Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography

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She was touchy because she knew it was something that, as part of her programme, she ought to have done. She also knew that with three million people unemployed, you couldn’t just cut them off at the knees and say, ‘Well the state’s not going to help you.’ But I think she had a view that, had she been able to stay in power for 20 years, which I don’t think she ever dreamed of doing, the time would come when there would be high levels of employment. Then she could have started to reform the welfare state. It would have attracted the same criticism that David Cameron got when Iain Duncan Smith was doing it in the coalition government. And yet, Thatcher’s contains much more detailed political discussion. While Blair chooses to share his toilet habits, Thatcher writes long and detailed (though defensive) rationales for many of the policies she adopted. To give a single example from their respective autobiographies, I understand much more clearly Thatcher’s argument for defending the Falklands than Blair’s argument for invading Iraq. Where I disagree with Thatcher, I can still follow her line of argument in a way that I cannot even where I agree with Blair. On another occasion, in 1994, my wife and I were invited to the opening of the new stand at Towcester Racecourse by Lord Hesketh. He sat me next to Mrs T. We had taken our son with us because we had no one to leave him with. He sat on my wife’s knee for most of the first course and then I took him for a while, so she could eat. I put him on my knee and Mrs T gurgled with him and played with him and then she started to cut my food up for me, saying to my son, ‘Daddy’s got to eat, too, you know.’ So I held the baby in one hand and forked everything else into my mouth with the other. She was brilliant. The main points of the book are the story of Margaret Thatcher’s life and the facts that she has destroyed patriarchal stereotypes and become an example for imitation of a whole generation of English women. At the same time, this witty and honest piece of writing shows that the ‘Iron Lady’ had life beyond the boundaries of great politics. Overall, the author adheres to the idea that a concept of a female politician is real. Indeed, Margaret Thatcher was the first woman in the politics of the 20th century who overturned the belief that politics was the sphere of total men’s control. That, if you like, has been the argument between Remainers and Leavers ever since. You either believe in this country or you don’t. She did and he didn’t.

Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography - Goodreads

The pro-European wing of the Conservative party revolted. On November 13, the minister for finance and foreign affairs, Sir Geoffrey Howe, stepped down in protest. His resignation speech put wind in the sails of the prime minister’s opponents. It was in Dartford too that she met her husband, Denis Thatcher, a local businessman who ran his family's firm before becoming an executive in the oil industry. They married in 1951. Twins — Mark and Carol —were born to the couple in 1953.In 1950, Margaret was chosen to stand as the Conservative candidate for Dartford, a tough industrial seat just outside London. It was a safe Labour seat and she didn’t really stand a chance. She lost, but she did reduce her Labour opponent’s majority from 20,000 to 14,000 votes. The first was that more money was being spent than usual, but supply couldn’t keep up with rising demand. Lots of people wanted to buy, say, houses and cars, but not enough houses or cars were being built. As a result, prices rose and people’s savings didn't stretch as far as they used to. She said, ‘Mr Heffer, have you seen what I’ve done? I have privatised…’ she got out the list. ‘I have tamed the trades unions…’ It was only a question! I remember Ralph Harris saying to me—and he got this from Hayek—’If you pay people to be unemployed, you’ll have unemployment. If you stop paying them to be unemployed, jobs will turn up.’

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Having established a presence on the islands before 1833, it believes that the Falklands – las Malvinas in Spanish – belong to Argentina, even if its inhabitants see themselves as British. I think she enjoyed humiliating these people, particular white-collar trade unions like the BMA. She found that amusing. But she knew there was a limit to which she could go. So, she brought some sort of internal market into the health service and abolished area health authorities in the early 1980s. She looked for places where there was a duplication of bureaucracy and overspending and tried to cut those but, actually, breaking the fundamental vow of ‘a health service, free at the point of use’ was never going to happen. The exchange rate also rose, meaning that the British pound was worth more compared to other currencies. As a result, it was cheaper to import goods and more expensive to export them. I read some of the passages on Europe in One of Us. He sees UK membership of the EU as this immensely inevitable process that she was seeking to frustrate. But, actually, reading it in the wake of Brexit, it really doesn’t read well for him at all. The ’30s and ’40s were hard decades: There was the Great Depression and then the war. The goods they sold in their store were often in desperately short supply.Enoch wanted Britain to be strongly defended, but to exist in Lord Salisbury-style ‘splendid isolation’”