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Margaret Thatcher: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
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Baroness Margaret Thatcher was Europe's first woman prime minister and the first British prime minister of the twentieth century to serve three consecutive terms. A leading conservative since she became the first woman president of the Oxford University Conservative Association, she worked as a research chemist and tax attorney before first standing for Parliament in 1959. As prime minister from 1979 to 1990, she supported privatizing state-run programs and reducing government's role in citizens' lives. She recaptured the Falkland Islands after a ten-week Argentine occupation and supported the position that a strong British and NATO military provided the best deterrent to war.
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As a major player on the world stage, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was a fixture on TV in the 1980s, along with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and former actor Ronald Reagan. Guess what she looks like now!
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Victorious in the June 1987 elections, Thatcher became the only British prime minister in the 20th century to serve three consecutive terms. However, Thatcher’s contentious third-term legislative agenda and autocratic leadership style, which led to conflict with her ministers, produced divisions within the Conservative Party and the larger public that undermined her political support. Among the most controversial of Thatcher’s policies was the notorious Community Charge (commonly called the poll tax), a flat tax paid by all adult citizens. The tax, first introduced in Scotland in 1989 (and in England and Wales in 1990), sparked mass protests. In London a violent riot broke out. Many Britons refused to pay the tax.
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Thatcher became Britain's first female Prime Minister in 1979. As a conservative, she believed that government should play a smaller role in people's lives. She passed laws that shrunk the size of government. Thatcher served as the prime minister for more than 11 years, longer than any British prime minister has served in over 150 years. She is recognized as being one of the most effective leaders in British history.
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Thatcher was the longest-serving British Prime Minister since Lord Salisbury and had the longest continuous period in office since Lord Liverpool in the early 19th century. She is one of only two women to have led a major political party in the UK, and one of only two to have held any of the four great offices of state (the second being Margaret Beckett in both cases - though Mrs. Beckett was not elected leader of the Labour Party but succeeded to the post upon the death of John Smith before being replaced by Tony Blair). Perhaps the most significant British politician in recent political history, she is ... one of the most divisive, loved and loathed by citizens from across the political spectrum.
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Thatcher was reelected in 1983 and 1988. In 1988 she became the longest- serving British Prime Minister of the century. Thatcher's vigorous response to the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands, resulting in the Falkland War, was highly popular. Strongly opposing the actions of the Soviet Union, Thatcher allied Britain with Ronald Reagan's foreign policy.
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British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher