Margaret Thatcher: The Iron Lady

Margaret Thatcher, otherwise known as The Iron Lady, was known for her role in saving Britain. The economy of Britain was facing tremendous troubles in the nineteen hundreds (Blundell 92). If the economy of Britain continued down the road it was going, Britain would have faced many great economic hardships that Margaret Thatcher prevented during her time in office. Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister in British history, exceptionally reformed Britain in a time of need while leaving a legendary legacy in history.
Britain’s large influence on the world’s market was quickly diminishing, and Margaret Thatcher was determined to liberate the economy. From nineteen fifty five to nineteen seventy nine, Britain’s part in world trade dropped
Margaret Thatcher, concerned with these statistics, made a reform to break free of the exchange controls in order to help fix this problem (Blundell 93). Exchange controls were very strict controls on the amount of money some one could take abroad. The exchange controls were soon suspended and Britain did away with all of their price controls as well. The people of Britain now had more freedom and no longer had to beg the banks for foreign currency (Blundell 94). “It was liberating. The general view was that if Prime Minister Thatcher had done nothing else over the term of her parliament it would be
The percentage of people living in government housing rose over thirty percent from the nineteen hundreds to the nineteen seventies (Blundell 96). Margaret Thatcher fought hard for housing to be taken out of the hands of the state and put into the hands of private homeowners and the people. For that reason, Margaret Thatcher became a part of a housing project that took the selling of affordable homes out of the hands of the government and put it more into the hands of the people. The housing project began taking squatted homes that were in bad shape and flipping them and selling them to interested homeowners. They rehabilitated hundreds and hundreds of homes (Moore 161). The housing project greatly lessened the number of vacant homes, as well as decreased the people living in public housing (Moore 161). Margaret Thatcher felt this organization was a great way for people less well off to help and encourage each other with purchasing homes (Moore 162). Margaret Thatcher then passed a “Right to Buy” legislation that enabled local ministers to get involved if local councils refused to sell newly built housing to private homeowners rather than tenants (Blundell 108). Also, as an incentive for one to buy a home, Margaret Thatcher gave people looking to privately own