Truly the end of an era…and covered very well in this article from the Foreign Policy Morning Brief email…
The first female prime minister in her country’s history, Thatcher came to embody a turn toward a free-market political program that sought to unleash economic dynamism through an aggressive program of privatizations and tax reductions. Thatcherism — as her political program became known to both her supporters and detractors — would throw off the heavy hand of the state and seek a Britain with greater vitality. Her perhaps defining moment came in 1984 when she broke a major strike launched by the miners union, a victory that consolidated her political power and represented a triumph over the country’s strike-prone unions.
The woman who came to be known as the Iron Lady matched her pioneering domestic agenda with a muscular foreign policy that saw Britain come to blows with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. And just as she refused to cede British sovereignty in the South Atlantic, she remained deeply skeptical toward the European project and laid the groundwork for Britain’s taciturn relationship with the European Union and its decision not to adopt the euro. Together with Ronald Reagan, a man who would become a close friend, she emerged as a canny leader in the Cold War, recognizing early on that Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms presented an opportunity for the West.
But to her detractors, Thatcher’s free-wheeling market ideology came to embody an uncaring political philosophy, one willing to sacrifice at the altar of economic dynamism a state apparatus directed toward the common good.
Regardless, she is likely to go down in history as Britain’s greatest post-war prime minister.
…and a couple of apt comments from Dan Drezner’s article on her influence…
James011. I didn’t respect all of her policies; but one thing I will say for Thatcher: she knew how to lead. No dithering, no faltering and she had a sometimes terrifying steely resolve. She was one of the last politicians you could look at and know exactly what she stood for. I can’t imagine any other politician, even during this recession who would make a statement like “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”. She spoke her mind and did what she promised to do when she was elected- I respect that and very few politicians do the same.
sasss31. People can say a whole lot about Margaret Thatcher but no sensible person can deny her intelligence, wit, and influence. The fact is that she was Prime Minister for 11-years as a woman in the years of 1979-1990. She stood up to totalitarianism and was a force one did not want to reckon with. She was truly a transformative and vital leader of our time. Like her or hate her, the Iron Lady has her place cemented in the history books.
NorK posturing aside, in these times we forget sometimes – or never know for those under 35 – just what her time was like…the Cold War was in full force and there was a very real expectation that it might actually happen; wars were wars and lots of people died; terrorism was alive and active across Europe and in Great Britain; and unions ruled OK with little real concern for the rights or well-being of their members.
If she did nothing else, Margaret Thatcher created huge change by simply standing firm and she should be remembered for that. It is quite a sad thing really that she has been depicted as a doddering fool in the poor movie The Iron Lady, and that so many have seized the opportunity of her passing to leap on their own insignificant little soap boxes to belabour their own narrow opinions…
And this from a Facebook post…
Tonight I shall go and have a drink for Margaret Thatcher’s death. I shall raise my glass to the night sky, and THANK HER, and celebrate her life. People on this seem to have a very strange view of history. So here are a few little nuggets with how and more specifically WHY a lot of industries were destroyed by her, and what’s more, destroyed with the MANDATE OF THE BRITISH PEOPLE.
The seventies were blighted by the trade unions waiting for winter and then coming out on strike at it’s heart. Holding the country to ransom for ANNUAL pay rises of up to 36% ABOVE inflation. This was the likes of Scargill and co. And they bled us dry. We were bankrupted by them. And then the Winter of Discontent happened. And they ALL came out. Miners, power workers, transport workers; even funeral directors, everything tied into the TGWU came out. My own grandparents lay on a slab for 2 months waiting to be buried. The entire country was a ruin. Rubbish not collected for months, rats everywhere. And the unions laughed, and brought down Callaghan’s Labour Government.
And Thatcher stood up at the General Election and made ONE SIMPLE PROMISE. Elect me. And THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. ELECT ME AND I WILL DESTROY THEM. She won a landslide. On that promise.And she became the last elected Prime Minister to actually hold true to her election promise. She did exactly what she said. She utterly destroyed the unions. Obliterated them. The cost was those industries. We knew that would be the price. But we would not allow them to hold us to ransom again. What she did, she did with our BLESSING. The socialists and people who backed those strikes have only themselves to blame for what happened. Baroness Thatcher didn’t destroy those industries and communities for fun or as part of a class war. She did it to stop them holding the country to ransom again. And then she held the purse strings tight and re-built the economy and the country and Britain again stood tall and thrived. And we won back the global respect we had lost while the left wing ruled.
In the Falklands we were thankful for her being in office. Those of us who went ‘south’ in ’82 did so knowing we had a leader who would not – and did not- interfere. She sent the military and allowed us to do our job. Gave us the money, the equipment and most of all THE FREEDOM to get the job done. Our lands had been invaded. We had a gun up our nose. SHE led us. Frankly Thatcher took a very broken Britain by the hand like a strict old fashioned Matron and LED THE COUNTRY BACK TO WHERE IT HAD ONCE BEEN. We were the worlds 3rd major power in ALL respects. And as for the world, it has NEVER been safer than when Thatcher was in Downing Street, Reagan was in the White House and Gorbachev was in the Kremlin as the three spoke DAILY. They laid the ground for the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Russians were TERRIFIED of her. And the world again feared Britain.
And lets not forget that she gave people the full right to buy their own council property. Her vision was that the TENANT and the tenant alone could buy that property.As soon as her party stabbed her in the back the feeding frenzy began as under her the famous Tory grandee greed was held in check. So they stabbed her, led by the Europro traitor ponce Heseltine – who didn’t have the guts to face her openly and alone – they arranged her removal. And we have been a broken patsy for Europe ever since.
So yes, tonight I will celebrate the death of Baroness Thatcher, with thanks, with respect, and with sadness, because she allowed me to know what we could be, what we could achieve, what it meant to be BRITISH.
~ Credit to Steve Chiverton for this piece of writing
And in response to this insect…
…You worry about what someone calling himself ‘citizen bomber’ says or thinks…? She will be laughing over a brandy with Churchill at how all the insects have had to wait til she passed before feeling brave enough to launch their soap box flotillas of jealousy…
…The British Government is making arrangements for all such left-wing insects to be emigrated to Albania where they will be happy. In an unintentional twist of irony, they will be transported on the aircraft carrier Iron Lady….
You do have to admit that HMS Iron Lady has a nice ring to it…
The World According to Me... 
I think HMS Iron Lady would be the start of a new Dreadnought class?
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LOL…Absolutely!!!
Certainly there was naught she dreaded….and equally certainly she wouldn’t have stood for any of this nonsense about loaning aircraft carriers to France of all nations…
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