Brooks Newmark MP (Braintree)
Margaret Thatcher Was unique in her time in breaking the glass ceiling for women and inspired a new generation of women to come in to politics.
Eleanor Laing MP (Epping Forest)
Margaret Thatcher changed the world for women—for women across the world, for women in Britain and for women in politics and in Parliament. I cannot stand by and watch commentators say that Margaret Thatcher did nothing for women when I know, as many of my hon. Friends in the House and those around the country know, just how much of a difference her very being has made to women. As for women in politics and Parliament, Margaret Thatcher gave us encouragement and advice. I am fed up of hearing the media channels say that she did not want women around and that there was only one woman in her Cabinet while she was Prime Minister. That was not her fault: there were not enough women on these Benches with the experience and seniority to go into her Cabinet. She encouraged women, so that by the end of her premiership and when John Major became Prime Minister, there were plenty of women to go into the Cabinet. They would not have been there had they not had the encouragement and backing of Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister. She understood the difficulty that women experience in public life because they are trying to balance their duties to their families, their constituency, Parliament and their general duties. She understood that and made allowances for it. Again, the way she dealt with such matters was to give encouragement.
It never occurred to her, of course, that women might need special pleading. Of course she did not want women-only shortlists; it simply never occurred to her that her female status was any hindrance at all, and indeed, that is because it was not.
The other great thing about Margaret Thatcher that no one has mentioned is that in everything she did in public life, and the many hours spent at the Dispatch Box, in Downing street and representing our country around the world, she was always, on every occasion, immaculate and elegant. Here was a lady who was tougher than any man, but she never lost her femininity.
Penny Mordaunt MP (Portsmouth North)
“We have indeed lost a great Briton, and many here today on the Government and the Opposition Benches have lost a great friend. I myself was a mere acquaintance, but like many others I felt I knew her before I met her. My childhood memories are full of her and the vibrant colour she brought to political life. Her ability to escape the normal bounds of politics and penetrate our day-to-day lives is evidenced by the fact that when I was six, and when she had been Prime Minister for less than a year, I had perfected an uncanny impression of her, which led to Mrs Thatcher to be written into my primary school production of Dick Whittington. Within three years, her leadership, resolve and reassurance would provide vision and comfort to many of my classmates in Portsmouth, as their fathers set off to retake the Falkland Islands.
In her later years, Lady Thatcher supported me and many others as we strove to get elected to this place. I was struck by her kindness and her interest in people and what they wanted to achieve. She took time to speak to me and to write to me and other Conservative parliamentary candidates when we won or, perhaps more important, when we lost. Her principle, her courage and her vision for Britain meant that she was able to motivate long after she left office.
Mourning the loss of Ronald Reagan, her great friend and western co-architect of the demise of the cold war, Lady Thatcher said:
“We here still move in twilight. But we have one beacon to guide us that Ronald Reagan never had. We have his example.”
We have hers: her confidence that a conviction politician could lead her country; her unshakeable belief in the best of human nature; her optimism that this country could be led back to international respect and renown; her focus on making a real, tangible difference to people’s lives; her self-confidence, not founded in arrogance but in belief in equal access to opportunity and in meritocracy; her ambition that others should achieve their ambitions; and her courage to do what she believed to be right and to take responsibility for it, to face down terrorism and the foes of freedom.
Margaret Thatcher was a warrior who fought for freedom, of the individual and of nations. She believed in the nation state, but where her opponents could see only the state, she saw the nation. She believed in Britain and the British people, in our history, our destiny and our capacity to play a leading role in the world.
For those who were born after Lady Thatcher’s premiership—a vast cohort that now includes many young adults—her legacy may be hard to comprehend, for the simple reason they have only lived in the Britain she forged. Nowadays, talk of freedom when freedom can be taken for granted seems overblown, the nearness of danger in the cold war now intangible, the destructive power of the unions so distant as to seem always doomed, triumph over an invading dictator predestined and Britain’s high standing in the world an unshakeable fact. Yet personal freedom, victory in the cold war, proper industrial relations and a dynamic market economy, triumph in the Falklands and respect for Britain’s voice in the councils of the world were not inevitable accomplishments. That is why they were accomplishments —her accomplishments.
As we mourn Lady Thatcher, I hope she will inspire us afresh. We should take pride in her life, her achievements and what this country was able to do under her leadership and henceforth as a consequence of it. We should celebrate a remarkable life of service and a remarkable woman.”
Harriet Baldwin MP (West Worcestershire)
Baroness Thatcher was a great leader and was a ground-breaker for women, becoming the first female British prime minister. Her legacy leading Britain through war-time conflict and peace time was outstanding and she will be greatly missed.
I had the privilege of meeting her when I was a political candidate and she was a great inspiration in helping me form my own political career.
Margot James MP (Stourbridge)
Shortly before he died my father said to me “If you meet Margaret Thatcher tell her from me there were only two politicians who made a difference in my life time and she was one of them”. The other one he was talking about was Winston Churchill of course.
Churchill and Thatcher both saved this country, from different adversaries. The insidious ‘enemy within’ was perhaps a more challenging foe than even Germany in the Second World War.
When people debate her legacy it is worth reminding ourselves of what Britain was like in the 1970s and how we were seen by the rest of the world. We were known as “the sick man of Europe” and with just cause. The so-called post war consensus that had led both Conservative and Labour governments to view their role as custodians of the country’s decline was something which united the political elite.
The result was a total destruction of the liberty of the individual. If you went abroad for a holiday fierce exchange rate controls meant you couldn’t take more than £50 in currency. If you wanted a new phone you could only get it from the nationalised supplier, there was no choice and you waited for weeks. If you earned even a modest salary the taxman took a huge proportion of your earnings. The Beatles even wrote a song about it.
The Trade Unions ran the country to all intents and purposes. Wildcat strikes, violent picket lines, closed shops, crippling pay demands, were some of the many bullyboy tactics that Governments and business leaders feared and gave way to every time. If, like my father, you tried to stand up to them, the law was definitely not on your side.
My father spoke as he did from personal experience. Born in Coventry he left his council school aged fourteen with no prospects. After a few false starts he got going in business with a single lorry delivering coal from the Black Country around the Birmingham area. After his stint in the army, which took him to India for over three years, he returned and built the business very successfully, taking it public in 1963.
By 1973 it was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. “All out” was the familiar refrain and it meant that any money you had the hope of making disappeared in ever more fantastic wage settlements. The other thing that was so very damaging, although it did not hit my father’s business itself, was the way the Trade Unions stood in the way of all technological progress that might reduce their workforce. So whilst other countries were developing more efficient methods of production our industry was mired in the past, slowly losing share on the world markets.
Money for new investment was also limited severely by the need for higher and higher taxation in order to subsidise loss making heavy industry. The vast majority of these businesses were of course nationalised. British Leyland, British Steel, the telephones, the railways (including all the railway stations, you certainly could not operate a private business on a forecourt). The greater the subsidy, the higher the taxes; and by the time Margaret Thatcher came to power the top marginal rate of tax was a staggering ninety eight per cent.
In short, profit was a dirty word, there was no choice, incentives were killed off by punitive tax rates and in 1976 Britain, like Greece and Portugal today, had to be rescued by the IMF.
This was the Herculean task that faced Margaret Thatcher when she won the momentous 1979 election and became Britain’s first woman Prime Minister. I had the great honour of shaking her hand outside Parliament on the night she won the election for the leadership of the Conservative Party, a moment which was captured on camera by the Daily Mail’s photographer. But admire her as I did even then, I didn’t anticipate the scale of the change she would bring about. It was truly breathtaking and entirely unpredicted.
The truth was that no one thought that Britain’s decline could be reversed. Which was why each new government came in hoping to manage the decline with as few consequences as possible.
Michael Heseltine addressed a by election rally in Coventry during the Callaghan government. I went as a teenager with my father and asked him a question; “if the Conservatives get back in will you de-nationalise the nationalised industries?” His reply said it all “Well it would be a wonderful idea but I don’t think we’ll be making any such promises, after all who would want to buy them?”
Heseltine and all the rest of the political elite of the day saw no answer to our problems. He was utterly pessimistic; and then had the gall to present himself as the answer when he flounced out of the cabinet and followed that up by standing against Margaret Thatcher in the leadership election some thirteen years later!
Margaret Thatcher’s achievements went well beyond the shores of Britain. But the influence she brought to bear on the end of the Cold War would never have been possible without the turnaround she first secured in Britain. Others were involved of course. My view is that none of it could have happened without her leadership, but that like all good leaders she did need the talents of those around her. She was fortunate in the services of Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson, Lord Young, and the architects of her trade union law reform and others.
Thatcher restored Britain’s place in the world by making us competitive again. Incentives were restored, business was encouraged, industries were de-nationalised and taxes were lowered. None of that would have been possible without the law reform that took place over several years that drew the Trade Unions back under the rule of law. Previously outlaws they now had to operate within a legal framework that balanced their rights with the rights of employers, non unionised workers and the public.
The convictions, passion and principles that guided Margaret Thatcher were the cornerstones of what became known as “Thatcherism”. Her determination to stand up for Britain in Europe, for the freedoms of those under the thumb of the Soviet Union, for the working people who wanted to own a stake in their future and to get on and above all for the pride of Britain in the world was unequalled in my lifetime. It was a privilege to witness it all and I am grateful to have benefited from her policies personally; without her economic and political reforms I do not think my business would have grown, flourished as it did providing employment for hundreds of people.
There is much talk of Margaret Thatcher being a divisive figure. She certainly became a hate figure for those whose power she challenged and eventually overcame. I sympathise very much with people who lost their jobs in the manufacturing industries that declined in the 1980s. But the seeds of that decline began decades earlier and accelerated dramatically in the sixties and seventies. The strikes and restrictive practices deployed by shop stewards led to a very negative climate for investment and by the time she was elected so much of our old industry was kept going only by ever increasing government subsidy. This was ultimately unaffordable and diverted money from investment in new industries and services that would provide employment in the future. I do realise that this is of small comfort to the communities that suffered so, because of the closures of loss making industry, but to lay the blame at her door is to shoot the messenger.
In 2005 I took my Mother, then aged 81, to a dinner given by the Conservative Party to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of her election as leader of the party. There was a reception prior to the dinner at which my mother and I met Margaret Thatcher briefly and I passed on the message from my late father. She was very pleased but was more touched by my Mother’s presence at nine years older than herself. “How good of you to come” she said to my mother as she clasped her hand. Mum was thrilled and I was very touched by Lady Thatcher’s kindness and humility. Qualities she showed in abundance to her staff and close aides, but which were sadly obscured for the most part, from public view.
Karen Bradley MP (Staffordshire Moorlands)
I was pleased to return to Parliament last week to attend the debate in tribute to her and her legacy. The stories that were told of her kindness and generosity were in stark contrast to some of the vitriolic attacks made by people who neither knew her, nor in many cases, were not even alive during the time that she was Prime Minister.
I do remember the 1970s; the black outs, when everyone had only candles for light; the occasion that my grandfather was taken ill and had to be rushed to hospital in a Black Maria because there were no ambulances; the smell of rubbish piled in the streets; the all out strikes that were called without notice and crippled services. Britain was a country in which the government manufactured cars, owned furniture removal businesses and in which it was illegal to even own a telephone. The sun shone on Election Day 1979 and I remember the feeling of optimism that things would change. And they most certainly did.
The Britain of 1979 could not have been more different to the one of 1990 when Mrs Thatcher resigned as PM. During that period, Britain started to pull its weight internationally again and Mrs Thatcher was instrumental in ending the Cold War. We had the courage to fight a war thousands of miles away to save British people in the Falklands, thousands of people were given the chance to own their own homes, dying industries were given new life and millions were given the confidence to take new opportunities that would not have been possible before.
It will be with great pride and honour that I will represent Staffordshire Moorlands at the Baroness’ funeral on Wednesday. Without Mrs Thatcher, someone like me, a comprehensive school girl, the daughter of publicans, would never have felt able to go to university, gain professional qualifications and eventually become an MP and a Government Minister. She, and her reforms, gave me the confidence to believe that I could. And for that, I will always be grateful.”
Jackie Doyle-Price MP (Thurrock)
Margaret Thatcher inspired me to become involved in politics. She transformed this country, she made the Conservative Party the party of hard working people and along with Ronald Reagan she ended the Cold War. It is amazing to look at the countries of Eastern Europe now, all liberal economies and remember that just thirty years ago they were behind the iron curtain.
My parents like many others had their lives transformed by the right to buy their council house. She ended the power of the trade unions to bring this country to it knees. She liberated nationalised industries. She turned this country around from the sick man of Europe to a great success. She was a truly amazing leader.
On a personal note, she was always very kind to me. I was very touched to receive her encouragement and congratulation when I was elected. Such a great lady.
Fiona Bruce MP (Congleton)
I had the privilege of meeting Margaret Thatcher just once, shortly before I became MP for the Congleton Constituency. It was at an event in the House of Commons, held for her to meet with and encourage younger candidates such as myself. She was frail by then but as impeccably turned out as ever. Although she said very little, she listened courteously and intently and clearly enjoyed herself in the surroundings of the House of Commons – when her aides said it was time for her to go – she didn’t want to!
Although that one meeting was brief the impact which Margaret Thatcher had on my life and many of my contemporaries has endured over decades. An early recollection of the period around when she entered office in May 1979 will remain with me forever. As a young student I remember the three day week and power cuts - doing homework by candlelight ; I recall literally crying with sadness and shame as I watched rubbish piling up in our streets on television screens , and heard of families unable to bury their dead. I remember feeling that there was something terribly wrong that (certain unrepresentative individuals)/union barons instigating such action could hold our country to ransom in that way.
So it was that after she became Prime Minister I respected her enormously for standing up to this - it cannot have been easy; for introducing much needed labour laws - such as outlawing secondary picketing and introducing secret ballots, - and for putting an end to that period of industrial anarchy. Her Premiership restored some much needed dignity to our nation – and not only at home but also on the European and further International stages.
Clearly she blazed a trail as a woman, but more importantly for me, she stood out as a conviction politician. Not everyone agrees with what her convictions were, but even those who disagree with them must surely respect her for standing by what she believed in and not bending to every whim of the crowd. In a political era of “focus groups” “seeking the middle ground” and “consensus politics” – whatever that means - she stands out. She had clear beliefs and lived and led by them – beliefs such as the importance of personal and social responsibility and accountability; hard work and enterprise; the imperative of endeavouring to “balance your books” - whether with a household budget or when managing public funds; the importance of family (she wrote personally to every parent who lost a son in our armed forces), and of strong communities which can only be created and sustained by the active citizenship of many folk (as I see quite remarkably today in my Constituency of Congleton); of a sense of duty, service, and a moral code (no doubt influenced by her father, a Methodist lay preacher), and of a strong nation state – but not a state which nationalises society. For me having, and adhering to your convictions as she did, distinguishes the Statesman (or woman) from the politician, and that is why I have so much respect for her and why I believe she is respected so widely today both across this country and indeed the world.
Just by being there, as Prime Minister, she was a standard bearer for women - but she was also a wife and mother too. I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Dennis Thatcher also. Too often we fail to express sufficient gratitude for the unwavering support spouses like Dennis provide. I’ve no doubt that together their enduring commitment to their strong marriage enabled her in large part to fulfil the role and calling she had as our nation’s leader. I’ve no doubt too that many times Margaret Thatcher – despite her epithet ‘The Iron Lady’ (originally intended as an insult but ultimately expressed by so many as a compliment) – would have been deeply hurt by the outrageous slings and arrows of political leadership, but with Dennis’ support she weathered them all with dignity and composure in the service of this nation and for that example we owe her our thanks.
She must too surely have been hurt when her view of society was utterly traduced when words she used in a magazine interview in 1987 were quoted totally out of context. Of course she believed in society – and her point was this. Strong enduring societies are made up of individual men and women and families, each playing their part. In that same interview she spoke of our ‘duty...to look after our neighbours.’ The state is not and never can be a surrogate family or community or society. She knew that and it reflects ill on those who misinterpreted her on this issue.
Likewise, to attribute the materialism, selfishness and greed exhibited by some over recent years, to her has been an equally gross distortion. What I and many gleaned from the years of her premiership was that to be entrepreneurial is about creating something, something which was not there before, often overcoming huge challenges and stretching your capabilities in a myriad of ways in the process, it’s about creating something which contributes to the welfare and wellbeing of not just the individuals who work within it but to a community and a country also, and it’s about having a sense of social responsibility as to what to do with the measures of success if they come.
Margaret Thatcher epitomised for me the fact that one individual, given hard work and commitment, can make a remarkable difference. Whilst I am sure that even she would have agreed that no one gets everything right all of the time, as I’ve gone through life from being that student to practising as a young lawyer, through to setting up and developing a law firm, having a family and now entering politics, Margaret Thatcher’s example has inspired me to believe that every individual has the potential to make a remarkable difference - whatever their circumstances, start or sphere in life, and whether at home, work, in our local communities, voluntary groups, in public service or further afield and that indeed, “no insignificant person has ever been born.”