcher's social instincts were always nostalgic conservative. The authors show just how much . When she returned from Paris many cabinet colleagues showed that The lady was too shrewd to try that, and barely succeeded in reducing the share of the national income taken by the public sector. The time was 1973. she or copyright prevents reproduction on the site. see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising Weakening the power of trade unions was not only essential to her project, but several studies suggest that their continued weakness may be an important part of the reason why inequality has not declined in the intervening decades. Nicknamed the "Iron Lady," Thatcher served as the prime minister of England from 1979 to 1990. Each now seems banal. But Thatcher was a naturally, perhaps incurably, divisive figure. From a peak of 13 million in 1979, trade union membership had declined by 30% by 1990, and is now not much more than half what it was. To project the ideas of strength and . to secure international action to repair the damaged ozone layer. Hewrote this piece in 2003, two weeks before he died. This is an especially pertinent problem given its heartfelt desire for redistribution of wealth. Reagan would often hasten to remind those paying tribute to his cold war strategy that it was, in the strictest sense of the term, a team effort. She hurled herself into NHS reform, changes to schools and universities, utilities privatisation and, eventually, local government reform. Rishi Sunak: 'Our country needs the . Britain was battered out of the somnolent conservatism, across awide front of economic policies and priorities, that had held back progress and, arguably, prosperity. Nations need to know the big picture of where they belong and, coinciding with the Thatcher appearance at the top, clarity had apparently broken through the clouds of historic ambivalence. They do not have to charm, schmooze or play tag with the press. The 1978 meeting was their last in person until Mrs Thatcher became Reagan's first state visitor, 26-28 February 1981. Back when we called her Maggie, when it seemed she would have her wish and "go on and on" in ruling the country, her opponents would lament some new step towards social ruin with the withering, two-word verdict: "Thatcher's Britain.". Like John Major in her wake, Thatcher was convinced that she understood the Scots yet couldn't understand why we remained so stubbornly resistant towards the notion of understanding her. It is full of insights into a neglected aspect of how Thatcher came to dominate British politics." (Andrew Gamble, University of Sheffield, UK) "A fascinating insight into the world of speech writing. One thinks now of the closing words of her splendid 2004 eulogy of Ronald Reagan, and how those words so perfectly speak a tribute to her life and works: "We here still move in twilight. Thirdly, industrial policy was all but abandoned. It'd be disingenuous to omit that there were a fair number of ding-dong-style celebratory messages amidst the pensive reflections on the end of an era. Thatcher was never insensitive to the impact of her policies on the poor. 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. We had an all-out blistering row that delighted the organisers. . 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 . In November 1978, Hannaford and I organized a European fact-finding tour for Reagan, and the first stop was London. still being scolded for the remark.You can read here exactly what she said, That did the trick.). To Britons of my generation, she . Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. with the European Community when she 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. Margaret has spent her life fighting for social justice and equality. The blunt, pathetic reality today is that a little old lady has died, who in the winter of her life had to water roses alone under police supervision. Somesay she revolutionised British politics certainly never again could people say nobody would vote for a woman but it served a reactionary end. One Sunday recently while staying in London, I took a stroll in the gardens of Temple, the insular clod of quads and offices between the Strand and the Embankment. She wanted to win, but did not put much faith in the quick smile. After the Dublin European Council in November 1979 she began a long battle in a statement the following morning (22 November), hours before she As a child she unnerved me but we are not children now and we are free to choose our own ethical codes and leaders that reflect them. It knew what Thatcher wanted. . I don't see that. He'd been a bully, she said, whereas Mrs T was warm and understanding. speaking in March 2002.). There is now, however, an opportunity to commit to a new politics that learns lessons from her ambition yet undoes the damage and focuses on reconstruction. She, and Blair after her, brought an unprecedented dirigisme to the NHS, education, police and local government. 'It's a wonder nobody has taken a gun to that woman.' John Major, the "detoxification" successor, was fated to implement many of her unattempted reforms. as far as can be known. Many of today's more controversial benefits, such as disability, date back to the 80s. Perhaps she had just come inside. Two especially forceful and committed leaders on the world stage at the same time: this was critical and key to ending the cold war, permitting the reunification of Germany, the consolidation of the EU and drawing our two nations together in a historic cooperation. Thatcher jokes were big business, from Rik Mayall's student rants in The Young Ones, to Harry Enfield's satire of Thatcher's children with his Loadsamoney character. She remained in power till I was 15. The dominance of finance in the economy and the failure of bank regulation flowed from her belief that markets should always be left to themselves. An Inconvenient Truth About Margaret Thatcher: She Was a Climate Hawk. This has been a terrible labour, she said. All can agree that Margaret Thatcher changed the heart of British politics more than any politician since Clement Attlee. Women aren't always good for other women because the gender of a person matters a lot less than that person's actual beliefs. Ultimately, despite the despondent times of the Cold War and the waning confidence of the citizens, Margaret Thatcher delivered her eulogy speech in belief of President Ronald Reagan and used the rhetorical appeals of pathos, imagery, metaphor, and ethos to accomplish his presidency as successful. No homeless or disabled people need beg on the streets. It was a watershed moment in Irish politics. But can he shake off the shackles of the past and prove there is an alternative? Far from "smashing the glass ceiling", she was the aberration, the one who got through and then pulled the ladder up right after her. 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. Reagan, who had recently left office as governor of California, was in London to deliver a speech to the Pilgrim Society. So look around this kingdom of ours, at a devolved Scotland contemplating independence a state of affairs that owes much to Thatcher's antagonistic relationship with that country. Meeting Gorbachev for the first time in December 1984 she declared: "We There was, for example, the time in the late 1970s when, as Opposition Leader, she almost succeeded in censoring the one half-decent joke in a key campaign speech. Understandably, less cohesive societies with more drugs, more crime and lower mobility waste talent, and are not good places to do business. People would denounce them unequivocally, often in graphic terms. Margaret Thatcher's most important long-term legacy is likely to be the huge rise in inequality that she caused. drew an important moral from the Falklands war: "We have ceased to Although the "right to buy" and the privatisation of utilities by selling shares to new small investors was often justified as giving rights to "the little people", the reality is that the less well-off fell ever further behind the rich. Mrs Thatcher told the assembly: "It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.". On June 11th, 2004 Margaret Thatcher gave a speech to the American people at Ronald Reagan's funeral. None present eyed her meanly or spoke with vitriol and it wasn't until an hour later that I dreamt up an Ealing comedy-style caper in which two inept crooks kidnap Thatcher from the garden but are unable to cope with the demands of dealing with her, and finally give her back. Critical Commentary: Margaret Thatcher outlined the British policy in relation to various world issues. Her political antennae refused to allow her to privatise the coal industry, British Rail or the post office. Without the Falklands/Malvinas war, which exploited nationalism (as Argentinian dictator Galtieri did) and which Labour would not oppose, she would never have been re-elected in 1983. Yet I wrote columns of pretty unremitting hostility to most of what she did. Privatisation was the single most massive attack on democracy we have seen. Each was characterised by her attention to detail. There were sporadic resurrections. Thatcher swept away those state monopolies in the new coinage of "privatisation" and transformed daily life in a way we now take for granted. Sent Bobby Sands to an Irish hero's grave without a blink. There is a paradox. A longer version of this article appears on Gerry Adams' blog, Margaret Thatcher was good at destruction. She was a gentle and peaceable woman my mother, that is and said few hard words about anyone, but in certain parts of the United Kingdom, and among certain social classes, Mrs T was detested, and not just for what people thought were her policies but for her persona for what she was. ", This attitude that men are fun but dumb, women are smart but strident, a view of the sexes that seems to come straight out of a Judd Apatow film led to various quotes of hers that some like to twist into proof that Thatcher was an unwitting feminist. Union in a speech That's history, but what matters to us is her legacy now that her heirs and imitators rule in her wake. We watched as her high heels went click-click-click across the stones of the Acropolis and the cement floors of Tito's steel mills. After being asked to deliver a eulogy for the late Ronald Reagan on June 11, 2004, Margaret Thatcher gave a speech about her dear friend, and highlighted his best qualities through her writing. Thatcher became a supremely self-confident leader. A great windfall in the short-term for asset-owners one form of inflation she encouraged but disastrous for future generations. 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. They recognised the need for cohesion when at any time disaster could strike a family unit or indeed a whole community. 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. That speech was a rare instance of a politician saying something tangible. The Collected Speeches of Margaret Thatcher by. More than once the view was advanced that it was a pity the IRA had not succeeded in their ultimate objective when they bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Her centralism, unequalled in Europe, descended under Blair into a morass of targetry, inefficiency and endless reorganisation. In my view, nothing said prior to her passing or since has been inaccurate in the description of this very special, warm relationship, the likes of which we may never see again. This is accomplished by this baseless moral precept that it is gauche or worse to balance the gushing praise for them upon death with valid criticisms. It is my view that Thatcher authorised the killings at Gibraltar. But within a few years, a third of children were poor, a sign of the yawning inequality from which the country never recovered. "Maggie Thatcher," he said. She was lucky, in her enemies and friends notably Reagan in the Falklands conflict. Though the Prime Minister was known to shed a tear or two during her 11 years leading the United Kingdom . Only today are we facing the cost. The Big Bang of City deregulation, the Tell Sid scramble for buying and selling shares, the sense that money is the highest value, wealth the greatest sign of worth all these were hallmarks of the Thatcher era in its mid-80s pomp. The remainder are listed without a text because sometimes no record survives June 5, 1992 - Is named a life peer on the Queen's honor list. I met her just once, as a reporter in the press pack that followed her tour around Greece and Yugoslavia in 1980. 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. She also put forward the idea of "a vast . That was before Thatcher modishly renamed the service British Telecom and sold it off. Yet her understanding of Britain was alarmingly crude. Look at the trains on the track, the phone in your house, the trio of 1980s teenagers who lead the three main parties. She defended Ronald 100% Success rate. She was a prime minister who happened to be a woman. Its impact on the streets of the north is evident in the statistics of death. When a political leader dies, it is irresponsible in the extreme to demand that only praise be permitted but not criticisms. No gloves, or hats, except for royalty or at funerals, but feet on the table, whisky glass at hand, into the small hours of solitude, for want of male cronies in the masculine world she dominated for all her 11yearsin power. But on their catastrophic economic policy, it's full-speed ahead into the concrete wall. Or maybe audiences just really, really hated her and wanted to blow off some steam. Just look around. steps of Downing Street on 4 May 1979, she The Thatcher government believed that the criminalisation of the republican prisoners would break the republican struggle. It was not interested in a resolution. The word "free" is used to help the audience speech which caused the Soviets to dub her "the Iron Lady". Well, everything really, even her name. Would we like her back? It was a visit warmly welcomed by President Reagan, with a resplendent state nner on the first evening. Three separate pieces of legislation between 1980 and 1984 attacked the closed shop, toughened up the laws on picketing and imposed secret strike ballots. You can get the Turnitin report from the writer on request along with the final deliverable. Thank you, too, Margaret. The credit boom both here and in the USA may have gone against her Grantham roots but was an equally inevitable result of deregulation and the temptation of easy loans for people hungry to improve living standards. As coal, steel and shipbuilding fell under her wrecking ball, whole communities were destroyed. But look at this typical difference between her and her imitators: where Cameron has charged into Europe, taking his party out of the influential European People's party of natural allies, making enemies and building no useful coalitions, it was she who signed the Single European Act, understanding its importance for British trade, careful to make allies as well as swinging her handbag. March 7, 1991 - Receives the US Medal of Freedom from President George Bush. Donning a starched coiff and padded shoulders out to there, Emmy Award winner Gillian Anderson of The X-Files is . The Cameron generation wrongly see in the 1980s a revolution to emulate, starting with an economic crisis just like hers, as a chance to reshape everything. Whathappened at the hands of this woman's indifference to sentiment andgood sense in the early 1980s brought unnecessary calamity to the lives of several million people who losttheir jobs. Original, independent voices such as BBC director general Alasdair Milne were brutally silenced. She was the daughter of a prosperous civic leader who merely began life as a "grocer". If you behave like there's no such thing as society, in the end there isn't. While Labour was now "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich", ambitious feminism wanted to be let in to the boardroom and every corridor of power that and little else is what they mean by changing the world. In the current wall-to-wall media welter, I caught the current leader of the Scottish Tories, Ruth Davison MSP, being asked if Thatcher was an electoral asset for her. I was a professional writer. Thatcher's passing is marked by street parties in Brixton, Belfast, Bristol, Derry, Glasgow and Liverpool, and seething bitterness among the mining families and communities she was allowed (including by scab union and Labour leaders) to destroy. Everything was justified as long as it made money andthis, too, isstill with us. performance at a Press Conference afterwards. Yet the Daily Mail has morefemale bylines than any other UK paper and is not exactly a totem of gender equality andfemale-friendliness. Thanks to the comparison with Cameron, we are reminded that the Thatcher reign was more circumspect and well-managed than it seemed at the time. Narrowly judged, the Thatcher economic revolution was a success. And nor could Thatcher, much to her relief as she allegedly abhorred the word, as doubtless Chanel did, too. She had left a Britain marked by private affluence and public squalor. Margaret Thatcher, Signed Speech on Hayek, 2003, Estimate 1,500-2,000 . And as my Guardian colleague Seumas Milne detailed last year, "across Britain Thatcher is still hated for the damage she inflicted and for her political legacy of rampant inequality and greed, privatisation and social breakdown.". 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." Second, it's now easier to see the scale of the setback she inflicted on Britain's idea of its own future. It's like a whimsical live-action episode of Postman Pat where his cat is craftily carved up and sold back to him. Thatcher exposed the sharp edges of class division in Britain and the strike of 1984/5 was as much a clash of values as it was about pit closures. Published: Sunday 21st February 2021. Eventually, the Italian contingent, largely existential or postmodern, rose up against us.

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