THE IRON LADY

This is the life story, in its distilled essence, of Mrs. Margaret Thatcher – a highly talented, strong, outstanding individual; the first ever woman Prime Minister of Great Britain; and the longest serving Prime Minister of that country in the previous century.

In addition to narrating her life story, however, in this post we shall attempt something audacious. We shall compare the stages of her illustrious life with the four-state roadmap (see here). Why do we want do that? The answer is very simple: Because that comparison throws light on human life.

Margaret was born in 1925 in the family of Alfred Roberts. Alfred was a store-owner and highly civic-minded Methodist lay preacher in the picturesque small town of Grantham, in the English Midlands north of London. Although he was not highly educated in the formal sense, Alfred was a wise and active man. He was an excellent public speaker, who later became the Mayor of Grantham. The modest Roberts family home was located on the first floor of the store.

Margaret idolized her father. She was good in studies, high-spirited, articulate, and ambitious. The values are imbibed in her childhood and youth are described here in her own words:

• I think it was really my father who shaped my personality.
• Each of us does the job according to the needs of the time.
• If you are brought up over a grocer’s shop, you are used to going down frequently to calls which come in any time of the day or after hours.
• You are taught it was wrong to be idle.
• You were taught that cleanliness is next to godliness.
• If you found something was wrong in the life of the town, it wasn’t enough to make a speech about it; you had to go out and do something about it yourself.

After school, Margaret continued her studies at Oxford, choosing Chemistry as her subject. She participated actively in the Conservative Students Union. Later, she studied law, and was soon invited to join the Conservative party. Her articulate, savvy and forceful personality ensured her steady rise in the party. In 1951 she married wealthy businessman Denis Thatcher, a divorcee, who gave her steady support throughout her political career, until his death in 2003. In 1953 they had twins Marc and Carol.

In 1993, Mrs. Thatcher wrote these wonderful words about her husband Denis: Being Prime Minister is a lonely job. In a sense, it ought to be: you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there I was never alone. What a man. What a husband. What a friend.

Nobody who knew her well and had witnessed first-hand her ambition and drive would have been surprised when she became the first ever woman Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1979.

***

Before Mrs. Thatcher defeated him in a party vote, Edward Heath was the leader of the opposition Conservative party. The Labour government of the time was headed by James Callaghan. Heath and Callaghan were old school politicians, and Mrs. Thatcher had no difficulty in defeating them one by one: Heath in a party election in 1975, and the Labour party led by Callaghan in national elections in 1979.

The following is a list of the major policies Mrs. Thatcher followed, and the major challenges she faced, during her tenure as PM:

• unpopular austerity measures and privatization, aimed at ‘top-down’ economic recovery,
• uncompromising position against labour unions,
• uncompromising position against the IRA in Northern Ireland,
• the Falklands war,
• ‘big bang’ financial reforms in 1986,
• carefully cultivated relations with major foreign leaders such as Reagan,  Gorbachev and Mrs. Indira Gandhi,
• firm opposition to any ‘pro-Europe’ policy proposals, and
• obstinacy in trying to push through the extremely unpopular ‘poll tax’.

Throughout the eleven year period of her Prime Ministership, Mrs. Thatcher remained true to her values and her style. A Soviet journalist first dubbed her ‘The Iron Lady’. Some senior colleagues admitted later that, in the latter years of her tenure, she became autocratic and would not heed their advice. Discontent within the party, especially over the last two issues listed above,  led to her losing party leadership, which then passed to her cabinet colleague John Major.

In our previous post (please see link above), we described the first two stages of human life as (i) nurture/education, and (ii) taking up worldly responsibilities.

Based on the brief account given here, we can say without the slightest hesitation that Mrs. Thatcher should get FULL MARKS for the way she lived the first two stages of her truly remarkable life. In awe, we salute her clarity, powerful personality, boldness and drive. Her individual peak probably came around the year 1982, the year of the Falklands war, or soon thereafter.

***

Mrs. Thatcher lost party leadership through the same process which had got her the leadership, fifteen years earlier. Politics is about power, and in 1990 her party colleagues thought it was time for change of leadership. That is how the game of power is played, and surely she understood that very well.

We submit that the ouster could have worked out for her as a blessing in disguise. It was an opportunity to say good riddance to power politics, and to introspect. Is power politics the only game in town for an intelligent, talented person? What does power politics do to a person’s better instincts? Must the better instincts be suppressed for ever? If so, to what end?

Imagine that, upon resigning from the PM’s post, Mrs. Thatcher reflected upon what her country needed at that stage. Imagine that she reflected not as a formidable politician, but as a thoughtful and concerned citizen. Imagine further that she travelled to different parts of the country, to talk to citizens of different backgrounds, and to assess the conditions first-hand. 

Mrs. Thatcher believed: Each of us does the job according to the needs of the time. In the four decades since her debut in politics, conditions had changed enormously in the country. Therefore there was a need to withdraw, reflect, detach oneself from active politics. Education and entrepreneurship had been her favourite concerns; away from politics, she could have done much to promote new ventures and new ideas in these vital areas.

The country’s economy cannot be understood from the privileged vantage point of the City of London, the centre of incredible wealth, power and fame. The enormous financial power residing in the City, seeking attractive returns, does nothing for the economically languishing regions of the country.

Mrs. Thatcher had the intelligence and the talent to become a formidable proponent for policies that would unite the country and lead to fairer economic policies. But she stuck to the positions which she had shaped to perfection a few decades earlier. Her unbending attitude, so valuable during her political career, blocked her from broadening her outlook towards what was needed in the country a few decades later.

Consider what the Indian President Mrs. Draupadi Murmu and Mrs. Sudha Murthy have done – and are still doing – for India. These two wonderful ladies are distinguished not by the power they wield, but by their love of people and concern for people. Certainly Mrs. Thatcher had the ability to be like these two wonderful ladies; but she did not choose that path.

‘Western’ leaders measure everything by wealth and power. Amongst any clique of such leaders, true concern for ‘ordinary’ citizens of one’s country is bad form, even class betrayal. Mrs. Thatcher had invested her full life-force in taking up a specific political stance. Being locked into that stance, it was not possible for her to move gracefully into the next spiritual stage of life, a stage which would have been more benevolent towards the country.

Over time, a meticulously crafted, preserved, defended and projected persona closes a person’s mind. The artificial persona makes it in impossible for the mind to look beyond itself – ‘outside that box’ – even though it was the same mind that created the box-like persona in the first place.

It is not illegal, and not even immoral, to be thus boxed in; indeed, it may be fashionable and/or politically useful to have a sharply defined, easily marketed persona. Most so-called ‘western elites’ are thus boxed-in within their ‘elite’ persona. But then such a boxed-in person must necessarily bid goodbye to the wonderful and organic further stages of life which are otherwise reachable. A boxed-in person cannot progress.

During the last few years of her life, Mrs. Thatcher was plagued by poor health and dementia. She passed away in 2013. Queen Elizabeth II attended her funeral services, which were carried out with full military honours.

***

The greater the person, the longer the person’s shadow. Let us apply that totally impromptu observation to The Iron Lady.

Mrs. Thatcher seemed to have harboured a deep instinctive belief in the greatness of her country, an equally deep instinctive dislike of labour unions,  and an implicit trust in the good intentions of moneyed men.

While union leaders are not exactly saints, the workers they represent are loyal citizens of the country. One would think that a leader of the stature and talents of Mrs. Thatcher should have been able to reach a deal with workers, despite her dislike of the union leaders. Unfortunately for the country, that did not happen. By taking a tough and totally uncompromising position, Mrs. Thatcher certainly achieved ‘victory’ in her conflict with unions. But it seems that the civil conflict and its handling left deep divisions in the society which have not healed even after four decades.

As an integral aspect of her conservative upbringing and work-ethic, Mrs. Thatcher had a high regard for ‘businessmen’. Before the green light was given to all sorts of financial skullduggery, ‘businessmen’ meant those who dealt in real products: food, steel, cars, engines, ships, electric machinery et cetera. After financial skullduggery started, altogether different types of people – apparently more uncaring – grabbed the reins of the economy.

The finance sector claims incessantly – and quite loudly – to have the well-being of the real economy as its aim. The alleged mechanism which makes high finance work for the real economy is the unregulated market in all types of financial instruments. The stark reality, however, is that cunning financial operatives make huge amounts of money out of the real economy, at the latter’s detriment. Over-financialization thus creates a huge divide between the financial sector and the real economy.

It is fair to say that Mrs. Thatcher did not foresee the adverse impact on the real economy of unleashing the awesome power of the unregulated financial markets. At high power meetings in the City, the rest of the country must seem remote, beyond the horizon. If political ‘leaders’ live in such a bubble, the consequences of over-financialization go rapidly from bad to worse.

Mrs. Thatcher was a patriot, not a shyster. However, since her time, the ‘west’ has by and large been getting shysters as ‘leaders’, with each shyster followed by an even worse one. All the major political parties now suck at the teats of high finance, which defines economic policy, indulges in reckless money printing, and works out tax breaks and bailouts for itself.

Today we see early signs of the end of western financial hegemony. The so-called ‘Global South’ – which actually means the rest of the world – is seeing through the west’s financial skullduggery, and resisting being robbed by stealth. Mrs. Thatcher helped start a trend in finance whose consequences are being witnessed today, and will continue to be witnessed for a long time.

[Grateful acknowledgement: The two photographs are from the Wikipedia entry about Mrs. Thatcher, and Mrs. Thatcher’s words about her own upbringing are from this interview.]