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.[nb 1] 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.
Thatcher holds a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire, which entitles her to sit in the House of Lords.
Margaret Thatcher's birthplace, in Grantham
Commemorative plaque on the building in which Margaret Thatcher was born
Margaret Thatcher was born Margaret Roberts in Grantham, Lincolnshire, on 13 October 1925. Her father was Alfred Roberts, originally from Northamptonshire, and her mother was Beatrice Ethel (née Stephenson) from Lincolnshire.[3] She spent her childhood in Grantham, where her father owned two grocery shops.[4] She and her older sister Muriel were raised in the flat above the larger of the two, located near the railway line.[4] Her father was active in local politics and the Christian church, serving as an alderman and a Methodist local preacher,[5] and brought up his daughter as a strict Methodist.[6] He came from a Liberal family but stood—as was then customary in local government—as an Independent. He was Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950.[5]
Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School.[7] Her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement; her extracurricular activities included the piano, field hockey, poetry recitals, swimming and walking.[8][9] She was head girl in 1942–43.[10] In her upper sixth year she applied for a scholarship to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford but was initially rejected, and was offered a place only after another candidate withdrew.[11][12] She arrived at Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with Second Class Honours in the four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree; in her final year she specialised in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin.[13][14]
Roberts became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946.[15][16] She was influenced at university by political works such as Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944),[17] which condemned economic intervention by government as a precursor to an authoritarian state.[18]
After graduating, Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics.[19] She joined the local Conservative Association and attended the party conference at Llandudno in 1948, as a representative of the University Graduate Conservative Association.[20] One of her Oxford friends was also a friend of the Chair of the Dartford Conservative Association in Kent, who were looking for candidates.[20] Officials of the association were so impressed by her that they asked her to apply, even though she was not on the Conservative party's approved list: she was selected in January 1951 and added to the approved list post ante.[21] At a dinner following her formal adoption as Conservative candidate for Dartford in February 1951 she met Denis Thatcher, a successful and wealthy divorced businessman, who drove her to her Essex train.[20][21] In preparation for the election Roberts moved to Dartford, where she supported herself by working as a research chemist for J. Lyons and Co. in Hammersmith, part of a team developing emulsifiers for ice cream.[20][22]
In the 1950 and 1951 general elections she was the Conservative candidate for the safe Labour seat of Dartford, where she attracted media attention as the youngest and the only female candidate.[23][24] She lost both times to Norman Dodds, but reduced the Labour majority by 6,000, and then a further 1,000.[23] (By an odd coincidence, Edward Heath was elected for the first time in the neighbouring constituency in 1950.) During the campaigns, she was supported by her parents and by Denis Thatcher, whom she married in December 1951.[23][25] Denis funded his wife's studies for the bar;[26] she qualified as a barrister in 1953 and specialised in taxation.[27] That same year her twins, Carol and Mark, were born.[28]
Thatcher was not a candidate in the 1955 general election as it came fairly soon after the birth of her children, although she was narrowly defeated as the candidate for the Orpington by-election, 1955.[28] Afterwards, she began looking for a safe Conservative seat, and was selected as the candidate for Finchley in April 1958 (narrowly beating Ian Montagu Fraser). She was elected as MP for the seat after a hard campaign in the 1959 election.[29] Her maiden speech was in support of her private member's bill (Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960), requiring local authorities to hold their council meetings in public. In 1961 she went against the Conservative Party's official position by voting for the restoration of birching.[30] She regarded Finchley's Jewish residents as "her people" and became a founding member of the Anglo-Israel Friendship League of Finchley as well as a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel.[31] But she nevertheless believed that Israel had to trade land for peace, and condemned Israel's bombing of Osirak as "a grave breach of international law".[31]
In October 1961 Thatcher was promoted to the front bench as Parliamentary Undersecretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in Harold Macmillan's administration.[32] After the Conservatives lost the 1964 election she became spokeswoman on Housing and Land, in which position she advocated her party's policy of allowing tenants to buy their council houses.[33] She moved to the Shadow Treasury team in 1966, and as Treasury spokeswoman opposed Labour's mandatory price and income controls, arguing that they would produce effects contrary to those intended and distort the economy.[33]
At the Conservative Party Conference of 1966 she criticised the high-tax policies of the Labour Government as being steps "not only towards Socialism, but towards Communism".[33] She argued that lower taxes served as an incentive to hard work.[33] Thatcher was one of the few Conservative MPs to support Leo Abse's Bill to decriminalise male homosexuality[34] and voted in favour of David Steel's bill to legalise abortion,[1][35] as well as a ban on hare coursing.[36][37] She supported the retention of capital punishment[38] and voted against the relaxation of divorce laws.[39][40]
In 1967 she was selected by the United States Embassy in London to take part in the International Visitor Leadership Program (then called the Foreign Leader Program), a professional exchange programme that gave her the opportunity to spend about six weeks visiting various US cities and political figures as well as institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.[41] Thatcher joined the Shadow Cabinet later that year as Fuel spokesman. Shortly before the 1970 general election, she was promoted to Shadow Transport spokesman and later to Education.[42]
The Conservative party under Edward Heath won the 1970 general election, and Thatcher was subsequently appointed Secretary of State for Education and Science. During her first months in office she attracted public attention as a result of the administration's attempts to cut spending. She gave priority to academic needs in schools,[43] and imposed public expenditure cuts on the state education system, resulting in the abolition of free milk for schoolchildren aged seven to eleven.[44] She held that few children would suffer if schools were charged for milk, but she agreed to provide younger children with a third of a pint daily, for nutritional purposes.[44] Her decision provoked a storm of protest from the Labour party and the press,[45] leading to the moniker "Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher".[44] Thatcher wrote in her autobiography: "I learned a valuable lesson [from the experience]. I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit."[45][46]
Thatcher's term of office was marked by proposals for more local education authorities to close grammar schools and to adopt comprehensive secondary education. Although she was committed to a tiered secondary modern-grammar school system of education, and determined to preserve grammar schools,[43] during her tenure as Education Secretary she turned down only 326 of 3,612 proposals for schools to become comprehensives; the proportion of pupils attending comprehensive schools consequently rose from 32 per cent to 62 per cent.[47]
The Heath government continued to experience difficulties with oil embargoes and union demands for wage increases in 1973, and lost the February 1974 general election.[45] Labour formed a minority government, and went on to win a narrow majority in the October 1974 general election. Heath's leadership of the Conservative Party looked increasingly in doubt. Thatcher was not initially the obvious replacement, but she eventually became the main challenger, promising a fresh start.[48] Her main support came from the Conservative 1922 Committee.[48] She defeated Heath on the first ballot and he resigned the leadership.[49] In the second ballot she defeated Heath's preferred successor, William Whitelaw, and became party leader on 11 February 1975;[50] she appointed Whitelaw as her deputy. Heath remained disenchanted with Thatcher to the end of his life, for what he and many of his supporters perceived as her disloyalty in standing against him.[51]
Thatcher began to attend lunches regularly at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank founded by the poultry magnate Antony Fisher, a disciple of Friedrich von Hayek; she had been visiting the IEA and reading its publications since the early 1960s. There she was influenced by the ideas of Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon, and she became the face of the ideological movement opposing the welfare state Keynesian economics they believed was weakening Britain. The institute's pamphlets proposed less government, lower taxes, and more freedom for business and consumers.[52][page needed]
The television critic Clive James, writing in The Observer during the voting for the leadership, compared her voice of 1973 to a cat sliding down a blackboard.[nb 2] Thatcher had already begun to work on her presentation on the advice of Gordon Reece, a former television producer. By chance Reece met the actor Laurence Olivier, who arranged lessons with the National Theatre's voice coach.[53][54][55] Thatcher succeeded in completely suppressing her Lincolnshire dialect except when under stress, notably after provocation from Denis Healey in the House of Commons in April 1983, when she accused the Labour front bench of being frit.[56][nb 3]
On 19 January 1976 Thatcher made a speech in Kensington Town Hall in which she made a scathing attack on the Soviet Union; in response, the Soviet Defence Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) called her the "Iron Lady":[57]
The Russians are bent on world dominance, and they are rapidly acquiring the means to become the most powerful imperial nation the world has seen. The men in the Soviet
Politburo do not have to worry about the ebb and flow of public opinion. They put guns before butter, while we put just about everything before guns.
[57]
In mid-1978, the economy began to improve and opinion polls showed Labour in the lead, with a general election being expected later that year and a Labour win a serious possibility. Prime Minister James Callaghan surprised many by announcing on 7 September that there would be no general election that year and he would wait until 1979 before going to the polls. Thatcher reacted to this by branding the Labour government as "chickens", and Liberal Party leader David Steel joined in, criticising Labour for "running scared".[58]
The Labour government then faced fresh public unease about the direction of the country and a damaging series of strikes during the winter of 1978–79, dubbed the "Winter of Discontent". The Conservatives attacked the Labour government's unemployment record, using advertising with the slogan Labour Isn't Working. A general election was called after James Callaghan's government lost a motion of no confidence in early 1979. The Conservatives won a 44-seat majority in the House of Commons, and Margaret Thatcher became the UK's first female Prime Minister.
Thatcher's Ministry meets with Reagan's Cabinet at the
White House, 1981
Thatcher became Prime Minister on 4 May 1979. Arriving at 10 Downing Street, she said, in a paraphrase of the "Prayer of Saint Francis":
Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.
Thatcher was Leader of the Opposition and Prime Minister at a time of increased racial tension in Britain. Commenting on the local elections of May 1977, The Economist noted "The Tory tide swamped the smaller parties. That specifically includes the National Front, which suffered a clear decline from last year".[59][60] Her standing in the polls rose by 11 percent after a January 1978 interview for World in Action in which she said "the British character has done so much for democracy, for law and done so much throughout the world that if there is any fear that it might be swamped people are going to react and be rather hostile to those coming in."; and "in many ways [minorities] add to the richness and variety of this country. The moment the minority threatens to become a big one, people get frightened."[61][62] In the 1979 General Election, the Conservatives attracted voters from the National Front, whose support almost collapsed.[63][64] In a meeting in July 1979 with Lord Carrington (the Foreign Secretary) and William Whitelaw (Home Secretary) she objected to the number of Asian immigrants,[65] in the context of limiting the number of Vietnamese boat people allowed to settle in the UK to fewer than 10,000.
As Prime Minister, Thatcher met weekly with Queen Elizabeth II to discuss government business, and their relationship came under close scrutiny.[66][67] In July 1986 the Sunday Times reported claims attributed to the Queen's advisers of a "rift" between Buckingham Palace and Downing Street "over a wide range of domestic and international issues".[68][69] The Palace issued an official denial, heading off speculation about a possible constitutional crisis.[69] After Thatcher's retirement a senior Palace source again dismissed as "nonsense" the "stereotyped idea" that she had not got along with the Queen, or that they had fallen out over Thatcherite policies.[70] Thatcher later wrote: "I always found the Queen's attitude towards the work of the Government absolutely correct ... stories of clashes between 'two powerful women' were just too good not to make up."[71]
During her time in office Thatcher practised great frugality in her official residence, including insisting on paying for her own ironing-board.[72]
Thatcher's economic policy was influenced by monetarist thinking and economists such as Milton Friedman.[73] Together with Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe, she lowered direct taxes on income and increased indirect taxes.[74] She increased interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply and thereby lower inflation,[73] introduced cash limits on public spending, and reduced expenditure on social services such as education and housing.[74] Her cuts in higher education spending resulted in her being the first Oxford-educated post-war Prime Minister not to be awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Oxford, after a 738 to 319 vote of the governing assembly and a student petition.[75] Her new centrally-funded City Technology Colleges did not enjoy much success, and the Funding Agency for Schools was set up to control expenditure by opening and closing schools; the Social Market Foundation, a right-wing think tank, described it as having "an extraordinary range of dictatorial powers".[76]
Some Heathite Conservatives in the Cabinet, the so-called "wets", expressed doubt over Thatcher's policies.[79] The 1981 riots in England resulted in the British media discussing the need for a policy U-turn. At the 1980 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher addressed the issue directly, with a speech written by the playwright Ronald Millar[80] that included the lines: "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning!"[79]
Thatcher's job approval rating fell to 23% by December 1980, lower than recorded for any previous Prime Minister.[81] As the recession of the early 1980s deepened she increased taxes,[82] despite concerns expressed in a statement signed by 364 leading economists issued towards the end of March 1981.[83]
By 1982 the UK began to experience signs of economic recovery;[84] inflation was down to 8.6% from a high of 18%, but unemployment was over 3 million for the first time since the 1930s.[85] By 1983 overall economic growth was stronger and inflation and mortgage rates were at their lowest levels since 1970, although manufacturing output had dropped by 30% since 1978[86] and unemployment remained high, peaking at 3.3 million in 1984.[87]
By 1987, unemployment was falling, the economy was stable and strong, and inflation was low. Opinion polls showed a comfortable Conservative lead, and local council election results had also been successful, prompting Thatcher to call a general election for 11 June that year, despite the deadline for an election still being 12 months away. The election saw Thatcher re-elected for a third successive term.[88]
Throughout the 1980s revenue from the 90% tax on North Sea oil extraction was used as a short-term funding source to balance the economy and pay the costs of reform.[89]
Thatcher reformed local government taxes by replacing domestic rates—a tax based on the nominal rental value of a home—with the Community Charge (or poll tax) in which the same amount was charged to each adult resident.[90] The new tax was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales the following year,[91] and proved to be among the most unpopular policies of her premiership.[90] Public disquiet culminated in a 70,000-strong demonstration in London on 31 March 1990; the demonstration around Trafalgar Square deteriorated into the Poll Tax Riots, leaving 113 people injured and 340 under arrest.[92] The Community Charge was abolished by her successor, John Major.[92]
Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the trade unions, whose leadership she accused of undermining parliamentary democracy and economic performance through strike action.[93] Several unions launched strikes in response to legislation introduced to curb their power, but resistance eventually collapsed.[94] Only 39% of union members voted for Labour in the 1983 general election.[95] According to the BBC, Thatcher "managed to destroy the power of the trade unions for almost a generation".[96]
The miners' strike was the biggest confrontation between the unions and the Thatcher government. In March 1984 the National Coal Board (NCB) proposed to close 20 of the 174 state-owned mines and cut 20,000 jobs out of 187,000.[97][98][99] Two-thirds of the country's miners, led by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) under Arthur Scargill, downed tools in protest.[97][100][101] Thatcher refused to meet the union's demands and compared the miners' dispute to the Falklands conflict two years earlier, declaring in a speech in 1984: "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty."[102] After a year out on strike, in March 1985, the NUM leadership conceded without a deal. The cost to the economy was estimated to be at least £1.5 billion, and the strike was blamed for much of the pound's fall against the US dollar.[103] The government closed 25 unprofitable coal mines in 1985, and by 1992 a total of 97 had been closed;[99] those that remained were privatised in 1994.[104] The eventual closure of 150 coal mines, not all of which were losing money, resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and devastated entire communities.[99][105] Miners had helped bring down the Heath government, and Thatcher was determined to succeed where he had failed. Her strategy of preparing fuel stocks, appointing a union-busting NCB leader in Ian MacGregor, and ensuring police were adequately trained and equipped with riot gear, contributed to her victory.[106]
The number of stoppages across the UK peaked at 4583 in 1979, when more than 29 million working days were lost. In 1984, the year of the miners' strike, there were 1221, resulting in the loss of more than 27 million working days. Stoppages then fell steadily throughout the rest of Thatcher's premiership; in 1990 there were 630 and fewer than 2 million working days lost, and they continued to fall thereafter.[107] Trade union membership also fell, from 13.5 million in 1979 to fewer than 10 million by the time Thatcher left office in 1990.[108]
The policy of privatisation has been called "a crucial ingredient of Thatcherism".[109] After the 1983 election the sale of state utilities accelerated;[110] more than £29 billion was raised from the sale of nationalised industries, and another £18 billion from the sale of council houses.[111]
The process of privatisation, especially the preparation of nationalised industries for privatisation, was associated with marked improvements in performance, particularly in terms of labour productivity.[112] Some of the privatised industries including gas, water, and electricity, were natural monopolies for which privatisation involved little increase in competition. The privatised industries that demonstrated improvement often did so while still under state ownership. British Steel, for instance, made great gains in profitability while still a nationalised industry under the government-appointed chairmanship of Ian MacGregor, who faced down trade-union opposition to close plants and reduce the workforce by half.[113] Regulation was also significantly expanded to compensate for the loss of direct government control, with the foundation of regulatory bodies like Ofgas, Oftel and the National Rivers Authority.[114] There was no clear pattern to the degree of competition, regulation, and performance among the privatised industries;[112] in most cases privatisation benefitted consumers in terms of lower prices and improved efficiency, but the results overall were "mixed".[115]
Thatcher always resisted rail privatisation, and was said to have told Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley "Railway privatisation will be the Waterloo of this government. Please never mention the railways to me again." Shortly before her resignation, she accepted the arguments for privatising British Rail, which her successor John Major implemented in 1994.[116] The Economist later considered the move to have been "a disaster".[115]
The privatisation of public assets was combined with financial deregulation in an attempt to fuel economic growth. Geoffrey Howe abolished Britain's exchange controls in 1979, allowing more capital to be invested in foreign markets, and the Big Bang of 1986 removed many restrictions on the London Stock Exchange. The Thatcher government encouraged growth in the finance and service sectors to compensate for Britain's ailing manufacturing industry.
In 1980 and 1981, Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison carried out hunger strikes in an effort to regain the status of political prisoners that had been removed in 1976 under the preceding Labour government.[117] Bobby Sands began the 1981 strike, saying that he would fast until death unless prison inmates won concessions over their living conditions.[117] Thatcher refused to countenance a return to political status for the prisoners, declaring "Crime is crime is crime; it is not political",[117] but nevertheless the UK government privately contacted republican leaders in a bid to bring the hunger strikes to an end.[118] After the deaths of Sands and nine others, some rights were restored to paramilitary prisoners, but not official recognition of their political status.[119] Violence in Northern Ireland escalated significantly during the hunger strikes; in 1982 Sinn Féin politician Danny Morrison described Thatcher as "the biggest bastard we have ever known".[120]
Thatcher narrowly escaped injury in a IRA assassination attempt at a Brighton hotel early in the morning on 12 October 1984.[121] Five people were killed, including the wife of Cabinet Minister John Wakeham. Thatcher was staying at the hotel to attend the Conservative Party Conference, which she insisted should open as scheduled the following day.[121] She delivered her speech as planned,[122] a move that was widely supported across the political spectrum and enhanced her popularity with the public.[123]
On 6 November 1981 Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald had established the Anglo-Irish Inter-Governmental Council, a forum for meetings between the two governments.[119] On 15 November 1985, Thatcher and FitzGerald signed the Hillsborough Anglo-Irish Agreement, the first time a British government had given the Republic of Ireland an advisory role in the governance of Northern Ireland. In protest the Ulster Says No movement attracted 100,000 to a rally in Belfast,[124] Ian Gow resigned as Minister of State in the HM Treasury,[125][126] and all fifteen Unionist MPs resigned their parliamentary seats; only one was not returned in the subsequent by-elections on 23 January 1986.[127]
The Thatchers with the Reagans standing at the North Portico of the White House before a state dinner, 16 November 1988
Thatcher took office in the penultimate decade of the Cold War and became closely aligned with the policies of United States President Ronald Reagan, based on their shared distrust of Communism,[94] although she strongly opposed Reagan's October 1983 invasion of Grenada.[128] During her first year as Prime Minister she supported NATO's decision to deploy US nuclear cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe,[94] and permitted the US to station more than 160 cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common, starting on 14 November 1983 and triggering mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.[94] She bought the Trident nuclear missile submarine system from the US to replace Polaris, tripling the UK's nuclear forces[129] at an eventual cost of more than £12 billion (at 1996–97 prices).[130] Thatcher's preference for defence ties with the US was demonstrated in the Westland affair of January 1986, when she acted with colleagues to allow the struggling helicopter manufacturer Westland to refuse a takeover offer from the Italian firm Agusta in favour of the management's preferred option, a link with Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation. The UK Defence Secretary, Michael Heseltine, who had supported the Agusta deal, resigned in protest.[131]
On 2 April 1982 the ruling military junta in Argentina ordered the invasion of the British-controlled Falkland Islands and South Georgia, triggering the Falklands War.[132] The subsequent crisis was "a defining moment of her [Thatcher's] premiership".[133] At the suggestion of Harold Macmillan and Robert Armstrong,[133] she set up and chaired a small War Cabinet (formally called ODSA, Overseas and Defence committee, South Atlantic) to take charge of the conduct of the war,[134] which by 5–6 April had authorised and dispatched a naval task force to retake the islands.[135] Argentina surrendered on 14 June and the operation was hailed a success, notwithstanding the deaths of 255 British servicemen and 3 Falkland Islanders. Argentinian deaths totalled 649, half of them after the nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror torpedoed and sank the cruiser ARA General Belgrano on 2 May.[136] Thatcher was criticised for the neglect of the Falklands' defence that led to the war, and notably by Tam Dalyell in parliament for the decision to sink the General Belgrano, but overall she was considered a highly capable and committed war leader.[137] The "Falklands factor", an economic recovery beginning early in 1982, and a bitterly divided Labour opposition contributed to Thatcher's second election victory in 1983.[138] Thatcher often referred after the war to the "Falklands Spirit"; Hastings and Jenkins (1983) suggested that this reflected her preference for the streamlined decision-making of her War Cabinet over the painstaking deal-making of peace-time cabinet government.[139]
Although saying that she was against apartheid, Thatcher stood against the sanctions imposed on South Africa by the Commonwealth and the EC.[140] She attempted to preserve trade with South Africa while persuading the regime there to abandon apartheid. This included "[c]asting herself as President Botha's candid friend", and inviting him to visit the UK in June 1984, in spite of the "inevitable demonstrations" against his regime.[141] Thatcher, on the other hand, was no friend of the African National Congress (ANC), which Geoffrey Howe recalls her dismissing as late as October 1987 as "a typical terrorist organisation".[142]
The Thatcher government supported the Khmer Rouge keeping their seat in the UN after they were ousted from power in Cambodia by the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. Although denying it at the time they also sent the SAS to train the Khmer Rouge alliance to fight against the Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea government.[143][144][145]
Thatcher's antipathy towards European integration became more pronounced during her premiership, particularly after her third election victory in 1987. During a 1988 speech in Bruges she outlined her opposition to proposals from the European Community (EC), forerunner of the European Union, for a federal structure and increased centralisation of decision making.[146] Thatcher and her party had supported British membership of the EC in the 1975 national referendum,[147] but she believed that the role of the organisation should be limited to ensuring free trade and effective competition, and feared that the EC's approach was at odds with her views on smaller government and deregulation;[148] in 1988, she remarked, "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels".[148] Thatcher was firmly opposed to the UK's membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a precursor to European monetary union, believing that it would constrain the British economy,[149] despite the urging of her Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson and Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe,[150] but she was persuaded by John Major to join in October 1990, at what proved to be too high a rate.[151]
Thatcher shares a laugh with Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife,
Raisa, at the Soviet Embassy in London, 1 April 1989
In April 1986, Thatcher permitted US F-111s to use Royal Air Force bases for the bombing of Libya in retaliation for the alleged Libyan bombing of a Berlin discothèque,[152] citing the right of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter.[153][nb 4] Polls suggested that less than one in three British citizens approved of Thatcher's decision.[155] She was in the US on a state visit when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded neighbouring Kuwait in August 1990.[156] During her talks with US President George H. W. Bush, who had succeeded Reagan in 1989, she recommended intervention,[156] and put pressure on Bush to deploy troops in the Middle East to drive the Iraqi army out of Kuwait.[157] Bush was somewhat apprehensive about the plan, prompting Thatcher to remark to him during a telephone conversation that "This was no time to go wobbly!"[158] Thatcher's government provided military forces to the international coalition in the build-up to the Gulf War, but she had resigned by the time hostilities began on 17 January 1991.
Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to respond warmly to reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Following Reagan–Gorbachev summit meetings and reforms enacted by Gorbachev in the USSR, she declared in November 1988 that "We're not in a Cold War now", but rather in a "new relationship much wider than the Cold War ever was".[159] She went on a state visit to the Soviet Union in 1984, and met with Gorbachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers.[160] Thatcher was initially opposed to German reunification, telling Gorbachev that it "would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security". She expressed concern that a united Germany would align itself more closely with the Soviet Union and move away from NATO.[161] In contrast she was an advocate of Croatian and Slovenian independence.[162] In a 1991 interview for Croatian Radiotelevision, Thatcher commented on the Yugoslav Wars; she was critical of Western governments for not recognising the breakaway republics of Croatia and Slovenia as independent states and supplying them with arms after the Serbian-led Yugoslav Army attacked.[163]
Thatcher was challenged for the leadership of the Conservative Party by the little-known backbench MP Sir Anthony Meyer in the 1989 leadership election.[164] Of the 374 Conservative MPs eligible to vote 314 voted for Thatcher and 33 for Meyer.[164] Her supporters in the party viewed the result as a success, and rejected suggestions that there was discontent within the party.[164]
During her premiership Thatcher had the second-lowest average approval rating, at 40 percent, of any post-war Prime Minister. Polls consistently showed that she was less popular than her party.[165] A self-described conviction politician, Thatcher always insisted that she did not care about her poll ratings, pointing instead to her unbeaten election record.[166]
Opinion polls in September 1990 reported that Labour had established a 14% lead over the Conservatives,[167] and by November the Conservatives had been trailing Labour for 18 months.[165] These ratings, together with Thatcher's combative personality and willingness to override colleagues' opinions, contributed to discontent within the Conservative party.[168]
On 1 November 1990 Geoffrey Howe, the last remaining member of Thatcher's original 1979 cabinet, resigned from his position as Deputy Prime Minister over her refusal to agree to a timetable for Britain to join the European single currency.[167][169] In his resignation speech on 13 November, Howe commented on Thatcher's European stance: "It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find the moment that the first balls are bowled that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain."[170] His resignation was fatal to Thatcher's premiership.[171]
The next day, Michael Heseltine mounted a challenge for the leadership of the Conservative Party.[172] Opinion polls had indicated that he would give the Conservatives a national lead over Labour.[173] Although Thatcher won the first ballot, Heseltine attracted sufficient support (152 votes) to force a second ballot.[174] Thatcher initially stated that she intended to "fight on and fight to win" the second ballot, but consultation with her Cabinet persuaded her to withdraw.[168][174][175] After seeing the Queen, calling other world leaders, and making one final Commons speech, she left Downing Street in tears. She regarded her ousting as a betrayal.[176]
Thatcher was replaced as Prime Minister and party leader by her Chancellor John Major, who oversaw an upturn in Conservative support in the 17 months leading up to the 1992 general election and led the Conservatives to their fourth successive victory on 9 April 1992.[177] Thatcher favoured Major over Heseltine in the leadership contest, but her support for him weakened in later years.[178]
Thatcher returned to the backbenches as MP for Finchley for two years after leaving the premiership.[179] She retired from the House at the 1992 election, aged 66, saying that leaving the Commons would allow her more freedom to speak her mind.[180]
After leaving the House of Commons, Thatcher became the first former Prime Minister to set up a foundation; it closed down in 2005 because of financial difficulties.[181] She wrote two volumes of memoirs, The Downing Street Years (1993) and The Path to Power (1995).
In July 1992, Thatcher was hired by the tobacco company Philip Morris as a "geopolitical consultant" for $250,000 per year and an annual contribution of $250,000 to her foundation.[182] She also earned $50,000 for each speech she delivered.[183]
In August 1992, Thatcher called for NATO to stop the Serbian assault on Goražde and Sarajevo to end ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian War. She compared the situation in Bosnia to "the worst excesses of the Nazis", and warned that there could be a "holocaust".[184] She made a series of speeches in the Lords criticising the Maastricht Treaty,[180] describing it as "a treaty too far" and stated "I could never have signed this treaty".[185] She cited A. V. Dicey when stating that as all three main parties were in favour of revisiting the treaty, the people should have their say.[186]
Thatcher was honorary Chancellor of the College of William and Mary in Virginia (1993–2000)[187] and also of the University of Buckingham (1992–1999), the UK's first private university, which she had opened in 1975.[188]
After Tony Blair's election as Labour Party leader in 1994, Thatcher praised Blair in an interview as "probably the most formidable Labour leader since Hugh Gaitskell. I see a lot of socialism behind their front bench, but not in Mr Blair. I think he genuinely has moved."[189]
In 1998, Thatcher called for the release of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when Spain had him arrested and sought to try him for human rights violations, citing the help he gave Britain during the Falklands War.[190] In 1999, she visited him while he was under house arrest near London.[191] Pinochet was released in March 2000 on medical grounds by the Home Secretary Jack Straw, without facing trial.[192]
In the 2001 general election Thatcher supported the Conservative general election campaign, but did not endorse Iain Duncan Smith as she had done for John Major and William Hague. In the Conservative leadership election shortly after, she supported Smith over Kenneth Clarke.[193]
In March 2002, Thatcher's book Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, dedicated to Ronald Reagan, was released. In it, she claimed there would be no peace in the Middle East until Saddam Hussein was toppled, that Israel must trade land for peace, and that the European Union (EU) was "fundamentally unreformable", "a classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure". She argued that Britain should renegotiate its terms of membership or else leave the EU and join the North American Free Trade Area. The book was serialised in The Times on 18 March.
Thatcher suffered several small strokes in 2002 and was advised by her doctors not to engage in any more public speaking.[194] On 23 March she announced that on the advice of her doctors she would cancel all planned speaking engagements and accept no more.[195]
Sir Denis Thatcher died on 26 June 2003 and was cremated on 3 July.[196] She had paid tribute to him in The Downing Street Years, writing "Being Prime Minister is a lonely job. In a sense, it ought to be: you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there I was never alone. What a man. What a husband. What a friend".[197]
On 11 June 2004, Thatcher attended the state funeral service for Ronald Reagan.[198] She delivered her eulogy via videotape; in view of her health, the message had been pre-recorded several months earlier.[199] Thatcher then flew to California with the Reagan entourage, and attended the memorial service and interment ceremony for the president at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.[200]
Thatcher surrounded by young Conservatives at a dinner in London, June 2008
Thatcher celebrated her 80th birthday at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hyde Park, London, on 13 October 2005; guests included the Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Alexandra and Tony Blair.[201] Geoffrey Howe, by then Lord Howe of Aberavon, was also present, and said of his former leader: "Her real triumph was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible."[202]
In 2006, Thatcher attended the official Washington, D.C. memorial service to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States. She was a guest of Vice President Dick Cheney, and met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit.[203]
In February 2007, Thatcher became the first living UK Prime Minister to be honoured with a statue in the Houses of Parliament. The bronze statue stands opposite that of her political hero, Sir Winston Churchill,[204] and was unveiled on 21 February 2007 with Thatcher in attendance; she made a rare and brief speech in the members' lobby of the House of Commons, responding: "I might have preferred iron – but bronze will do ... It won't rust."[204] The statue shows her addressing the House of Commons, with her right arm outstretched.[205]
She is a public supporter of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism and the resulting Prague Process, and sent a public letter of support to its preceding conference.[206]
After collapsing at a House of Lords dinner, Thatcher was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital in central London on 7 March 2008 for tests.[207] Her daughter Carol has recounted how she was first struck by her mother's dementia when she muddled the Falklands conflict with the Yugoslav wars; she has also recalled the pain of needing to tell her mother repeatedly that Denis Thatcher was dead.[208][209]
Thatcher returned to 10 Downing Street in late November 2009 for the unveiling of an official portrait by the artist Richard Stone,[210] an unusual honour for a living ex-Prime Minister.[211] Stone had previously painted portraits of the Queen and the Queen Mother.[210]
At the Conservative Party conference in 2010, the new Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he would invite Thatcher back to 10 Downing Street on her 85th birthday for a party to be attended by past and present ministers. She pulled out of the celebration because of flu.[212][213] She was invited to the Royal Wedding on 29 April 2011 but did not attend, reportedly due to ill health.[214]
On 4 July 2011, Thatcher was to attend a ceremony for the unveiling of a 10-foot statue to former American President Ronald Reagan, outside the American Embassy but was unable to attend due to frail health.[215] On 31 July 2011 it was announced that the former prime minister's office in the House of Lords had been closed down.[216] Earlier in July 2011, Thatcher had been named the most competent British Prime Minister of the past 30 years in an Ipsos MORI poll.[217]
Thatcher defined her own political philosophy, in a major and controversial break with One Nation Conservatives like her predecessor Edward Heath,[218] in her statement to Douglas Keay, published in Woman's Own magazine in September 1987:
I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand "I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!" or "I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!" "I am homeless, the Government must house me!" and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations.
[219]
To her supporters, Margaret Thatcher remains a figure who revitalised Britain's economy, curbed the trade unions, and re-established the nation as a world power.[220] She oversaw an increase from 7% to 25% of adults owning shares, and more than a million families bought their council houses, giving an increase from 55% to 67% in owner-occupiers. Total personal wealth rose by 80%.[221]
Thatcher's premiership was also marked by high unemployment and social unrest,[220] and many critics fault her economic policies for the unemployment level; many of the areas affected by high unemployment as a result of her monetarist economic policies have still not fully recovered and are blighted by social problems such as drug abuse and family breakdown.[222] Speaking in Scotland in April 2009, before the 30th anniversary of her election as Prime Minister, Thatcher insisted she had no regrets and was right to introduce the poll tax, and to withdraw subsidies from "outdated industries, whose markets were in terminal decline", subsidies that created "the culture of dependency, which had done such damage to Britain".[223] Political economist Susan Strange called the new financial growth model "casino capitalism", reflecting her view that speculation and financial trading were becoming more important to the economy than industry.[224]
Critics have regretted Thatcher's influence in the abandonment of full employment, poverty reduction and a consensual civility as bedrock policy objectives. She has been criticised as being divisive[225] and for promoting greed and selfishness.[220] Many recent biographers have been critical of aspects of the Thatcher years and Michael White, writing in New Statesman in February 2009, challenged the view that her reforms had brought a net benefit.[226] Despite being Britain's first woman Prime Minister, some critics contend Thatcher did "little to advance the political cause of women",[227] either within her party or the government, and some British feminists regarded her as "an enemy".[228] Her stance on immigration was perceived as part of a rising racist public discourse, which Professor Martin Barker has called "new racism".[229]
Influenced at the outset by Keith Joseph,[230] the term "Thatcherism" came to refer to her policies as well as aspects of her ethical outlook and personal style, including moral absolutism, nationalism, interest in the individual, and an uncompromising approach to achieving political goals.[nb 5] The nickname "Iron Lady", originally given to her by the Soviets, became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style.[231][232][233]
In 2011, Labour leader Ed Miliband praised some of Thatcher's key policies, stating: "Some of what happened in the 1980s was right. It was right to let people buy their council houses. It was right to cut tax rates of 60, 70, 80 per cent. And it was right to change the rules on the closed shop, on strikes before ballots. These changes were right, and we were wrong to oppose it at the time."[234]
Thatcher's tenure of 11 years and 209 days as Prime Minister was the longest since Lord Salisbury (13 years and 252 days in three spells starting in 1885), and the longest continuous period in office since Lord Liverpool (14 years and 305 days starting in 1812).[235][236][237]
Thatcher became a Privy Councillor (PC) upon becoming Secretary of State for Education and Science in 1970.[238] She was appointed a Member of the Order of Merit (OM) (an order within the personal gift of the Queen) within two weeks of leaving office. Denis Thatcher was made a Baronet at the same time.[239] She became a peer in the House of Lords in 1992 with a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire.[180][240] She was appointed a Lady Companion of the Order of the Garter, the UK's highest order of chivalry, in 1995.[241]
She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1983,[22] and was the first woman entitled to full membership rights as an honorary member of the Carlton Club on becoming leader of the Conservative Party in 1975.[242]
In the Falklands, Margaret Thatcher Day has been marked every 10 January since 1992,[243] commemorating her visit in 1983.[244][245] Thatcher Drive in Stanley is named for her, as is Thatcher Peninsula in South Georgia, where the task force troops first set foot on the Falklands.[243]
Thatcher has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour awarded by the US.[246] She is a patron of The Heritage Foundation,[247] which established the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom in 2005.[248] Speaking of Heritage president Ed Feulner, at the first Clare Booth Luce lecture in September 1993, Thatcher said: "You didn't just advise President Reagan on what he should do; you told him how he could do it. And as a practising politician I can testify that that is the only advice worth having."[249]
Other awards include Dame Grand Cross of the Croatian Grand Order of King Dmitar Zvonimir.[250]
Margaret Thatcher has been depicted in many television programmes, documentaries, films and plays. She was played by Patricia Hodge in Ian Curteis's long unproduced The Falklands Play (2002) and by Andrea Riseborough in the TV film The Long Walk to Finchley (2008). She is the titular character in two films, portrayed by Lindsay Duncan in Margaret (2009) and by Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady (2011),[251] in which she is depicted as having Alzheimer's disease.[252]
Thatcher was lampooned by satirist John Wells in several media. Wells collaborated with Richard Ingrams on the spoof "Dear Bill" letters which ran as a column in Private Eye magazine, were published in book form, and were then adapted into a West End stage revue as Anyone for Denis?, starring Wells as Denis Thatcher. The stage show was followed by a 1982 TV special directed by Dick Clement.[253] In 1979, Wells was commissioned by comedy producer Martin Lewis to write and perform on a comedy record album titled Iron Lady: The Coming Of The Leader on which Thatcher was portrayed by comedienne and noted Thatcher impersonator Janet Brown. The album consisted of skits and songs satirising Thatcher's rise to power.
Spitting Image, a satirical British TV show, once portrayed Thatcher as a bullying tyrant, wearing trousers, and ridiculing her own ministers.[254]
Thatcher was the subject or the inspiration for several protest songs. Paul Weller was a founding member of Red Wedge collective, which unsuccessfully sought to oust Thatcher with the help of music. In 1987, they organised a comedy tour with British comedians Lenny Henry, Ben Elton, Robbie Coltrane, Harry Enfield and others.[255]
- Miss Margaret Roberts (1925–1951)
- Mrs. Margaret Thatcher (1951–1959)
- Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, MP (1959–1970)
- The Rt Hon. Margaret Thatcher, MP (1970–1990)
- The Rt Hon. Lady Thatcher, OM, MP (1990–1992)
- The Rt Hon. The Baroness Thatcher, OM, PC (1992–1995)
- The Rt Hon. The Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC (1995–present)
- ^ In her foreword to the 1979 Conservative manifesto, Thatcher wrote of "a feeling of helplessness, that a once great nation has somehow fallen behind".[2]
- ^ "The hang-up has always been the voice. Not the timbre so much as, well, the tone—the condescending explanatory whine which treats the squirming interlocutor as an eight-year-old child with personality deficiencies. It has been fascinating, recently, to watch her striving to eliminate this. BBC2 News Extra on Tuesday night rolled a clip from May 1973 demonstrating the Thatcher sneer at full pitch. (She was saying that she wouldn't dream of seeking the leadership.) She sounded like a cat sliding down a blackboard." James, Clive (9 February 1975). The Observer (London). Anthologised in James 1977, pp. 119–120.
- ^ Amid uproar from both sides of the house, Mrs Thatcher shouted: "So you are afraid of an election are you? Afraid, Afraid, Afraid. Frightened, frit – couldn't take it. Couldn't stand it." "PM taunts Labour over early election". The Guardian. 20 April 1983.
- ^ Speaking to the House of Commons, Thatcher stated that "the United States has more than 330,000 members of her forces in Europe to defend our liberty. Because they are here, they are subject to terrorist attack. It is inconceivable that they should be refused the right to use American aircraft and American pilots in the inherent right of self-defence, to defend their own people."[154]
- ^ Nigel Lawson listed the Thatcherite ideals as: "Free markets, financial discipline, firm control over public expenditure, tax cuts, nationalism, 'Victorian values' (of the Samuel Smiles self-help variety), privatisation and a dash of populism." Lawson 1992, p. 64
- ^ a b Thatcher 1995, p. 150
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- ^ Beckett 2006, p. 5
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- ^ Blundell 2008, pp. 25–27
- ^ Beckett 2006, p. 16
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- ^ Blundell 2008, p. 28
- ^ Blundell 2008, p. 30
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- ^ a b Blundell 2008, p. 36
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- ^ a b c Beckett 2006, pp. 23–24
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- Withdrew after first ballot
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| Participants who died |
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| Participants who survived |
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| Political and religious figures |
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| Key events |
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| 1940s |
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| 1950s |
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| 1960s |
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| 1970s |
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| 1980s |
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| 1990s |
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| Foreign policy |
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| Ideologies |
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| Organizations |
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| Propaganda |
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| Races |
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| See also |
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| Soviet Union |
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| United States |
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| People's Republic of China |
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| Japan |
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| West Germany |
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| United Kingdom |
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| Italy |
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| France |
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| Finland |
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| Spain |
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| Portugal |
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| People's Republic of Poland |
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| Canada |
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| Philippines |
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| Africa |
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| Eastern Bloc |
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| Latin America |
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| Middle East |
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| South and East Asia |
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| Colonial era |
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| Post-colonial era |
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| Ex Officio |
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Knights and Ladies
Companion |
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Royal Knights
and Ladies |
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Stranger Knights
and Ladies |
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| Officers |
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US$ 
US$ 
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