Memorial Page for Margaret Thatcher (née Margaret Hilda Roberts)

Margaret Thatcher (born Margaret Hilda Roberts on 13 October 1925 in Grantham; died 8 April 2013 in London) was a British Conservative politician. From 1979 to 1990 she served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the first woman to hold the office and the longest continuously serving British prime minister of the twentieth century. Her name stands for a deep political and economic turn, but also for sharp social conflict.

Grantham, Oxford and the path into politics

Margaret Roberts grew up in Grantham as the daughter of a grocer and local politician. Her father Alfred Roberts shaped her with Methodist duty, self-discipline and an idea of personal responsibility. At Oxford she studied chemistry at Somerville College and later worked briefly in industry. At the same time she moved early into politics. In 1951 she married Denis Thatcher; after legal training she became a barrister. This combination of scientific training, legal thinking and political ambition belonged to her later manner: argumentative, precise and hard in conflict.

Finchley and party leadership

In 1959 Thatcher was elected to Parliament for Finchley. In Edward Heath's government she served as Secretary of State for Education and Science from 1970 to 1974. Public attention also came from an unpopular saving measure involving free school milk. After the Conservatives lost office, she challenged Heath's leadership and in 1975 became party leader. The Soviet nickname Iron Lady became part of her political image. Thatcher saw herself as a force against inflation, trade union power, state consensus politics and the sense of British decline.

Downing Street and Thatcherism

On 4 May 1979 Thatcher became prime minister. Her government pursued lower inflation, privatization, a reduced role for the state, more market competition, the sale of public housing and a hard line toward trade unions. This politics changed Britain permanently. To supporters it meant economic modernization, ownership, enterprise and the end of a paralysing postwar consensus. To opponents it meant deindustrialization, growing inequality, social coldness and the breaking of whole working communities.

Falklands, miners' strike and conflict

The Falklands War in 1982 greatly strengthened Thatcher's position and contributed to the large Conservative victory in 1983. At home, the miners' strike of 1984-85 became the hardest social conflict of her premiership. The government did not yield; many mining communities experienced defeat, job loss and long-term social consequences. In October 1984 Thatcher survived the IRA bombing of the Conservative Party conference hotel in Brighton. Her response reinforced the image of a politician who did not step back under pressure.

Europe, poll tax and the end of office

In the second half of the 1980s Thatcher deepened her economic reforms, including deregulation of London's financial markets. At the same time tensions grew inside her party, especially over Europe and over the Community Charge, known as the poll tax. The tax provoked mass resistance and undermined her authority. In 1990 Thatcher lost support in the Conservative Party and resigned as prime minister. She remained an influential voice on the British right and in 1992 entered the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher.

Farewell

Margaret Thatcher died in London on 8 April 2013. She was 87 years old. Her political effect is unusually strong because she left not only individual decisions, but a new political language: market, ownership, responsibility, national resolve and scepticism toward state expansion. That language shaped opponents as well as successors. Thatcher therefore remains one of the most significant and contested figures in modern British history.