April 8, 2013. Copyright 2013, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Iron Lady of British politics who polarised opinion
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, April 8, Graphic News:   It was the summer of 1970. The Conservatives, under Edward Heath, had just won the general election and Margaret Thatcher, chemistry graduate, barrister, mother-of-two and 10 years the MP for the north London constituency of Finchley and Friern Barnet, was brought into the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Science. Her local newspaper, the Finchley Press, interviewed her and asked the question increasingly on people's lips: did she privately hanker for the top job? No, she insisted. "There will not be a woman Prime Minister in my lifetime -- the male population is too prejudiced." But by the end of the decade she was there, on the steps of Downing Street, quoting Francis of Assisi and acknowledging the influence of her late father, Alfred Roberts, shopkeeper, Methodist and Alderman of Grantham, Lincolnshire, where Margaret and her sister, Muriel, had grown up above his grocery store.

Her husband, Denis -- he pre-deceased her in 2003 at the age of 88 -- was there to see his wife make history that May morning of 1979. Not only was she the first female occupant of Number 10, she was the first woman to lead any country in Europe. Missing from this momentous threshold was her close friend, mentor and campaign strategist, Airey Neave, who had been killed five weeks earlier by an IRA car bomb at the House of Commons. Mrs Thatcher would remain a target herself, throughout her record-breaking run of three consecutive terms in office. Her closest call came in the early hours of October 12, 1984, when the Tories were gathered in Brighton for their annual conference. The massive explosion which tore apart the Grand Hotel, claiming five lives, wrecked the bathroom she had left only minutes before. Her speech the following morning, on the dot of 9.30am, demonstrated supremely her unflinching style. Whether dealing with Republican terrorists, the National Union of Mineworkers, the might of the Argentine Navy or merely a cynical press pack who, on a visit to the North East of England, she admonished for being "moaning minnies", Mrs Thatcher was, as she famously put it, "not for turning".

Eventually, of course, the tide did turn against her. After 11 years at the helm, during which she was the darling of the Right, champion of the council tenant-turned-homeowner under Right-to-Buy legislation, unashamed money maker who privatised almost all of the country's utilities and made shareholders of thousands of ordinary people, the blessed Margaret, as she was lampooned, fell spectacularly from grace over the hugely unpopular Poll Tax and her reluctance to embrace closer economic ties with Europe. The political dominatrix who had weeded out the "wets" at the beginning of her tenure, cut a strangely out-of-touch figure by its end. She was at a summit in Paris when the knives came out back home by way of a leadership challenge. Two days later, on November 22, 1990, she accepted the inevitable and announced she would resign. Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven took her place in the House of Lords in 1992 and continued to fight Britain's corner on European issues, until a series of strokes robbed her of her once-formidable powers, and eventually claimed her life.
/ENDS