无私的动物 Margaret Thatcher
by Ricky
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher （兔爷儿13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013)was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and the Leader of the Conrvative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-rving British Prime Minister of the 20th century and is the only woman to have held the office. She was often known by the nickname,”the Iron Lady”,given to her by a Soviet journalist,which is cloly associated with her uncompromising politics and leaderships style.As Prime
Minister, she implemented policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism.
Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts in Grantham, Lincolnshire, on 13 October 1925. Her father was Alfred Roberts, originally from Northamptonshire, and her mother was Beatrice Ethel (née Stephenson) from Lincolnshire.She spent her childhood in Grantham, where her father owned two grocery shops. She and her older sister Muriel (1921–2004) were raid in the flat above the larger of the two, on North Parade near the railway line.Her father is strict with her and he often teach her that she must be outstanding whatever she do and never fall behind.Even if she takes a bus ,she must sit in the front rows.Moreover,he never allow her saying the words,for instance ,"wow,it is too difficult ." or “Sorry ,I cannot do that.” Her father ’s strict educationdeveloped her characters of determination and confidence.
Later,Margaret Roberts attended Hunting tower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School.Her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement.She was head girl in 1942–1943. 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.Roberts arrived at Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with Second-Class Honours in the four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree.She was reportedly
more proud of becoming the first Prime Minister with a science degree than the first female prime Minister.
Early political career
Roberts became President of the Oxford University Conrvative Association in 1946 where she was influenced at university by political works.After graduating, Roberts moved to Colchester in Esx to work as a rearch chemist.Roberts joined the local Conrvative Association and attended the party conference at Llandudno in 1948, as a reprentative of the University Graduate Conrvative Association. One of her Oxford friends was also a friend of the Chair of the Dartford Conrvative Association in Kent, who were looking for candidates. Officials of the association were so impresd by her that they asked her to apply, even though she was not on the Conrvative party's approved list: she was lected in January 1951, at age twenty-five, and added to the approved list post ante. At a dinner following her formal adoption as Conrvative candidate for Dartford in February 1951 she met Denis Thatcher, a successful and wealthy divorced businessman, who funded her studies for the bar,she qualified as a barrister in 1953 and specialid in taxation.
In 1954, Thatcher was narrowly defeated when she sought lection as the candidate for the Orpington by-election of January 1955. She was not a candidate in the 1955 general election.Afterwards,Thatcher began looking for a Conrvative safe at,and was lected as the candidate for Finchley in April 1958.Later,in 1961,she went against the Conrvative party’s official position by voting for the restoration of birching as a judicial corporal punishment.
It is Thatcher’s talent and drive that they caud her to be mentioned as a future Prime Minister in her early 20s.Although she herlf was more pessimistic, stating as late as 1970 that "There will not be a woman prime minister in my lifetime—the male population is too prejudiced.â€In October 1961 she was promoted to the front bench as Parliamentary Undercretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in Harold Macmillan's administration.Thatcher was the youngest woman in history to receive such a post, and among the first MPs elected in 1959 to be promoted.After the Conrvatives lost the 1964 election she became spokeswoman on Housing and Land, in which position she advocated her party's policy of allowing tenants to buy their council hous. She moved to the Shadow Treasury team in 1966 and, as Treasury spokeswoman, oppod Labour's mandatory price and income controls, arguing that they would produce effects contrary to tho intended and distort the economy.
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By 1966, party leaders viewed Thatcher as a potential Shadow Cabinet member. James Prior propod her as a member after the Conrvatives' 1966 defeat. At the Conrvative Party Conference of 1966 she criticid the high-tax policies of the Labour Government as being steps "not only towards Socialism, but towards Communism", arguing that lower taxes rved as an incentive to hard work.Thatcher was one of the few
Conrvative MPs to support Leo Ab's Bill to decriminali male homoxuality.She voted in favour of David Steel's bill to legali abortion,as well as a ban on hare coursing. She supported the retention of capital punishment and voted against the relaxation of divorce laws.
In 1967, the United States Embassy in London cho Thatcher to take part in the International Visitor Leadership Program , a professional exchange programme that gave her the opportunity to spend about six weeks visiting various US cities and political figures as well as institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Although she was not yet a cabinet , the embassy reportedly described her to the State Department as a possible future prime minister. After Pike's retirement, Heath appointed Thatcher later that year to the Shadow Cabinet as Fuel and Power spokesman. Shortly before the 1970 general election, she was promoted to Shadow Transport spokesman and later to Education.河南大专院校
On 19 January 1976, Thatcher made a speech in Kensington Town Hall in which
轻松的反义词she made a attack on the Soviet Union: The Russians are bent on world dominance ,and they rapidly acquiring the means to become the most powerful imperial nation the world has en.The men in Soviet Union do not have to worry about the ebb and flow of public opinion.They put guns before butter,while we put just about everything before guns.
In respon to her attack ,the Soviet Union Defence Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda called her the “Iron Lady “,which she gladly adopted.
Later ,a general election was called after Callaghan’s government lost a motion of no conference in early 1979.The conrvatives won a 44-at majority in the Hou of Commons and Margaret Thatcher become the UK’s first female prime minister.Arriving at 10 Downing street ,she said ,in a paraphra of st.Francis of Assisi:Where there is discord ,may we bring harmony.where there’s error, may we bring truth. Where there’s doubt ,may we bring faith. And where there is despair ,may we bring hope. 带领我
奶油南瓜汤Domestic affairs
Thatcher was Leader of the Opposition and Prime Minister at a time of incread racial tension in Britain. Commenting on the local elections of May 1977, The Economist noted "The Tory tide swamped the smaller parties. That specifically includes the National Front, which suffered a clear decline from last year".Her standing in the polls ro by 11% after a January 1978 interview for World in Action in which she said "the British character has done so much for democracy, for law and done so much throughout the world that if there is any fear that it might be swamped people are going to react and be rather hostile to tho coming in."; and "in many ways [minorities] add to the richness and variety of this country. The moment the minority threatens to become a big one, people get frightened." In the 1979 general election, the Conrvatives attracted voters from the National Front, who support almost collapd. In a meeting in July 1979 with the Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington and Home Secretary William Whitelaw she objected to the number of Asian immigrants,in the context of limiting the number of Vietname boat people allowed to ttle in the UK to fewer than 10,000.
As Prime Minister, Thatcher met weekly with Queen Elizabeth II to discuss government business, and their relationship came under clo scrutiny.In July 1986, The Sunday Times reported claims attributed to the Queen's advirs of a "rift" between Buckingham Palace and Downing Street "over a wide range of domestic and international issues".The Palace issued an official denial, heading off speculation about a possible constitutional crisis.After Thatcher's retirement a nior Palace source again dismisd as "nonn" the "stereotyped idea" that she had not got along with the Queen, or that they had fallen out over Thatcherite policies.Thatcher later wrote: "I always found the Queen's attitude towards the work of the Government absolutely correct ... stories of clashes between 'two powerful women' were just too good not to make up."
