Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, née Roberts (born 13 October 1925) is a British politician, the longest-serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of the 20th century, and the only woman to have ever held the post. A Soviet journalist nicknamed her the "Iron Lady", which became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. As Prime Minister, she implemented Conservative policies that were known as Thatcherism.

Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975, Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election and became Leader of the Opposition, as well as the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom. She became Prime Minister after winning the 1979 general election.

Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987, but her Community Charge (or "poll tax") was widely unpopular and her views on the European Community did not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990.

In the 1950 and 1951’s general elections she was the Conservative candidate for the safe Labor seat of Dartford, where she attracted media attention as the youngest and the only female candidate. She lost both times to Norman Dodds, but reduced the Labor majority by 6,000, and then a further 1,000. During the campaigns, she was supported by her parents and by Denis Thatcher, whom she married in December 1951. Denis funded his wife's studies for the bar; she qualified as a barrister in 1953 and specialized in taxation.

Member of Parliament (1959–1970)

Thatcher was not a candidate in the 1955 general election as it came fairly soon after the birth of her children. Later that year, she started looking for a Conservative safe seat, and was selected as the candidate for Finchley in April 1958. She was elected as MP for the seat after a hard campaign in the 1959 election. Her maiden speech was in support of her private member's bill (Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960), requiring local authorities to hold their council meetings in public.

In 1961, she went against the Conservative Party's official position by voting for the restoration of birching. In October 1961, Thatcher was promoted to the front bench as Parliamentary Undersecretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in Harold Macmillan's administration.

After the Conservatives lost the 1964 election, she became spokeswoman on Housing and Land, in which position she advocated her party's policy of allowing tenants to buy their council houses. She moved to the Shadow Treasury team in 1966, and as Treasury spokeswoman opposed Labour's mandatory price and income controls, arguing that they would produce effects contrary to those intended and distort the economy.

In 1967 she was selected by the United States Embassy in London to take part in the International Visitor Leadership Program (then called the Foreign Leader Program), a professional exchange program that gave her the opportunity to spend about six weeks visiting various US cities and political figures as well as institutions

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