Mrs Thatcher elected as the UK’s first female prime minister: 4 May 1979

She was born Margaret Hilda Roberts in 1925 in Grantham, a market town 100 miles to the north of London, to a greengrocer. The family lived above the shop, with her parents bringing her and her sister up to take personal responsibility, work had and uphold traditional moral values, a background that shaped both her future life and politics.

After studying Chemistry at Oxford, she went on to work in research and later study law. Both these were unusual for a woman even at that time. She married Denis Thatcher in 1951, gave birth to twins in 1953 and was admitted to the Bar that same year. After contesting Dartford in 1951 and choosing not to stand in 1955 because of her children, she won Finchley in 1959. By 1970 she had become Education Secretary under Edward Heath, and the party leader in 1975, defeating him on the first ballot.

Under the two 1970s Labour governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, the British economy sank ever deeper into decline, inflation surged and industrial strikes spread. Price and wage controls had been imposed by Heath in his own Conservative government, which led to his loss of the General Election in 1974 to James Callaghan.

For the next four years, as a Labour government ran the country, Thatcher fought to reshape her party. She was guided by the firm principles of personal responsibility, economic freedom, and smaller government. Her economic ideas came from Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman. She pledged to attack inflation, denationalise basic industry, and curb the power of the unions.

By then, Britain had become the “sick man” of Europe. The “winter of discontent" starting in 1978 brought mass strikes that dragged into 1979, and Labour PM James Callaghan had to call a general election.

It is hard to speak dispassionately about Mrs Thatcher, especially given what followed her coming to office. Elected on 4 May 1979 in her capacity as Leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party, she was the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom – and in due course as Britain’s longest serving since 1827. Standing outside 10 Downing Street with her husband, she quoted the words of St Francis of Assisi:

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.

She set the British economy to rights and helped the United States and the Soviet Union to end the Cold War. She believed that personal and economic freedom go together, that personal responsibility and hard work are the way to prosper, and that market democracies must stand firm against aggression.

Hard driving and hardheaded, Mrs Thatcher led her party to three straight election wins, holding office from May 1979 to November 1990. In 1979, the UK was crippled by high unemployment, nationalized utilities, punitive tax rates, foreign exchange controls, a trade union stranglehold, and a sleepy financial sector. By 1990, all of this had been turned around. She broke the power of the trade unions, broke up nationalised industry, redefined the role of the welfare state, and advanced the free market.

In foreign affairs, she stood up to the European Economic Community and said the UK paid out more than it got back in benefits. In late 1979 she said after negotiations at an EEC summit: "We are not asking for a penny piece of Community money for Britain. What we are asking is for a very large amount of our own money back."

By October 1980, the UK faced economic disaster. At the Conservative party conference that month, moderates saw electoral defeat staring them in the face, but Mrs Thatcher declared: "I am not a consensus politician, I am a conviction politician." She told them she would press forward with her policies: "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning."

In the summer of 1981, discontent boiled over into days of rioting in the inner cities of London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Bristol. Mrs Thatcher called for greater police powers, but she was forced to compromise. She later said it was her worst year in office.

Mrs Thatcher was relentlessly opposed to Communism. Her hostility to the Soviet Union fed fears of nuclear war, and the Soviet press called her the Iron Lady. She agreed with President Jimmy Carter to deploy American nuclear cruise missiles in Britain in response to a Soviet buildup in Eastern Europe. In the early Reagan years, despite big demonstrations in Britain and across Europe, the European NATO allies accepted deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles.

In April 1982, Argentine military forces invaded the British Falkland Islands. As the United States and other allies pushed for talks to avoid bloodshed, The Iron Lady knew where she stood: "We will stand on principle, or we will not stand at all." She ordered a Royal Navy armada to sail south and land British Army paratroopers and Royal Marines to retake the islands. They did, in an astonishing display of military prowess. Some 250 British servicemen and over a thousand Argentines were killed in the fighting. For Mrs Thatcher it was a great victory, and she became world famous.

When Mrs Thatcher called an election in June 1983, Labour Party leader Michael Foot campaigned for a unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the European Economic Community, further nationalization of industry, and a huge jobs program. Opponents called his manifesto the longest suicide note in history. The Conservatives won by a landslide.

Mrs Thatcher then broke the power of the trade unions. She picked a fight with the powerful National Union of Mineworkers. The coal mines had been nationalized in 1947 and had become unprofitable and outdated. In 1984, the government announced plans to shut down several mines and to decimate the workforce. In response, Marxist NUM boss Arthur Scargill called a nationwide strike. Night after night, TV news showed hundreds of miners battling police. The strike lasted almost a year, but Mrs Thatcher refused to surrender and fought it to the bitter end.

She refused to be bowed by terrorism. Despite the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, Mrs Thatcher saw the troubles there as intractable and refused to deal with the Irish Republican Army. After the IRA tried to assassinate her at the 1984 Conservative Convention in Brighton, killing five people, she insisted on continuing the conference the next day: "The fact that we are gathered here now, shocked, but composed and determined, is a sign not only that this attack has failed, but that all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail."

She pushed harder to realize her dream of popular capitalism. The sale of state-owned industries shifted almost a million jobs into the private sector. Over a million public housing units were sold to their occupants. Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson announced in 1985 that for the first time in a generation the Treasury would balance the Budget.

Across the Atlantic, Ronald Reagan cheered the British turnaround. He then invaded the British Commonwealth nation of Grenada in the wake of a Communist coup there. Mrs Thatcher protested at not being informed in advance, but their friendship was strong enough to survive the spat.

During the Reagan years, the Soviet Union began to show signs of economic failure. The Reagan administration raised the pressure by moving ahead with plans for the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as Star Wars.

Mrs Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to recognize that the new Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev was different from his Kremlin predecessors: "I like Mr Gorbachev. We can do business together." Her rapport with him and her friendship with Ronald Reagan made her a vital link between the White House and the Kremlin in their negotiations to end the cold war.

Gorbachev was opposed to SDI. Mrs Thatcher was skeptical too and told Reagan: "I know it won't work." But she changed her mind after he told her Britain would get some of the research and develop work for it. In December 1984, she helped to assure the Soviets that SDI would not get in the way of arms control talks.

In Iceland in October 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev almost agreed to ban nuclear weapons altogether. But the talks fell apart when Gorbachev insisted that Reagan first drop Star Wars. Many people were relieved. Mrs Thatcher: "The fact is that nuclear weapons have prevented not only nuclear war but conventional war in Europe for 40 years."

In April 1986, after terrorist attacks in Western Europe, Reagan sought permission to launch American warplanes from bases in Britain for attacks on Libya. Mrs Thatcher was happy to oblige. She said terrorism demanded a united response.

During those years, Mrs Thatcher's domestic legacy included liberalization of exchange controls, a huge cut in top income tax rates, liberalisation of labor markets, transformation of the legal position of trade unions and defeat of militant organised labor, sale of much of the public housing stock, privatization of most nationalized industries, and the liberalization of finance. After she deregulated the City of London in 1986, the UK became a global center for finance and investment.

She aired a principle of her philosophy in 1987: "There's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours."

Mrs Thatcher was forced to retreat from plans to privatize the water industry and the National Health Service, replace college grants with a student loan program, cut back pensions, and revamp the social security system. But the economy continued to work in her favor. She won her third general election in June 1987. Wall Street crashed in October.

Mrs Thatcher became increasingly strident and disruptive toward Europe. In 1988 she said: "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels."

She believed that linking the pound to other currencies would erode British sovereignty. At the Madrid EEC summit in 1989, leading Tories told her the UK must join the Exchange Rate Mechanism. But she resisted the idea that they could solve British economic problems by trying to align sterling with other currencies: "You can't buck the market."

Chancellor Lawson still tried to align sterling with the ERM by pegging the pound to the relatively stable German mark. Meanwhile, easy credit was fueling inflation, and Lawson refused to raise interest rates. When Mrs Thatcher demanded he relent, Lawson raised the rates, which threw Britain into recession. Lawson resigned in October 1989.

In 1990, to make local authorities more accountable for how they spent tax money, Mrs Thatcher pushed through a "poll tax" on all adult residents of a community. The tax was manifestly unfair and deeply unpopular. Protests flared into riots, and the Tories lost faith in their leader.

In the fall of 1990, the Iron Lady bolstered President George H.W. Bush in his efforts to build a UN coalition to oppose the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. She told him: "George, this is no time to go wobbly." 

That November, the Tories revolted. Deputy PM Geoffrey Howe and former defense minister Michael Heseltine led a rebellion against her. She fought to the bitter end: "I fight on. I fight to win." But she was forced to resign, and left 10 Downing Street in tears. She went on to sit in the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven.

Mrs Thatcher once said: "My task will not be completed until the Labour Party has become like the Conservative party, a party of capitalism." With the election of Tony Blair in 1997, her task was completed.

The 2008 crash shook the economic legacy of Thatcherism. Economic failure haunts the UK again. As the German example has shown, economic dynamism is possible without squandering social cohesion. Her legacy is not order but freedom. Her aim was "to change the heart and soul" of people in Britain. The change was necessary, and it stands.

Whatever one may say, Margaret Thatcher is considered the greatest British prime minister since Winston Churchill.