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Margaret Thatcher (1925-)
Margaret Thatcher is the first woman in European history to be elected Prime Minister. She served as British Prime Minister for more than eleven years (1979-1990), longer than anyone else in the 20th century.
Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on October 13, 1925 in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Her parents ran a grocery business. Margaret attended a local state school and from there won a place at Oxford, where she studied chemistry at Somerville College (1943-1947).
After graduating from Oxford University she worked for four years as a research chemist. Later she studied law and eventually became a barrister, specialising in taxation law. In 1951 she married a successful businessman, Denis Thatcher, with whom she had two children, Mark and Carol.
Thatcher's political career began in 1959, when she was elected to Parliament for London. When the Conservatives won the election in 1970, she was appointed Secretary of State for Education and Science. In 1974 Thatcher became the leader of the Conservative party and in 1979 she was elected Prime Minister. As Prime Minister she initiated what is now known as the Thatcher Revolution. She advocated privatisation of social housing and public transport, reduced the influence of trade unions, lowered taxes and reduced government spending on social purposes. By doing that Thatcher succeeded in reducing inflation but unemployment dramatically increased.
Thatcher's second government privatized national industries and utilities, including British Gas, British Telecom, British Airways, Rolls Royce and British Steel. In foreign affairs Thatcher was a close ally of the United States.
In the 1987 general election Thatcher won the third term in office. She continued her reforms but some of them led to a public protest, for example, introducing the poll tax and her refusal to support a common European currency and integrated economic policies. In November 1990 she had to resign.
In 1992 she was appointed to the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven. Lady Thatcher wrote three books — The Downing Street Years (1993), The Path to Power (1995), Statecraft (2002).