The Bow Group is one of the oldest think tanks in the United Kingdom. It is run by a group of volunteers. Taking its name from the Bow area of London where it first met, it was founded in 1951. The group conducts research, publishes reports, engages in political debate, and produces the quarterly members magazine Crossbow.

On 29 November 1950, a steering meeting was held to set up a group for Conservatives under the age of 35. The resulting group had its first meeting in 7 February 1951 and was named after the place where the original steering meeting had been held: the Bow and Bromley Conservative Association. Their first pamphlet, Coloured People In Britain, was published in 1952.^{[citation needed]}

The group was established as an extra-parliamentary forum for young people. It was to be a broad church, stretching across the Conservative Party, but found itself opposed to the Conservative Monday Club, leading to a misperception that the group was 'left-wing'.

The Bow Group argued that it was open to all Conservatives, and that it neither expressed a collective view nor organised meetings of MPs; rather it adopted an independent freely critical standpoint, and was a think-tank capable of airing ideas from all sides of the Conservative Party. Ian Waller, writing in the Sunday Telegraph in 1971, disagreed, making comparisons between the Bow Group and the Conservative Monday Club, said that the two organisations, their members and aims, were as different as chalk from cheese, and that the then current mood among Conservatives meant that the Club's rising membership had overtaken that of the Bow Group. Bow Group membership in 1975 stood at 1000.

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Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS, née Roberts (born 13 October 1925) is a British politician and the longest-serving (1979–1990) British prime minister of the 20th century, and the only woman ever to have held the post. A Soviet journalist nicknamed her the "Iron Lady", which later became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. As prime minister, she implemented conservative policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism.

Originally a research chemist before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975 Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election and became Leader of the Opposition, as well as the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom. She became prime minister after winning the 1979 general election.

After entering 10 Downing Street, Thatcher introduced a series of political and economic initiatives to reverse what she perceived as Britain's precipitous national decline. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Thatcher's popularity during her first years in office waned amid recession and high unemployment, until economic recovery and the 1982 Falklands War brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her re-election in 1983. Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987, but her Community Charge (popularly referred to as "poll tax") was widely unpopular and her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership.

Charles Leadbeater (formerly known as Charlie Leadbeater) is a British author and former advisor to Tony Blair.

He first came to widespread notice in the 1980s as a regular contributor to the magazine Marxism Today. Later he was Industrial Editor and Tokyo Bureau Chief at the Financial Times. While working at The Independent in the 1990s, he devised Bridget Jones's Diary^{[citation needed]} (originally a column) with Helen Fielding. He worked on social entrepreneurship, publishing The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur in 1997. He advised the British government on matters of the Internet and the knowledge-driven economy. His most recent book, We-think, explores the new phenomenon of mass creativity exemplified by web sites such as YouTube, Wikipedia and MySpace. The book, which in a preliminary version is open to public criticism and revision, argues that participation, rather than consumption or production, will be the key organizing idea of future society. In September 2010 Leadbeater opened the Incubate (festival), in Tilburg, The Netherlands.