Dear Editor,
I was one year old when the flamboyant character of Margaret Thatcher left the House of Commons in 1992.
I first came across the name Thatcher in an 'A' Level Literature tutorial in 2007. That very evening I started my research and reading on this great political icon. Her death now feels like a personal loss.
Mrs Thatcher will be remembered for her tough stance against the striking coal miners -- forcing them to return to work after nearly a full year of strike action, and also for her strident advocacy of free-market policies which consequently led to greater income inequality between the rich and the poor.
She was fiercely anti-Communist and found common cause with former United States President Ronald Reagan, who once described her as the "best man in England". Mrs Thatcher will also be remembered for the decision she took of sending in British troops and warships, in 1982, into the disputed British overseas territory, the Falkland Islands. She, along with Reagan, could be considered the two main architects in the anti-Communist crusade, which eventually led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the destruction of the Berlin Wall that followed shortly afterwards. Because of her toughness, she was described as "the Iron Lady of Britain".
In hindsight, however, 'Thatcherism' in England failed to address the burning issues of unemployment and skewed income distribution. If anything, there are today much higher levels of unemployment, cuts in social spending, and greater income inequality.
Lady Thatcher was made a baroness after she relinquished her seat in the House of Commons in 1992, and continued to sit in the House of Lords until ill health forced her to withdraw from public life entirely in 2002. She took a country that had lost faith in itself and gave it a long and hard slapping. In the end, she left the United Kingdom in a much better position than when she was first elected in 1979. Indeed, her career had a dark lust about it. It came from ancient British history, not ordinary politics. Like a Shakespearian tragedy, when a great figure topples, poetry points us to this personality. The same traits that raise them up now, bring them down... and that was how the lady went.
Andrew King
abking020@gmail.com
Thatcher 101
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I was one year old when the flamboyant character of Margaret Thatcher left the House of Commons in 1992.
I first came across the name Thatcher in an 'A' Level Literature tutorial in 2007. That very evening I started my research and reading on this great political icon. Her death now feels like a personal loss.
Mrs Thatcher will be remembered for her tough stance against the striking coal miners -- forcing them to return to work after nearly a full year of strike action, and also for her strident advocacy of free-market policies which consequently led to greater income inequality between the rich and the poor.
She was fiercely anti-Communist and found common cause with former United States President Ronald Reagan, who once described her as the "best man in England". Mrs Thatcher will also be remembered for the decision she took of sending in British troops and warships, in 1982, into the disputed British overseas territory, the Falkland Islands. She, along with Reagan, could be considered the two main architects in the anti-Communist crusade, which eventually led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the destruction of the Berlin Wall that followed shortly afterwards. Because of her toughness, she was described as "the Iron Lady of Britain".
In hindsight, however, 'Thatcherism' in England failed to address the burning issues of unemployment and skewed income distribution. If anything, there are today much higher levels of unemployment, cuts in social spending, and greater income inequality.
Lady Thatcher was made a baroness after she relinquished her seat in the House of Commons in 1992, and continued to sit in the House of Lords until ill health forced her to withdraw from public life entirely in 2002. She took a country that had lost faith in itself and gave it a long and hard slapping. In the end, she left the United Kingdom in a much better position than when she was first elected in 1979. Indeed, her career had a dark lust about it. It came from ancient British history, not ordinary politics. Like a Shakespearian tragedy, when a great figure topples, poetry points us to this personality. The same traits that raise them up now, bring them down... and that was how the lady went.
Andrew King
abking020@gmail.com
Thatcher 101
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