by Oleg Shevchenko
[REGNUM] Thirty-five years ago, on November 28, 1990, Margaret Thatcher closed the door to the British prime minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. When, after a series of political intrigues, the "Iron Lady" was finally brought down, many sighed: some with regret, many with relief.
But, in addition to the banal “an era has passed,” some amusing little details have also surfaced in the press.
For example, the all-powerful Prime Minister was ignorant of many everyday details. For instance, she "didn't understand how to make a phone call, since for decades she'd simply picked up the receiver and started a conversation..."
However, when accused of being "out of touch with the people," Mrs. Margaret Hilda Thatcher, a most honorary member of Her Majesty's Privy Council and, since 1992, a Baroness, could have quoted Sherlock Holmes: "Thank you for enlightening me, but now I will try to forget all this as quickly as possible." After all, it is necessary to keep only the essentials in mind, not cluttering a perfectly tuned mind with concerns that only the lower classes bother themselves with.
But Maggie Roberts, born on October 13, 1925, in the town of Grantham, a hundred miles from London, knew more than just how to make a phone call in her youth. She also knew how to count cash, handle chemicals, and, most importantly, how to climb a precarious career ladder to the very top.
HOW DADDY'S GIRL BROKE FAMILY TRADITION
When James Callaghan's Labour cabinet collapsed in the cold winter of 1978–79, the "Winter of Dissent", amid economic recession and strikes, the Conservative Party easily took power, winning the election by a landslide.
The Tories—historically considered the party of aristocrats and industrialists—largely capitalized on the fact that their leader, Margaret Thatcher, came from a lower-middle class background, if not a working-class one. And she achieved everything through hard work and perseverance. This fact is recalled by the Conservatives (now in His Majesty's Opposition) even now, in the year of Thatcher's centenary and the 35th anniversary of her resignation.
But there is a certain deceit in stories about women who achieved everything on their own.
The future prime minister's father, Alfred Roberts, was a wealthy man (he owned several grocery stores in Grantham), served on the town council, and was an alderman—a member of the community who could serve as a justice of the peace. This "ordinary shopkeeper" even served as mayor of Grantham.
Alfred also had spiritual authority—he served as a lay preacher in the local Methodist church. In a country where the majority belong to the Church of England, Methodists are a religious minority, the kind of people who were formerly called dissidents. Maggie grew up in a proper, but in some ways "different," family.
Margaret was a daddy's girl - she remembers her father more often than her mother.
Thus, she remembered forever how, when inspiring parishioners, her father used a special "preaching" voice, very different from his everyday tone. And on the very first page of her memoirs, Thatcher quotes her father's admonition: "Never do anything just because others are doing it."
On the one hand, the upbringing was Spartan: no movies or dancing, when you had to help in the shop or go to Sunday school.
On the other hand, her parents supported their daughter when her hobbies were beneficial. Even during World War II, the family found the money to pay for Maggie's sports activities (she enjoyed swimming and playing field hockey), piano lessons, and poetry classes.
But Margaret herself had already achieved her goals from a young age—becoming class monitor and then, as we would say, gaining a scholarship to an Oxford college. Moreover, she enrolled in a chemistry course taught by Dorothy Hodgkin, the future Nobel laureate. And then she went against the grain of family tradition.
The Roberts family always voted Liberal, but Margaret joined the Conservatives. By 1946, she had become the leader of the University Tory Association, sidelining the scions of aristocratic families.
MAN IN THE SHADOWS
Another fact from the "canonical" biographies of Thatcher: in the general elections of 1950 and 1951, she ran for parliament (the youngest politician in the campaign, the only woman candidate!), but "lost convincingly." Nevertheless, she gathered her strength and, after several attempts, was elected to the House of Commons in 1959, a seat she held until 1992.
But even here the biography of the “iron lady” is somewhat embellished.
Maggie Roberts got into politics through connections.
One of her Oxford friends was friends with the leader of the Conservative Party association in Kent. They were so impressed with Margaret that they persuaded her to run in the election, even though she wasn't on the Conservative Party's approved list of candidates.
Another important and useful meeting took place in January 1951. Whether at a chemists' convention or a party banquet, the young Miss Roberts, running for her second term, met a divorced businessman named Denis Thatcher. At the time of their meeting, he headed the family firm, which had branches abroad.
There's a famous saying attributed to Bernard Shaw: behind every great man there's a woman. In the case of the Thatchers, the situation was reversed, especially in the early stages.
Denis paid for Margaret's legal training, secured a patent, bought the aspiring politician a house in Chelsea, and, apparently, lobbied for and sponsored her political career.
His wife thanked her husband in true British fashion: in 1990, Denis was awarded the Thatcher Baronetcy. It is the only baronetcy created since 1964, and Thatcher remains the last non-royal person to receive the hereditary title. Of course, the title was granted by Queen Elizabeth, but not without the patronage of the Prime Minister.
THE LADY DOESN'T TURN
From the very beginning, Thatcher proved herself a pragmatist. She could frighten her fellow citizens by declaring that the high taxes introduced by Labour were a "step toward communism." The average British citizen openly feared communism and voted Tory.
But when it suited her, Conservative Thatcher used a leftist agenda. She voted for the legalization of abortion, the decriminalization of gays*, and a ban on aristocratic hare hunting with greyhounds.
Thatcher skillfully cultivated her public image: a charming woman, simple but striving to appear "comme il faut." She had a sense of humor, loved children, and managed to cook a family meal. Back then, she could still cook.
But when Margaret became Minister of Education in 1970, populism vanished without a trace. It was time to follow domestic guidelines: cut government spending and support business.
The British will long remember the minister's decision to scrap the free milk program for children aged 7-11, introduced after World War II ( Winston Churchill, a role model for Thatcher, said, "The best investment is milk in a child.") But the Ministry of Education's budget required cuts, and the first, but far from last, unpopular decision of her career was made.
At the instigation of the Labour Party, the minister was given the offensive nickname "Thatcher, the milk snatcher", which stuck for life.
Lost in this context was the fact that, thanks to the minister's decisions, the proportion of students attending comprehensive schools increased from 32% to 62%. "I learned a valuable lesson. I had incurred maximum political hatred for minimum political gain," Thatcher wrote in her memoirs. At the end of that decade, she moved into the prime minister's residence on Downing Street.
By 1979, the policies of the Labour Party had proven so ineffective that they were irritating even the workers themselves, not to mention the middle class and the wealthy. Besides these missteps, the oil crisis and the Cold War, which was entering a new phase, also played a role.
While criticizing Labour, Thatcher also played the Russophobic card.
"The Russians are determined to dominate the world!" declared the leader of Her Majesty's loyal opposition.
"They chose guns over butter, while for us almost everything else is more important than guns," the one who deprived their children of milk told voters.
Ultimately, voters decided to invest in "guns" and tighten their belts, so they could get the "butter" later. The economy, plunged into depression, was met with shock therapy from the first female prime minister. University spending was slashed, taxes were raised, and interest rates skyrocketed.
Entire subsidized industries were shuttered. Unemployment was higher than during the Great Depression—over 3 million. Production fell by 30%. Thatcher was asked to reverse the reforms, but was told, "Turn back if you like. The lady doesn't turn back!"
And she certainly didn't react to the cry that has become customary among Labour MPs when the Prime Minister appears in the House of Commons: "Ditch the bitch!"
FIGHT OVER A COMB
Against this backdrop, Thatcher resorted to a measure that liberals (and liberal conservatives) always blame "dictators" for: starting a small, victorious war to distract the people from domestic problems. But in Prime Minister Thatcher's case, the war with Argentina over the Falklands truly was small and victorious.
The great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, who witnessed "the last battle of the British Empire," called it a fight between two bald men over a comb. The sparsely populated archipelago in the South Atlantic is 13,000 kilometers from England, and Argentina had never previously attempted to reclaim the disputed islands.
But each side solved its own problems.
The latest Argentine junta, led by General Leopoldo Galtieri, decided to boost its popularity with American weapons. Thatcher was solving a similar problem, although Britain had its own weapons.
The Royal Navy and Air Force operation lasted almost two months, from April to June 1982.
The war was not bloodless. Britain lost 258 men killed, two frigates and two destroyers, a landing ship, 24 helicopters, and 10 aircraft. But in the end, Argentina "lost decisively," and Thatcher was able to stage a true, ancient triumph: a victory parade was held in London on October 12, 1982.
At the same time as the Falklands War, Thatcher was equally brutal in her internal war against the Irish Republican Army.
In March 1981, a group of IRA prisoners began a hunger strike in Maze Prison near Belfast, demanding the reinstatement of special status for political prisoners (under Thatcher's decision, they were held as common criminals). The prime minister refused to make concessions. The Irish hunger strike lasted between 46 and 73 days. Ten people died of exhaustion, but London "didn't cave."
ATOMIC MAGGIE
Foreign policy success (achieved against international opinion) and the brutality of the war against Ulster separatists distracted from domestic problems, and by the mid-1980s, the harsh measures had produced results. At least for the middle class—Thatcher's core electorate.
Thanks to low inflation, the "middle class" was able to privatize small state-owned properties, which reduced the intensity of public passions.
The demand for "guns" was fully satisfied: in the final stages of the Cold War, under the threat of the Soviet Union, Britain invested a then-astronomical £12 billion in nuclear weapons (the kingdom's nuclear arsenal eventually tripled).
Military spending continued to drain budget funds from education and social services, guaranteeing the Prime Minister the continued hatred of the poor.
The 1989 tax reform once again stirred public opinion, and 70,000 people took to the streets of London. Police opened fire to kill, leading to pogroms, riots, and protests.
Ultimately, the next Conservative prime minister, Thatcher's successor, John Major, rolled back the tax reforms. And the Northern Ireland problem was only resolved (or, more accurately, frozen) by the late 1990s.
But in foreign policy, Thatcher didn't just keep Britain afloat. The prime minister correctly assessed the prospects of China, which had begun to gain power under Deng Xiaoping.
It was under Thatcher that Britain decided to gradually hand over Hong Kong, which ensured good relations between London and Beijing.
She was also one of the first to appreciate Mikhail Gorbachev's potential, but already from a negative point of view - Gorbachev himself greatly valued the trusting (as it seemed to him) relationship with Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, which had developed since the mid-1980s.
For Thatcher, the dismantling of "Russian communism" was an unambiguous good - a view she held even as Miss Roberts.
“I rejoiced when I saw how Soviet communism was ridiculed in Ninotchka (a 1939 American film ), where Greta Garbo, the stern commissar, is captivated by a woman’s hat,” the prime minister recalled in her memoirs.
Moreover, the weakening of Russia, Britain's historical opponent, has always benefited the latter.
"WITCH" OR A GREAT PERSONALITY
In 1990, after a series of intrigues within her party, Thatcher voluntarily relinquished her post as Tory leader, which automatically meant she was no longer prime minister.
After retiring, she wrote three books and served as a consultant for a tobacco campaign, receiving $50,000 for each public appearance (in addition to her quarter-million-dollar annual salary).
She has repeatedly spoken out in the media demanding that NATO stop the Serbs, who were allegedly carrying out ethnic cleansing. She defended former dictator Augusto Pinochet, demanded the overthrow of current dictator Saddam Hussein, and called for the Kingdom's integration into the European community to be curtailed.
In the latter case, the "Iron Lady" parted ways with the London establishment of the time. Brexit is essentially a continuation of her policies.
However, she did not live to see the kingdom leave the overly leftist, almost socialist European Union.
In the early 2000s, Thatcher was struck by a stroke and dementia, and in 2013, at the age of 88, she died of a secondary stroke.
On the day of her death, the English left and left-liberals (many of whom were punks in the early 1980s – another product of “Thatcherism”) staged a real carnival.
The song "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead" from the musical "The Wizard of Oz" reached number 2 on the UK Singles Chart.
On the other hand, the biographical film The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep and shot two years before Thatcher's death (a film that is by no means debunking or condemning), won a ton of awards, including an Oscar and a Golden Globe.
The Guardian, citing the opinions of British academics (in this case, historians), called Thatcher the worst prime minister since 1916. But the problem is that The Guardian is a left-liberal newspaper close to the Labour Party. Incidentally, in 2013, the same publication cited the opinions of Britons surveyed by the ICN service. It showed that 50% considered Thatcher's contribution generally positive (with 34% disapproving). All these figures merely testify to the historically entrenched ideological divide and economic stratification in Britain.
But compared to subsequent prime ministers, not excluding the current one – Labour's Keir Starmer, under whom Britain found itself in yet another dead end – Thatcher really does look like a strong leader for her country and a serious enemy for us.
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