Today’s quote is from the longest serving Prime Minister in Britain: “IF YOU JUST SET OUT TO BE LIKED, YOU WOULD BE PREPARED TO COMPROMISE ON ANYTHING AT ANY TIME, AND YOU WOULD ACHIEVE NOTHING.” - Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on 13 October 1925 in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England and the daughter of a grocer. She went to Oxford University and then became a research chemist. She graduated in 1946 and worked for four years as a research chemist. In 1951, she married Denis Thatcher, a wealthy businessman, with whom she had two children. She studied law later to become a barrister in 1954. She developed an early interest in politics and, when studying chemistry at Oxford University, became president of the Oxford Conservative Association. Thatcher first stood for Parliament in 1950, but won her first election campaign in 1959, a seat she held until she retired in 1992. She rose within the ranks of the Conservative Party, holding a variety of positions. In 1970 she became the Minister for Education. She rose to public prominence after cancelling a programme providing free milk to primary school children which led to the nickname Thatcher the Milk Snatcher. When Conservative Party leader Edward Heath lost two General Elections in 1974, Margaret Thatcher became the only cabinet minister prepared to challenge him for the leadership of the party; she was in practical terms the candidate of disaffected right wing MPs. She won, surprisingly, by 130 votes to 119, though she only gained one vote from her Shadow Cabinet colleagues. She led the party in opposition. Forging a close relationship with US President Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher expressed a strong anti-communism and portrayed the USSR as an evil which should be opposed; she has been criticised for firmly keeping the Cold War alive by this approach until Gorbachev arrived in Russia to end it. However, she received Gorbachev warmly. A 1976 speech before she became Prime Minister, in which she roundly condemned communism, earned her the nickname The Iron Lady in the Soviet media, and the west soon adopted it. In 1984 Margaret Thatcher narrowly survived the IRA bombing of a hotel in Brighton, part of a larger campaign by the IRA for a united and independent Ireland which was, in turn, part of the larger political unrest and violence over British controlled Northern Ireland. Margaret Thatcher was the first female British Prime Minister. The leader of the Conservative Party, she won three consecutive terms of office (the only British PM in the twentieth century to do so), transformed the nation and at the time was the longest serving PM since 1827, governing from 1979 - 90. In 1992, Thatcher left the House of Commons. She was appointed a Peeress in the House of Lords with the title of Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven and continued giving speeches and lectures across the world. She also founded the Thatcher Foundation, which aimed to advance the cause of political and economic freedom, particularly in the newly liberated countries of central and eastern Europe. In 1995 she became a member of the Order of the Garter, the highest order of knighthood in England. In 2002, after a series of minor strokes, Baroness Thatcher retired from public speaking. She died of a stroke on April 8, 2013, at the age of 87.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 09:31:28 +0000
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