Margaret Thatcher
passed
away peacefully on Monday, April 8, 2013, at age 87. Baroness Thatcher was Great Britain’s first
and only female prime minister. She will
be honor with a full ceremonial funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral.
Prime Minister David Cameron
called the Baroness “a great prime minister, a great leader, a great Briton”
and added, “As our first woman prime minister, Margaret Thatcher succeeded
against all the odds, and the real thing about Margaret Thatcher is that she
didn’t just lead our country, she saved our country, and I believe she’ll go
down as the greatest British peacetime prime minister.
“Her legacy will be the fact she
served her country so well, she saved our country and that she showed immense
courage in doing so and people will be learning about what she did and her
achievements in decades, probably centuries to come.”
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair
called Mrs. Thatcher a “towering political figure” who had great influence over
Britain and the world. “Very few leaders
get to change not only the political landscape of their country but of the
world. Margaret was such a leader. Her global impact was vast.” He added, “As a person she was kind and
generous spirited and was always immensely supportive to me as Prime Minister
although we came from opposite sides of politics.
“Even if you disagreed with her
as I did on certain issues and occasionally strongly, you could not disrespect
her character or her contribution to Britain’s national life. She will be sadly missed.”
Mrs. Thatcher was “loved andloathed in equal measure,” she led the Tories to three election victories as
she “crushed the unions” and brought
“vast swathes of British industry” into private hands.
Mrs. Thatcher was particularly
angry when she heard her beloved Britain referred to as the “sick old man of
Europe.” She was determined that her
nation would not die, and she rejuvenated Britain by dismantling “Britain’s
cradle-to-grave welfare state, selling off scores of massive state-owned
industries, crushing the power of organized labor and cutting government
spending with the purpose of liberating the nation from what she called a
`culture of dependency.’”
In 1976 a Russian journalist
called Mrs. Thatcher the “Iron Lady” because of her strong opposition to Soviet
communism in which she stood shoulder to shoulder with President Ronald Reagan. The name stuck and became the title of the
2011 biopic in which Meryl Streep played the Iron Lady and won an Oscar for the
role. Her toughness was especially
apparent when she sent a taskforce to the Falklands on April 2, 1982, after
Argentina invaded the islands.
The Iron Lady not only brought
back “Victorian values that made Britain great,” but she also “modernized
British politics, deploying ad agencies and large sums of money to advance her
party’s standing.” She was “credited
with converting a spent Conservative Party from an old boys club into an
electoral powerhouse identified with middle-class strivers, investors and
entrepreneurs. No one denied her
political genius.” In fact, “future Prime
Minister Tony Blair eventually copied her methods to remake the rival Labor
Party.”
President Ronald Reagan described some of
the change that Mrs. Thatcher made in Great Britain and then said, “Margaret
Thatcher changed all that. She
demonstrated two great qualities. The
first was that she had thought seriously about how to revive the British
economy and entered office with a clear set of policies to do so. She brought down inflation by controlling the
money supply, and she began removing the controls, subsidies, and regulations
that kept business lazy. Her second
great quality was the true grit of a true Brit (or perhaps I should say, of a
true-blue Brit). We both realized that
our policies wouldn’t solve such deep-rooted problems overnight. The first effects, in the world recession of
1981-82, were painful. I remember
meeting her in Washington at a time when people in both our countries were
calling for a change of course. She
never wavered. And she was proved right
by events. Britain today is enjoying an
unprecedented economic recovery – one as long as our own. British businesses, woken from the long sleep
of socialism, are our feisty competitors in world markets. And, finally, Margaret Thatcher has begun to
dismantle the undergirding of socialism itself by privatizing large nationalized
industries like steel and airlines. Just
as I would claim modestly that our tax cuts of 1981 have stimulated a wave of
tax cutting around the world, so Margaret Thatcher’s privatization program has
been imitated as far afield as Turkey and New Zealand. We could do with a little more of it in the
United States.”
Ed Feulner, former president of
The Heritage Foundation, stated: “Great
Britain and the world have lost a great leader.
The Heritage Foundation, like all of America, has lost a faithful
ally. And, speaking personally, my wife
and I have lost a dear friend.
“Lady Thatcher now takes her
place in history alongside Sir Winston Churchill, the Duke of Wellington and
all the other great British heroes who defeated enemies of their island nation. An intrepid warrior for freedom and human
dignity, Prime Minister Thatcher stood with her `noble friend,’ President
Ronald Reagan, to confront the Soviet empire when it was at its peak. Her courage and steadfastness earned the
respect of her fiercest foes. It was,
after all, the Russians who dubbed her the Iron Lady.”
Like her political soul mate
President Ronald Reagan, Lady Thatcher came to power at a time when her nation
needed real leadership and bold ideas. The
Heritage Foundation produced the following video about Lady Thatcher entitled,
“The Real Legacy of Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s Iron Lady.”
Prime Minister Thatcher is
credited with the following quotes. I
believe these quotes, along with many others, show her conservative and common
sense principles. I agree that our
nation has lost a great friend and Britain and the world have lost a great
leader.
“My policies are based not on some
economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up
with: an honest day’s work for an honest
day’s pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your
bills on time; support the police.”
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