Lady Margaret Thatcher, in Memoriam

           Lady Margaret Thatcher, the greatest peacetime British Prime Minister, champion of free markets and staunch anti-communist, died last week at her residence in London at the age of 87.  She led the United Kingdom from economic decline to prosperity, from military weakness to respectable might and from despair to pride and self-confidence.

Born, Margaret Hilda Roberts, she was the daughter of a grocer from Lincolnshire.  She attained a degree in chemistry and later became a lawyer.

Thatcher was elected to Parliament in 1959 and served until 1992.  She became a member of the Cabinet of Prime Minister Edward Heath as Secretary of Education, from 1970-1974.  The following year, Thatcher was chosen the leader of the Conservative Party in 1975.  She led the Tories to victory in 1979, becoming Prime Minister.  Thatcher served from 1979-1990, the longest serving in modern times, winning three elections, two of which were landslides.  She was made a Baroness in 1992 and became a peer in the House of Lords, serving for a decade.

            As Prime Minister, Thatcher stood up to powerful labor unions, thereby ending the cycle of crippling strikes.  She notably ended the illegal strike by coalminers in 1985.  Thatcher privatized many commercial industries owned by the British government and reduced taxes, including lowering the highest rate from 86% to well under half.  “The problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people’s money,” she famously observed.  Her free market policies lifted the British economy.  She also maintained British independence of the European Union, which she recognized as a folly, refusing to abandon the pound sterling and join the Monetary Union – a decision that seems increasingly prescient during the current Eurozone crisis.  Many of her policies have endured, despite the continued criticisms from liberals.  Indeed, she transformed British politics by forcing the Labor Party to move from the far left to the center-left, which was the only way it was able to find electoral success by 1997.

            The parallels with the United States and the U.K. at the time were obvious, as Ronald Reagan also faced economic and military weakness upon taking office as President.  Indeed, Thatcher maintained a special relationship with Reagan, her ideological soul mate, and was a staunch ally of the U.S., despite occasional differences.  Like Reagan, she was anti-Communist, which earned her the epithet from the Soviets while she was still a young MP of the “Iron Lady,” a sobriquet she bore with pride.  Accordingly, she was the strongest backer in Europe of Reagan’s successful policy of placing American nuclear missiles there to counter the rising Soviet threat, despite strong criticism from the Left. 

            It was Thatcher who first recognized the possibility of negotiating with the rising Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, which she recommended to Reagan, who trusted her judgment and who concluded fruitful negotiations with Gorbachev after he became General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.  The extraordinary combination of leadership by Reagan, Blessed Pope John Paul II, the Great, and Thatcher is widely credited with facilitating the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe by 1989.

            Thatcher lived up to her reputation as the “Iron Lady” after an Argentine dictatorship seized the British colony of the Falkland Islands in 1982, dispatching an armada to retake the islands.  The Falklands War restored pride to the British people.  She was also tough on terrorism, both by the Irish Republican Party, which led to an assassination attempt by the IRA at a Conservative Party meeting, and Libya.  Thatcher provided support for the American bombing of Libya in 1986.  She opposed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, sending troops to Saudi Arabia as part of Desert Shield in 1990 before the end of her time in Number 10 Downing Street.

            Baroness Thatcher became a much-sought speaker in both the U.K. and the U.S., where she was admired, authored an autobiography and another book, Statecraft, and established the Thatcher Foundation to promote the free market.

            Lady Thatcher will be given the largest funeral for a former prime minister since Winston Churchill.

            The admiration on the right for Thatcher refutes the childish myth of the Left that conservatives are sexist.  Indeed, she was a heroine of the right and a role model for any female conservative politician. 

Thatcher remains an inspiration to the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom to this day, as well as to conservatives round the world.

            Margaret Thatcher’s legacy is freedom – freedom from Communism, Socialism, terrorism and aggression.  May her policies endure and may she continue to inspire conservatives to champion liberty with confidence.