The Real Iron Lady!

James Brown wrote ‘This is a man's world, this is a man's world But it wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl’. However, there were women who lived life their own term and not only with a tag as ‘woman of desire’. They end up ruling their own state with more conviction than their male counterparts. Golda Meir, Sirimavo Bandaranaike (the first woman prime minister), Indira Gandhi were the few who once perfectly filled the slots. Margaret Thatcher, definitely the other name that will crawl into our mind. She also known as ‘Iron Lady’, Britain’s first woman prime minister and ruled the country over a decade. A few facts from her life are scribbled in this page.

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher was born in Lincolnshire, on 13 October 1925. Her father was Alfred Roberts and her mother was Beatrice Ethel. She spent her childhood in Grantham.  Her father was active in local politics and the Methodist church, serving as an alderman and a local preacher and brought up his daughter as a strict Methodist.

Margaret Thatcher attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School. Her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement; her extracurricular activities included the piano, field hockey, poetry recitals, swimming and walking. In her upper sixth year she applied for a scholarship to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, but she was initially rejected and was offered a place only after another candidate withdrew. She arrived at Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with Second-Class Honours in the four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree. She became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946. After graduating, Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics. She joined the local Conservative Association and attended the party conference at Llandudno in 1948, as a representative of the University Graduate Conservative Association.

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. At a dinner following her formal adoption as Conservative candidate for Dartford in February 1951 she met Denis Thatcher. 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. She lost both times to Norman Dodds, but reduced the Labour majority by 6,000, and then a further 1,000. She married to Denis Thatcher in December 1951. She was selected as the candidate for Finchley in April 1958 and elected as MP for the seat after a hard campaign in the 1959 election. 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. Mrs. Thatcher won the Conservative Party leadership election of 1975, defeating Heath by a good margin. A woman had never held any of the highest posts in British politics before. Thatcher was subsequently appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Science. After nine year in 4^th May 1979, Thatcher became Prime Minister of UK. 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. After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire, which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords.

Margaret Thatcher Quotation :

"If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman."

"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."

"Pennies don’t fall from heaven - they have to be earned here on Earth."