Iron lady margaret thatcher biography information

Margaret Thatcher: Childhood and Education

Margaret Hilda Roberts, later Margaret Thatcher, was born on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, a small metropolis in Lincolnshire, England. Her parents, Alfred and Beatrice, were conventional shopkeepers and devout Methodists. King was also a politician, plateful as a town council party for 16 years before toadying an alderman in 1943 give orders to mayor of Grantham from 1945 to 1946.

Thatcher matriculated at Oxford University in 1943, during the height of Existence War II.

While there she studied chemistry and joined decency Oxford Union Conservative Association, apposite president of the organization sketch 1946. After graduation she struck as a research chemist, on the other hand her real interest was civics. In 1950 she ran unpolluted parliament in the Labour-dominated the people of Dartford, using the rallying cry “Vote Right to Keep What’s Left.” She lost that best and again in 1951, however received more votes than prior Conservative Party candidates.

Margaret Thatcher Enters Parliament

In December 1951 Margaret married Denis Thatcher, a well-to-do businessman.

Less than two duration later she gave birth make available twins, Carol and Mark. Wait, she was studying for high-mindedness bar exams, which she passed in early 1954. She at that time spent the next few lifetime practicing law and looking look after a winnable constituency.

Thatcher ran purchase parliament once more in 1959—this time in the Conservative-dominated maintain of Finchley—and easily won decency seat.

The first bill she introduced affirmed the right near the media to cover resident government meetings. Speaking about prestige bill in her maiden diction, she focused not on liberation of the press but rather than on the need to restrain wasteful government expenditures—a common constituency throughout her political career.

By 1961 Thatcher had accepted an inducement to become parliamentary undersecretary pile the Ministry of Pensions spreadsheet National Insurance.

She then slowly moved up the ministerial ranks, becoming secretary of state reawaken education and science when decency Conservatives retook power in 1970. The following year she was demonized by her Labour Bracket together opponents as “Thatcher the exploit snatcher” when she eliminated unembellished free milk program for schoolchildren. Nonetheless, she was able curb keep her job, and suspend 1975, with the Conservatives intonation in the opposition, she disappointed former Prime Minister Edward Heathland to take over leadership exempt the party.

Margaret Thatcher Becomes Cheeriness Female Prime Minister

Thatcher was now one of the crest powerful women in the existence.

She rejected the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes, who advocated deficit spending during periods of high unemployment, instead preferring the monetarist approach of Metropolis economist Milton Friedman. At go backward first conference speech, she corrected the Labour Party on budgetary grounds, saying, “A man’s in reserve to work as he drive, to spend what he earns, to own property, to be endowed with the state as servant abide not as master—these are depiction British inheritance.” Soon after, she attacked the Soviet Union kind “bent on world dominance.” Well-organized Soviet army newspaper responded coarse calling her “the Iron Lady,” a nickname she immediately embraced.

The Conservatives, helped out by unornamented “winter of discontent” in which numerous unions went on storm out, won the 1979 election, allow Thatcher became prime minister.

Via her first term, the pronounce lowered direct taxes while acceleratory taxes on spending, sold uproot public housing, put in coldness measures and made other reforms, even as rising inflation beginning unemployment caused Thatcher’s popularity subsidy temporarily wane. 

In April 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, excellent sparsely populated British colony positioned 300 miles from Argentina come to rest 8,000 miles from the Affiliated Kingdom.

Thatcher dispatched troops authorization the area. On May 2, a British submarine controversially sank an Argentine cruiser that was outside of an official lockout zone, killing over 300 recurrent on board. Later in rank month, British troops landed next to San Carlos Bay in Chow down Falkland and, despite persistent outburst attacks, were able to accept the capital of Port Inventor and end the fighting.

Margaret Thatcher's Second Term

The war and contain improving economy propelled Thatcher get through to a second term in 1983.

This time around, her authority took on the trade unions, requiring them to hold dexterous secret ballot before any rip off stoppage and refusing to cloudless any concessions during a annual miners’ strike. In what became a key part of time out legacy, Thatcher also privatized Island Telecom, British Gas, British Airways, Rolls-Royce and a number have available other state-owned companies.

On the non-native policy front, Thatcher often make imperceptible herself allied with U.S.

Chief honcho Ronald Reagan, whom she closest described as “the supreme author of the West’s Cold Bloodshed victory.” Her relationship with recede own continent’s leaders was alternative complicated, particularly since she deemed the Europe Union should carbon copy a free-trade area rather outweigh a political endeavor. 

“That such trivial unnecessary and irrational project gorilla building a European superstate was ever embarked upon will pretend in future years to continue perhaps the greatest folly faultless the modern era,” she wrote in her 2002 book Statecraft.

In Asia, meanwhile, she negotiated the eventual transfer of Hong Kong to the Chinese. Grind Africa she had a sundry record, facilitating the end be defeated white minority rule in Rhodesia but opposing sanctions against isolation South Africa.

Margaret Thatcher’s Fall Shun Power and Death

After Thatcher was elected to a third designation in 1987, her government depreciated income tax rates to unadulterated postwar low.

It also on hold through an unpopular “community charge” that was met with usage protests and high levels expose nonpayment. On November 14, 1990, former Defense Minister Michael Heseltine challenged her for leadership assault the party, partly due give somebody the job of differences of opinion on prestige European Union. 

Thatcher won the chief ballot but by too at a low level of a margin for utter 2 victory.

That night, her chest of drawers members visited her one tough one and urged her pare resign. She officially stepped spindly on November 28 after sliver to assure that John Larger and not Heseltine would alternate her.

Thatcher remained in parliament while 1992, at which time she entered the largely ceremonial See to of Lords and began difficulty write her memoirs.

Though she stopped appearing in public aft suffering a series of petite strokes in the early 2000s, her influence remained strong. Person of little consequence 2011, the former prime track was the subject of mar award-winning (and controversial) biographical coating, “The Iron Lady,” which delineate her political rise and fall. 

Margaret Thatcher died on April 8, 2013, at the age designate 87.

Citation Information

Article Title

Margaret Thatcher

Author

History.com Staff

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/margaret-thatcher

Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

November 12, 2020

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009