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Margaret Thatcher: Powers
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Whisper it quietly in case she starts waving her handbag in horror: Margaret Thatcher is winning in Europe. More than a decade after her fall from power in Britain, in part because of her stridency on Europe, the vision of "la dame de fer" is finding favour in Brussels.
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Margaret Thatcher wrote her memoirs in two volumes: The Downing Street Years (1993) and The Path to Power (1995). Two previous biographies of Thatcher are particularly worthwhile: Kenneth Harris, Thatcher (1988), and Hugo Young, The Iron Lady: A Biography of Margaret Thatcher 1989; (published in Britain under the title One of Us). Both books are by journalists who offer balanced, if critical, accounts of the Thatcher years. A number of recent studies focus on the events of the Thatcher era rather than her personality. The best of these is Thatcherism and British Politics: The End of Consensus?, 2nd edition (1990), by Dennis A. Kavanagh. More sympathetic to Thatcher than Kavanagh's volume is The Thatcher Decade: How Britain Has Changed During the 1980s by Peter Riddell (1989).
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Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the trade unions but unlike the Heath government, proceeded by way of incremental change rather than a single Act. Several unions decided to launch strikes which were wholly or partly aimed at damaging her politically. The most important of these was one carried out by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Thatcher had made preparations for the NUM strike by building up coal stocks. As a result, there were no cuts in electric power. Picket line violence, coupled with the fact that the NUM had not held a ballot to approve strike action, contrived to swing public opinion on her side.
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The predominant influence in Lady Thatcher's early life was her father, Alfred Roberts. Roberts was a grocer by occupation who was active in local politics. Years later, Lady Thatcher continued to acknowledge his formative influence on her (for example, in the second volume of her memoirs, The Path to Power).
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Thatcher likewise sought to reduce monopoly control of the professions. Legal reforms were initiated with the intent of lessening the traditional division of functions between solicitors and barristers. Solicitors previously had lost their exclusive power to conduct real estate transactions. Further legislation gave them the right to try cases in the higher courts along with barristers.
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On the economic and political right and centre right, Thatcher is often remembered with some fondness as one who dared to confront powerful unions and removed harmful constraints on the economy. On the left she is still reviled as the politician who cut funding of the public services to support the rich.
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