Commentary on Margaret Thatcher's memoirs

Résumé du document

Margaret Thatcher became the UK's first woman Prime Minister, and she won two further general elections. However, she became the most unpopular Prime Minister in British history. This text is extracted from 'The Downing Street Years', by Margaret Thatcher in 1995. In this extract she redraws the policy of her three governments, through a propaganda approach. In this text, she doesn't talk about serious problems she caused in the UK (unemployment, over 3 million from 1982 to 1987, manufacturing industries were hit hard, etc.) but she tries to justify herself on her policy opposing the Labour party and the other Conservatives. So, how does this text show that Margaret Thatcher, even though being the emblem of her party through the twentieth century, opposed the Labour party through Thatcherism which appears as liberalism?

Extraits

[...] Such a comparison must be beneficial and good for her and for her policy. Furthermore, another example of her propaganda is in the way she had to justify herself against the criticism of Capitalism. Actually, she made a series of questions challenging capitalism: was the price of capitalist prosperity too high? Were not the attitudes required to get on in Thatcher's Britain causing the weak to be marginalized, homelessness to grow, communities to break down? In short, was not the ‘quality of life' being threatened?” The way she asked all these questions shows us that it must be the public opinion criticism after her 11 years as Prime Minister. [...]

[...] In a first part, let's see that this text introduces Thatcherism as an anti- Keynesianism policy through Margaret Thatcher's propaganda. In a second part, we will see that Thatcherism is a full party, opposed to the Conservative Party, even though being a faction of it, and the Labour party. Margaret Thatcher believed in the market, she was anti-Keynesianism and she explains her point of view about the market and the intervention of the State in The Downing Street Years. She was an individualist as she says am an individualist in the sense that I believed that individuals are ultimately accountable for their actions and must behave like Actually, it means that she is against dependency culture, as she says about the United States. [...]

[...] This text is extracted from The Downing Street Years, by Margaret Thatcher in 1995. In this extract she redraws the policy of her three governments, through a propaganda approach. Margaret Thatcher was the emblem of the Conservative party in the twentieth century. After the Second World War, a political system called the Consensus was established, which was mostly led by the Labour party. In 1979, Thatcher became Prime minister and she broke out with the consensus and established a conservatism system which advocated liberalism and free market, while most of the Conservatives advocated mixed economy, i.e. [...]

[...] This text shows us how Thatcherism was a complete party, with proper ideologies different from those of the Conservative party in its entirety, and strongly opposed to the Labour party. Thatcher during the 11 years she was Prime Minister, she tried to fight against the idea of intervention of the State. But actually, in 1990 she let a conservative party divided and difficulties within the country. [...]

[...] So historically, Thatcher opposed the Labour party, and she criticized it for having let England fallen into crisis during the consensus when they were in majority. In her work she tried to use this opposition and the fact that the ‘Left' failed to show herself and Conservatism to best advantage. It is a further source of propaganda. But actually, she didn't only oppose the Labour party; she also opposed her proper one. Thatcher distanced herself from the others by her constant opposition within her proper party. [...]