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Tributes Pour In for Margaret Thatcher Thatcher Freed Market Forces, and Europe Is Still Adjusting
(about 4 hours later)
LONDON — Margaret Thatcher, a dominant, divisive and yet revered figure in British politics whose impact on British life and society was enduring and contentious, died on Monday of a stroke, her family said. Politicians called her influence on her country’s destiny among the greatest since Winston Churchill, and the authorities said she would be buried with military honors. As word of Margaret Thatcher’s death spread on Monday, her successor several times removed, Prime Minister David Cameron, cut short a trip to Spain intended to address what had been among her greatest concerns — British suspicions about deeper ties with Europe.
“It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother, Baroness Thatcher, died peacefully following a stroke this morning,” a statement from her spokesman, Lord Tim Bell, said, referring to her son and daughter. But Mrs. Thatcher’s imprint on the politics and economics of her nation, Europe and the world extended well beyond her proud nationalism. The approach she imposed on a divided and reluctant Britain starting with her election as prime minister in 1979 continue to echo even at her death. It was built on a faith in market forces, a willingness to impose short-term austerity in the service of long-term prosperity and skepticism or even hostility to the fiscal and social costs of the welfare state cherished by much of Europe.
President Obama said in a tribute released by the White House that Mrs. Thatcher’s achievement as the first woman to serve as Britain’s prime minister taught “our daughters that there is no glass ceiling that can’t be shattered.” He added that the “world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend.” Along with President Ronald Reagan, with whom she helped define modern conservatism, Mrs. Thatcher developed a strain of capitalism that became dominant around the world with the fall of communism. But she also helped unleash market forces and unravel social compacts in ways that many societies have yet to come to grips with. Even on the day of her death, leaders and citizens from Cyprus to Portugal to Washington were enmeshed in emotional debates over the policies that defined her legacy. Those cross currents continue to play out in her own country, a laboratory even now for austerity policies.
Mrs. Thatcher, 87, served as prime minister for 11 years beginning in 1979. She was known as the Iron Lady, a stern Conservative who transformed Britain’s way of thinking about its economic and political life, broke union power and opened the way to far greater private ownership. Mrs. Thatcher, 87, as many of the eulogies pouring in to her said, transformed Britain, battling for a smaller role for the state in the economy, opening the way for sweeping privatization and deregulation, legitimizing wealth, and unleashing acquisitive, entrepreneurial passions among her compatriots that still seem to make continental Europeans uncomfortable.
The daughter of a grocer, she was leader of Britain through its 1982 war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands and stamped her skepticism about European integration onto her country’s political landscape for decades, famed for her succinct rejection of three European proposals for closer unity with the words “No, no, no.” She also passionately defended her view of Britain as a significant power in the world, with interests and influences of her own that were independent of the 27-nation European Union. Just as Mrs. Thatcher once famously declared ‘'No! No! No!'’ in Parliament to a French-led push for closer European integration, and looked to Britain’s ‘'special relationship'’ with the United States as a way of leveraging Britain’s own weight in international affairs, Mr. Cameron, publicly espousing her legacy, has trodden a broadly similar path.
Mrs. Thatcher had been in poor health for months, and close friends said she was suffering from a form of dementia that hindered her ability to remember some of the key moments of her own career, including her close relationship with President Ronald Reagan. Within moments of the announcement of Mrs. Thatcher’s death by Lord Bell, Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister David Cameron offered tributes to what Mr. Cameron called “a great leader, a great prime minister, a great Briton.” He has balked at a European push for legally mandated restrictions bankers’ bonuses and the imposition of stiffer taxes on financial trading, anathema to Mr. Cameron’s Conservatives and to the financial industry that is centered in the City of London, and serves as the one of the principal founts of Britain’s now-beleaguered prosperity.
Mr. Cameron cut short a visit to Spain and France — billed as the beginning of an effort to resolve his own troubled relationship with much of the Continent — to return to Britain. More broadly, he has stood four-square against the French and German resolve to create a stronger federal Europe, with more intrusive powers to regulate national economies and bolster the Euro currency, and outlined a future in which Britain would fashion a future for itself that would revert to an earlier vision of Europe as a trading bloc, not a one-size-fits-all club in which national sovereignties would be subsumed.
Mr. Cameron’s office said that in line with her family’s wishes Mrs. Thatcher would not be accorded a full state funeral. “We can announce that, with the Queen’s consent, Lady Thatcher will receive a ceremonial funeral with military honors,” according to a statement from 10 Downing Street. “The service will be held at St Paul’s Cathedral. A wide and diverse range of people and groups with connections to Lady Thatcher will be invited. The service will be followed by a private cremation. All the arrangements being put in place are in line with wishes of Lady Thatcher’s family.” As Mr. Cameron broke off his European journey to return to London on Monday to oversee preparations for Mrs. Thatcher’s funeral, 10 Downing Street announced that the funeral, to take place next week, would include a service with full military honors, with the service itself at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Officials gave no other details, beyond saying that the arrangements would be similar to those made after the death in a Paris car crash in 1997 of Diana, Princess of Wales, whose coffin was carried through crowds in London on a horse-drawn caisson with an honor guard of military outriders.
Buckingham Palace said the Queen was “sad to hear the news” and would be sending a private message of sympathy to the family. The last prime minister to be accorded similar honors was Winston Churchill in 1965, a similarity that spoke for Britain’s sense of Mrs. Thatcher as a historical figure, and as many of her admirers said on Monday, as perhaps the country’s greatest peacetime leader.
Lawmakers said Mrs. Thatcher retired from public life about two years ago. Her career in politics ended in 1990 when her own Conservative Party forced her from office and replaced her with John Major, who said Monday that she had “brought conviction back to politics.” But the commemorations were accompanied, too, by more acerbic, even vitriolic, remembrances from those, particularly on the political left, who saw her as a destructive figure, who had ruptured the economic and social fabric of post-war Britain and left a country that was more divided, more selfish, and, for the have-nots, more resentful than at any time in its recent history.
An assessment in the conservative Daily Telegraph said, “She will go down in history not only as Britain’s first female prime minister, but as the woman who transformed Britain’s economy in addition to being a formidable rival on the international stage.” Across the world, as in Europe, the response to Mrs. Thatcher’s death appeared to oscillate between similar poles. Many foreign leaders and commentators spoke about her as President Barack Obama did, as ‘'one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and as an example to women that ‘'there is no glass ceiling that can’t be shattered.'’ However, there were others, particularly on the political left, who spoke with bitterness of the political vogue that spread across the globe in the name of Thatcherism, and which saw the rollback of socialism and the dismantling of command economies in virtually every continent, in favor of an approach that saw the free market as a vehicle to generate wealth and spread prosperity in a way that socialist redistribution never could.
“Lady Thatcher was the only British prime minister to leave behind a set of ideas about the role of the state which other leaders and nations strove to copy and apply,” the newspaper said. But, where that legacy had its strongest impact, in Europe, it has not brought Britain close to its continental cousins. Since Mrs. Thatcher’s retirement from active politics in 1990, toppled by her own party elite, Britain has drifted further from Europe. It is not a member of key vehicles of integration — the euro currency, the Schengen accord on free travel across the continent’s internal frontiers. Indeed, bowing to the powerful euroskeptic currents in his own party, Mr. Cameron has promised a referendum on continued British membership in the E.U.
Speaking to the BBC, Henry A. Kissinger, the former United States secretary of state, said Mrs. Thatcher was a “great leader” and a “good friend of the United States.” She was known particularly for her close working relationship with President Reagan, with whom she shared a profound ideological rejection of communism. So if there was a symbol of the fruits of the Thatcher legacy on Monday it was that of a British prime minister abandoning an overture to Europe to return home to mourn at a shrine to euroskepticism whose influence still tugs at many ideological passions.
But she also won the respect of some interlocutors in Moscow, most notably Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, who described her on Monday as “a politician whose word carried great weight.” Many Britons remembered Mrs. Thatcher as a dominant, divisive and yet revered figure, whose impact on British life and society was enduring and contentious, and whose pervasive influence on political thinking about the role of the state in free societies spread far beyond Britain’s shores. Mrs. Thatcher did not simply lead Britain, Mr. Cameron said as he returned home, ‘'she saved our country.'’
“Our first meeting in 1984 marked the beginning of a relationship that was at times difficult, not always smooth, but was treated seriously and responsibly by both sides,” Mr. Gorbachev, 82, said, according to Reuters. “We gradually developed personal relations that became increasingly friendly. In the end, we were able to achieve mutual understanding, and this contributed to a change in the atmosphere between our country and the West and to the end of the cold war.” ‘'She was the patriot prime minister,'’ Mr. Cameron, recalling her role in shaping Britain’s relationship with the European Union. He said Parliament would be recalled on Wednesday for a special session in her honor.
But the ideological divisiveness of her legacy was also evident in reactions to the news of her death. News of her death emerged when her spokesman, Tim Bell, said in a statement: ‘'It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother, Baroness Thatcher, died peacefully following a stroke this morning.'’
Paul Kenny, a labor union leader, said Mrs. Thatcher would be “remembered by many for the destructive and divisive policies she reigned over.” And Lindsey German, a peace advocate who opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan long after Mrs. Thatcher’s political eclipse, said she “laid the basis for policies which wrecked the lives of millions in Britain” and “should also be remembered as a warmonger.” Mrs. Thatcher, who was Britain’s first female prime minister, had been in poor health for months. She served as prime minister for 11 years, beginning in 1979. She was known as the Iron Lady, a stern Conservative who transformed Britain’s way of thinking about its economic and political life, broke union power and opened the way to far greater private ownership.
“She led, alongside Ronald Reagan, the escalation of the cold war,” Ms. German said. “She introduced cruise missiles to Britain and fought the Falklands war.” The hostility resonated, too, with Gerry Adams, the leader of the nationalist Sinn Fein party that shares power with pro-British unionists in Northern Ireland. Within moments of the announcement of Mrs. Thatcher’s death, Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Cameron offered tributes to what Mr. Cameron called ‘'a great leader, a great prime minister, a great Briton.'’
“Her Irish policy failed miserably,” he said. Mr. Cameron’s office said that, in line with her family’s wishes, Mrs. Thatcher would not be accorded a full state funeral but would nonetheless be buried with full military honors.
Well-wishers left flowers outside Mrs. Thatcher’s elegant London home, though British news reports said that for much of this year she had been living at the Ritz Hotel in central London as the guest of its owners. An assessment in the conservative Daily Telegraph said, ‘'She will go down in history not only as Britain’s first female prime minister, but as the woman who transformed Britain’s economy in addition to being a formidable rival on the international stage.'’
The reports said she had moved to the hotel after a hospital stay that left her frail and in need of constant care that required the space offered by a hotel suite compared with her townhouse home in London’s Belgravia district. ‘'Lady Thatcher was the only British prime minister to leave behind a set of ideas about the role of the state which other leaders and nations strove to copy and apply,'’ it said. Indeed, one of the most notable features of the political reaction came in the magnanimity and praise that characterized the comments of many of her old political foes.
In assessing her impact, Richard Carr, a political scientist at Anglia Ruskin University, said: “To supporters, she changed Britain from a nation in long-term industrial decline to an energetic, dynamic economy. To opponents, she entrenched inequalities between the regions and classes and placed the free market above all other concerns. Our politics, and many of our politicians, have been forged in her legacy.” Speaking to the BBC, Henry A. Kissinger, the former United States Secretary of State, said Mrs. Thatcher was a ‘'great leader'’ and a ‘'good friend of the United States.'’ She was known particularly for her close working relationship alliance with President Reagan, with whom she shared a profound ideological rejection of cold war communism.
That view was borne out in remarks from opposition Labour figures, including the party’s current leader, Ed Miliband, and former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who acknowledged her long reach in British politics. But she also won the respect of some interlocutors in Moscow, notably Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, who described her on Monday as ‘'a politician whose word carried great weight.'’
“She will be remembered as a unique figure,” Mr. Miliband said. “She reshaped the politics of a whole generation. She was Britain’s first woman prime minister. She moved the center ground of British politics and was a huge figure on the world stage. The Labour Party disagreed with much of what she did, and she will always remain a controversial figure. But we can disagree and also greatly respect her political achievements and her personal strength.” ‘'Our first meeting in 1984 marked the beginning of a relationship that was at times difficult, not always smooth, but was treated seriously and responsibly by both sides,'’ Mr. Gorbachev, 82, said, according to Reuters. ‘'We gradually developed personal relations that became increasingly friendly,'’ he said. ‘'In the end, we were able to achieve mutual understanding, and this contributed to a change in the atmosphere between our country and the West and to the end of the Cold War.'’
“She also defined the politics of the 1980s,” he said. “David Cameron, Nick Clegg and I all grew up in a politics shaped by Lady Thatcher. We took different paths, but with her as the crucial figure of that era.” But even in death, the ideological divisiveness of her legacy in office was also evident in reactions to the news of her death. Paul Kenny, a labor union leader, said Mrs. Thatcher would be ‘'remembered by many for the destructive and divisive policies she reigned over.'’
Mr. Blair said, “Some of the changes she made in Britain were, in certain respects at least, retained by the 1997 Labour government, and came to be implemented by governments around the world.”