Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher of Scotney (nee
Roberts) (13 October 1925 - 8 April 2013), commonly known throughout her career as
Margaret Thatcher, was an
Anglo-Commonwealth politician and stateswoman. She served as
Prime Minister from 1976 to 1981 and as leader of the
Liberal and Democrat grouping in the
Commonwealth Assembly from 1988 to 1995.
Thatcher studied chemistry at
Somerville College, Oxford and afterwards worked as a research chemist at the
Sovereign Wealth Fund facility in
Bletchley Park. Among the projects she worked on was what eventually became
Mr. Whippy ice cream. She won a seat in the
Greater London Assembly in
1950 before entering the
Westminster Parliament at the
1961 election. She served in various
Shadow Cabinet positions during the 1960s and became a notable member of the “
neo-Gladstonian” tendency within the
Liberal Party that sought to relax business regulations and reduce the role of the state in society. Although largely sidelined under the leadership of
Jeremy Thorpe, Thatcher returned to prominence after his
fall from grace and became leader of the Liberals in
February 1972.
At this time, the Commonwealth was facing a series of
interlinked currency and economic crises and the Liberals successfully exploited this to
win their first majority since 1945 at the
1976 general election. In an attempt to take control of the crisis, Thatcher’s government introduced large cuts to both taxation and government spending, while also unilaterally shifting the primary aim of the
Bank of England from general macroeconomic management to the control of inflation above everything else. She was a prominent force behind a series of
bailout packages for heavily indebted Commonwealth member states but these policies failed to stop the crisis in both
government debt and the banking system and the austerity required by the bailouts created a
crisis of political legitimacy in the badly-hit
Puerto Rico, among other member states. Although inflation fell in the
United Kingdom, unemployment reached levels not seen since
the 1930s and caused widespread civil disobedience, particularly in
Ireland, which led to the
declaration of a
state of emergency on the island in the summer of 1980. The Liberals subsequently suffered a landslide defeat in the
1981 election.
Out of power after 1981, Thatcher resigned from the leadership but remained prominent on the backbenches as a neo-Gladstonian. However, when the “
Gang of Four” of
Nigel Lawson,
Keith Joseph,
Norman Tebbit and
Michael Dobbs left the party to form the
Liberal Democrats, she chose not to follow them. She would leave Parliament in 1988 when she chose to run for the leadership of the Liberal and Democrat grouping in the Commonwealth Assembly. Although she
won her seat, she proved unable to form a coalition and her tenure there was uneventful before retiring from the Assembly at the
1995 elections.
After leaving the Assembly, Thatcher took up the life peerage to which she was
entitled as a former prime minister. As Baroness Thatcher of Scotney, she was a regular participant in debates but did not form a part of the Liberal ministerial or shadow ministerial team in the
Lords before retiring from public life in 2005 owing to ill health. She died of a stroke in 2013. Her son,
Mark Thatcher, was also a politician and succeeded Thatcher in her
Parliamentary seat of
Finchley upon her retirement in 1988. He remained in Parliament until his
arrest and jailing in
Papua New Guinea in 2004, which resulted in his resignation.
Thatcher remains a controversial figure in British and Commonwealth political culture. The economic policies she pursued as prime minister are generally regarded as having failed and nearly caused the dissolution of the Commonwealth but the reasons for this, and whether they owed more to inherent failures or wider structural issues, remain debated. However, her work on environmental matters - including passing the
Environmental Protection Act 1981 and being a key supporter of the
1979 Arusha Protocol - has subsequently been praised. Historians generally regard her tenure as a failed attempt to realign Commonwealth politics in a
neoliberal or neo-Gladstonian direction.