Margaret Thatcher and Diplomacy - Essay Example

Sony Peronel Farcau 11/23/09 Margaret Thatcher and Diplomacy Introduction Margaret Thatcher was one of the longest serving Prime Ministers of Great Britain. She was the first lady Prime Minister for Britain. Margaret Thatcher was one of the charismatic personalities as far as the world politics in general and in British politics in particular during the latter half of the twentieth century. She is considered as the “lady of Iron” in British politics. She was such a brilliant diplomat so that the world has listened her opinions and views eagerly. She was never afraid of the consequences while implementing her policies in British politics. She was so sure of the success of her policies even though most of her policies were not understandable to the common public at that time because of their lack of awareness about the need and usefulness of it. Globalization, Liberalization and Privatization like revolutionary policies were controversial at the time of Margaret Thatcher. But she was never afraid of the success of these policies and implemented it successfully in Britain. “Thatcherism” and its importance were recognized by the British public more than ever at present. Apart from being a good administrator, Mrs. Thatcher was a brilliant diplomat as well. Her opinions have been heard by the world respectfully and many world leaders valued her words. This paper mainly focuses on Margaret Thatcher’s career and strategies as a diplomat. Margaret Thatcher’s career Winning, winning, winning- this would be the pattern of Thatcher’s life the time she was born to her years as Prime Minister. She has worked hard to get what she wanted (Hughes, p.6). Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on 13 October 1925 in Grantham, Lincolnshire as the daughter of a grocer. After grown up, she went to Oxford University for her future studies and became a research chemist initially and then became a barrister in 1954. Before that in 1951, she married a wealthy businessman, Denis Thatcher, with whom she had two children. Attracted by the policies of the conservative party, she joined it and became the conservative Member of Parliament for Finchley in north London in 1959, serving as its MP until 1992. She was appointed as the junior minister for pensions in Harold Macmillans government. Even when the labour party captured power from 1964 to 1970, she served in a number of positions in Edward Heaths shadow cabinet. Heath became prime minister in 1970 and Thatcher was appointed secretary for education1 (BBC). When the conservatives defeated in the 1974 elections, Thatcher has made most of the opportunities and challenged the leadership of Heath and became the leader of the conservative party. This was really a surprise move by Thatcher which raised eyebrows of many people. She has worked hard and succeeded in bringing the conservative party back on power in 1979 elections and became the Prime Minister of Britain for the first time. She was successful in retaining power from 1979 to 1990. She has led Britain to success in the Falklands War in 1982 and narrowly escaped from death when the IRA planted a bomb at the Conservative party conference in Brighton in 19842 (BBC). The daughter of Margaret Thatcher has disclosed that Britains former prime minister is suffering from dementia on 25 August 2008, in the familys first public confirmation of what has been widely rumoured in Britain for several years (Sullivan). Another report shows that in June, 2009, Thatcher broke a bone in her arm in a fall at home and underwent a 45 minute surgical procedure to insert a pin into her upper arm. More recently, around 13 th of this month the rumors about the death of Margaret Thatcher spread in some countries like Canada. But as of now Margaret Thatcher is still alive even though her health conditions are not so good. Margaret Thatcher’s career as a diplomat Margaret Thatcher was one of the most vigorous, determined and successful enemies of socialism, the world has known (Berlinski, p.5). As everybody knows she was a severe critique of the Soviet Union till Michael Gorbachev introduced his famous policies like ‘perestroika’ and ‘glasnost’ in Soviet Union. Even though she kept a strong dislike towards communist countries, she dealt even the communist leaders with diplomacy. Her meeting with Gorbachev contributed in changing her policies towards Soviet Union and she also played a vital role in ending the cold war. The cold war has many times threatened the world of a possible third World War. But Mrs. Thatcher’s diplomatic efforts many times saved the world form that. Thatcher was never adamant in her policies and she was ready to reconsider her views based on the changing world politics. She had kept a good relationship with US and the president Ronald Reagan. Since both of them belong to the conservative parties, their views and policies were similar in nature. “Despite their differences in circumstances, both Reagan and Thatcher were kept some common views about their life. Family was considered as the basic building block of society by both of them. Moreover, both of them considered family as the most important institution humanity had developed” (Wapshott, p.2). In fact the similarities in views and opinion between Thatcher and Reagan helped them to interfere in world matters more effectively. Though Thatcher visited the Queen once in every week, political analysts still don’t have clear idea about Mrs. Thatcher’s relationships with Queen Elizabeth II. Many people believe that there were a lot of differences between Thatcher and the Queen in most of the social and political issues though there was no animosity between them. Both of them kept a diplomatic silence about their relationships which resulted in many speculations even now. Before entering politics, Margaret Thatcher was a chemist by profession which helped her to involve in environmental issues more effectively. Her speeches regarding the global warming, acid rain, and ozone depletion were widely accepted and noticed in the world. In short, Mrs. Thatcher was successful in providing her own contributions to the world in common issues. Margaret Thatcher as an administrator Thatcher has developed and refined ways of circumventing political protocol and procedure, partly because hers was usually a minority opinion. She liked to forestall opposition by making statements to the media that had not been agreed in cabinet, and she would sidestep cabinet altogether when she could. She didnt scruple to undermine her cabinet colleagues by criticizing them in the house and beyond, breaking all the rules of masculine collegiality. She didnt always give credit where credit was due and sometimes claimed credit for the ideas and initiatives of others, as in the case of privatization, to which she was a late convert (Greer) Margaret Thatcher was a controversial figure among colleagues as far as her behavior was concerned. She behaved indifferently at times and hence the colleagues failed to identify what is going on through the mind of Mrs. Thatcher. She often surprised others with her unexpected actions and decisions. She was not an economist or expert in financial matters. She was a chemist and barrister during her early period of life. Yet some of the economic reforms implemented by Mrs. Thatcher are unbelievable for a woman of her background. Her economic, social and political policies were still debated among the public. Most of the economic policies like globalization and privatization, prevalent in the current world were indebted to Margaret Thatcher. “Even as the rest of Europe toyed with socialism and state ownership, she set about privatizing the nationalized industries, which had been hitherto sacrosanct, no matter how inefficient. It worked. British Airways, an embarrassingly slovenly national carrier that very seldom showed a profit, was privatized and transformed into one of the worlds best and most profitable airlines” (Johnson) . Margaret Thatcher was one of the prominent advocates of globalization and privatization. The general public were unaware of the benefits of these policies when she implemented it in Britain. “When Margaret Thatcher took office, there were 3 million private shareholders; when she left, there were almost 11 and a half million. The popularity of privatization increased as each industry was floated on the stock exchange. When the gas industry was launched, the shares were oversubscribed by 500 percent” (Sir Boyson & Martino)3. Thatcher has tried to reduce the government intervention in public utility areas. She thought that the state’s role in economic matters is more than what is required at that time. She argued that the government alone cannot do much for the economic progress of the country. She believed that a careful blend of public and private participation is essential for the economic growth of a country. In other words she believed in free market economy with barriers to the private entry. Even though these policies were indigestible to the left parties at that time, it should be remembered that even the communist China is in forefront to take advantages of globalization and liberalization policies. The British people were not aware of the benefits of Globalization and Privatization in the 80’s because these policies were not tested before. Moreover the denationalisation of major public organizations like, British Airways, British Telecom, British Steel Rolls Royce etc were hard to digest for the British people. These companies were considered as some kind of monuments for the British public. But Thatcher was confident of her reformation policies and she was well aware of the long term benefits of such policies. So she decided to avoid the public protest and continued with her reformation processes for the long term benefits of Britain. British people were forced to pay more taxes during the Thatcher era even though she was succeeded in reducing inflation and budget expenditures. Social inequalities and unemployment were also at the peak during her regime. “By 1990, a growing opposition to Margaret Thatcher’s tax policies and foreign policy created a situation where her popularity within the Conservative Party was challenged” (Tatum) She replaced local taxes with community tax which was not acceptable to the general public at that time though the present analysts are of the view that Thatcher made the right step in the already messed up tax system in Britain. The property taxes were made uniform and the residential property tax was replaced by head tax or individual taxes. The general public failed to realize the long term benefits of such a tax system to the country and they started to criticise Thatcher’s policies more severely. Her popularity started to decline as she refused to compromise on the newly employed tax system which finally resulted in her resignation. Unemployment was another big problem during the initial phase of Thatcher era which resulted in immense dissatisfaction among the public. She has cut down the subsidies for business sector which adversely affected the private business and thereby the employment opportunities as well. The policies adopted by Thatcher for tackling unemployment problem did not yield immediate results. The insecurity among the workers increased a lot during this period. At the same time because of the reforms implemented by Thatcher unemployment problem has reduced a lot later. The social inequalities were increased because of the increased rate of unemployment problems and the authority of local governing authorities and public sector professionals weakened during the initial phase of Thatcher administration. Lot of people Mrs. Thatcher as a dictator since she has allowed limited freedom to the trade unions. Moreover, the working class accused Thatcher as an administrator who is polarized towards the rich and wealthy segment of the society. “The defeat of the trade unions, together with privatization, represented one of Margaret Thatchers greatest successes.” (Sir Boyson & Martino) Mrs. Thatcher was against excessive unionism and she has imposed lot of regulations over the labour unions which raised lot of agitations among the workers. But such objections were short lived and Thatcher finally succeeded in imposing strong control over unions. The British people should be grateful to Mrs. Thatcher for destroying the unhealthy strikes and unionism in Britain. The manufacturing units of Great Britain in the 21 st century is not much agitated with unionism or strikes and the people of Britain should be grateful to Thatcher for her contributions in the trade union sector. Margaret Thatcher- strategies and policies Thatcher assumed power during the last stages of cold war. She was a strong supporter of President Reagan and she supported NATO’s decision to deploy nuclear weapons in Western Europe. She has supported this in order to silence the communist dominated European countries. As everybody knows and mentioned earlier, Thatcher was a strong critique of communism and when Gorbachev put forward his perestroika and glasnost like reformation policies, Mrs. Thatcher was the first who welcomed it. Margaret Thatcher was the first person who declared that the period of cold war was over in 1988 following a diplomatic meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev. Margaret Thatcher was against German unification as she afraid that the German unification might not be in line with the interests of Great Britain. She was afraid that German unification may again lead the world towards another world war. Moreover, she calculated that the unified Germany may shift towards Soviet Union which might not better for the interests of the British people. Margaret Thatcher has finally supported the US bombing of Libya even though she had certain reservations initially. Even though, no other country has supported US actions on Libya, Thatcher has realized that the terrorism is a global phenomenon and it can cause problems any where anytime. Moreover, Libya was believed to be the factory of making terrorists at that time. Conclusion Margaret Thatcher is one of the prominent world leaders who have influenced the world politics a lot during the second half of the twentieth century. Apart from a great administrator, she was a great diplomat as well. The strong desire to succeed was evident even from her early childhood. She was never afraid of the criticisms and never shied away from implementing policies which she was sure of bringing success. For the supporters, Margaret Thatcher will be remembered as a saviour who regained Britain’s status as a world power and also revitalized the British economy through the Liberalization and privatization policies which were unknown to the world earlier. The Tory and Labour governments followed by the Thatcher regime never tried to alter the economic policies of Mrs. Thatcher which was a great recognition for her policies and stands. Most of the policies adopted by Thatcher were with the view of long term growth prospects rather than the short term benefits. Another success of Margaret Thatcher was her success in bringing Britain back from the evils of recession in 1970. Margaret Thatcher was firm in her policies and thoughts and its implementations. Thatcher’s policies were not evaluated properly at the time of her regime which resulted in many criticisms from every corner. Even her party colleagues failed in properly evaluating her policies and reforms. The Thatcher era is over as far as politics is concerned. But the contributions of Margaret Thatcher as a diplomat, politician and environmentalist would be respected by the world for ever. Works Cited 1. Berlinski, Claire. 2008. “There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters”. Publisher: Basic Books. Illustrated edition (September 29, 2008) 2. BBC. “Margaret Thatcher (1925 - )”. 18 November 2009. 3. Greer, Germaine.2009. “The making of Maggie”. The Guardian, Saturday 11 April 2009. 4. Hughes, Libby. 2000. “Madam Prime Minister: A Biography of Margaret Thatcher (People in Focus)”. Publisher: IUniverse (November 2, 2000) 5. Johnson, Paul. 1998. “Leaders and Revolutionaries – Margaret Thatcher”. 18 November 2009. 6. Sir Boyson Rhodes & Martino Antonio. 1999. “What We Can Learn from Margaret Thatcher. 18 November 2009. 7. Sullivan, Kevin. 2008. “Thatchers Daughter Reveals Britains Ex-Premier Has Dementia”. 18 November 2009. 8. Tatum, Malcolm. 2003. “Who is Margaret Thatcher?” 18 November 2009. 9. Wapshott, Nicholas. “Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage”. Publisher: Sentinel Trade; Reprint edition (November 25, 2008) Read More