Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography

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Thatcher had eighteen months to write the book covering her premiership. She hired a previous director of the Conservative Research Department, Robin Harris, to do most of the writing, the Oxford academic Christopher Collins to do the research and O'Sullivan to help polish the drafts. Just like with her speeches, Thatcher would "edit, criticise and exhaustively rewrite the drafts" until she was happy. [10] Good biographies, and this is an exceptionally good one, tell us things we did not know about the life of their subject.”– New Statesman Her response was characteristic: at the Conservative Party's annual conference in October 1986, her speech foreshadowed a mass of reforms for a third Thatcher Government.With the economy now very strong, prospects were good for an election and the government was returned with a Parliamentary majority of 101in June 1987. Yet for non-believers this volume ought to be the most palatable, since it covers her declining years in government, from 1987 to 1990, and her often melancholy 23 years afterwards. It also appears with both conservatism and capitalism seemingly in crisis: even the Financial Times has started using the slogan “Capitalism: Time for a Reset”. Unlike Thatcher’s previous biographers, Moore has the chance to judge her against the troubled, unsustainable world she helped create.

But by the mid-1980s, however, some Conservatives had come to see things differently. Britain’s economy was doing well and the costs of membership now seemed to outweigh its benefits. So, in 1984, Margaret Thatcher renegotiated Britain’s contributions to the EC budget and won significant reductions. European states would keep certain powers, but they’d also be integrated into a single federal structure. In some areas of political life, Brussels, not national parliaments, would have the final say. No-one can deny that Margaret Thatcher was a divisive figure. As so often, I’m somewhere in the middle. To me, Thatcher has qualities that one can admire, even if one isn’t supportive – to put it mildly – of everything she did. As an autobiography, it’s wholly unsurprising that it is her positive attributes that tend to shine through here. The post-war consensus seemed to work – at first, anyway. The economy grew steadily for two decades. Over a million new affordable houses were built. Unemployment was low and wages high. During her term of office she reshaped almost every aspect of British politics, reviving the economy, reforming outdated institutions, and reinvigorating the nation's foreign policy. She challenged and did much to overturn the psychology of decline which had become rooted in Britain since the Second World War, pursuing national recovery with striking energy and determination.

Thatcher's close friend Woodrow Wyatt recounted in his diary on 3 February 1989 a conversation he had with Rupert Murdoch who wanted Thatcher to write her equivalent of Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika, explaining her philosophy and that John O'Sullivan could do all the "donkey work" for her. Wyatt countered this by stating that the chairman of the publishing house Collins had tried to get him to persuade Thatcher to publish her memoirs with Collins and Thatcher herself seemed favourable to this option. [1] The next day Wyatt put Murdoch's idea to Thatcher but she claimed she did not have the time. [2] These policies did reduce inflation, but there were side-effects. Deprived of subsidies, lots of British firms went bust. Others became uncompetitive because their goods were too expensive to export. Soon, some three million people were unemployed – around 13 percent of the workforce. For the first time in its history, Britain became a net importer of goods. In foreign policy, she got on well with American President Ronald Reagan. They often met and talked of a ‘special relationship’ between the US and the UK. Mrs Thatcher also expressed respect for Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev. She famously said of Gorbachev, that ‘he was a man who we could do business with’ It’s hard to imagine anyone, even the most anti-Thatcherite, finding this dull…it sparkles with insight, drama, and wit.”– Daily Mail Margaret threw herself into politics. She took part in debates, gave speeches, and campaigned for the Conservative party in the general election of 1945.

A good insight so far, but quite detailed. Amazing how forward thinking this woman was when we consider the problems we are experiencing just in the last half a decade. Critics and supporters alike recognise the Thatcher premiership as a period of fundamental importance in British history. Margaret Thatcher accumulated huge prestige over the course of the 1980s and often compelled the respect even of her bitterest critics. Indeed, her effect on the terms of political debate has been profound. Whether they were converted to 'Thatcherism', or merely forced by the electorate to pay it lip service, the Labour Party leadership was transformed by her period of office and the 'New Labour' politics of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would not have existed without her. Her legacy remains the core of modern British politics: the world economic crisis since 2008 has revived many of the arguments of the 1980s, keeping her name at the centre of political debate in Britain. Thatcher was interviewed with David Frost on Breakfast with Frost about her memoirs, [15] and she promoted her book with radio and television interviews, book signings, a question and answer session at the Barbican chaired by Jeffrey Archer and a four-part BBC television series. [14]

The third theme which is reflected in the book is that despite constant pressure from various politicians, a strong woman should always defend her rights and interests. The autobiography shows that Margaret Thatcher always sharply criticized the Soviet Union, and communism was unacceptable for her. In the foreign policy, she focused on the US and always spoke negatively about Soviet political leaders. On the other hand, she believed that the communist and capitalist countries could coexist by means of mutual compromises and defended this position. The economic and social policies pursued by Margaret Thatcher were called Thatcherism. There were no people who felt indifferent regarding her ideas. For the supporters of “The Iron Lady”, she was a symbolic figure, and her ideas were excellent. Yet, Thatcher’s opponents believed that she did her best to weaken the UK, and thus, particular attention in the book is given to the section about the attempt of her assassination. In 1984, the Irish Republican Army tried to murder Margaret Thatcher. The separatists put a bomb in a hotel in Brighton during a conference of the Conservative Party. Five citizens were killed, but Thatcher herself was not hurt. Margaret Thatcher first told her husband, Denis, that she was going to run for the leadership of the Conservative party in 1974. He told her that she didn’t stand a chance. Nevertheless, there's no denying that Thatcher was a highly intelligent, accomplished, capable, and impressive world leader.

The strikes began on the day the government announced its plan to cut coal production. Miners in Yorkshire were the first to down tools. Sympathy strikes soon spread to other areas of the country.

A growing number of Conservative MPs wanted rid of Margaret Thatcher. The bone of contention was an issue which causes divisions within the party to this day: Europe. receiving warm tributes from all sides. After his death her own health deteriorated further and faster, causing progressive memory loss, and she died in London on 8 April 2013. She was honoured at a ceremonial funeral in St Paul's Cathedral nine days later. There would be international outcry, of course, but Anaya thought Argentina could get away with it. The country was a key ally of the United States, which was trying to contain Communism in South America. Britain, by contrast, was weaker than ever before. Officially, Washington would condemn Argentina. Unofficially, Anaya believed, the US might just turn a blind eye. Hard work, self-reliance, and private initiative – those were the values which Margaret admired. No faction in Oxford was more committed to those values than the Conservatives. I was 11 when Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979. She was without doubt the most divisive figures in British postwar politics,and I wanted to find out for myself why she attracted such strong feelings.

In 1989, around the tenth anniversary of her election as prime minister, the polls turned decisively against her and the Conservatives. Voters had tired of her abrasive, imperial style, and the damage her iconoclastic policies had done to the fabric of Britain. Meanwhile, like most ageing governments, hers had become “accident-prone”, as Moore pithily puts it, beset by increasingly visible splits, scandals and administrative errors. In 1990 Thatcher’s many internal enemies finally moved to unseat her. Moore builds a Westminster drama that is compelling and emotionally raw des­pite the fact that many readers will know the key scenes already It was also a conservative decade. Winston Churchill defeated Labour in 1951, and the party would stay in power for 13 years. But there wasn’t a counter-revolution. To win power, the Conservatives had promised not to dismantle the new welfare system created by Labour.But then everything changed. Britain was plunged into a national crisis. It was Margaret Thatcher’s greatest challenge – and an opportunity to prove herself.