Baroness Margaret Thatcher’s funeral was this morning in London. The grocer’s daughter from Lincolnshire rose through the ranks, from back-benching in Parliament to Shadow Secretary of Education, to leader of the Conservatives, to Great Britain’s first woman Prime Minister.
She was 87 years young, a celebrated inspiration for the right, the conservatives, and independents. She was a caustic irritant to the left, to liberals and to Labour, although that party’s return to power depended on adopting her core conservative principles. She remains a reminder of the divide that defined a generation, and which now is defining ours.
With the Cold War was thawing in the late 1970s, early ‘80s, the final gasps of the Soviet Union and Leninist Communism still were shaking the world, like the hollow hacking of a dying man on life support. In Great Britain, plagued with the contagion of Big Government growing bigger, the lesser evil of socialism, more insidious because of its democratic veneer, had wrapped its siphoning tentacles around the United Kingdom, which was a shadow of its former imperial glory days. Labor strikes crippled the nation, from the miners to gravediggers to trash-handlers. Nineteen-seventy-four was a bitter year for Conservatives. The party suffered its third straight defeat.
A young Thatcher encouraged and exhorted her disheartened colleagues and the country. She reminded them that the party had to reach out to people’s hearts, not just their minds – a message disaffected Republicans and conservatives in the United States should heed. Disgusted with the enfeebled leadership in her party, Thatcher challenged the weak-willed opposition leader, and she won. During the 1979 Parliamentary elections, Thatcher ran on a simple platform: “Labour isn’t working.” It worked, and Thatcher and the conservatives won their first majority in decades.
Shrinking Government
From the outset, feminists, unionists, socialists hissed with fussy disapproval. Thatcher wanted to cut taxes, reduce spending, remove government from the lives of British citizens. She privatized major industries, including British Steel. Eventually, she gave way to selling off the British railway system. Unions engaged in crippling strikes. Instead of caving, she dug in. She overcame them. In private conversations, Thatcher admitted she almost conceded. But when one association broke away, the thread had been pulled. Trade unions gave up. For a generation, Labour lost its labor vote.
In foreign policy as much as in domestic policy, Thatcher was a fighter. While the Irish Republican Army attempted her assassination, she deliberately maintained her role and her rule over the United Kingdom. When the Argentinian military junta attempted to seize the Falklands, Thatcher dispatched her forces, pushing away the petty Latin American fray. In two months, followed by the massive submarine attack on Argentina’s ARA General Belgrano, the Argentines surrendered. Her approval ratings soared. In 1983, her government reasserted their majority in spite of pervasive deflation matched with unemployment and recession. Thatcher’s economic medicine worked. The patient struggled, yet the doctor remained standing.
The End
Her staunch support of President Reagan during the 1980s presented a formidable blockade to the Soviet Union. Decaying on the inside, it crumbled in 1989, finally disappearing on Christmas Day 1991. “The problem with socialism,” she quipped, “is that eventually the government runs out of other people’s money.” With a simple economic argument and a strong cause, a stable United Kingdom and pound sterling re-emerged. Into the late ‘80s, the economy improved dramatically. Subsidies were cut, yet opportunity expanded for all Britons. To this day, the generation that followed Thatcher’s shared their gratitude for a prime minister who enabled their parents and grandparents to afford their own home once again.
She was divisive, concise, and committed, so much so that within her party, rumblings about her reign disturbed more than inspired others. One back-bencher posed a weak first challenge, then another forced her premiership to endure a second ballot, which she lost. In the early ‘80s, her stalwart refusal to reverse course on massive liberalization cost her nothing:
“To those waiting with baited breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: ‘You turn if you want. The lady's not for turning.’”
During times of peace and prosperity, her strength-turned-stubbornness cost her the premiership. Her failures should warn future leaders that one must never ingratiate with opponents, yet he (or she) must cooperate with (not necessarily capitulate to) one’s colleagues.
Thatcher’s wins against Big Government in Great Britain, coupled with the Reagan Revolution, expanded a global conservative revival. Her life and losses hold lessons for future conservatives, especially in America, where conservatives are shaking off their second drubbing, an unexpected loss in spite of dire economic indicators, facing a President and his party tilting our country further to the left.
Margaret Thatcher’s conviction, communication, and conservatism are still needed for conservatism, a movement on the mend. Future leaders in the United States should emulate her courageous advocacy of individual liberty and limited government. Even in death, her example can inspire hope.
Arthur Christopher Schaper is a writer and blogger on issues both timeless and timely; political, cultural, and eternal. A lifelong resident of Southern California, he currently lives in Torrance. He may be contacted at arthurschaper@hotmail.com, aschaper1.blogspot.com and at asheisministries.blogspot.com. Also see waxmanwatch.blogspot.com.
