Margaret Thatcher was the longest incumbent British Prime Minister in the 20th century. She was Prime Minister for eleven and a half years, from May 1979 to November 1990. She won three successive general elections, two of which with a large majority – a success unequalled by any other party ...
(Show more)Margaret Thatcher was the longest incumbent British Prime Minister in the 20th century. She was Prime Minister for eleven and a half years, from May 1979 to November 1990. She won three successive general elections, two of which with a large majority – a success unequalled by any other party leader in the 20th century. Even if she had been a man, this would still to say the least have been a remarkable result. But Margaret Thatcher is a woman, the first female British party leader and Prime Minister and in fact the first female premier in a Western country. Gro Harlem Brundtland, who occupied a comparable position in Norway, only took up office in 1981 and then only for a short period. It was not until 1986 that Brundtland was to begin her second term of office.
But was Margaret Thatcher also a ‘great’ Prime Minister? Was she responsible for important achievements that raise her above the level of the average politician? Thatcher herself is far from modest when it comes to the performance of her three successive cabinets. She is proud of having wrought fundamental changes for good in British society and elsewhere in the world. Moreover, she has actively contributed to the creation of a politically correct picture of herself, regarding her functioning as a politician and as a housewife and as a mother. This picture has been propagated, with variations, by Margaret Thatcher in her two autobiographies, through many media interviews and also in the – not entirely uncritical – biography of her husband written by her daughter Carol. Carol quotes her father, who was proud of being married to ‘one of the greatest women the world has ever produced.’
The goal of my paper is to assess the content and style of Margaret Thatcher’s leadership. This will be based on a discussion of the various facets of the picture created by Thatcher, as briefly delineated above. The point of departure for my argument is that from the gender perspective this figure is, one way or another, unique and important to post-war Western history, due to her position as the first female Prime Minister in the UK and indeed in any Western country.
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