margaret thatcher speech writer

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. The Crown Season 4 brings with it a whole lot of change for Queen Elizabeth II's family and, more importantly, the United Kingdom. In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon. 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. and What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neo-liberal inculcation begins. at The Hague in May 1992. The Tories triumphed, of course, and lost only two sitting MPs Hamish Gray and the social-security scrounger-bashing Iain Sproat, who vacated his marginal Aberdeen seat and headed for the Scottish Borders, only to suffer defeat there at the hands of the Alliance. Accounts vary. Now she would more likely have been beaten to the Tory leadership by one of the Etonians in cabinet. Would we like her back? 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. Narrowly judged, the Thatcher economic revolution was a success. Many of today's more controversial benefits, such as disability, date back to the 80s. . But she also provided great material. She was lucky in surviving the IRA's bomb. Real Analysis Solved Problems, Synthesis Essay Freedom Of Speech, Photography Dissertation Titles, Reflective Essay Writers Service Usa, Sample Of The Resume 4423 . A distinction is often made between two traditions of British Conservative thought: the paternalist "one nation/middle way" tradition, and the more libertarian one that is associated with Margaret Thatcher. Knocking up a flan for Denis or helping Carol with her algebra or Mark with his gun-running, are jarring distractions from the main narrative; woman as warrior queen. She attacked the Treaty of Maastricht in a She was immensely brisk. 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. To project the ideas of strength and . A Labour veteran blamed another legacy of Thatcher: the need for iron discipline after the media onslaught that engulfed her opponents. Its impact on the streets of the north is evident in the statistics of death. Thatcher is gone, but Thatcherism has infected and discredited all mainstream parties, depriving us of a chance to turn it down. in a statement the following morning (22 November), hours before she The 1978 meeting was their last in person until Mrs Thatcher became Reagan's first state visitor, 26-28 February 1981. After leaving office, MT widened and deepened her criticism of the European Not even the Falklands war would push it off the tracks or damage it in any way. Interview by Benedict King. Barack Obama, interestingly, said in his statement that she had "broken the glass ceiling for other women". Respected, viewed with awe, a conviction politician, but if liking came into it, that was an accident. Gillian Anderson's portrayal of the Iron Lady in "The Crown" is pretty spot-on. Look at the trains on the track, the phone in your house, the trio of 1980s teenagers who lead the three main parties. as far as can be known. The evidence shows that greater equality provides the foundation on which higher standards of social wellbeing can be built. Getting the record straight. A longer version of this article appears on Gerry Adams' blog, Margaret Thatcher was good at destruction. But perhaps her greatest legacy was New Labour. Ithink on balance, it was for the better, and so, plainly did Thatcher's chief successor, Tony Blair. From then on she disregarded her critics and became intolerant of any who were "not one of us". No sign they learned from her that markets don't move in to fill the gaps when the state is rolled back not then, not now. The first is what changed in the temper of Britain and the British. When Margaret Hilda Thatcher took over as Prime Minister, in May, 1979, I was sixteen. The word "free" is used to help the audience 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. first television interview the following day, euphoric In her 1982 party conference speech, Margaret Thatcher offered a prediction for the future: "How absurd it will seem in a few years' time that the state ran Pickfords removals and Gleneagles Hotel." Understandably, less cohesive societies with more drugs, more crime and lower mobility waste talent, and are not good places to do business. 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. Thatcher was suspicious of democracy. He had enough Del Boy about him to admire her coiffured virility but in a way Thatcher was so omnipotent; so omnipresent, so omni-everything that all opinion was redundant. After the 1987 election, Thatcher cut an increasingly isolated figure. The stance was often in broadest terms, more moral than political. I wouldn't say I have got myself a Kennedy-type speech-writer yet . In short, miners believed in society. see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising she That bonuses and top incomes continue to rise while the incomes of the rest of the population struggle to keep up with inflation tells us that what we needed was legislation to ensure employee representation on company boards and remuneration committees as many of our European partners have. which revealed a good deal as to her political She also put forward the idea of "a vast . Tellingly, few people have trouble understanding the need for balanced commentary when the political leaders disliked by the west pass away. Many whom Reagan encountered in public life thought of him in this way, but most politicians would love to reach even "Grade B" status. In a break with tradition and protocol, Reagan decided he'd also attend the "return dinner" at the British Embassy the next evening. If you have a . We might speculate that an adviser had offered Thatcher a selection of good lines, or that she had asked to see some. speaking in March 2002.). There are more than 8,000. By John Cassidy. TRIBUTES were paid last night to Sir Bernard Ingham, the longstanding press secretary to Margaret Thatcher and a columnist in The Yorkshire Post until just a few weeks ago. It was illegal to put an extension lead on your phone. Heath took us into Europe, and a referendum in spring 1975 confirmed national approval for the move. 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. of her best Parliamentary speeches in a debate on the strikes, prayed on the British Labour MP Tom Watson decreed: "I hope that people on the left of politics respect a family in grief today." When President Reagan died in June 2004, she delivered a But it was the killing of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane in February 1989 that reveals the depth of the Thatcher government's state collusion policy. 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. 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. What you see is a nation ruled for 11 turbulent years by a remarkable woman and which still lives in her image. This zest for ideas was boosted by the 2010 intake, which comprises just under half the parliamentary party. Unquestionably, a major component of what Reagan achieved was mirrored in what Baroness Thatcher herself achieved. As the authorised biographer of Margaret Thatcher, I was given special permission by the Cabinet Secretary to see government papers not yet released to the public.For . I didn't know what to think of this fearsome woman. (No wonder it sold 7m copies a week). Few would argue that they have not endured. One of the few direct hits scored in the modern era was when Alex Ross and James Herring remixed Nick Clegg's bizarre "I'm sorry" speech and turned it into a hilarious R&B tune. Mobilising society, by rule of law, against the trade union bosses was undoubtedly an achievement. 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. 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. Just look around. Plus there's the fact that comedy is now a big business, and there's less money in sharp satire than gentle observation. This was a historic step, and resulted in further reinforcing the US-UK alliance. From the valleys of Wales to the far reaches of Scotland, miners were, by and large, socialists by nature but this was tempered by strong Christian beliefs. While she spoke of his example as a beacon, she knew very well that she was an important component of what is often attributed solely to him, and in the first instance "winning" the cold war. I will know that we have finally broken from the kind of capitalism that she championed and which died in 2008 when we see workers elected on to company boards. Yet for all these fissures, even Maoist modernisers and the most reactionary social conservatives share a similar stance over the role of the state. announced that White Nicknamed the "Iron Lady," Thatcher served as the prime minister of England from 1979 to 1990. But she regarded rightwing causes as an intellectual hobby. Shoot-to-kill actions by British forces also significantly increased. the British Embassy in Paris and stated Thatcher's threat to butcher the mining industry, destroy the fabric of mining communities and in particular the trade union to which miners had a bond of loyalty, was met with the fiercest resistance any government has met in peacetime. As coal, steel and shipbuilding fell under her wrecking ball, whole communities were destroyed. She was not a writer. She was a radical conservative, known for dismantling nationalized industries and social services, weakening union power.She was also the first incumbent prime minister in the UK removed on a vote of their own party. Thatcher was born as Margaret Hilda Roberts on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, England. Margaret Thatcher's landmark Bruges speech about the future of Europe was never intended to push the UK towards the exit, the man who wrote it says. Seizing her chariot's reins to drive it on recklessly, they lack her brains, experience and political skill. History, Sample Essay. 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. I was a professional writer. talked of "Victorian Values". wrong with politics? There were big tax cuts for those on the highest incomes, driven by the belief that this would encourage entrepreneurship. Look at the cars on the road, none made by the old, nationally-owned British Leyland and only few by the British marques that once dominated but which went the way of much of British industry unable to survive the chill wind of "market forces", another phrase which filled the air back then. On her return to London, she sent me a warm and complimentary letter, a prize in my personal archives. 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. For her own part, she was a social conservative and yet today's right for, say, gay couples to marry if they want to fits with one aspect of the Thatcherite vision of personal choice. So what caused this great divide, with one side a fountain of fresh ideas and the other struggling for new inspiration? This was my mother speaking at some point in the middle 1980s. "You see," she announced in her self-satisfied way, "it just goes to show what people can do when they have to. Neither shift of ownership and power would have happened without a leader prepared to take risks with her life. Thatcher was a divisive woman who created discord, not harmony. Hire a Writer. That said, by the mid-1980s it was clear that the Conservative government's economic policy was based on a handful of core principles. The preface to the Another head of government died recently who, like Thatcher, was called divisive. 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. At every level of his killing, British agents and agencies had a hand: the leader of the UDA group that carried out the killing was a Special Branch agent, as was the man who confessed to being the gunman, and the man who supplied the gun. Her imitators swerve all over the place, with 37 U-turns at the Telegraph's latest count on matters from forests and pasties to buzzard nests and caravans. The late Benazir Bhutto later gave me much the same account. The fact is that if both sides removed their ideological blinkers, as Thatcher, remarkably perhaps, managed to do, then her trilogy of speeches in the late 1980s still offer some of the best and . She lost seven cabinet ministers on the Europe question, a record that permeated the party for years afterwards. 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. But on their catastrophic economic policy, it's full-speed ahead into the concrete wall. Margaret Thatcher Curriculum Vitae. But Margaret Thatcher did not hesitate, and the long, substantive lunch seemed to energize both future world leaders. If you behave like there's no such thing as society, in the end there isn't. A special licence was granted exclusively to the Radio Times. As working families in poverty now account for more than half of those below the poverty line, a government committed to "making work pay" should surely encourage this trend and raise the minimum wage. From 1987 to 1988, he was a senior policy writer and speechwriter in 10 Downing Street for Margaret Thatcher when she was British prime minister and remained close to her up to her death.. O'Sullivan served from 2008-2012 as vice-president and executive editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio . speech in the House of Commons, her Sunstein worked for a Democratic president, but did not meet the Labour leader or key advisers. But Thatcher was a naturally, perhaps incurably, divisive figure. For a national matriarch she is oddly unmaternal. 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. There are still some great comics doing political material, with Mark Steel and Mark Thomas flying the flag of alternative comedy, while people such as Josie Long and Chris Coltrane find the funny in activism. We had had a strange relationship. Now it was the turn of the words, and no one, of course, would, against all the odds, do them better than the lady who, 25 years before, once thought the sky was beyond her limit. they did not want her to go on (21 November) and that night she made the The welfare state set out to ensure that no one, in the UK at least, would starve or freeze to death, or suffer or die for lack of medical or other care. She was a steadfast friend to brutal tyrants such as Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein and Indonesian dictator General Suharto ("One of our very best and most valuable friends"). Texts for listed statements are available on the site in almost 70 per cent of cases. Emery Evans . "Respecting the grief" of Thatcher's family members is appropriate if one is friends with them or attends a wake they organize, but the protocols are fundamentally different when it comes to public discourse about the person's life and political acts. The lady was too shrewd to try that, and barely succeeded in reducing the share of the national income taken by the public sector. see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising But these concrete achievements do not wholly explain why she still looms so large, large enough that not one but two current West End plays The Audience and Billy Elliot grant Thatcher a pivotal, if largely unsympathetic, role, whether seen or unseen. In rich societies such as the UK, what makes most difference to the real quality of our lives is the quality of community life and social interaction. Reagan's decision to bomb Libya, spoke When I started knocking on Highland doors in May 1983, two things struck me more than any other. In January 1983 she Where copyright is the problem, the full text can be found on the Complete But unlike Thatcher, president Hugo Chvez of Venezuela, the "president of the poor", fought for a caring economy and against the rule of the market. ", This was the great leader in her favourite pose as Samuel Smiles: human beings didn't need to be helped they needed to help themselves. But growth rates in the decades since her period in office have been lower than during those that preceded her; nor does the balance of research evidence suggest that greater inequality acts as a spur to growth. studying Thatcher's speeches . Visit a station and notice the plethora of competing train companies, replacing the single British Rail that operated in the pre-Thatcher days the fruit of a rail privatisation that was not hers, but was made possible only by the serial privatisations she had pioneered and made normal. I met her just once, as a reporter in the press pack that followed her tour around Greece and Yugoslavia in 1980. Thatcher's reputation never recovered from the ruthless budgets of 1980 and 1981, or her insensitivity to colleagues. Reversing Britain's long-term economic decline. I think on balance Thatcher did for Britain what was needed at the time. "Maggie Thatcher," he said. But she personified the change from meaning to meaninglessness in so many settlements and lives, and for this reason she is hard to forgive. Those gushing depictions can be quite consequential, as it was for the week-long tidal wave of unbroken reverence that was heaped on Ronald Reagan upon his death, an episode that to this day shapes how Americans view him and the political ideas he symbolized. Reagan was especially interested in Mrs Thatcher's domestic policy initiatives, and it was quickly established that the foreign policy views ran along parallel lines. drew an important moral from the Falklands war: "We have ceased to Which raises the question: why isn't this happening now? Government will respond to clear leadership if it knows what a leader wants. Tasteless." recommended by Simon Heffer. Meryl Streep's depiction of a shuffling figure, stricken and isolated by the death of her husband, Denis, may have softened memories, or formed them in the minds of a younger generation. But the key point is this: those who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics) aren't silent at all. Queen Elizabeth is widely assumed . "The original alternative comics just did it because they had to," he says. To enrich the global 1% she so brilliantly represented, our "entitlement" had to go and she was just the one to do it. Police charges against picketing union printers in Wapping enabled the Murdoch empire to flourish, ensuring their power and hers. Reagan was a highly influential president during his time in office, and had a lot of responsibility concerning the Cold War. The financial crash of 2008 was a direct result of the policies Thatcher championed. Oil helped Thatcher paper over the cracks, but Britain's age-old problem finding a way to pay its way in the world remains. 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. Margaret Thatcher's most important long-term legacy is likely to be the huge rise in inequality that she caused. It's like a whimsical live-action episode of Postman Pat where his cat is craftily carved up and sold back to him. Mrs T shared the same reductionism. Here is a selection of the best writing from commentators, politicians and journalists on the legacy of Margaret Thatcher's 11 years in power - and on her continuing impact in the time following her downfall, as figures from across the political spectrum examine the legacy of one of the most important political figures from the last half-century, this (appropriately diplomatic) statement from President Obama, key role not only in bringing about the first Gulf War, publicly advocate for the 2003 attack on Iraq, the Guardian reported upon the death last month of Hugo Chavez, the Daily Mail has morefemale bylines than any other UK paper, Alan Krueger, chair of Obama's council of economic advisers, nor does the balance of research evidence suggest that greater inequality acts as a spur to growth, decline in trade union membership and the rise in inequality, intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich, the primary force behind what was known then as alternative comedy, Rik Mayall's student rants in The Young Ones, wicked, incompetent mindset that was the spirit of the 80s, "very fashionable in the Guardian for a few months before the financial crisis". Her policy decisions entrenched sectarian divisions, handed draconian military powers over to the securocrats, and subverted basic human rights. The spell he was referring to is the unseen bond that connects us all and prevents us from being subjugated by tyranny. Norman Tebbit, one of Thatcher's acolytes and fellow "Munsters evacuee", said when the National Union of Mineworkers eventually succumbed to the military onslaught and starvation over which she presided: "We didn't just break the strike, we broke the spell." When the late Christopher Hitchens was a political reporter for the New Statesman, he corrected the prime minister on a point of fact, and she was quick to correct Hitchens in turn. She was a prime minister who happened to be a woman. For Thatcher it all ended months later in November 1990 when she was forced to resign. In the prime Thatcher years they required a severity of will to carry through that would now, if called on, bewrapped in so many cycles of deluding spin as to persuade us it hadn't really happened. In 1979 she inherited a nation that was the "sick man of Europe", an object of constant transatlantic ridicule. Making sure the verdict wasn't purloined by others. She was able to reach Margaret Thatcher was a hugely divisive figure in British politics. The remainder are listed without a text because sometimes no record survives And for the people of Ireland, and especially the north, the Thatcher years were among some of the worst of the conflict. Cameron's crew crudely imagine she intended it. Margaret Thatcher's speech writer will miss funeral but 'shed a tear' When the mourners gather for Baroness Thatcher's funeral tomorrow, one important figure from her political past will be . Her political antennae refused to allow her to privatise the coal industry, British Rail or the post office. was an Oxford student home for the university holidays. Thatcher refused to recognise the right of citizens to vote for representatives of their choice. Steely, certainly. The Brixton rioters, the Argentinians, teachers; everyone actually. One turns with gratitude to Alan Clark's diaries for a fine description of being summoned to No 10 and being subjected to just such an examination. Or perhaps it was just because I was a little kid and more interested in them Weetabix skinheads, Roland Rat and Knight Rider. Large parts of society never recovered, while Germany and other countries managed the transition without such brutality. rejecting Commission proposals at the Rome European Council with the words 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. To Britons of my generation, she . in his defence during the IranContra affair later that year.. Elected for a third term in June 1987, she told The resignation was announced The left misleads us and maybe itself when it says that Thatcher's policies, extended by New Labour and then by the coalition, have failed. Any such objections would have been invalid. Out!" Rishi Sunak 20 July 2022 9:30pm. of the 1600 libraries around the world which hold the CD-ROM. John Major was elected her successor yesterday by Conservative Party members. Her bouffant and handbag and nasal voice were comedy gold, but she was also earnest, principled and said exactly what she meant. Perhaps we suspected that reality had created a character beyond our creative reach. She was an ardent pro-European, and her 1979 manifesto made no mention of radical union reform or privatisation. If you want anything done, ask a woman.". The appointment was a 20-minute audience with the . But there are less obvious manifestations of the same habit. successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to Everything was justified as long as it made money andthis, too, isstill with us. . Here shovels the earth during a tree-planting ceremony . When Margaret Thatcher won the general election in 1979, she became Prime Minister of a land in chaos. She abolished city-wide local government, capped spending and expected the poll tax to further undermine alternative voices. She made her remarks To have achieved all this alone would have made Margaret Thatcher a towering, transformational figure, one who altered the physical fabric of the nation. speech to the House of Lords in June 1993. It is not true that Thatcher didn't care about the media. Author: Margaret Thatcher Year: 1979 Location: London, the UK Occasion: Address to the Parliament. When she returned from Paris many cabinet colleagues showed that On November 8th 1989, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave an inspiring speech to the UN General Assembly about the environment and climate change. That was the daunting task Margaret Thatcher set herself when she arrived in Downing Street in May 1979 at the end of a traumatic decade that had seen a three-day week, inflation topping 25%, a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and the winter of discontent. 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. three press interviews (15-17 November) when Howe's resignation speech It was thoroughly "wet". Strident, divisive, and in her own view infallible, and for these reasons hard to mourn. Margaret Thatcher's 1980 speech was written by playwright Ronnie Miller, and Julia recalls that the night before delivering the speech she had a huge row with him about the content. She led Britain further into Europe, while talking us further out. The jobs that went during the 80s tended to be good, skilled jobs, delivering decent incomes and some security. 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. He was a political and historical figure and the need to accurately portray his legacy and prevent misleading hagiography easily outweighed precepts of death etiquette that prevail when a private person dies. And by my own firsthand experience, it was genuine to the core. The last remnants of the postwar consensus were swept away in the ensuing decade a period that saw the crushing of the trade unions, the Big Bang in the City, council house sales, the privatisation of large chunks of industry, the encouragement of inward investment, tax cuts, attempts to roll back the state, a deep manufacturing recession, a boom in North Sea oil production, and support for the creation of a single market in Europe. Absurd or not, it does indeed seem alien not least to those born in the 1980s, the generation we shall always call Thatcher's children.

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