Margaret Thatcher was born in Lincolnshire, England, to a middle-class family of shopkeepers. Growing up, she was introduced to conservative politics by her father, a member of the town’s council, and formed her political tendencies and inspired her to become a Politician. She attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and later Kesteven and Grantham Girls’ School. At 18, she got a scholarship to study at Somerville College, Oxford, earning a degree in chemistry. There, she was active in school politics, serving as president of the Conservative Association. After graduation, she moved to Colchester, where she worked as a research chemist.
In 1950, at the age of 25, she relocated to London and made her first bid for public office, running as the Labour candidate for the Dartford parliamentary seat. Though she lost the election both in 1950 and in 1951, her nomination increased the local Conservative votes. At the time, she worked at J. Lyons & Co food company as a food scientist, testing the quality of ice creams and cake fillings. In 1951, she married Denis Thatcher and took some time off politics to study law. She passed the bar exams in 1954 while taking care of her newborn twins. Later on, she worked for a few years as a tax attorney.
In 1959, 34 years old Thatcher made another attempt to enter the House of Commons, successfully winning the Conservative seat of Finchley district. Once in, she steadily climbed within the party. Within two years, she was appointed parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, becoming the youngest woman to receive such a post. In 1969, she was named chief opposition spokesman on education and then secretary of state for education and science. In this position, she advocated for making academic education available for working-class children.
In 1975, at the age of 50, Thatcher, who was still low ranked in the party hierarchy, was elected Leader of the Conservative Party, becoming the first woman to lead a major political party in the UK and the first to serve as the opposition leader in the House of Commons. In the following year, she gave the Britain Awake speech, in which she attacked the Soviet Union and its policies, for which she was called the Iron Lady by the Soviet press, a nickname that stuck with her for the rest of her life.
In 1979, Thatcher led the Conservative Party to win the general elections, becoming the first female prime minister in the UK. At the time, England was in political and economic turmoil, unemployment on the rise, and the government was nearly bankrupt. In her first term, she constructed a series of measures to eliminate governmental regulations and advance the independence of individuals from the state: increasing taxes on spending, privatizing state-owned industries such as public transport, social housing, water, gas, and electricity, reducing governmental expenses on social services including education and health care, and eliminating regulations of businesses. The result was a collapse of the manufacturing industry that led to an increase in unemployment by more than 20%.
Thatcher’s popularity was in decline, but her firm approach during the Falklands War in 1982, in which Britain managed to retake the territory from Argentina, enabled her to win the 1983 elections. In her second term, Thatcher focused on applying legal restrictions on trade unions. She also formed an alliance with the US against the Soviet Union, presided over the independence of Zimbabwe, and opposed international sanctions against the apartheid regime of South Africa. Though she encountered criticism for her actions, she managed to gain popularity by supporting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and keeping the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent, which manifested in another victory in the 1987 elections.
In her third term, Thatcher led a hostile approach toward the European Community (EC), believing that the European Union should be a free-trade area and not a political entity. This approach against the EC divided the party. This, and the violent street outbreaks caused by the implementation of fixed-rate local tax led to the resignation of numerous party members.
In 1990, Thatcher won the party elections by a small margin and decided to resign as the party’s leader and prime minister. She remained a member of Parliament and continued to influence the party’s politics until the 1992 elections. Afterward, she received a life peerage as Baroness that entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. After retiring at 67, Thatcher began to write about her experiences as prime minister and a woman in politics. In addition, she gave lectures and established the Thatcher Foundation to promote political and economic freedom. Thatcher retired from public speaking after suffering a series of minor strokes in 2000, which led to progressive dementia. She died at the age of 87.
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