Archives
April 2022
Categories
All
|
Back to Blog
MORGAN HUNT
Former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is prone to being called nicknames. Over time she’s been called “Maggie,” “Thatcher, the Milk Snatcher,” “Attila the Hen,” “That Bloody Woman,” “Maggon,” “Thatch” (aka pubic hair), and “The Iron Lady.” Her critics were unafraid to label her as a heinous witch, while her supporters fiercely worshipped her strong qualities and principled leadership. As a result, these epithets run the gamut from ugly to comical to affectionate to grand. None of them, in my opinion, give her legacy the credit it deserves, as I shall now prove. In 1959, Margaret Thatcher was first elected MP (Member of Parliament) for the British constituency of Finchley. She was an Oxford-trained chemist, who grew up in a decidedly political household (her father was the Conservative mayor of her hometown of Grantham). Her traditional Methodist up-bringing strongly influenced her politics, and she knew from a young age that conservatism was the way to create a prosperous and stable country. 16 years later, she was elected leader of the Conservative party. Four years after that, she became British Prime Minister. Her character and politics never changed from the time she was first elected to the time she became PM. Thatcher was a powerful and decisive Prime Minister because of her resolute and dependable dogma. She was a fierce enemy of consensus politics and compromise, defining the former as the “process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of which no one believes.” With Thatcher, one always knew she would respond to problems with decisiveness and vigor. The strength of her political consistency and the inflexibility of her ideology drew plaudits from even her harshest critics. Later, Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote about the “resilience” in which she carried out her duties, adding “even those who disagreed with her never doubted the strength of her convictions.” Thatcher additionally possessed a superb ability to speak and write the English language. Each argument she made in debate was crafted to reveal a new facet of her point; every speech emphasized a new part of her political acumen. Her quotes argued for conservatism in the most concise and insightful manner. Margaret was truly notable and quotable. This fact also drew praise and respect from Thatcher’s opposition, although one can imagine they really despised her abilities for being superior to their own. Thatcher’s carefully crafted words contrast starkly with the dialect of today’s politicians, who merely recite slogans and repeat words in the hope that witless audiences will understand and believe what they’re saying. Thatcher never used dulled-down rhetoric, but that fact never affected her popularity. The Conservative Party under her leadership won three consecutive landslide victories in general elections. Thatcher’s agenda as PM was three-pronged. She was principled in her response to domestic conflict and terrorism, spearheaded British strength in foreign affairs, and continuously supported neoliberal economics while her opposition defended socialism. All three aspects of her premiership brought her significant success. The Troubles The Irish Troubles of the ‘80s provided challenges to the maintenance of a unified Britain and to the country’s objective of domestic peace. The IRA was the provisional Irish Republican Army, a Catholic Militia which wanted Irish independence from Britain but became evermore violent in their quest. They fought the Ulster Defense Association (UDA), a Protestant Loyalist Militia, which wanted Ireland to remain a part of the U.K. In 1976, a handful of IRA criminals were imprisoned for conspiring to plant a bomb against the UDA. In 1981, these prisoners decided to fast themselves to death. Their demands were that the UK government consider them political prisoners rather than criminals. Thatcher did not give in to their ultimatum. She claimed that the criminals should be treated as criminals given their crime. As the IRA prisoners began dying of hunger, she continued to hold this position as head of the UK government. Her reaction gained her many Catholic enemies in Ireland. Yet Thatcher’s firm deference to law and order exemplified that moral compromise was not a phrase present in her vocabulary. In my mind, Thatcher must be applauded for never budging an inch on the obscene demands of these prisoners. The night prior to the 1984 Conservative Party Conference in Brighton, England, the IRA struck back at Thatcher. They planted a bomb in the Brighton Hotel where her entire party was staying the night. At 3 am, it detonated. Five were killed by the blast with Thatcher barely escaping fatality (the bathroom in her hotel room was crushed by rubble). Yet Thatcher remained incredibly composed throughout the aftermath of this incident. She gave a TV interview at 7 am that morning stating that the party’s conference would go on. It did, and in her speech that night she remarked: “The fact that we are gathered here now…is a sign not only that this attack has failed, but that all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail.” Her unbridled resilience in confronting the IRA, and all other terrorists, after her life was nearly taken was remarkable. The Falklands War While Thatcher has been credited by many to have brought about the end of the Cold War, Thatcher’s biggest foreign policy success was in the Falklands; a war remembered fondly by the British, but not by most Americans. When the Argentine military invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982 (an area that both the UK and Argentina believed was rightfully theirs), the British military, under the order of Thatcher’s parliament, successfully recaptured the Falklands and defeated Argentina. The victory was devastating for Argentina but a huge boost for morale in Britain. The Falklands War re-established belief in British might and the effectiveness of Margaret Thatcher’s government. It is often suggested that Thatcher was a great wartime leader that was damned to reign in a time of worldwide military peace. The Falklands War gives a hint of what she might have been like. Neoliberal Economics Thatcher’s world fame comes from her part in ending the Cold War. I argue that Thatcher’s war with the USSR was most successful not because she brought about détente, but because Thatcher attacked Marxist socialism and Soviet communism with more vitriol than perhaps any ruler in history. She saw political freedom and economic freedom as inseparable (an idea she shared with economic advisor Milton Friedman and friend Ronald Reagan), and knew that any increase in government spending or nationalization of industries was a step closer to authoritarian government. Thatcher demolished the welfare state in her country, and with it the majority of wealth redistribution. Her goal was to create wealth, rather than redistribute it, and she did so through tax cuts and the privatization of once-public industries. Her policies brought success and positive economic change to Great Britain. Over the course of her tenure, Thatcher brought inflation down from 23% to around 2% per year, decreased public spending by 10%, decreased taxation by a similar amount, declined union membership by four million, and raised UK household incomes across all economic classes. Critics point to the increasing unemployment during her term and increasing levels of relative poverty. I respond that the former development was a natural result of her incentives to deindustrialize Britain and revitalize private sectors where Britain had a stronger global capacity. All but the industrial workers realized that this was a necessary change. The latter argument does not take into account the clear fact that all UK classes were more prosperous after Thatcher than they were before her. In her final Prime Minister’s Questions, she rightly claimed that socialists “would rather the poor were poorer provided the gap [between rich and poor] were smaller.” How right she was. A True Feminist Hero While many modern liberals see Michelle Obama and Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the greatest female political pioneers in history, it is vital to remember that the true trailblazers for women’s advancements in politics were conservative women. Margaret Thatcher was the first female leader of a Western democracy and Sandra Day O’Connor was the first female jurist to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. It’s ridiculous that Thatcher isn’t lauded more by feminist advocates. It’s also to be expected, since modern feminism tends to disregard the achievements of women who don’t subscribe to left-leaning ideology. If Thatcher had accomplished similar things as a Labour Party Prime Minister for 11 years, she would be talked about much more frequently and positively in feminist circles here in America. What a shame that is. After Thatcher’s death in 2013, her legacy was treated tepidly in America. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) was one of a few Senators to deliver a tribute to her posterity on the floor of the U.S. Senate. He said, “I’ve always been fond of her admonition that conservatives need to first win the argument, then we’ll win the vote.” He was, and still is, quite right. Not everyone recognized that a great woman and prime minister had passed away, however. Then-President Barack Obama did not send any top members of his administration to Thatcher’s funeral. Most tributes to her were written in haste and vaguely focused on how she brought about Soviet détente. Thatcher’s legacy deserves more attention, particularly among American conservatives. As leader of the Tories for 15 years, she showed the Western world that the facts of history and economics are conservative, and that society will be better off when we have a strong, principled, effective, and conservative leader to follow. I argue that she deserves a meaningful tribute from everyone in the land, and that she should be referred to not by flouncy monikers, but by her full name: Baroness Margaret Thatcher. Comments are closed.
|