History UsefulNotes / MargaretThatcher

On 8 April 2013 her death was announced; the cause of death was stroke. She was 87 years old. People's reactions reflects how she was viewed. Her death was met with mourning and condolences were sent in by the government, her supporters and those living in the Tory heartlands, and her funeral pulled in a large and surprisingly respectful crowd. Meanwhile, [[AndThereWasMuchRejoicing spontaneous street parties broke out in several cities]] and towns across the country, particularly parts of Scotland, northern England and Wales which had been hit hard by industrial decline in the 1980s, while [[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead-could-reach-number-one-following-margaret-thatchers-death-8566042.html as reported by]] [[BritishNewspapers the Independent]], [[Film/TheWizardOfOz "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead"]] [[BlackComedy shot up the charts.]]

* IronLady (Technically, an AppropriatedAppellation from the Soviet press, but...)

* ArchEnemy: Lets just say she had many and was one to many groups.....

** Incidentally, the allegedly somewhat Centrist Queen apparently disagreed with many of Thatcher's policies, or the extremity of them at least. The media sometimes portrayed the Queen as actually ''hating'' Thatcher (''SpittingImage'', for instance, went so far as to joke that the Queen supported the (anti-monarchist) Socialist party, purely because Thatcher didn't like them). In reality their relationship was...complicated, with Thatcher idolising the Queen (which the Queen, it is said, initially found somewhat sycophantic and patronising) and the Queen gradually respecting Thatcher for, if nothing else, having a strong will and managing to serve as long as she did.

* InsultBackfire: "Iron Lady was supposed to be an insult but it became her favorite nickname.

* JerkassWithAHeartOfGold: Came with the SugarAndIcePersonality

* ManipulativeBitch: She's seen as this by many of her opponents.
* NeverASelfMadeWoman: {{Averted}}. Very much averted.

* NoSenseOfHumour / PopCulturalOsmosisFailure:

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Margaret Thatcher led the Tory party to three consecutive election landslide victories, all but destroyed the labour movement and the Labour Party, and dragged British politics permanently to the right. But once she became an electoral liability, the Tories themselves were the ones who defenestrated her.

Some have criticized her for beginning a trend of concentrating power in the office of Prime Minister, strengthening the "elective dictatorship" innate to British politics. She was a [[NotEvilJustMisunderstood dear friend]] of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet until he died. She also criticized the ANC (the anti-apartheid party of which Nelson Mandela was a member), opposed sanctions on South Africa when ''every other Commonwealth country supported them'', and sent SAS commandos to train the Red Khmers in Cambodia. Thatcher was pretty much willing to excuse any injustice if the country doing it was on their side of the Cold War, really. Her support for the anti-gay policy Section 28 has also been a red mark on her historical reputation, now that same-sex marriage is legal in the UK and most knowledgeable people are against homophobia. One surprisingly good thing about her, though, is that she was one of the first major world political leaders to say that global warming was very, very likely caused by humans (and, of course, towards the end of her life she regretted saying this).

On 8 April 2013 her death was announced; the cause of death was stroke. She was 87 years old. People's reactions reflects how she was viewed. Her death was met with mourning and condolesences were sent in by the government, her supporters and those living in the Tory heartlands, and her funeral pulled in a large and surprisingly respectful crowd. Meanwhile, [[AndThereWasMuchRejoicing spontaneous street parties broke out in several cities]] and towns across the country, particularly parts of Scotland, northern England and Wales which had been hit hard by industrial decline in the 1980s, while [[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead-could-reach-number-one-following-margaret-thatchers-death-8566042.html as reported by]] [[BritishNewspapers the Independent]], [[Film/TheWizardOfOz "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead"]] [[BlackComedy shot up the charts.]]

* DancePartyEnding: A morbid example: when she died after a long struggle with dementia, people who saw her as their enemy [[AndThereWasMuchRejoicing openly rejoiced her death with dancing on the streets]], singing ''[[TheWizardOfOz Ding Dong the Witch is Dead]]''.

On 8 April 2013 her death was announced; the cause of death was stroke. She was 87 years old. People's reactions reflects how she was viewed. Her death was met with mourning and condolesences were sent in by the government, her supporters and those living in the Tory heartlands, and her funeral pulled in a large and surprisingly respectful crowd. Meanwhile, [[AndThereWasMuchRejoicing spontaneous street parties broke out in several cities]] and towns across the country, particularly parts of Scotland, northern England and Wales which had been hit hard by industrial decline in the 1980s, while [[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead-could-reach-number-one-following-margaret-thatchers-death-8566042.html as reported by]] [[BritishNewspapers the Independent]], ''[[Film/TheWizardOfOz Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead]]'' [[BlackComedy shot up the charts.]]

** When Germany won the football world championship in 1990, she allegedly remarked "They might have beaten us at our national sport, but we managed to beat them at their national sport ''twice'' in the 20th century."

** "He would rather the poor be poorer as long as the rich were less rich. What a policy!"

On the other hand, her economic policies came under fire - and not just from her opponents. Her policies had the initial effect of exacerbating the early 1980s recession. Unemployment rose to its highest level since the Great Depression. Three hundred and sixty-four leading economists released a statement in 1981, criticising her handling of the economy. Even when the economy began to recover, unemployment still hovered around the three million mark and the British heavy industrial sector took a major hit, with manufacturing output declining by 30% since 1978. If it was not for the outbreak of UsefulNotes/TheFalklandsWar, Thatcher probably wouldn't have been re-elected.

* OneOfUs: Bizarrely enough. Mrs Thatcher was a huge fan of ''YesMinister'', and has written an (admittedly excellent) piece of [[http://www.yes-minister.com/thatcherscript.htm ''Yes Minister'' Fan Fic.]]
** And [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ6TgaPJcR0 in a speech]], she described the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democrats Liberal Democrats' "Bird of Liberty"]] as "[[MontyPython an ex-parrot]]". The closing line is even "And now for SomethingCompletelyDifferent..."

* CantTakeCriticism: Very notorious for this, it eventually caused relations with her Cabinet to become strained. If those critics were from the media, she would retaliate. Angered over the BBC's coverage of the Falklands War, and what she perceived as their liberal bias found in the organization, she set up a government committee in hopes that it would report that the license fee which funds the BBC should be scrapped and the BBC reworked into a commercial network. They didn't. When ITV aired a controversial documentary about the IRA called ''Death on the Rock" that was produced by Thames Televison, she passed legislation that would lead to it losing its London franchise.

* CantTakeCriticism: Very notorious for this, it eventually caused relations with her Cabinet to become strained. If those critics were from the media, she would retaliate. Angered over the BBC's coverage of the Falklands War, and what she perceived as their liberal bias found in the organization she set up a government committe in hopes that it would report that the license fee which funds the BBC should be scrapped, and the BBC reworked into a commerical network they didn't. When ITV aired a controversial doumentary about the IRA called ''Death on the Rock" that was produced by Thames Televison she passed legislation that would led to it losing its London franchise.
** She never admitted that her ''Community Charge'' was a bad idea, despite the massive oppostion it casued from the British public.

** "Never mind, it's wet outside, I expect he wanted to come in. You can't blame him really, it's always nicer where the Tories are." - On an hysterical protester being forcibly evicted from a Tory rally

* DancePartyEnding: A morbid example: when she died after a long struggle with dementia, people who saw her as their enemy [[AndThereWasMuchRejoicing openly rejoiced her death with dancing on the streets]]. Singing ''[[TheWizardOfOz Ding Dong the Witch is Dead]]''.

* {{Feminism}}: Though she did believe women and men were equal, she was not a fan of the organized feminist movement itself. Thatcher took the view that if ''she'' could become Prime Minister without help then any woman could, making several comments along the lines of "maybe if feminists started working instead of talking, they might find themselves with more influence." The fact that Britain's first female PM did almost nothing in the field of gender equality is a source of contention to this day.

* InsultBackfire: 'Iron Lady' was supposed to be an insult but it became her favorite nickname.

* ItsPersonal: With the Irish Republican Army and other Irish Nationalist groups. When one of her closest friends and collegue Airey Neave was assassinated by a car bomb in the House Of Commons parking lot, it influenced her hardline policies on UsefulNotes/TheTroubles when she came to power

* NeverASelfMadeWoman: Averted. Very much averted.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: For those who support the ''United'' Kingdom, Thatcher's rule was the jumpstart for the modernd Scottish independence movement, specifically the fact the highly unpopular Poll Tax was introduced in Scotland a ''year'' before England and Wales '''ticked''' off the Scots, who deeply resented being used as guinea-pigs for a highly unpopular economic policy

** According to UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev, she did better in other areas. When he joked that the Politiburo hadn't tasked him with recruiting her when they met at a conference she chuckled.

* SugarAndIcePersonality: Cold definitely but not entirely.

* TakeThat: It is custom for Oxford University to grant honorary doctorates to [=PMs=] who earned their degrees there. However, in 1985 Oxford actually voted ''not'' to give her an honorary doctorate in protest to her cuts for higher education.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: For those who support the ''United'' Kingdom, Thatcher's rule was the jumpstart for the modernd Scottish independence movement, specifically the fact the highly unpopular Poll Tax was introduced in Scotland before England and Wales '''ticked''' off the Scottish people.

* DancePartyEnding: A morbid example: when she died after a long struggle with dementia, people who saw her as their enemy [[AndTheirWasMuchRejoicing openly rejoiced her death with dancing on the streets]]. Singing ''[[TheWizardOfOz Ding Dong the Witch is Dead]]''.

* DancePartyEnding: A morbid example: when she died after a long struggle with dementia, people who saw her as their enemy, [[TheFunInFuneral didn't care about funeral parlour at all]] and openly rejoiced her death with dancing on the streets. Singing ''[[TheWizardOfOz Ding Dong the Witch is Dead]]''.

On the other hand, her economic policies came under fire - and not just from her opponents. Her policies had the initial effect of exacerbating the early 1980s recession. Unemployment rose to its highest level since the Great Depression. Three hundred and sixty-four leading economists released a statement in 1981, criticising her handling of the economy. Even when the economy began to recover, unemployment still hovered around the three million mark and the British heavy industrial sector took a major hit, with manufacturing output declining by 30% since 1978. If it was not for the outbreak of TheFalklandsWar, Thatcher probably wouldn't have been re-elected.

[[caption-width-right:350: ''"The mouth of MarilynMonroe and the eyes of [[JosefStalin Stalin]]."'' [[note]]'''François Mitterand''', then-President of France.[[/note]] ]]

** According to Mikhail Gorbachev, she did better in other areas. When he joked that the Politiburo hadn't tasked him with recruiting her when they met at a conference she chuckled.

** Inverted in 1989. When the Berlin Wall was opened and Germany was on its way to being reunified, Thatcher personally called Soviet leader Gorbachev and begged him to keep the border closed. Her fear was that a unified Germany would drift more to the Soviet Union, even though the East Germans had had enough of communist rule. [[note]] She was also opposed to a unified Germany as she was afraid that then-Chancellor HelmutKohl was power hungry and that letting him have East Germany back would be the beginning of a new period of German imperialism similar to how the country behaved under Nazi rule; she even carried a map of Germany just before the outbreak of World War II to support her opposition to the German reunification. Naturally, this view was seen as hysterical by just about everyone around her, including Kohl, United States president UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush (who did all he could to undermine Thatcher's influence on the reunification) and most of her own party. This also played a significant role in her downfall and may also help explain why the Tories so quickly and happily threw her to the curb in favour of UsefulNotes/JohnMajor.[[/note]]

* {{Feminism}}: Not a fan. Thatcher took the view that if ''she'' could become Prime Minister without help then any woman could, making several comments along the lines of "maybe if feminists started working instead of talking, they might find themselves with more influence." The fact that Britain's first female PM did almost nothing in the field of gender equality is a source of contention to this day.

* CantTakeCriticism: Very notorious for this, it eventually caused relations with her Cabinet to become strained. If those critics were from the media, she would retaliate. Angered over the BBC's coverage of the Falklands War, and other accusations of liberal bias found in the organization she set up a government committe in hopes that it would report that the license fee which funds the BBC should be scrapped, and the BBC reworked into a commerical network they didn't. When ITV aired a controversial doumentary about the IRA called ''Death on the Rock" that was produced by Thames Televison she passed legislation that would led to it losing its London franchisee.

Her downfall came in November 1990 after Michael Heseltine (one of her former ministers) challenged her for the party leadership. Although Thatcher could have stayed on to win the leadership election, it revealed that she was losing support in her own party. Discontent in the Conservative Party had been brewing for several reasons. The economy had gone back into recession, high inflation had returned, Labour had a massive poll lead and many Europhile Tories disagreed with her views on the EU; others were growing to dislike her centralised style of government. And then there was the Community Charge. Previously, local government was funded by the rates, a tax based on how much home properties were worth. While there were some genuine concerns over the effectiveness of this policy, Thatcher's solution was spectacularly mismanaged. The new Community Charge, widely known as a poll tax, was a flat tax where all adult citizens had to pay the same amount. The policy was widely unpopular (only 12% of the population supported it, and by this time her approval rating was 20%) and in 1990, there were protests and even riots all across England. Not long after he entered office, her successor JohnMajor replaced the poll tax with the modern Council Tax, which looked suspiciously similar to the previous rates system.

** Inverted in 1989. When the Berlin Wall was opened and Germany was on its way to being reunified, Thatcher personally called Soviet leader Gorbachev and begged him to keep the border closed. Her fear was that a unified Germany would drift more to the Soviet Union, even though the East Germans had had enough of communist rule. [[note]] She was also opposed to a unified Germany as she was afraid that then-Chancellor HelmutKohl was power hungry and that letting him have East Germany back would be the beginning of a new period of German imperialism similar to how the country behaved under Nazi rule; she even carried a map of Germany just before the outbreak of World War II to support her opposition to the German reunification. Naturally, this view was seen as hysterical by just about everyone around her, including Kohl, United States president UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush (who did all he could to undermine Thatcher's influence on the reunification) and most of her own party. This also played a significant role in her downfall and may also help explain why the Tories so quickly and happily threw her to the curb in favor of JohnMajor.[[/note]]

What can be said is her time as Prime Minister resulted in a significant disembowelment of the trade union movement. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on what your views on unions are. Similarly, Britain's heavy industry sector was sidelined, and the UK became a net importer of goods for the first time in modern history. Again, whether you think this is good or not depends on whether you think the UK should have a manufacturing economy or a service economy. As you can imagine, she's ''very'' divisive. The only thing everybody can agree is that she had the most impact on Britain of any PM since ClementAttlee, regardless of whether you consider that impact positive or negative. Paradoxically, Thatcher had the lowest average approval rating of any Prime Minister and yet still managed to win two [[LandslideElection landslide election victories]] in 1983 and 1987. Truth is, for most of her premiership, Thatcher was only popular with hardcore Tories - it was the Conservative Party as a whole that was actually popular, not its polarizing leader.

She was the daughter of a grocer, which she mentioned from time to time. She was notorious for claiming she was a follower of [[UsefulNotes/PoliticalIdeologies classically liberal]] economist Frederich von Hayek. However, unlike Hayek, she opposed the legalization of illicit drugs and denationalization of the money supply. She had also trained as a research chemist, and before embarking on a career in politics and the law, [[HeAlsoDid she also was part of a team that invented emulsifiers for soft-serve ice cream]].

* CantTakeCriticism: Very notorious for this, it eventually caused relations with her Cabinet to become strained. If those critics were from the media, she would retaliate. Angered over the BBC's coverage of the Falklands War, and other accusations of liberal bias she set up a government committe in hopes that it would report that the license fee which funds the BBC should be scrapped, they didn't. When ITV aired a controversial doumentary about the IRA called ''Death on the Rock" that was produced by Thames Televison she passed legislation that would led to it losing its London franchisee.

* CantTakeCriticism: Very notorious for this. If those critics were from the media, she would retaliate. Angered over the BBC's coverage of t heFalklands War she set up a government committe in hopes that it would report that the license fee which funds the BBC should be scrapped, they didn't. When ITV aired a controversial doumentary about the IRA called ''Death on the Rock" that was produced by Thames Televison she passed legislation that would led to it losing its London franchisee.

* CantTakeCriticism: Very notorious for this. If those critics were from the media, she would retaliate. Angered over the BBC's coverage of [[TheFalklandsWar]] she set up a government committe in hopes that it would report that the license fee which funds the BBC should be scrapped, they didn't. When ITV aired a controversial doumentary about the IRA called ''Death on the Rock" that was produced by Creator/ThamesTelevison she passed legislation that would led to it losing its London franchisee.

On 8th April 2013 her death was announced; the cause of death was stroke. She was 87 years old. People's reactions reflects how she was viewed. Her death was met with mourning and condolesences were sent in by the government, her supporters and those living in the Tory heartlands, and her funeral pulled in a large and surprisingly respectful crowd. Meanwhile, [[AndThereWasMuchRejoicing spontaneous street parties broke out in several cities]] and towns across the country, particularly parts of Scotland, northern England and Wales which had been hit hard by industrial decline in the 1980s, while [[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead-could-reach-number-one-following-margaret-thatchers-death-8566042.html as reported by]] [[BritishNewspapers the Independent]], ''[[Film/TheWizardOfOz Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead]]'' [[BlackComedy shot up the charts.]]

* DirtyOldWoman: She was known to have surrounded herself with paedophiles, from her Father, to several men in her cabinet, including Sir Peter Morrison. She was also lifelong close friends with the [[DirtyOldMan dirtiest old man in the UK]], the disgraced television presenter, Jimmy Savile. After Savile's death in 2011, and after the allegations of '''450''' alleged victims were reported, the Daily Mail ran an article about how Thatcher made '''FIVE''' attempts to secure a knighthood for Savile.