She also met her husband, Denis Thatcher, in Dartford. He was a local businessman and oil industry executive. After their marriage, Thatcher was able to resign her position at BX Plastics and become a lawyer specializing in taxation. On August 15, , she gave birth to twins Mark and Carol and six months later passed the bar exam. In , Thatcher was elected as Member of Parliament for Finchley.
By , she was given a junior office in the administration of Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister from January to October When the Conservatives were in Opposition from , Thatcher served continuously in various shadow cabinet positions and was appointed Education Secretary when Edward Heath became Prime Minister in The Heath government was elected on promises of economic revival that would be spurred by introducing more free-market policies and taming the trade unions but became one of the most interventionist governments in British history.
Thatcher herself faced a difficult job as Education Secretary at the height of student radicalism, with protesters disrupting her speeches, harsh criticism in the opposition press for not being liberal enough, and criticism from Conservatives for veering too far to the left. When the Heath Government lost a second General Election in October , Thatcher decided to run against Heath for the leadership of the Conservative Party and won in February , becoming the first woman to lead a Western political party and to be the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons.
The economic difficulties experienced by the United Kingdom under the Labour government - requiring credit from the International Monetary Fund in and causing extensive trade union strikes over pay demands in the winter of — swung public opinion back to the favor of the Conservatives. The Thatcher government had pledged to turn Britain's economic decline around, mainly by increasing taxes and balancing the budget. By the spring of , recovery had begun, followed by eight years of steady growth.
Thatcher demonstrated her confidence, determination, and decisiveness again during the Falklands War—on April 2, , Argentina invaded the British-held Falkland Islands and South Georgia Island. Although she first pursued a diplomatic resolution, a British military task force was on-hand when that effort failed. The Falklands were back under British control in 74 days, with Argentina surrendering on June 14, The Conservative government was reelected in June with its Parliamentary majority more than tripled to seats.
The government faced as many challenges as it had during its first term. The labor movement resisted the government's trade union reforms, with the miners' union going on a violent, year-long strike beginning in The union was eventually defeated, and the Labour Opposition quietly accepted the success of the trade union legislation, pledging not to reverse key components.
In October , the Irish Republican Army bombed the hotel Thatcher and many of her cabinet were staying in during the Conservative Party annual conference. She had refused to meet their political demands, particularly during the prison hunger strikes.
Thatcher was unhurt although several colleagues were among the dead and injured, and she appeared the next morning, defiant and undeterred from continuing with the conference. The treaty established the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, which gave the Irish government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's government and confirmed Northern Ireland's constitutional position.
Although the agreement did not immediately end violence in Northern Ireland, it was crucial in the peace process by improving cooperation between the British and Irish governments. Thatcher's policies continued to help the economy improve. The writer can't even get gender pronouns right.
Gender pronouns? Yikes, tread lightly, you might offend someone just by saying that. I was a born in the early 70's into an Indian home, l was a child when Marge served as a Prime Minister and a teen when she reliquished her position. My late dad who was as hard as nails and a strong, intelligent man, loved this little lady and followed her like milllions of others via the news South Africa.
Margaret Thatcher Margaret Thatcher is one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century. She was the Prime Minister of Great Britain from up until Her policies, which became known as Thatcherism, earned her respect, but also, criticisms. One way of insulting or praising her was giving her names.
She was born on October 13, in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Her parents were Beatrice Ethel and Alfred Roberts, who owned a grocery. The young Margaret Thatcher helped his father in managing their grocery. She managed to enter to the prestigious Oxford University, graduated and became a chemist. She then later became a barrister with the help of his husband, Denis Thatcher.
She ran for parliament in and but lost. As she grew older people began to be worried there would be another war. Unfortunately they were right. The Second World War broke out in when she was 14 and lasted till when she was Also during her childhood lots of people had no jobs and had very little money.
The Roberts family was luckier than most and did baking for people who were unwell or didn't have enough to eat, which people from their church took round. They went to services together twice every Sunday. So she grew up at a time when terrible things were happening in the world and life was much harder than it is today.
But people helped each other and they were very proud of their town and their country. There was no television when she was small the very first tv programmes were shown in Britain when she was 14, but she didn't see them. And of course there were no computers and no internet. But there were cinemas! She loved films, which were a new thing when she was a child. Most came from America and she watched as many as she could.
Also radio started when she was small. She was very excited the day the family got its first radio and ran all the way home from school. The whole family would listen most evenings to favourite programmes, like quizzes, comedies and news. She went to state schools - even when she was very small she had to walk several miles there and back each day except when there was a radio to run for - and worked hard, winning a place at Oxford University when she was 18 to study chemistry, a subject she loved.
Her teacher at Oxford was a famous chemist who later won a Nobel Prize for her work. But what she really wanted to do was to go into politics.
Her father - she called him "Pa" - was very interested in what was happening in the world and helped to run the local council. She enjoyed listening to him talk about how things worked, and he knew a lot, so that was one reason she was became a politician. She first helped at an election when she was 10, the age she was in the picture just above. At university she won her first election, becoming president of the student Conservative Association.
It was only a small election, but some famous politicians came to speak to her club and she made some useful friends who helped her later. After university she got her first job as a chemist and tried to become the Member of Parliament or MP for a town called Dartford in Kent, on the edge of London.
She tried twice, in and She didn't come close to winning, because most voters in Dartford supported the Labour Party. But she was the youngest woman candidate in the country, and very pretty, so her picture was in lots of newspapers. The photo to the left shows how she looked at this time.
She hugely enjoyed fighting the elections. He was older than her and had fought in the war. They were a very close couple and he gave her tremendous help and support in everything she did.
They had twins in , Mark and Carol. In those days fathers weren't usually present at the birth of their children.
Denis was at a cricket match when they were born and when he first saw the babies said they looked like rabbits without fur on. He was always cracking jokes. After MT got married she decided to train as a lawyer, something which she had planned to do for some years.
She was always very determined and managed the hard work even though she had small children. A nanny helped her. She tried to find other places where she could stand for Parliament but it was difficult, partly because lots of Conservatives felt that women with young children should not have careers. But after years of trying she was chosen to be the Conservative candidate for Finchley, in north London, and finally became an MP in October Just after being elected MT entered a kind of competition among MPs to win the chance to pass a law.
She won first time and got her own law written, meeting important people in Parliament and impressing other MPs with her first speech called a "maiden speech". She gave her first ever tv interview the next day, at home on the sofa with the twins on either side of her. Soon she was asked to become a member of the government, responsible for pensions and benefits. She was good at understanding all the complicated rules, and worked hard.
She began to become quite well known and in , when a man called Edward Heath became PM, she was given the important job of Education Secretary, responsible for Britain's schools and colleges.
MT had a bad time as Education Minister, especially in her first year. She was attacked by people who were annoyed that she had abolished free school milk for older children and got the nickname "milk snatcher". There were lots of other arguments too, and she was unhappy for a time, but it the end she was made stronger by the experience and many of her critics came to realise how tough a person she was.
Sadly she did not got on very well with the PM the man in the picture on the left. His government had to cope with serious economic problems.
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