Great British Leader:

Margaret Thatcher

Main Life Accomplishments:

She is a British politician, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She is the first and only woman to date to hold either post.

 

Basics:

Born: 13 October 1925 (1925-10-13) (age 82) Grantham, Lincolnshire, England

Died: 

Nationality: British  

Religion: Methodist

Fields: Politics, Military

Main Accomplishments: Thatcher's tenure as Prime Minister was the longest since that of Lord Salisbury and was the longest continuous period in office since Lord Liverpool was Prime Minister in the early 19th century. She was the first woman to lead a major political party in the UK, and the first of only three women to have held any of the four great offices of state. 

 

Chronology of Life Events:

1925

Margaret Hilda Roberts is born in Grantham, Lincolnshire on October 13.

 

1936

Margaret the grocer’s daughter goes to Kesteven & Grantham Girls’ School. BBC starts television service and Edward VIII begins his reign, but soon abdicates. The Spanish Civil War begins and Olympic Games held in Berlin where Jessie Owen wins enough gold medals to make Hitler's moustache twitch.

 

1943 

Margaret goes to Oxford something she never said she allowed to hold her back. She studied chemistry and became the first female president of the Oxford University Conservative Association. Churchill and Roosevelt hold the Casablanca Conference and Mussolini is deposed as the German’s surrender at Stalingrad.

 

1950

Margaret is working as a research chemist, among her projects are a means of improving the freezing, if not the flavour, of ice cream paving the way for Mr Whippy. The first modern credit card is introduced in the USA and Labour win the general election which Margaret involves herself in as the unsuccessful Tory candidate for Dartford.

 

1951

Margaret marries entrepreneur Dennis Thatcher and begins her studies to become a lawyer. South Africa (where Denis has several business interests) are forced to carry ID Cards identifying their racial background. Winston Churchill wins 1951 election and the Festival of Britain was held to celebrate the centenary of the 1851 Great Exhibition.

 

1953 

Margaret gives birth to twins Mark and Carol. She begins to study law. First men to climb Everest and Korean War ends, the Crucible opens on Broadway and North Sea flood kills 307 in the South East.

 

1959

Margaret wins the parliamentary seat of Finchley. Cuban revolution means that Castro takes power and the Sound of Music opened on Broadway. The Conservatives gained a third consecutive general election victory in October so Harold Macmillan stayed on as Prime Minister.

 

1966

England win the World Cup and Eric Cantona was born.

 

1968

Margaret votes to liberalise the abortion laws and to decriminalise male homosexuality. England win the World Cup and Eric Cantona was born.

 

1970

Margaret becomes Education Minister after Ted Heath’s shock election victory though more shocking to many people is the break up of the Beatles. Hardly anyone noticed the introduction of the first floppy disks though.

 

1974

Conservatives lose election (twice) and Margaret along with other right wingers plot the end of Ted Heath’s leadership. Elsewhere the Terracotta Army is discovered in China and Lord Lucan Richard John Bingham disappeared.

 

1975

Margaret wins the leadership of the Conservative Party and Arthur Ashe was the first black man to win Wimbledon. The Common Market referendum was held in June and 67% said that the UK should stay in.

 

1976

A little speech about the Iron Curtain becomes a major event as Pravda dubs Margaret Thatcher the Iron Lady. Anarchy in the UK is released by the Sex Pistols signalling a dramatic shift in British music and culture.

 

1979

The Conservative Party wins the election and Thatcher becomes Britain's first woman Prime Minister. Ayatollah Khomeini returns from exile to become leader of Iran. Sony Introduces the walkman and Brighton became the first UK seaside town to introduce a beach for nude bathing.

 

1980

Margaret Thatcher refuses to make a u-turn on her economic policy despite rising unemployment and inflation. John Lennon was shot dead on December 8 and that Xmas aside from buying ‘Give peace a chance’ most people got a Rubiks Cube which were introduced that year.

 

1981

Margaret faces a series of strikes and South London went up in flames as rioting spread through Brixton in April. In July, rioting broke out in dozens of cities across the country most ferociously in Liverpool prompting the reworking of the old folk saying, red sky at night, Toxteth’s alight. IBM released the first personal computer for sale in October.

 

1982

Margeret’s taskforce retakes the Falkland Islands and increases her popularity. E.T. is released and in December, women surrounded Greenham Common military base to protest about the installation of nuclear weapons when perhaps they might have been better advised protesting against Trivial Pursuit which was released that year.

 

1983

Conservative Party wins a landslide election after the opposition is split by the Social Democratic Party and My Little Pony is popular too. The winning racehorse of the 1981 Derby, Shergar, was stolen in February and has never been heard of since. The Americans responded to a left-wing coup in Grenada by sending in troops. Britain responded angrily to the American action in a British colony.

 

1984

Defeats the striking miners and narrowly avoids assassination by the IRA at Brighton. Figure skaters Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean amazed the world and took the gold medal for Britain at the Winter Olympics on Valentine's Day (February 14). A new disease (AIDS) is recognised and Band Aid single tops the charts.

 

1985 

Margaret claims that there are too many football clubs and the industry should be rationalised in the season that 40 people died at Valley Parade Bradford after a stand caught fire and 39 more after a wall collapsed during the European Cup Final in Belgium between Liverpool and Juventus. Margaret is refused an honourary degree by Oxford University and the Titanic was located at the bottom of the North Atlantic.

 

1986

Margaret allows the US airforce to use British bases to bomb Libya and in April, the Russian nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in the Ukraine suffered a major accident which resulted in thirty deaths. Michael Heseltine resigns from the cabinet over the Westland affair.

 

1987

Record third general election victory in the year that DNA is first used to convict criminals and Britain was hit by a hurricane with winds of up to 110mph causing 17 deaths and damage across the country.

 

1988

Margaret Thatcher accepts the science behind global warming and pledges to do more for the environment. In December, junior health minister Edwina Curry caused panic by suggesting salmonella bacteria was wide spread in the British egg farming industry. Not that it affected the sale of wobbly eggs as Britain went acciiiieeeddd crazy and the rave fuelled summer of love followed typically refusing to join the fun Morrissey records Margaret on the Guillotine.

 

1989 

Interest rates are raised to stop the economic boom fuelling inflation and the Poll Tax is introduced in Scotland. Margaret is quoted as saying ‘we have become grandmother’ after her daughter gives birth. Salman Rushdie went into hiding following a fatwa over the author's book Satanic Verses. On November 10, the Berlin Wall was taken down.

 

1990

Following a challenge to her leadership, Margaret Thatcher resigns and is succeeded by John Major. Nelson Mandela is freed and Poll Tax Riots erupt in central London. British beef was taken off menus across Europe following the discovery of the infection BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), also known as Mad Cow Disease ironically just as the Channel Tunnel is completed.

 

1992 

Margaret Thatcher enters the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher at the official end of the Cold War and also the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Di. Somewhat surprisingly John Major wins the election for the conservatives.

 

1997

William Hague with strong backing from Margaret is elected leader of the Tories. On her way to a press conference she quips ‘you knew I was coming didn’t you see the Mummy Returns posters. Tony Blair is elected by a landslide for Labour and the era of Cool Britannia begins (and ends).

 

2003 

Denis Thatcher dies leaving Margaret alone. Second Gulf War starts over fictitious weapons of mass destruction and Robin Cook resigns from the Labour Cabinet.

 

2004

Ronald Reagan dies and American re-elects George Bush the son of his vice president. Margaret makes her first public statement in a long while at his funeral.

 

2005

Musical is written about her life entitled True Blue and another one called Thatcher the musical.

 

2006:

Proposed monument to Lady Thatcher deemed to be a traffic hazard.

2007

Film of her life proposed.

 

2008 

Play the Death of Margaret Thatcher opens to general lack of applause whilst the lady herself has surgery in St Thomas' Hospital

 

Early Life:

Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on the 13 October 1925 to Alfred Roberts, originally from Northamptonshire, and Beatrice Roberts nee Stephenson from Lincolnshire. Thatcher spent her childhood in the town of Grantham in Lincolnshire, where her father owned two grocery shops. She and her older sister Muriel (born 1921, Grantham; died December 2004) were raised in the flat above the larger of the two located near the railway line. Her father was active in local politics and religion, serving as an Alderman and Methodist lay preacher. He came from a Liberal family but stood—as was then customary in local government—as an Independent. He lost his post as Alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950.

Thatcher was brought up a devout Methodist and has remained a Christian throughout her life. After attending Huntingtower Road Primary School, she received a scholarship and attended Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School. Her school reports show hard work and commitment, but not brilliance. Outside the classroom she played hockey and also enjoyed swimming and walking. Finishing school during the Second World War, she subsequently applied for a scholarship to attend Somerville College, Oxford and was only successful when the winning candidate dropped out. She went to Oxford in 1943  and studied Natural Sciences and specialised in Chemistry. She became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946, the third woman to hold the post. Thatcher graduated with a BA from Oxford in 1946 with Second Class Honours in Final Honours School. She subsequently studied crystallography and received a postgraduate B.Sc. degree in 1947. Her BA status was converted to MA by Oxford in 1950.

Following graduation, Margaret Roberts moved to Colchester and worked as a research chemist for BX Plastics. During this time she joined the local Conservative Association and attended the party conference at Llandudno in 1948, as a representative of the University Graduate Conservative Association. She was also a member of the Association of Scientific Workers. In January 1949, a friend from Oxford, who was working for the Dartford Conservative Association, told her that they were looking for candidates. After a brief period, she was selected as the Conservative candidate, and she subsequently moved to Dartford to stand for election as a Member of Parliament. To support herself during this period, she went to work for J. Lyons and Co., where she helped develop methods for preserving ice cream and was paid £500 per year.

Husband Background:

Major Sir Denis Thatcher, 1st Baronet, MBE, TD (10 May 1915 – 26 June 2003) was an English businessman, and the husband of the former British Prime Minister, The Baroness Thatcher. He was born in Lewisham, London, England, the elder child of a New Zealand-born British businessman, Thomas Herbert (Jack) Thatcher, and his wife (Lilian) Kathleen, née Bird. As of 2007, he is the last person outside the British Royal Family to be awarded a hereditary title.

 

At the age of eight he entered a preparatory school as a boarder in Bognor Regis, following which he attended the leading nonconformist public school, Mill Hill. He left school at the age of 18 to join the family paint and preservatives business, Atlas Preservatives. He enlisted in the army shortly after the Munich crisis, convinced war was imminent.

During the Second World War, he served in the 34th Searchlight (Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment) of the Royal Engineers before being promoted to the rank of major. Although, to his regret, he saw no real fighting, he was twice Mentioned in Despatches, and in 1945 was appointed an MBE. Leaving the forces in 1946, he returned to run the family business, his father having died, aged 57, on 24 June 1943, when Thatcher was in Sicily.

On 28 March 1942 he married Margaret Doris Kempson, the daughter of Leonard Kempson, a businessman at Monken Hadley. The childless marriage ended in divorce, in 1948. She met someone else whilst Thatcher was away and married him later.

In February 1949, while attending a Paint Trades Federation function in Dartford, he met Margaret Roberts, a chemist and newly-selected parliamentary candidate. They married on 13 December 1951, and had twin children, Carol and Mark, in 1953.

Thatcher financed his wife's training as a barrister and a home in Chelsea; he also bought a large house in Lamberhurst, Kent in 1965. His firm employed 200 people by 1957, but he sold it to Castrol on 26 August 1965 after suffering a mild nervous breakdown in 1964. He received a seat on Castrol's parent board, which he maintained when Burmah Oil took it over in 1966. He retired from Burmah in June 1975, four months after his wife won the Conservative Party leadership election.

In addition to being a director of Burmah, he was chairman of the Atlas Preservative Co, vice-chairman of Attwoods plc from 1983 to January 1994, a director of Quinton Hazell plc from 1968 to 1998, and a consultant to Amec plc and CSX Corp. He was also a non-executive director of Halfords in the mid-1980s.

 

Father Background:

Alfred Roberts (18 April 1892 – 10 February 1970) was a grocer, a lay preacher, an alderman and a Mayor of Grantham. He was the father of Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Roberts was born in Ringstead and grew up in Northamptonshire. He was the fifth of seven children born to Benjamin Ebenezer Roberts and Ellen Smith. His bad eyesight meant he could not enter the family trade of shoemaking. He left school at thirteen in order to help support his family and moved to Grantham, Lincolnshire, where he gained a job as an apprentice in a grocery store; he had originally wanted to become a teacher. When World War I broke out in 1914, Roberts, "a deeply patriotic man", applied to enlist in the army six times but was rejected because of his poor eyesight.

Four years after moving to Grantham, Roberts met Beatrice Ethel Stephenson through the local Methodist church, which he attended every Sunday. They married in Grantham on May 28, 1917 and had two daughters, both born in Grantham: Muriel (1921 - December 2004) and Margaret (born 1925). In 1919 they bought the grocery shop and in 1923 Roberts opened a second shop. He took one week off work every year to compete in the annual bowls tournament at Skegness. He was a religious man and also a routine lay preacher who met prominent Methodists such as Leslie Weatherhead and Donald Soper.

Roberts was an "old-fashioned liberal" who believed strongly in individual responsibility and sound finance. He had read and admired John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. He came from a family that traditionally voted Liberal but he believed that the Liberal Party had embraced collectivism and that the Conservatives stood for the old liberalism. His daughter Muriel recalled that Roberts "was always a Liberal at heart". In the 1935 general election, Roberts helped the local Conservative candidate Victor Warrender to win the seat.

In 1927 Roberts was elected to the Grantham town council as an independent. He was also a part-time Justice of the Peace, president of the Chamber of Trade, President of Rotary, a director of the Grantham Building Society, a director of the Trustee Savings Bank, chairman of the local National Savings Movement, a governor of the local boys and girls grammar schools and chairman of the Workers' Educational Association. During the Second World War he was Chief Welfare Officer, directing civil defence. He soon became Chairman of the Finance and Rating Committee, and in 1943 he was elected by the council as an Alderman and then served as the Mayor of Grantham from November 1945 to 1946, in which he presided over the town's victory celebrations. In his inaugural speech Roberts called for a large programme of expenditure to rebuild the roads, public transport, health and social services for children and to "build houses by the thousand."

On May 21, 1952 Roberts was voted out as Alderman by the first Labour majority on the council and as the vote was taken he proclaimed: "It is now almost nine years since I took up these robes in honour, and now I trust in honour they are laid down."[8] When his daughter Margaret recalled this event over thirty years later during an interview with Miriam Stoppard she said it was "very emotional" and wept on television.

Roberts retired and sold his business in 1958 but continued to preach and remained active in the Rotary Club. After Beatrice died in 1960 Roberts remarried in 1965 to Cecily Miriam Hubbard. Roberts died in 1970.

 

Mother Background:

Her mother is Beatrice Stephenson Roberts from Lincolnshire.

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