Margaret Thatcher

"Iron Lady" redirects here. For other uses, see Iron Lady (disambiguation) and Margaret Thatcher (disambiguation).

The Right Honourable The Baroness Thatcher LG OM DStJ PC FRS HonFRSC
Studio portrait, c. 1995–96
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office 4 May 1979 – 28 November 1990
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Deputy	Geoffrey Howe (1989–90)
Preceded by	James Callaghan
Succeeded by	John Major
Leader of the Opposition
In office 11 February 1975 – 4 May 1979
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson James Callaghan
Deputy	William Whitelaw
Preceded by	Edward Heath
Succeeded by	James Callaghan
Leader of the Conservative Party
In office 11 February 1975 – 28 November 1990
Deputy	The Viscount Whitelaw
Chairman	See list The Lord Thorneycroft Cecil Parkinson John Gummer Norman Tebbit Peter Brooke Kenneth Baker
Preceded by	Edward Heath
Succeeded by	John Major
Ministerial portfolios Secretary of State for Education and Science In office 20 June 1970 – 4 March 1974 Prime Minister Edward Heath Preceded by Edward Short Succeeded by Reg Prentice Parliamentary Secretary 1961–1964 Ministry for Pensions
Shadow portfolios Shadow Minister 1966–1967 Treasury 1967–1968 Fuel and Power 1968–1969 Transport 1974–1975 Treasury Shadow Secretary of State 1969–1970 Education and Science 1974 Environment
Parliamentary offices Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal Life peerage 30 June 1992 – 8 April 2013 Member of Parliament for Finchley In office 8 October 1959 – 16 March 1992 Preceded by John Crowder Succeeded by Hartley Booth
Personal details
Born	Margaret Hilda Roberts (1925-10-13)13 October 1925 Grantham, Lincolnshire, England
Died	8 April 2013(2013-04-08) (aged 87) London, England
Resting place	Royal Hospital Chelsea 51.489057°N 0.156195°W / 51.489057; -0.156195
Party	Conservative
Spouse	Denis Thatcher ​ ​ (m. 1951; died 2003)​
Children	Mark Carol
Parent	Alfred Roberts (father)
Education	Somerville College, Oxford (MA)
Awards	Full list
Signature
Website	Foundation
Nickname	"Iron Lady"

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (née Roberts; 13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013) was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and the first woman to hold the office. As prime minister, she implemented policies that came to be known as Thatcherism. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style.

Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, and worked briefly as a research chemist before becoming a barrister. She was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970–1974 government. In 1975 she defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition and the first woman to lead a major British political party.

On becoming prime minister after winning the 1979 general election, Thatcher introduced a series of economic policies intended to reverse high inflation and Britain's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an oncoming recession. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised greater individual liberty, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Her popularity in her first years in office waned amid the recession and rising unemployment. Victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence of support, resulting in the Conservative Party being returned to government in a landslide victory in 1983. She survived an assassination attempt by the Provisional IRA in the 1984 Brighton hotel bombing and achieved a political victory against the National Union of Mineworkers in the 1984–85 miners' strike. In 1986 Thatcher oversaw the deregulation of UK financial markets, leading to an economic boom, in what came to be known as the Big Bang. Thatcher was re-elected for a third term with another landslide in 1987, but her subsequent support for the Community Charge (also known as the "poll tax") was widely unpopular, and her increasingly Eurosceptic views on the European Community were not shared by others in her cabinet. She resigned as prime minister and party leader in 1990, after a challenge was launched to her leadership, and was succeeded by John Major, her Chancellor of the Exchequer.

After retiring from the House of Commons in 1992, Thatcher was given a life peerage, which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. In 2013 she died of a stroke at the Ritz Hotel, London, at the age of 87. A polarising figure in British politics, she is nonetheless viewed favourably in historical rankings and public opinion of British prime ministers. Her tenure constituted a realignment towards neoliberal policies in Britain; the complex legacy attributed to this shift continues to be debated into the 21st century.

Early life and education

Birthplace in Grantham 2009 photograph of her father's former shop Commemorative plaque Margaret and her elder sister were raised in the bottom of two flats on North Parade.

Family and childhood (1925–1943)

Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on 13 October 1925 in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Her parents were Alfred Roberts (1892–1970), from Northamptonshire, and Beatrice Ethel Stephenson (1888–1960), from Lincolnshire. Her father's maternal grandmother, Catherine Sullivan, was born in County Kerry, Ireland.

Roberts spent her childhood in Grantham, where her father owned a tobacconist's and a grocery shop. In 1938, before the Second World War, the Roberts family briefly gave sanctuary to a teenage Jewish girl who had escaped Nazi Germany. With her pen-friending elder sister Muriel, Margaret saved pocket money to help pay for the teenager's journey.

Alfred was an alderman and a Methodist local preacher. He brought up his daughter as a strict Wesleyan Methodist, attending the Finkin Street Methodist Church, but Margaret was more sceptical; the future scientist told a friend that she could not believe in angels, having calculated that they needed a breastbone 6 feet (1.8 m) long to support wings. Alfred came from a Liberal family but stood (as was then customary in local government) as an Independent. He served as Mayor of Grantham from 1945 to 1946 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950.

1938–39 portrait, aged 13

Roberts attended