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November 19 - November 19, 2024
She would once again find herself at odds with her own party when she decided to vote in favor of so-called “birching.” Birching was an outdated form of punishment in which criminals were whipped with a birch rod. Such things might sound like they were taken right out of the medieval period, but the British legal system was indeed still using some forms of harsh corporal punishment under certain circumstances. Thatcher herself
was known throughout her life as a staunch supporter of corporal as well as capital punishment (i.e., the death penalty).
During this period, she also spoke tirelessly on traditional, conservative values, such as individual accountability, the lowering of taxes, and reducing state intervention in the economy.
The British Empire of old was gone, and the new Britain to emerge had found itself in uncharted waters.
Britain, which had previously produced a wide variety of goods for the rest of the world, found itself largely reduced to relying upon imports for much of its own mainstays.
In the midst of all of the hand-wringing over why and how Britain had come to such a state, this seeming loss of prestige often became coupled with a sense among Conservatives that perhaps Britain’s decline on the world stage was in part due to an internal rot—or moral decline—at home.
Yes, Margaret had learned her lessons well and had discovered how she could make her background quite malleable. If she wished to impress the Tory elites, she could easily point to Denis Thatcher, while if she wished to get in good with the lower classes of British society, she could talk a good game about how she was a working-class grocer’s daughter.
The sweeping win of the Conservatives in the 1978 election would see Thatcher rise to the top of the pack and become the official prime minister in May of 1979.
Thatcher stuck to her principles and ultimately forced the strike to come to an end without any results for the Irish activists.
Even so, the battle that erupted in order to beat back the Argentines was a bloody one that resulted in the deaths of 255 British troops and 650 Argentines.
Nevertheless, despite her hang-ups and disagreements, Thatcher often showed she was open to dialogue. In 1994, this sentiment was on full display when she applauded Labour leader Tony Blair’s rise to the post of prime minister. As he was the head of the opposition party, one might think that she would view him with anathema, but rising above the bitterness of party politics, she declared Blair to be a good leader.
Still, Thatcher’s post-government life was not without its controversy, and in 1998, she gained bad publicity when she voiced her opinion that former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet should be released from prison.
