Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography

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The miners' strike was one of the most violent and long lasting in British history. The outcome was uncertain, but after many turns in the road, the union was defeated. This proved a crucial development, because it ensured that the Thatcher reforms would endure. In the years that followed, the Labour Opposition quietly accepted the popularity and success of the trade union legislation and pledged not to reverse its key components. A newly edited, single-volume commemorative edition of The Path to Power and The Downing Street Years; this is Margaret Thatcher in her own words. He first came across Americans at the Casablanca Conference in 1943. And he was horrified by the Americans he met because he thought they acted like they owned the world. But he thought, ‘But we own the world—what’s going on?’ The catastrophic moment for him was 20 February 1947, the night that Clement Attlee got up in the House of Commons and said that Britain would be leaving India on 15 August. Enoch was horrified because he wanted to be Viceroy. That was his principal ambition. He told me, ‘I walked the streets of London. I couldn’t sleep. I kept walking around Westminster, thinking ‘what has he done?’ And at that moment I realised that, if that was what was going to happen, then the whole British Empire was over. All our pretensions to be a world power were gone.’ It was a delusion. Many felt this was inappropriate given the recent casualties on both the British and Argentinian sides. The electorate was impressed. Few British or European leaders would have fought for the islands. By doing so, Margaret Thatcher laid the foundation for a much more vigorous and independent British foreign policy during the rest of the 1980s.When the General Election came in June 1983, the government was re-elected with its Parliamentary majority more than trebled (144 seats).

Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography – HarperCollins

Offering a riveting firsthand version of the critical moments of her premiership – the Falklands War, the miners' strike, the Brighton bomb and her unprecedented three election victories, the book reaches a gripping climax with an hour-by-hour description of her dramatic final days in 10 Downing Street. She brought that totally un-hypocritical sense of virtue, energy and hard work into her view of political life” No, she was. He made that speech when he was shadow defence minister. He says that there was no point in Britain being east of Suez. The point of being east of Suez was India. He took the view that, once India had gone, we should be realistic about where we were. This also ties in with his anti-Americanism. He believed, with some justification, that one of the main aims of American foreign policy from Versailles onwards had been to dismantle the British Empire. The book sheds light on controversial episodes in Mrs. Thatcher's political career and attempts to present what really happened, rather than how Mrs. Thatcher preferred to present it. These are mainly situations where Mrs. Thatcher felt she had no choice but to compromise her principles, particularly in regard to budget and monetary policy, the IRA hunger strikers, and negotiations over the Falklands. I don’t think there will be a woman Prime Minister in my lifetime.” (BBC Television, 5 March, 1973)

Anyway, we always got on very well. Until she became an ex-prime minister, I always called her ‘prime minister’ and she always called me ‘Mr Heffer’. And then, suddenly, when she was out of Downing Street, she started calling me ‘Simon’ and I called her ‘Mrs Thatcher.’ But she said, no, I must call her ‘Mrs T.’ All her friends called her Mrs. T. And that’s what I called her until the day she died. I never called her ‘Lady Thatcher’ or ‘Lady T’—always Mrs T. I was thinking of her the other day when Des O’Connor died. She wrote a piece about the Maastricht Treaty in The European that caused huge trouble with John Major. This would have been in 1992, probably, and the paper was owned by the Barclay brothers. She asked me to write the article for her. So I wrote it and took it round to Chesham Place, where she worked after leaving office. We were going through it when one of her secretaries came in and said, ‘Major’s said something this afternoon. It’ll be on the news at 5:45 on ITN’—in about five minutes. Why didn’t you choose Margaret Thatcher’s memoirs among your five books? Are they not much of a read? Politicians’ memoirs often aren’t.

Margaret Thatcher : The Autobiography - Google Books Margaret Thatcher : The Autobiography - Google Books

Margaret Thatcher had a rough ride as Education Minister. The early 1970s saw student radicalism at its height and British politics at its least civil. Protesters disrupted her speeches, the opposition press vilified her, and education policy itself seemed set immovably in a leftwards course, which she and many Conservatives found uncomfortable. But she mastered the job and was toughened by the experience.

Drawing on an extraordinary cache of letters to her sister Muriel, Moore illuminates Thatcher’s youth, her relationship with her parents, and her early romantic attachments, including her first encounters with Denis Thatcher and their courtship and marriage. Moore brilliantly depicts her determination and boldness from the very beginning of her political career and gives the fullest account of her wresting the Tory leadership from former prime minister Edward Heath at a moment when no senior figure in the party dared to challenge him. His account of Thatcher’s dramatic relationship with Ronald Reagan is riveting. This book also explores in compelling detail the obstacles and indignities that Thatcher encountered as a woman in what was still overwhelmingly a man’s world. I think she enjoyed humiliating these people, particular white-collar trade unions like the BMA. She found that amusing. But she knew there was a limit to which she could go. So, she brought some sort of internal market into the health service and abolished area health authorities in the early 1980s. She looked for places where there was a duplication of bureaucracy and overspending and tried to cut those but, actually, breaking the fundamental vow of ‘a health service, free at the point of use’ was never going to happen. With unequaled authority and dramatic detail, the first volume of Charles Moore’s authorized biography of Margaret Thatcher reveals as never before the early life, rise to power, and first years as prime minister of the woman who transformed Britain and the world in the late twentieth century. Moore has had unique access to all of Thatcher’s private and governmental papers, and interviewed her and her family extensively for this book. Many of her former colleagues and intimates have also shared previously unseen papers, diaries, and letters, and spoken frankly to him, knowing that what they revealed would not be published until after her death. The book immediately supersedes all other biographies and sheds much new light on the whole spectrum of British political life from Thatcher’s entry into Parliament in 1959 to what was arguably the zenith of her power—victory in the Falklands in 1982. But a political earthquake occurred the next day on her return to London, when many colleagues in her cabinet — unsympathetic to her on Europe and doubting that she could win a fourth General Election — abruptly deserted her leadership and left her no choice but to withdraw. She resigned as Prime Minister on November 28 1990. John Major succeeded her and served in the post until the landslide election of Tony Blair's Labour Government in May 1997.

Margaret Thatcher - Five Books The best books on Margaret Thatcher - Five Books

Book gathers steam as it explores the rot of the Wilson, Heath, and Callaghan governments. The sections on Heath are critical toward understanding Thatcher’s bold and successful challenge in 1975. This leads to the general election triumph in 1979 and the political struggles the Tories faced as they begin implementing Thatcher’s reforms. Volume 1 concludes with the British victory in the Falklands and Thatcher at the height of her own personal popularity and probably politically as well. The first volume covers her early life through to her initial period as prime minister. Volume two covers her at the peak of her powers: the five years between the Falklands War and her 1987 general election victory. And the third volume covers her final term in power and the decades that followed. I think Hayek will ultimately be proved right everywhere. Incidentally, one reason I think Enoch didn’t like him was that Enoch did believe in a national health service. His father had been very ill in the late 1920s and they had had a real job finding all the money to pay for his care. That had a big effect on him. And I think for both him and Mrs Thatcher, the National Health Service became a bit of a no-no. Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount.Hayek started writing The Road to Serfdom in the 1930s, I think. He was terrified of both communism and fascism. Partly as a result of that, he has this very tight identification in his argument between personal freedom and economic freedom and you can totally see why that was very persuasive throughout most of the 20th century. I was just wondering whether, with the emergence of China as a capitalist, but highly authoritarian state, Hayek’s work is less immediately relevant on that account. Or would you argue that it is perennially important and can be used to criticise the kind of authoritarian capitalism that we see now? Robin is a very clever man. He’s a highly intelligent, highly educated man, who was ‘present at the creation.’ And then he followed the story through. That’s the advantage of his book—it’s based on immersion in the life of Mrs Thatcher. It’s a more spontaneous book. Since I already finished volume 3, volume 1 is a much easier read. Of course, her early life with many anecdotes is also more interesting than the dense political life in later years. What strikes me is her strong sense of purpose since young age. “Her faults, in the eyes of her contemporaries,concerned her tendency to come top, to be right and to rub it in.” I find the last point very amusing. Mrs Thatcher had a real understanding of her massive responsibilities towards this country. This is something that her present successor does not have. She really understood how crucial it was that this country function properly. And she understood that, as a stateswoman, she had the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that everything went well here. You see that in things such as her reaction to the invasion of the Falkland Islands—‘I’m not going to let some jumped-up fascist from Argentina go in there and oppress our people, even if we have to strain every possible sinew to prevent it.’ And yet, Thatcher’s contains much more detailed political discussion. While Blair chooses to share his toilet habits, Thatcher writes long and detailed (though defensive) rationales for many of the policies she adopted. To give a single example from their respective autobiographies, I understand much more clearly Thatcher’s argument for defending the Falklands than Blair’s argument for invading

Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume Three Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume Three

She was also determined to deal with what she saw as the illogicality of a nationalised industry. Nationalised industries just ensured that the people in charge had no experience of industry whatsoever and also ensured that it had to be funded by the taxpayer. She understood that when you privatise something you tend to call people in who know what they’re doing, and you can also raise money from the private sector, from private individuals, to run and expand these companies. I know it’s not perfect, but the idea that British Telecom would have developed in the way that it has in this technological age, if it had stayed in the public sector, is inconceivable.The Roberts family ran a grocery business, bringing up their two daughters in a flat over the shop. Margaret Roberts attended a local state school and from there won a place at Oxford, where she studied chemistry at Somerville College (1943-47). Her tutor was Dorothy Hodgkin, a pioneer of X-ray crystallography who won a Nobel Prize in 1964. Her outlook was profoundly influenced by her scientific training.