Thatcherism

THATCHERISM
In the early 20th century, little by little women were getting their own place in politics. In 1918, women over 30 were allowed to vote and in 1928 women over 20 were allowed to vote. The first woman named Member of Parliament was Nancy Astor (1919) and the first woman who entered the Cabinet was Margaret Bondfield (1929). In 1909, Jesse Wilston Phipps was the first woman to take part in a council sub-committee and by 1925 the London County Council already had 25 women members. By the mid-twentieth century, women had taken part in the social, political and cultural sphere, but this fight continued in the second half of the 20th century, with women becoming writers, artist and politics.
Margaret Thatcher (13 October 1925 - 8 April 2013) was the first woman Prime Minister in the UK, winning three successive elections in 1979, 1983 and 1987. After becoming Prime Minister, she was member of the parliament, Education Secretary and Leader of the Opposition.
As Member of Parliament (1959), she was against the high-tax policies of the Labour Government, she did not support homosexuality and she wanted to legalize abortion. She also supported the maintenance of capital punishment and she was against divorce laws. As Education Secretary (1970), she gave priority to academic needs in schools and made cuts in the nutrition of the children. This provoked a protest from the Labour party. She wanted to establish a comprehensive secondary education and the proportion of students increased. As leader of the opposition, the Labour Government lost a motion of no confidence (1979) and Margaret Thatcher began as the first Woman Prime Minister of United Kingdom. With the Argentina war (1982), she became more popular and was reelected in 1983, but she fell because of the introduction of the Community Charge and was replaced by John Major (1990).
The ideas of Margaret Thatcher were to solve the economic problems that had seized England being in favor of liberal solutions. Margaret wanted to accomplish a political system known as Thatcherism, which described political conviction, social and economic policy and the political ideas of the British Conservative Party and Margaret Thatcher. When she came to the power in 1979, she found a country economically depressed, socially powerless and politically uninfluenced in the international field. Therefore, Margaret suggested a radical change in favor of free market, personal election and liability and national independence concepts. The main characteristics of her policy were:
One of the main issues of Margaret was the Falklands war. In 1982 Argentine invaded the Falklands islands and the nearby South Georgia Island. As a consequence, Britain decided to send a naval force in order to engage the Argentine Navy. Finally, Britain won the war and this revived the prestige of Margaret Thatcher and of the soldiering of England.
Moreover, the bad relationship between the Republicans of Ireland and Margaret Thatcher resulted in the Brighton hotel bombing occurred on 12 October 1984. A boom was planted with the intention of killing Margaret by a member of the IRA, since Margaret did not accept Republican’s demands. However, on 15th November 1985, the Anglo-Irish agreement occurred. This accordance was signed between Britain and Northern Ireland in order to provide the Irish Government to take part in the administration of Northern Ireland. This disembogued in the Good Friday peace agreement in 1988.
Furthermore, the iron lady was involved into the Westland affair in 1986, which meant a political scandal. This helicopter company had to be the subject of a rescue bid.
In addition to this, Margaret Thatcher did several changes in education. Although the 1944 Act has been the main pattern during four decades, the radical changes in the policy of Margaret Thatcher meant the appearance of the Education reform act in 1988. In this act the schools were allowed to opt out of local authority control and be funded by central government. Thatcher found some problems in the social sphere.
The 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of a five-year protest during The Troubles by Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. In 1980, seven prisoners participated in the first hunger strike, which ended after 53 days.
The second hunger strike took place in 1981 and was a confrontation between the prisoners and Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister at the time. Bobby Sands, one of the strikers, was even elected Member of Parliament during the strike, which was called off after ten prisoners had starved themselves to death.
Violent strikes also appeared against her policy because of the closure of British coal mines in 1984.
In conclusion, her main objective was to create a new type of country where her campaign purposes were reflected.
To face up to the continuous recession of the British economy and the uncontrollable wave of strikes and demands, Thatcher launched an economic program to step away from that disastrous situation. On the one hand, the main aim of Thatcherism was to reduce the infraction rate using a restrictive monetary policy and keep the budget deficit under control to later reduce it. On the other hand, there were other important reforms as: attending the crushing of trade unions, privatizing industries due to the fact that public companies had lots of loses, shrinking the state, stimulating foreign investment and encouraging the oil boom in the North Sea.
What were the consequences? Speaking at general level, the Thatcher government stopped the economic decline of the UK. This was achieved thanks to fast productivity growth in privatized, deregulated and/or de-unionised industries. The reforms hurt but worked. Thatcher was often criticized because her reforms were believed to favor big business but not ordinary people. Even though high unemployment rate was the most used example to sustain that criticism, today's unemployment rate in the UK is one of the lowest in Europe.
The Thatcherism reforms had other positive effects on ordinary people. The privatization schemes enabled a lot of people to buy shares, allowing them to participate in the economy in a different way than just employees. The state proclaimed that everybody should take care of himself.
The most significant legacy of Mrs. Thatcher can still be found in the UK and the remarkable changes operated in business culture and people's attitude towards entrepreneurship.