LEADING LADY:

The lady still lords it (GILLIAN GLOVER, 10/13/05, The Scotsman)

THE Baroness herself would approve the simple economics: you pays your money, and you takes your choice. So today, as the Queen and Prince Philip are due to join more than 600 guests at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in London to celebrate the 80th birthday of Britain's first woman prime minister, Margaret Thatcher will be described either as a "frail and fading ghost" or saluted as "the iron lady", the woman who single-handedly rescued Britain from oblivion.

"The current Conservative leadership contest is remarkable for many reasons," wrote Simon Hoggart earlier this week. "Not least the fact that it's the first for 40 years that hasn't been dominated by Margaret Thatcher."

Forty years of party dominance - even Stalin fell short of that. It seems an impossible span of power. But then Margaret Hilda Thatcher became the nation's most renowned impossible woman. Even now, 15 years after her departure from Downing Street, scarcely a day passes in the British media without a parcel of blame or praise being laid at her absent feet. Everything from child-rearing to car manufacture was altered, despoiled or saved by Thatcherism. [...]

When Thatcher came to office in 1979, the top rate for income tax was 83 per cent; "unearned" income and income from savings could be taxed as high as 98 per cent. Throughout the 70s, Prime Ministers invited Trade Union leaders to Number 10 to consult them about whether proposed Government policy would be acceptable to the Unions. Vast amounts of public money was spent supporting inefficient and uncompetitive nationalised companies. Schools were under no obligation to disclose pupils' exam results, and the only compulsory subject on the (English) school curriculum was religious education.

During the 1978 "winter of discontent" - the widespread public service strikes which left rubbish rotting in the streets for weeks on end, and eventually led to the defeat of Callaghan's Labour government, an independent economic think tank predicted that the UK's economic output would fall behind that of Spain and Greece within a year. "The sick man of Europe" was deemed all but incurable.

Until Thatcher began administering some very nasty-tasting medicine, that is. And whether you remember the nasty taste - unemployment edging over three million, factory closures, the miners' strike, Wapping etc - or prefer to recall the wider economic revival and increasing influence of Britain on the world stage, is a personal matter. But what is impossible to deny is that Margaret Thatcher changed Britain for ever.

"Boadicea with a handbag" grumbled columnist Brian Sewell, as he labelled Thatcher's goals "illusory" and dubbed the 11 years of her premiership "ancient history". But that famous Ferragamo handbag was auctioned for charity a couple of years ago and was bought by a Scottish businessman for £190,000. Besides, we are still enjoying rather too many of the privileges this ancient history bequeathed.

"Thatcher knew nothing of the European customs and cultures with which we were allied," sneers Sewell. And though it would be interesting to examine the precise nature and longevity of any such vaunted alliances with Europe, by 1990 Thatcher's reforming zeal and unshakeable faith in her own judgment had shifted towards hubris. Comments such as "we are now a grandmother" and her constant capacity for self-congratulation was what worried the voting public.

What had once sounded evangelical, radical, even inspiring, was beginning to seem dangerously deluded. The poll tax riots were dismissed as isolated incidents caused by a minority of trouble-makers. Later - amid the tireless international tours to which Thatcher devoted herself throughout the 1990s - she would claim to be a victim of her own success. "The painful paradox is that we Conservatives, here and abroad, have won arguments but lost power. Our very success has made us seem dispensable."

In fact, while the Tories have continued to diverge from her vision, Thatcherism dominates the governing parties of Britain, America and Australia. She's ultimately a more important figure than Ronald Reagan.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 13, 2005 8:49 AM