EMU Mrs. Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher was Great Britain's first woman Prime Minister.
She came to office in May 1979 and remained until her resignation in November 1990,
making her the longest serving British Prime Minister in over 100 years.
www.thatcherweb.com/

- They are not more European than we are. They are just more federal.
Mrs. Thatcher, June 27, 1991

Evaluating Thatcher's legacy
Twenty five years to the day since she entered Downing Street, Margaret Thatcher remains a controversial figure. To her supporters, she was a revolutionary figure who transformed Britain's stagnant economy, tamed the unions and re-established the country as a world power. Together with US presidents Reagan and Bush, she helped bring about the end of the Cold War.
BBC 2/5 2004

UK was right not to join flawed euro, admits Jacques Delors
M Delors, 78, also spoke with unexpected admiration of Baroness Thatcher, his old nemesis. He said that she was a “figure who counts” in British and European history, and the way her Conservative colleagues dumped her was an example of the “atrocious” manner in which male politicians treat female colleagues.
The Times 17/1 2004

One of the dominant voices of the 20th Century has been silenced:
Baroness Thatcher has decided to follow doctors’ advice and will never make a speech in public again.
The surprise announcement yesterday marks the effective retirement from public life of the 76-year-old former Prime Minister, who has suffered a series of slight strokes and whose failing health has been a source of deep concern to family and friends.
Her last speech was at a tribute evening for her old ally Ronald Reagan, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, in Washington, where she was given a rapturous standing ovation by a 700-strong audience of leading Republicans.
The Times, March 23, 2002

Between late 1980 and 1984, interest rates in Britain were slashed from 17 per cent to 8.5 per cent. As a result of these dramatic rate cuts, the value of sterling halved from $2.40 in early 1981 to just $1.05, giving what was left of Britain’s manufacturing industry an enormous boost.

The monetary stimulus from these rare cuts and devaluation was what triggered the recovery of the British economy — far more than Mrs Thatcher’s labour and trade union reforms. Significantly, only one of the great supply-side reforms for which Mrs Thatcher is now remembered was implemented before the economic recovery of 1982-84. This was the sale of council houses and financial deregulation that helped to produce the house price boom of 1982-85.

The labour reforms and privatisations that came later were absolutely necessary to consolidate the recovery of the early 1980s and to prevent it developing into an inflationary spiral; but it was the monetary easing, devaluation and housing boom that got the economy moving.

Is Margaret Thatcher winning in Europe?
May 30th 2002 From The Economist print edition

A SPECTRE is haunting Europe, the spectre of Margaret Thatcher. These days Lady Thatcher, warned off public speaking by her doctors since she fell ill last autumn, is as silent as a ghost. But while her voice is no longer heard, her ideas continue to resonate through European politics.

Warnings about the dangerous spread of “Thatcherism” have again become a staple of left-wing politics across the European Union. In Spain, as trade unions gear up for a general strike this month just before a grand EU summit in Seville, they have attacked Jose Maria Aznar, the prime minister, for pursuing “the most reactionary policies of Margaret Thatcher”. In France, the Socialists have accused President Jacques Chirac of wanting to emulate “the iron lady” by “destroying public services”.

Of course, any political figure as vivid as Lady Thatcher is unlikely ever to disappear from the political lexicon. But Thatcherism remains so live an issue inside the EU because many of the battles she won in Britain, particularly over trade-union reform and privatisation, are still being fought out on the continent. Messrs Berlusconi and Aznar, among several other leaders, would love to “do a Thatcher” on their unions, but have provoked general strikes by broaching reforms of the labour market.

Left-wingers, meanwhile, fear the spread of what they see as an “ultra-liberal virus” from Britain. Much as British mothers once frightened their children with threats of “Boney” (Napoleon), so French Socialists now send chills down each other's spine with talk of Thatcher. When she came out in support of Chile's General Augusto Pinochet in his fight to avoid extradition from Britain a few years ago, it confirmed their feeling that it is but a short step from trade-union reform to torture.

There is, of course, a rich irony in all of this. When Mrs Thatcher was drummed out of office in 1990, it was largely because her attitude to Europe appalled many leading figures in her party. The iron lady had concluded that the Union posed an increasing threat to much of what she had achieved in Britain.

Over the past decade she has repeatedly made it clear that she feels that she was betrayed and deceived by those who convinced her to sign the Single European Act of 1986, which, in the name of creating a single market, ushered in a huge extension of majority voting within the EU and thus a big erosion of British (and every other EU country's) sovereignty.

So did the lady actually win—and just not notice her victory? Inevitably, it is more complicated than that. It is pretty clear that as prime minister she may have failed to understand that the ramifications of the Single European Act would go well beyond mere economic liberalisation. In Brussels, eager enthusiasts for more European integration on all fronts still cackle with amusement over how Mrs Thatcher was persuaded unwittingly to sign away so much sovereignty. It is also true that to achieve the single-market programme, the British had to concede the idea of a “social Europe” in the shape of a set of norms on everything from safety at work to the length of the working day.

Lady Thatcher is not heartless - her critics are
By Tom Utley, Daily Telegraph 30/03/2002

Wrting in the Mirror, Tony Parsons greeted the news of Lady Thatcher's illness and her consequent retirement from speech-making with an article so vitriolic and spiteful, so fizzing with venom, that I feared for his sanity.

He described the former prime minister as a "heartless cow", a "shrill bully" who shed tears for nobody except for her "useless- bastard son" when he went missing in the desert. "This plastic patriot sent men to die and burn and be crippled in the Falklands. 'Rejoice, rejoice,' she shrieked, dry-eyed," he wrote. He concluded with the words: "Rot in hell, Maggie Thatcher."

The article was illustrated by a grotesque drawing, every line of it etched in hatred, showing Lady Thatcher with a large cork in her mouth. The cork was inscribed with the words: "And now stay shut up you mad old bat!"

Many of us columnists go over the top occasionally, in our efforts to hold our readers' attention, and my usual instinct is to forgive the odd burst of hyperbole. But when we consider that what prompted this vicious and idiotic tirade from Mr Parsons was the news that a 76-year-old woman had suffered several minor strokes, which had affected her once sharp mind, I do not see why we should forgive him.

Since her dramatic ejection from the leadership of her party and the country in 1990, Margaret Thatcher has been indefatigable—never happier than when picking up an award or delivering a lecture on how she and Ronald Reagan (to whom this work is rather touchingly dedicated) fought and won the battle to save the world from Communism.

If “Statecraft” were just collected anecdotes, it would, even allowing for Lady Thatcher's characteristic spikiness, be the book that retired statesmen are supposed to write. But Lady Thatcher has more to say. Proud as she is of her record as a cold warrior, she is riven with guilt about her part in drawing Britain into an ever-closer relationship with the European Union.

Lady Thatcher has not hidden her mounting revulsion for Europe during the last decade, but the extent of her current apostasy is breathtaking. This is, after all, someone who was happy to serve in Ted Heath's cabinet when the arch-Europhile negotiated the terms of Britain's entry into the then EEC, who, as prime minister, appointed a succession of Euro-enthusiastic foreign secretaries, signed up to the Single European Act in 1986 and who, during her last weeks in power, took sterling into the exchange-rate mechanism.

The former premier feels so terrible about all this that she devotes about 100 pages to explaining how she could have got it so horribly wrong and why there is no hope for Britain unless a future Conservative government has the courage to pull out of a project that is not only doomed but fundamentally hostile to Britain's national interest.

Baroness Thatcher is certainly not one to shirk a good fight. Her former adversaries in the EU, such as Germany's Helmut Kohl, know that all too well. This time she has come out in her true colours to declare that Britain should start the process of withdrawing from the EU.

The next Conservative government should state at the outset its intention of fundamentally renegotiating the terms of UK membership of the Union, she says. The aim should be to quit the common agricultural policy, the fisheries policy and the common foreign and security policy and reassert national control of trade policy. That would play havoc with the single market and competition policy.

Her real aim is scarcely in question. Europe is "a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure: only the scale of the final damage is in doubt", she says in her new book. It is time to think the unthinkable about quitting the EU. Lady Thatcher wants out.

It would be wrong to dismiss her outburst merely as the fury of a woman scorn'd. It reflects the frustration of a formidable prime minister who believes she was misled. For she must take much credit for a giant stride towards closer EU integration, in the shape of the single market.

Much in Lady Thatcher's analysis is correct. She knows a political project when she sees one.

She is perfectly right when she describes Europe's single currency, its security and defence initiative and plans for a common judicial area and a constitution as adding up to "one of the most ambitious political projects of modern times". But she is wrong in concluding that it will inevitably become a fully fledged United States of Europe. A federation of nation states is a much more accurate description.

By arguing for what amounts to withdrawal, Lady Thatcher will not only undermine the Conservative party's commitment to constructive engagement, to the delight of Tony Blair. She would also renounce Britain's role in shaping the EU. That would do nothing to preserve British sovereignty in any more than token fashion. The EU will combine aspects of federalism and nation states and the UK must play a full part in defining it.

Thatcher insists Britain must never join the 'doomed' euro
The Times March 19, 2002
“It can never be right for Britain to abolish its currency. And it can never be right for the Conservative Party to pretend otherwise.”

BARONESS Thatcher insists that the European single currency will fail “economically, politically and socially” and says that Britain must never enter.

The former Prime Minister storms back on the attack with a warning that the euro is “nothing more or less than an instrument for forging a European superstate” and is not necessary for Britain to prosper and the City to thrive.

British News March 19, 2002 Thatcher insists Britain must never join the 'doomed' euro By Philip Webster, Political Editor BARONESS Thatcher insists that the European single currency will fail “economically, politically and socially” and says that Britain must never enter. The former Prime Minister storms back on the attack with a warning that the euro is “nothing more or less than an instrument for forging a European superstate” and is not necessary for Britain to prosper and the City to thrive. Story continues below advertisement ADVERTISEMENT Her latest onslaught, in her new book Statecraft being serialised in The Times, comes after she reignited passions over Europe with a call for Britain to begin negotiating its way out of the European Union.

In today’s extract she criticises the Tory party’s past “timidity” over the euro and urges it to rule it out for good — a policy that Iain Duncan Smith has adopted.

She turns her fire on previous leaders by attacking the “wait and see” policy on the euro adopted by John Major at the 1997 election and its successor at the 2001 election under William Hague of ruling out the euro for a parliament.

“This was not very logical. The principal arguments against Britain’s joining the single currency are not dependent on circumstances: they depend, rather, on matters of fundamental belief which cannot be glossed over if Conservatives wish to be taken seriously.”

I would never give up the pound, declares Thatcher
Daily Telegraph 2001-05-23
LADY THATCHER thrust Europe to the centre of the election campaign last night with a dramatic declaration that she would "never" give up the pound.
Although giving strong backing to William Hague, she went well beyond official Tory policy of only ruling out membership of the euro for the lifetime of the next Parliament. The former prime minister, appearing alongside Mr Hague for the first time in the campaign, said the key issue was whether Britain would remain a free independent nation or would be absorbed into a federal Europe.

Thatcher rouses Tories with mauling of Labour and Brussels Financial Times; May 23, 2001

Baroness Thatcher put Europe at the heart of the election last night, igniting what looks set to be a crucial campaign issue. Lady Thatcher, dressed in her trademark blue coat and pearl necklace, went further than the official Conservative policy of ruling out membership of the euro for the lifetime of the next parliament, launching an outspoken attack on Brussels "bureaucracy".

"The greatest issue in the election - indeed the greatest issue before our country - is whether Britain is to remain a free independent nation state or whether we are to be dissolved in a federal Europe," she said.

"To surrender the pound, to surrender our power of self-government would betray all the past generations down the ages that lived and died to defend it.

"It would also be to turn our back on America, leader of the English-speaking peoples to whom Europe, let's remember, owes its freedom."

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Mrs. Thatcher