Iron Lady

A Soviet propagandist for the newspaper Red Star intended “Iron Lady” as an insult; so did TASS (official Soviet state media) and other press. Thatcher astutely embraced “Iron Lady” at Finchley, “I stand before you tonight in my Red Star chiffon evening gown, my face softly made up and my hair gently waived, the Iron Lady of the Western world.” Then she strategically drove home the point: “Yes, I am an iron lady, after all it wasn’t a bad thing to be an iron duke, yes if that’s how they wish to interpret my defence of values and freedoms fundamental to our way of life.”

At a time of detente when Western diplomats wanted to settle and communists wanted to win, when America was in decline after defeat in Vietnam and the scandal of Watergate, and when the Soviets were on the march on several continents, Thatcher said no. She said no clearly, and she explained why. She also channeled her inner Churchill and was willing to stand alone. The start of the political partnership between Prime Minister Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan was five years ahead in a future that was neither known nor determined.

By dint of her family upbringing, Christian faith, and education, Thatcher lived by and championed individual liberty, personal responsibility and hard work, community rather than collectivism, free markets, and a limited state. She believed that Karl Marx and his heirs regarded socialism as a transitional stage on the way to full communism and thus meant the end of the West; she took on the most destructive political ideology yet created by man from the start of her career. “We believe in the freedom of the democratic way of life,” she wrote in her 1950 New Year’s Eve message as a first-time, prospective candidate for Parliament. “Communism seizes power by force, not by free choice of the people….We must firstly believe in the Western way of life and serve it steadfastly. Secondly we must build up our fighting strength to be prepared to defend our ideals, for aggressive nations understand only the threat of force.”

Thatcher developed her core understanding about big-brother communism and little-sister socialism, as she honed her communication skills to educate supporters and counter opponents. Politics and economics were morally and consistently intertwined in her position. In a 1968 speech entitled “What’s Wrong with Politics,” Thatcher, while Conservative shadow minister for fuel and power, maintained that “[m]oney is not an end in itself,” and that “even the Good Samaritan had to have the money to help, otherwise he too would have had to pass on the other side.” In her view, communism and socialism—in their varying degrees—suffered from the same source problem of “too much,” too big, and too centralized government, which robbed the people of their right and ability to practice self-government.

Mrs. Thatcher was sincere in wanting Europe to be a success. But what she wanted the European Common Market to be was not what most of the other states eventually wanted. Her British successors then gave up on the battle to steer Europe away from centralism. If she had remained a few more months in office, she would have vetoed the Maastricht Treaty. That would have allowed Britain to remain within the existing framework, while others integrated further under new treaties. Brexit would, therefore, have been unnecessary. In this sense, she would have kept Britain in Europe.

The important text for all this, if now only as an inspiration, is her Bruges Speech to the College of Europe in 1988. I had a hand in it. Read it, and you will see that it is not anti-European. In fact, in the speech she extolls Europe’s legacy and values, especially those of Christendom. She adds that “Europe is not the creation of the Treaty of Rome.” She calls for cooperation between independent sovereign states and makes clear that nationhood must not be devalued. She says it is “folly” to attempt creating what she called an “identikit European personality.” That is what virtually all right-of-centre Europeans believe today.

The Bruges speech was also ahead of its time in reaching out explicitly to Europeans living in the thrall of Communism. “East of the Iron Curtain,” she said, “people who once enjoyed a full share of European culture, freedom, and identity have been cut off from their roots,” She added that “we shall always look on Warsaw, Prague and Budapest as great European cities.”