Margaret Thatcher: life, ideas and books

Life

Margaret Roberts was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, in 1925, studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, and worked as a research chemist before qualifying as a barrister in 1953, specialising in tax law. She lost two elections at Dartford in 1950 and 1951 and was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959, a seat she held until 1992.

She served as Secretary of State for Education and Science from 1970 to 1974, led the Conservative Party from 1975 and became prime minister in 1979, the first woman to hold the office, and the longest-serving British prime minister of the twentieth century. She led the country through the Falklands War in 1982 and survived the Brighton hotel bombing in 1984. She resigned in 1990 after a leadership challenge and entered the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher in 1992. She died in London in 2013.

Ideas

Thatcher's approach, called Thatcherism, combined lower taxes, tighter control of inflation, privatisation of state-owned companies, reduced union power, financial deregulation in the "Big Bang" of 1986 and the right of council tenants to buy their homes. She was influenced by Friedrich Hayek and by the Institute of Economic Affairs. She was a firm opponent of the Soviet Union and an ally of Ronald Reagan, and she grew increasingly sceptical of European integration. Her Community Charge, or poll tax, proved widely unpopular and contributed to her fall.

Major works

• The Bruges Speech (1988), on European integration.
• The Downing Street Years (1993) and The Path to Power (1995), her memoirs.
• Statecraft (2002).

Why conservatives read her

Thatcher stands for the revival of free-market conservatism in Britain and, with Reagan, in the wider Western world. Her record is a reference point in debates about privatisation, trade unions, sovereignty and the role of the state. She remains a polarising figure, and her legacy is still contested in the United Kingdom.