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Margaret Thatcher: Scottish Conservatives
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In 1996, the Scott Inquiry into the Arms-to-Iraq affair investigated the Thatcher government's record in dealing with Saddam Hussein. It revealed how £1bn of Whitehall money was used in soft loan guarantees for British exporters to Iraq. The judge found that during Baghdad's protracted invasion of Iran in the 1980s, officials destroyed documents relating to the export of Chieftain tank parts to Jordan which ended up in Iraq. Ministers clandestinely relaxed official guidelines to help private companies sell machine tools which were used in munitions factories. The British company Racal exported sophisticated Jaguar V radios to the former Iraqi dictator's army on credit. Members of the Conservative cabinet refused to stop lending guaranteed funds to Saddam even after he executed a British journalist, Farzad Bazoft, Thatcher’s cabinet minuting that they did not want to damage British industry.
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At her most vulnerable, she was challenged in a leadership election by Michael Heseltine, who exceeded expectations by gaining 152 votes to 204 for Mrs Thatcher. Mrs Thatcher ended up four short of an overall majority. Many colleagues regarded her as an electoral liability, not least for her determination to retain the poll tax. Some 40 per cent of Conservative MPs wished for a change. Senior colleagues told her that she should stand down and in the end she accepted that advice. She announced to colleagues on 21 November that she was standing down.
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In December 2004, it was reported that Thatcher had told a private meeting of Conservative MPs that she was against the British Government's plan to introduce identity cards. She is said to have remarked that ID cards were a "Germanic concept and completely alien to this country".[16]
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Thatcher, who governed Britain from 1979 to 1990, turned 80 in October and has grown frail in recent years following a series of small strokes. The Conservative Party said she would be kept in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London overnight as a precaution and doctors were confident she would be well enough to leave Thursday morning.
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On 13th December, 1951 she married Denis Thatcher, a successful businessman. A member of the Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher was elected to represent Finchley in October 1959. Two years later she joined the government of Harold Macmillan as joint parliamentary secretary for Pensions and National Insurance.
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