Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher,
LG OM PC FRS (née
Roberts, 13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013) was a British politician who was the
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and the
Leader of the Conservative Party
from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British Prime Minister
of the 20th century and is the only woman (and only scientist) to have
held the office. A
Soviet journalist called her the "
Iron Lady",
a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and
leadership style. As Prime Minister, she implemented policies that have
come to be known as
Thatcherism.
Originally a research
chemist before becoming a
barrister, Thatcher was elected
Member of Parliament (MP) for
Finchley in
1959.
Edward Heath appointed her
Secretary of State for Education and Science in his
1970 government. In 1975, Thatcher defeated Heath in the
Conservative Party leadership election to become
Leader of the Opposition and became the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom. She became Prime Minister after winning the
1979 general election.
Upon moving into
10 Downing Street,
Thatcher introduced a series of political and economic initiatives
intended to reverse high unemployment and Britain's struggles in the
wake of the
Winter of Discontent and an ongoing recession.
[nb 1] Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised
deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the privatisation of
state-owned companies,
and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Thatcher's
popularity during her first years in office waned amid recession and
high unemployment, until the 1982
Falklands War brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her
re-election in 1983.
Thatcher was re-elected for a third term
in 1987. During this period her support for a
Community Charge (popularly referred to as "poll tax") was widely unpopular and her views on the
European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after
Michael Heseltine launched a
challenge to her leadership. After retiring from the
Commons in 1992, she was given a
life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of
Kesteven in the County of
Lincolnshire, which entitled her to sit in the
House of Lords.
After a series of small strokes in 2002 she was advised to withdraw
from public speaking, and in 2013 she died of another stroke in London
at the age of 87.
Early life and education
Margaret Thatcher's birthplace, in
Grantham, above her father's former grocery store
Commemorative plaque at Thatcher's birthplace
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.
[3]
She and her older sister Muriel (1921-2004) were raised in the flat
above the larger of the two, located on North Parade near the railway
line.
[3] Her father was active in local politics and the
Methodist church, serving as an
alderman and a
local preacher,
[4] and brought up his daughter as a strict
Wesleyan Methodist[5] attending the
Finkin Street Methodist Church. He came from a
Liberal family but stood—as was then customary in local government—as an
Independent. He was Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the
Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950.
[4]
Margaret Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to
Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School.
[6]
Her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement; her
extracurricular activities included the piano, field hockey, poetry
recitals, swimming and walking.
[7] She was
head girl in 1942–43.
[9] 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.
[11] She arrived at Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with
Second-Class Honours in the four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree; in her final year she specialised in
X-ray crystallography under the supervision of
Dorothy Hodgkin.
Roberts became President of the
Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946. She was influenced at university by political works such as
Friedrich von Hayek's
The Road to Serfdom (1944), which condemned economic intervention by government as a precursor to an authoritarian state.
After graduating, Roberts moved to
Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist for
BX Plastics.
[18] In 1948, she applied for a job at
ICI, but was rejected after the personnel department assessed her as "headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated".
[19]
She joined the local Conservative Association and attended the party conference at
Llandudno in 1948, as a representative of the University Graduate Conservative Association.
[20] One of her Oxford friends was also a friend of the Chair of the
Dartford Conservative Association in
Kent, who were looking for candidates.
[20]
Officials of the association were so impressed by her that they asked
her to apply, even though she was not on the Conservative party's
approved list: she was selected in January 1951, at age twenty-five, and
added to the approved list
post ante.
[21] At a dinner following her formal adoption as Conservative candidate for Dartford in February 1951 she met
Denis Thatcher, a successful and wealthy divorced businessman, who drove her to her Essex train.
[20][21] In preparation for the election Roberts moved to Dartford, where she supported herself by working as a research chemist for
J. Lyons and Co. in Hammersmith, part of a team developing
emulsifiers for
ice cream.
[20][22]
Early political career
In the
1950 and
1951 general elections, she was the Conservative candidate for the safe Labour seat of
Dartford, where she attracted media attention as the youngest and the only female candidate.
[23][24] She lost both times to
Norman Dodds, but reduced the Labour majority by 6,000, and then a further 1,000.
[23] During the campaigns, she was supported by her parents and by Denis Thatcher, whom she married in December 1951.
[23][25] Denis funded his wife's studies for the
bar;
[26] she qualified as a barrister in 1953 and specialised in taxation.
[27] That same year her twins,
Carol and
Mark, were born.
[28]
Member of Parliament (1959–1970)
Thatcher was not a candidate in the
1955 general election
as it came fairly soon after the birth of her children. In 1954, she
was narrowly defeated when she sought selection as the candidate for the
Orpington by-election of January 1955.
[28] Afterwards, she began looking for a Conservative
safe seat and was selected as the candidate for
Finchley in April 1958 (narrowly beating
Ian Montagu Fraser). She was elected as MP for the seat after a hard campaign in the
1959 election.
[29] Her
maiden speech was in support of her
private member's bill (
Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960), requiring local authorities to hold their council meetings in public.
[30] In 1961 she went against the Conservative Party's official position by voting for the restoration of
birching as a
judicial corporal punishment.
[31]
She regarded Finchley's Jewish residents as "her people" and became a
founding member of the Anglo-Israel Friendship League of Finchley as
well as a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel.
[32] She also believed Israel had to trade land for peace, and condemned Israel's 1981 bombing of
Osirak as "a grave breach of international law".
[32]
In October 1961 Thatcher was promoted to the front bench as
Parliamentary Undersecretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in
Harold Macmillan's administration.
[33] After the Conservatives 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 houses.
[34] She moved to the Shadow
Treasury
team in 1966 and, as Treasury spokeswoman, opposed Labour's mandatory
price and income controls, arguing that they would produce effects
contrary to those intended and distort the economy.
[34]
At the Conservative Party Conference of 1966 she criticised the
high-tax policies of the Labour Government as being steps "not only
towards Socialism, but towards Communism".
[34] She argued that lower taxes served as an incentive to hard work.
[34] Thatcher was one of the few Conservative MPs to support
Leo Abse's Bill to decriminalise male homosexuality.
[35] She voted in favour of
David Steel's bill to legalise abortion,
[37] as well as a ban on
hare coursing.
[38] She supported the retention of capital punishment
[39] and voted against the relaxation of divorce laws.
[40]
In 1967, she was selected by the
United States Embassy in London to take part in the
International Visitor Leadership Program
(then called the Foreign Leader 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.
[42] Later that year Thatcher joined the
Shadow Cabinet, where she was appointed Fuel and Power spokesman by opposition leader Edward Heath.
[43] Shortly before the
1970 general election, she was promoted to Shadow Transport spokesman and later to Education.
[44]
Education Secretary and Cabinet Minister (1970–1974)
The Conservative party under Edward Heath won the 1970 general election, and Thatcher was subsequently appointed to the
Cabinet as
Secretary of State for Education and Science.
During her first months in office she attracted public attention as a
result of the administration's attempts to cut spending. She gave
priority to academic needs in schools.
[45]
She imposed public expenditure cuts on the state education system,
resulting in the abolition of free milk for schoolchildren aged seven to
eleven.
[46]
She held that few children would suffer if schools were charged for
milk, but she agreed to provide younger children with a third of a pint
daily, for nutritional purposes.
[46] Cabinet papers later revealed that she opposed the policy but had been forced into it by the Treasury.
[47] Her decision provoked a storm of protest from Labour and the press.
[48] leading to the moniker "Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher".
[46][49]
She reportedly considered leaving politics in the aftermath and would
later write in her autobiography: "I learned a valuable lesson [from the
experience]. I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the
minimum of political benefit."
[48][50]
Thatcher's term of office was marked by proposals for more local education authorities to close
grammar schools and to adopt
comprehensive secondary education. Although she was committed to a tiered
secondary modern-grammar school system of education and was determined to preserve grammar schools,
[45]
during her tenure as Education Secretary she turned down only 326 of
3,612 proposals for schools to become comprehensives; the proportion of
pupils attending comprehensive schools consequently rose from
32 per cent to 62 per cent.
[51]
Leader of the Opposition (1975–1979)
The Heath government continued to experience difficulties with
oil embargoes and union demands for wage increases in 1973 and lost the
February 1974 general election.
[48] Labour formed a minority government and went on to win a narrow majority in the
October 1974 general election. Heath's
leadership of the Conservative Party
looked increasingly in doubt. Thatcher was not initially the obvious
replacement, but she eventually became the main challenger, promising a
fresh start.
[52] Her main support came from the Conservative
1922 Committee.
[52] She
defeated Heath on the first ballot and he resigned the leadership.
[53] In the second ballot she defeated Heath's preferred successor,
William Whitelaw, and became party leader and
Leader of the Opposition on 11 February 1975;
[54]
she appointed Whitelaw as her deputy. Heath remained disenchanted with
Thatcher to the end of his life, for what he and many of his supporters
perceived as her disloyalty in standing against him.
[55]
Thatcher began to attend lunches regularly at the
Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank founded by the poultry magnate
Antony Fisher, a disciple of
Friedrich von Hayek; she had been visiting the IEA and reading its publications since the early 1960s. There she was influenced by the ideas of
Ralph Harris and
Arthur Seldon, and she became the face of the ideological movement opposing the
welfare state.
Keynesian economics,
they believed, was weakening Britain. The institute's pamphlets
proposed less government, lower taxes, and more freedom for business and
consumers.
[56]
The television critic
Clive James, writing in
The Observer during the voting for the leadership, compared her voice of 1973 to a cat sliding down a blackboard.
[nb 2] Thatcher had already begun to work on her presentation on the advice of
Gordon Reece, a former television producer. By chance Reece met the actor
Laurence Olivier, who arranged lessons with the
National Theatre's voice coach.
[57][58] Thatcher succeeded in completely suppressing her Lincolnshire dialect except when under stress, notably after provocation from
Denis Healey in the House of Commons in April 1983, when she accused the Labour front bench of being
frit.
[59][60]
On 19 January 1976 Thatcher made a speech in Kensington Town Hall in which she made a scathing attack on the Soviet Union:
The Russians are bent on world dominance, and they
are rapidly acquiring the means to become the most powerful imperial
nation the world has seen. The men in the Soviet
Politburo 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.
[61]
In response, the
Soviet Defence Ministry newspaper
Krasnaya Zvezda (
Red Star) called her the "
Iron Lady,"
[61] a sobriquet she gladly adopted.
Margaret Thatcher wanted to prevent the creation of a Scottish
assembly. She told Conservative MPs to vote against the Scotland and
Wales Bill in December 1976, which was defeated, and then when new Bills
were proposed she supported amending the legislation to allow the
English to vote in the
1979 referendum on devolution.
[62]
In mid-1978, the economy began to improve and opinion polls showed
Labour in the lead, with a general election being expected later that
year and a Labour win a serious possibility. Prime Minister
James Callaghan
surprised many by announcing on 7 September that there would be no
general election that year and he would wait until 1979 before going to
the polls. Thatcher reacted to this by branding the Labour government as
"chickens", and
Liberal Party leader
David Steel joined in, criticising Labour for "running scared".
[63]
The Labour government then faced fresh public unease about the
direction of the country and a damaging series of strikes during the
winter of 1978–79, dubbed the "
Winter of Discontent". The Conservatives attacked the Labour government's unemployment record, using advertising with the slogan
Labour Isn't Working. A
general election was called after James Callaghan's government lost a
motion of no confidence
in early 1979. The Conservatives won a 44-seat majority in the House of
Commons, and Margaret Thatcher became the UK's first female Prime
Minister.
Prime Minister (1979–1990)
Thatcher became Prime Minister on 4 May 1979. Arriving at 10 Downing Street, she said, in a paraphrase of the "
Prayer of Saint Francis":
Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where
there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring
faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.
[64]
Domestic affairs
Thatcher was Leader of the Opposition and Prime Minister at a time of increased 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".
[65][66] Her standing in the polls rose by 11 percent 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 those 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."
[67][68] In the 1979 general election, the Conservatives attracted voters from the National Front, whose support almost collapsed.
[69][70] 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,
[71] in the context of limiting the number of
Vietnamese boat people allowed to settle 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 close scrutiny. In July 1986,
The Sunday Times reported claims attributed to the Queen's advisers of a "rift" between
Buckingham Palace and
Downing Street "over a wide range of domestic and international issues".
[74][75] The Palace issued an official denial, heading off speculation about a possible constitutional crisis.
[75]
After Thatcher's retirement a senior Palace source again dismissed as
"nonsense" the "stereotyped idea" that she had not got along with the
Queen, or that they had fallen out over Thatcherite policies.
[76]
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."
In August 1989, Thatcher queried her government's response to the
Taylor Report,
writing a hand-written comment on a Downing Street briefing note: "The
broad thrust is devastating criticism of the police. Is that for us to
welcome? Surely we welcome the thoroughness of the report and its
recommendations?"
[78]
During her time in office, Thatcher practised great frugality in her
official residence, including insisting on paying for her own
ironing-board.
[79]
Economy and taxation
Thatcher's economic policy was influenced by
monetarist thinking and economists such as
Milton Friedman and
Alan Walters.
[80] Together with
Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe, she lowered direct taxes on income and increased indirect taxes.
[81] She increased interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply and thereby lower inflation,
[80] introduced cash limits on public spending, and reduced expenditure on social services such as education and housing.
[81]
Her cuts in higher education spending resulted in her being the first
Oxford-educated post-war Prime Minister not to be awarded an honorary
doctorate by the University of Oxford, after a 738 to 319 vote of the
governing assembly and a student petition.
[82] Her new centrally funded
City Technology Colleges
did not enjoy much success, and the Funding Agency for Schools was set
up to control expenditure by opening and closing schools; the
Social Market Foundation, a centre-left think tank, described it as having "an extraordinary range of dictatorial powers".
Some Heathite Conservatives in the Cabinet, the so-called "
wets", expressed doubt over Thatcher's policies.
[86] The
1981 riots in England
resulted in the British media discussing the need for a policy U-turn.
At the 1980 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher addressed the issue
directly, with a speech written by the playwright
Ronald Millar that included the lines: "You turn if you want to.
The lady's not for turning!"
[86]
Thatcher's job approval rating fell to 23 per cent by December 1980, lower than recorded for any previous Prime Minister.
[88] As the
recession of the early 1980s deepened she increased taxes,
[89] despite concerns expressed in a statement signed by 364 leading economists issued towards the end of March 1981.
[90]
By 1982 the UK began to experience signs of economic recovery;
inflation was down to 8.6 per cent from a high of 18 per cent, but
unemployment was over 3 million for the first time since the 1930s.
[92]
By 1983 overall economic growth was stronger and inflation and mortgage
rates were at their lowest levels since 1970, although manufacturing
output had dropped by 30 per cent since 1978
[93] and unemployment remained high, peaking at 3.3 million in 1984.
[94]
By 1987, unemployment was falling, the economy was stable and strong,
and inflation was low. Opinion polls showed a comfortable Conservative
lead, and
local council election
results had also been successful, prompting Thatcher to call a general
election for 11 June that year, despite the deadline for an election
still being 12 months away. The
election saw Thatcher re-elected for a third successive term.
[95]
Throughout the 1980s revenue from the 90 per cent tax on
North Sea oil extraction was used as a short-term funding source to balance the economy and pay the costs of reform.
Thatcher reformed local government taxes by replacing
domestic rates—a tax based on the nominal rental value of a home—with the
Community Charge (or poll tax) in which the same amount was charged to each adult resident.
[97] The new tax was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales the following year,
[98] and proved to be among the most unpopular policies of her premiership.
[97] Public disquiet culminated in a 70,000 to 200,000-strong
[99] demonstration in London on 31 March 1990; the demonstration around
Trafalgar Square deteriorated into the
Poll Tax Riots, leaving 113 people injured and 340 under arrest.
[100] The Community Charge was abolished by her successor,
John Major.
[100]
Industrial relations
Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the
trade unions, whose leadership she accused of undermining parliamentary democracy and economic performance through strike action. Several unions launched strikes in response to legislation introduced to curb their power, but resistance eventually collapsed.
[102] Only 39% of union members voted for Labour in the 1983 general election.
[103] According to the BBC, Thatcher "managed to destroy the power of the trade unions for almost a generation".
[104]
The
miners' strike was the biggest confrontation between the unions and the Thatcher government. In March 1984 the
National Coal Board (NCB) proposed to close 20 of the 174 state-owned mines and cut 20,000 jobs out of 187,000.
[105][106][107] Two-thirds of the country's miners, led by the
National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) under
Arthur Scargill, downed tools in protest.
[105][108][109] Scargill had refused to hold a ballot on the strike,
[110] having previously lost three ballots on a national strike (January 1982, October 1982, March 1983).
[111] This led to the strike being declared illegal.
[112][113]
Thatcher refused to meet the union's demands and compared the miners'
dispute to the Falklands conflict two years earlier, declaring in a
speech in 1984: "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We
always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more
difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty."
[114]
After a year out on strike, in March 1985, the NUM leadership conceded
without a deal. The cost to the economy was estimated to be at least
£1.5 billion, and the strike was blamed for much of the
pound's fall against the
US dollar.
[115] The government closed 25 unprofitable coal mines in 1985, and by 1992 a total of 97 had been closed;
[107] those that remained were privatised in 1994.
[116]
The eventual closure of 150 coal mines, not all of which were losing
money, resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and devastated
entire communities.
[107][117]
Miners had helped bring down the Heath government, and Thatcher was
determined to succeed where he had failed. Her strategy of preparing
fuel stocks, appointing a union-busting NCB leader in
Ian MacGregor, and ensuring police were adequately trained and equipped with riot gear, contributed to her victory.
[118]
The number of stoppages across the UK peaked at 4583 in 1979, when
more than 29 million working days were lost. In 1984, the year of the
miners' strike, there were 1221, resulting in the loss of more than
27 million working days. Stoppages then fell steadily throughout the
rest of Thatcher's premiership; in 1990 there were 630 and fewer than
2 million working days lost, and they continued to fall thereafter.
[119] Trade union membership also fell, from 13.5 million in 1979 to fewer than 10 million by the time Thatcher left office in 1990.
[120]
Privatisation
The policy of
privatisation has been called "a crucial ingredient of Thatcherism".
[121] After the 1983 election the sale of state utilities accelerated;
[122]
more than £29 billion was raised from the sale of nationalised
industries, and another £18 billion from the sale of council houses.
[123]
The process of privatisation, especially the preparation of
nationalised industries for privatisation, was associated with marked
improvements in performance, particularly in terms of
labour productivity.
[124] Some of the privatised industries, including gas, water, and electricity, were
natural monopolies
for which privatisation involved little increase in competition. The
privatised industries that demonstrated improvement often did so while
still under state ownership.
British Steel,
for instance, made great gains in profitability while still a
nationalised industry under the government-appointed chairmanship of Ian
MacGregor, who faced down trade-union opposition to close plants and
reduce the workforce by half.
[125]
Regulation was also significantly expanded to compensate for the loss
of direct government control, with the foundation of regulatory bodies
like
Ofgas,
Oftel and the
National Rivers Authority.
[126] There was no clear pattern to the degree of competition, regulation, and performance among the privatised industries;
[124]
in most cases privatisation benefitted consumers in terms of lower
prices and improved efficiency, but the results overall were "mixed".
[127]
Thatcher always resisted rail privatisation and was said to have told
Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley
"Railway privatisation will be the Waterloo of this government. Please
never mention the railways to me again." Shortly before her resignation,
she accepted the arguments for privatising
British Rail, which her successor John Major implemented in 1994.
[128] The Economist later considered the move to have been "a disaster".
[127]
The privatisation of public assets was combined with
financial deregulation
in an attempt to fuel economic growth. Geoffrey Howe abolished
Britain's exchange controls in 1979, allowing more capital to be
invested in foreign markets, and the
Big Bang of 1986 removed many restrictions on the
London Stock Exchange.
The Thatcher government encouraged growth in the finance and service
sectors to compensate for Britain's ailing manufacturing industry.
Northern Ireland
In 1980 and 1981,
Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and
Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners in Northern Ireland's
Maze Prison carried out
hunger strikes in an effort to regain the status of political prisoners that had been removed in 1976 by the preceding Labour government.
[129] Bobby Sands
began the 1981 strike, saying that he would fast until death unless
prison inmates won concessions over their living conditions.
[129]
Thatcher refused to countenance a return to political status for the
prisoners, declaring "Crime is crime is crime; it is not political",
[129] but nevertheless the UK government privately contacted republican leaders in a bid to bring the hunger strikes to an end.
[130]
After the deaths of Sands and nine others, some rights were restored to
paramilitary prisoners, but not official recognition of their political
status.
[131] Violence in Northern Ireland escalated significantly during the hunger strikes; in 1982
Sinn Féin politician
Danny Morrison described Thatcher as "the biggest bastard we have ever known".
[132]
Thatcher narrowly escaped injury in an IRA
assassination attempt at a Brighton hotel early in the morning on 12 October 1984.
[133] Five people were killed, including the wife of Cabinet Minister
John Wakeham.
Thatcher was staying at the hotel to attend the Conservative Party
Conference, which she insisted should open as scheduled the following
day.
[133] She delivered her speech as planned,
[134] a move that was widely supported across the political spectrum and enhanced her popularity with the public.
[135]
On 6 November 1981 Thatcher and Irish
Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald had established the Anglo-Irish Inter-Governmental Council, a forum for meetings between the two governments.
[131] On 15 November 1985, Thatcher and FitzGerald signed the Hillsborough
Anglo-Irish Agreement,
the first time a British government had given the Republic of Ireland
an advisory role in the governance of Northern Ireland. In protest the
Ulster Says No movement attracted 100,000 to a rally in Belfast,
[136] Ian Gow resigned as
Minister of State in the
HM Treasury,
[137][138] and all fifteen Unionist MPs resigned their parliamentary seats; only one was not returned in the subsequent
by-elections on 23 January 1986.
[139]
Foreign affairs
The Thatchers with the Reagans standing at the North Portico of the
White House before a state dinner, 16 November 1988
Thatcher took office during the
Cold War and became closely aligned with the policies of
United States President Ronald Reagan, based on their shared distrust of Communism,
[102] although she strongly opposed Reagan's October 1983
invasion of Grenada.
[140]
Reagan had assured Thatcher that an invasion was not contemplated, and
thereafter Thatcher felt she could never fully trust Reagan again.
[141] During her first year as Prime Minister she supported
NATO's decision to deploy US nuclear
cruise and
Pershing missiles in Western Europe
[102] and permitted the US to station more than 160 cruise missiles at
RAF Greenham Common, starting on 14 November 1983 and triggering mass protests by the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
[102] She bought the
Trident nuclear missile submarine system from the US to replace Polaris, tripling the UK's nuclear forces
[142] at an eventual cost of more than £12 billion (at 1996–97 prices).
[143] Thatcher's preference for defence ties with the US was demonstrated in the
Westland affair of January 1986, when she acted with colleagues to allow the struggling helicopter manufacturer
Westland to refuse a takeover offer from the Italian firm
Agusta in favour of the management's preferred option, a link with
Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation. The UK Defence Secretary,
Michael Heseltine, who had supported the Agusta deal, resigned in protest.
On 2 April 1982 the ruling
military junta in Argentina ordered the invasion of the British-controlled
Falkland Islands and
South Georgia, triggering the
Falklands War.
[145] The subsequent crisis was "a defining moment of her [Thatcher's] premiership".
[146] At the suggestion of
Harold Macmillan and
Robert Armstrong,
[146] she set up and chaired a small
War Cabinet (formally called ODSA, Overseas and Defence committee, South Atlantic) to take charge of the conduct of the war,
[147] which by 5–6 April had authorised and dispatched a naval task force to retake the islands.
Argentina surrendered on 14 June and the operation was hailed a
success, notwithstanding the deaths of 255 British servicemen and
3 Falkland Islanders. Argentinian deaths totalled 649, half of them
after the nuclear-powered submarine
HMS Conqueror torpedoed and sank the cruiser
ARA General Belgrano on 2 May.
[149] Thatcher was criticised for the neglect of the Falklands' defence that led to the war, and notably by
Tam Dalyell in parliament for the decision to sink the
General Belgrano, but overall she was considered a highly capable and committed war leader.
The "Falklands factor", an economic recovery beginning early in 1982,
and a bitterly divided opposition contributed to Thatcher's second
election victory in
1983.
[151]
Thatcher often referred after the war to the "Falklands Spirit";
Hastings and Jenkins (1983) suggested that this reflected her preference
for the streamlined decision-making of her War Cabinet over the
painstaking deal-making of peace-time
cabinet government.
In September 1982 she visited
China to discuss with
Deng Xiaoping the
sovereignty of Hong Kong
after 1997. China was the first communist state Thatcher had visited
and she was the first British prime minister to visit China. Throughout
their meeting, she sought the PRC's agreement to a continued British
presence in the territory. Deng stated clearly the PRC's sovereignty on
Hong Kong was non-negotiable, but he was willing to settle the
sovereignty issue with Britain through formal negotiations, and both
governments promised to maintain Hong Kong's stability and prosperity.
[153] After the two-year negotiations, Thatcher made concession to the PRC government and signed the
Sino-British Joint Declaration in Beijing in December 1984, handing over Hong Kong's sovereignty in 1997.
Although saying that she was in favour of "peaceful negotiations" to end
apartheid,
[154] Thatcher stood against the sanctions imposed on
South Africa by the
Commonwealth and the
EC.
[155]
She attempted to preserve trade with South Africa while persuading the
regime there to abandon apartheid. This included "[c]asting herself as
President
Botha's candid friend", and inviting him to visit the UK in June 1984, in spite of the "inevitable demonstrations" against his regime. Thatcher, on the other hand, dismissed the
African National Congress (ANC) in October 1987 as "a typical terrorist organisation".
[157]
The Thatcher government supported the
Khmer Rouge keeping their seat in the
UN after they were ousted from power in Cambodia by the
Cambodian–Vietnamese War. Although denying it at the time they also sent the
SAS to train the non-Communist members of the
CGDK to fight against the Vietnamese-backed
People's Republic of Kampuchea government.
[159][160]
Thatcher's antipathy towards
European integration became more pronounced during her premiership, particularly after her third election victory in 1987. During a 1988 speech in
Bruges she outlined her opposition to proposals from the European Community (EC), forerunner of the
European Union, for a federal structure and increased centralisation of decision making.
[161] Thatcher and her party had supported British membership of the EC in the
1975 national referendum,
[162]
but she believed that the role of the organisation should be limited to
ensuring free trade and effective competition, and feared that the EC's
approach was at odds with her views on smaller government and
deregulation;
[163]
in 1988, she remarked, "We have not successfully rolled back the
frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a
European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance
from Brussels".
[163] Thatcher was firmly opposed to the UK's membership of the
Exchange Rate Mechanism, a precursor to European monetary union, believing that it would constrain the British economy,
[164] despite the urging of her
Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson and Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, but she was persuaded by John Major to join in October 1990, at what proved to be too high a rate.
Thatcher with Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife,
Raisa, at the Soviet Embassy in London, 1 April 1989
In April 1986, Thatcher permitted US
F-111s to use
Royal Air Force bases for the
bombing of Libya in retaliation for the alleged
Libyan bombing of a Berlin discothèque,
[167] citing the right of self-defence under
Article 51 of the UN Charter.
[168][nb 3] Polls suggested that fewer than one in three British citizens approved of Thatcher's decision.
[170] She was in the US on a state visit when Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein invaded neighbouring
Kuwait in August 1990.
[171] During her talks with US President
George H. W. Bush, who had succeeded Reagan in 1989, she recommended intervention,
[171] and put pressure on Bush to deploy troops in the Middle East to drive the
Iraqi Army out of Kuwait.
[172]
Bush was somewhat apprehensive about the plan, prompting Thatcher to
remark to him during a telephone conversation that "This was no time to
go wobbly!"
[173] Thatcher's government provided military forces to the international coalition in the build-up to the
Gulf War, but she had resigned by the time hostilities began on 17 January 1991.
Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to respond warmly to reformist Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev.
Following Reagan–Gorbachev summit meetings and reforms enacted by
Gorbachev in the USSR, she declared in November 1988 that "We're not in a
Cold War now", but rather in a "new relationship much wider than the
Cold War ever was".
[174] She went on a state visit to the Soviet Union in 1984 and met with Gorbachev and
Nikolai Ryzhkov, the
Chairman of the
Council of Ministers.
[175] Thatcher was initially opposed to
German reunification,
telling Gorbachev that it "would lead to a change to postwar borders,
and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the
stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our
security". She expressed concern that a united Germany would align
itself more closely with the Soviet Union and move away from NATO.
[176] In contrast she was an advocate of
Croatian and
Slovenian independence.
[177] In a 1991 interview for
Croatian Radiotelevision, Thatcher commented on the
Yugoslav Wars;
she was critical of Western governments for not recognising the
breakaway republics of Croatia and Slovenia as independent states and
supplying them with arms after the Serbian-led
Yugoslav Army attacked.
[178]
Challenges to leadership and resignation
Thatcher was challenged for the leadership of the Conservative Party by the little-known backbench MP Sir
Anthony Meyer in the
1989 leadership election.
[179] Of the 374 Conservative MPs eligible to vote, 314 voted for Thatcher and 33 for Meyer.
[179]
Her supporters in the party viewed the result as a success, and
rejected suggestions that there was discontent within the party.
[179]
During her premiership Thatcher had the second-lowest average
approval rating, at 40 percent, of any post-war Prime Minister. Polls
consistently showed that she was less popular than her party.
[180]
A self-described conviction politician, Thatcher always insisted that
she did not care about her poll ratings, pointing instead to her
unbeaten election record.
[181]
Opinion polls in September 1990 reported that Labour had established a 14% lead over the Conservatives,
[182] and by November the Conservatives had been trailing Labour for 18 months.
[180]
These ratings, together with Thatcher's combative personality and
willingness to override colleagues' opinions, contributed to discontent
within the Conservative party.
[183]
On 1 November 1990
Geoffrey Howe, the last remaining member of Thatcher's original 1979 cabinet, resigned from his position as
Deputy Prime Minister over her refusal to agree to a timetable for Britain to join the
European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
[182][184]
In his resignation speech on 13 November, Howe commented on Thatcher's
European stance: "It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the
crease only for them to find the moment that the first balls are bowled
that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain."
[185] His resignation was fatal to Thatcher's premiership.
[186]
The next day,
Michael Heseltine mounted a challenge for the leadership of the Conservative Party.
[187] Opinion polls had indicated that he would give the Conservatives a national lead over Labour.
[188]
Although Thatcher won the first ballot, Heseltine attracted sufficient
support (152 votes) to force a second ballot. Under party rules,
Thatcher not only needed to win a majority, but her margin over
Heseltine had to be equivalent to 15 percent of the 372 Conservative MPs
in order to win the leadership election outright; she came up four
votes short.
[189]
Thatcher initially stated that she intended to "fight on and fight to
win" the second ballot, but consultation with her Cabinet persuaded her
to withdraw.
[183][190] After seeing the Queen, calling other world leaders, and making one final Commons speech,
[191] she left Downing Street in tears. She regarded her ousting as a betrayal.
Thatcher was replaced as Prime Minister and party leader by her
Chancellor John Major, who oversaw an upturn in Conservative support in
the 17 months leading up to the
1992 general election and led the Conservatives to their fourth successive victory on 9 April 1992.
[193] Thatcher favoured Major over Heseltine in the leadership contest, but her support for him weakened in later years.
[194]
Later life (1990–2013)
Thatcher returned to the
backbenches as MP for Finchley for two years after leaving the premiership.
[195]
She retired from the House at the 1992 election, aged 66, saying that
leaving the Commons would allow her more freedom to speak her mind.
[196]
Post-Commons
After leaving the House of Commons, Thatcher became the first former Prime Minister to set up a foundation;
[197] the British wing was dissolved in 2005 because of financial difficulties.
[198] She wrote two volumes of memoirs,
The Downing Street Years (1993) and
The Path to Power (1995). In 1991, she and her husband Dennis moved to a house in
Chester Square, a residential garden square in central London's
Belgravia district.
[199]
In July 1992, Thatcher was hired by the tobacco company
Philip Morris as a "geopolitical consultant" for $250,000 per year and an annual contribution of $250,000 to her foundation.
[200] She also earned $50,000 for each speech she delivered.
[201]
In August 1992, Thatcher called for NATO to stop the Serbian assault on
Goražde and
Sarajevo to end
ethnic cleansing during the
Bosnian War. She compared the situation in Bosnia to "the worst excesses of the Nazis", and warned that there could be a "holocaust".
[202] She made a series of speeches in the Lords criticising the
Maastricht Treaty,
[196] describing it as "a treaty too far" and stated "I could never have signed this treaty".
[203] She cited
A. V. Dicey when stating that as all three main parties were in favour of revisiting the treaty, the people should have their say.
[204]
Thatcher was honorary
Chancellor of the
College of William and Mary in Virginia (1993–2000)
[205] and also of the
University of Buckingham (1992–1999), the UK's first private university, which she had opened in 1975.
[206]
After
Tony Blair's
election as Labour Party leader in 1994, Thatcher praised Blair in an interview as "probably the most formidable Labour leader since
Hugh Gaitskell. I see a lot of socialism behind their front bench, but not in Mr Blair. I think he genuinely has moved".
[207]
In 1998, Thatcher called for the release of former Chilean dictator
Augusto Pinochet when Spain had him
arrested and sought to try him for human rights violations, citing the help he gave Britain during the Falklands War.
[208] In 1999, she visited him while he was under house arrest near London.
[209] Pinochet was released in March 2000 on medical grounds by the Home Secretary
Jack Straw, without facing trial.
[210]
In the
2001 general election, Thatcher supported the Conservative general election campaign, as she had done in 1992 and 1997, and in the
Conservative leadership election shortly after, she supported
Iain Duncan Smith over Kenneth Clarke.
[211]
In March 2002, Thatcher's book
Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, dedicated to Ronald Reagan, was released. In it, she claimed there would be no peace in the Middle East until
Saddam Hussein
was toppled, that Israel must trade land for peace, and that the
European Union (EU) was "fundamentally unreformable", "a classic
utopian
project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose
inevitable destiny is failure". She argued that Britain should
renegotiate its terms of membership or else leave the EU and join the
North American Free Trade Area. The book was serialised in
The Times on 18 March.
Thatcher suffered several small strokes in 2002 and was advised by her doctors not to engage in further public speaking.
[212]
On 23 March, she announced that on the advice of her doctors she would
cancel all planned speaking engagements and accept no more.
[213]
Husband's death
Sir
Denis Thatcher died of heart failure on 26 June 2003 and was cremated on 3 July.
[214] She had paid tribute to him in
The Downing Street Years,
writing "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."
Final years
On 11 June 2004, Thatcher attended the state funeral service for Ronald Reagan.
[216] She delivered her eulogy via videotape; in view of her health, the message had been pre-recorded several months earlier.
[217] Thatcher flew to
California with the Reagan entourage, and attended the memorial service and interment ceremony for the president at the
Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
[218]
Thatcher attends a Washington memorial service marking the 5th anniversary of the
September 11 attacks, pictured with Vice President
Dick Cheney and his wife
Thatcher celebrated her 80th birthday at the
Mandarin Oriental Hotel in
Hyde Park, London, on 13 October 2005; guests included the Queen,
the Duke of Edinburgh,
Princess Alexandra and Tony Blair.
[219]
Geoffrey Howe, by then Lord Howe of Aberavon, was also present, and
said of his former leader: "Her real triumph was to have transformed not
just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the
great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible."
[220]
According to a later article in
The Daily Telegraph, Thatcher's daughter Carol first revealed that her mother had
dementia
in 2005, saying that "Mum doesn't read much any more because of her
memory loss .. It's pointless. She can't remember the beginning of a
sentence by the time she reaches the end."
[221]
She later recounted how she was first struck by her mother's dementia
when she muddled the Falklands conflict with the Yugoslav wars; she has
also recalled the pain of needing to tell her mother repeatedly that
Denis Thatcher was dead.
[222]
In 2006, Thatcher attended the official Washington, D.C. memorial service to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the
September 11 attacks on the United States. She was a guest of
Vice President Dick Cheney, and met
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit.
[223]
In February 2007, Thatcher became the first living British Prime Minister to be honoured with a
statue in the Houses of Parliament. The bronze statue stands opposite that of her political hero, Sir
Winston Churchill,
[224]
and was unveiled on 21 February 2007 with Thatcher in attendance; she
made a rare and brief speech in the members' lobby of the House of
Commons, responding: "I might have preferred iron – but bronze will
do ... It won't rust."
[224] The statue shows her addressing the House of Commons, with her right arm outstretched.
[225]
She was a public supporter of the
Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism and the resulting Prague Process, and sent a public letter of support to its preceding conference.
[226]
After collapsing at a House of Lords dinner, Thatcher was admitted to
St Thomas' Hospital in central London on 7 March 2008 for tests. In 2009 she was hospitalised again when she fell and broke her arm.
[227]
Thatcher returned to 10 Downing Street in late November 2009 for the unveiling of an official portrait by artist
Richard Stone,
[228] an unusual honour for a living ex-Prime Minister. Stone had previously painted portraits of the Queen and the
Queen Mother.
[228]
On 4 July 2011, Thatcher was to attend a ceremony for the unveiling
of a 10-foot statue to former American President Ronald Reagan, outside
the
American Embassy in London, but was unable to attend because of frail health.
[229] On 31 July 2011, it was announced that her office in the House of Lords had been closed.
[230] Earlier that month, Thatcher had been named the most competent British Prime Minister of the past 30 years in an
Ipsos MORI poll.
[231]
Death
Following several years of poor health, Thatcher died on the morning of 8 April 2013 at
The Ritz Hotel in London after suffering a
stroke.
She had been staying at a suite in the hotel since December 2012 after
having difficulty with stairs at her Chester Square home.
[232]
Reactions to the news of Thatcher's death were mixed, ranging from
tributes lauding her as Britain's greatest-ever peacetime Prime Minister
to public celebrations and expressions of personalised vitriol.
[233] Details of her funeral were agreed with her in advance.
[234] In line with her wishes she received a
ceremonial funeral, including full military honours, with a church service at
St Paul's Cathedral on 17 April 2013.
[235][236]
Legacy
Political legacy
Thatcher defined her own political philosophy, in a major and controversial break with
One Nation Conservatives like her predecessor Edward Heath,
[237] in her statement to Douglas Keay, published in
Woman's Own magazine in September 1987:
I think we have gone through a period when too many
children and people have been given to understand "I have a problem, it
is the Government's job to cope with it!" or "I have a problem, I will
go and get a grant to cope with it!" "I am homeless, the Government must
house me!" and so they are casting their problems on society and who is
society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and
there are families and no government can do anything except through
people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after
ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a
reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in
mind without the obligations.
[238]
The percentage of adults owning shares rose from 7% to 25% during her
tenure, and more than a million families bought their council houses,
giving an increase from 55 per cent to 67 per cent in owner-occupiers
from 1979 to 1990. The houses were sold at a discount of 33-55 per cent,
leading to large profits for some new owners. Personal wealth rose by
80 per cent in real terms during the 1980s, mainly due to rising house
prices and increased earnings. Shares in the privatised utilities were
sold below their market value to ensure quick and wide sales, rather
than maximise national income.
Thatcher's premiership was also marked by high unemployment and social unrest,
[240]
and many critics on the Left of the political spectrum fault her
economic policies for the unemployment level; many of the areas affected
by high unemployment as well as her
monetarist economic policies have still not fully recovered and are blighted by social problems such as drug abuse and family breakdown.
[241]
Speaking in Scotland in April 2009, before the 30th anniversary of her
election as Prime Minister, Thatcher insisted she had no regrets and was
right to introduce the
poll tax,
and to withdraw subsidies from "outdated industries, whose markets were
in terminal decline", subsidies that created "the culture of
dependency, which had done such damage to Britain".
[242] Political economist
Susan Strange
called the new financial growth model "casino capitalism", reflecting
her view that speculation and financial trading were becoming more
important to the economy than industry.
[243]
She has been criticised as being divisive
[244] and for promoting greed and selfishness.
[240] Many recent biographers have been critical of aspects of the Thatcher years and
Michael White, writing in the
New Statesman in February 2009, challenged the view that her reforms had brought a net benefit.
[245]
Despite being Britain's first woman Prime Minister, some critics
contend Thatcher did "little to advance the political cause of women",
[246] either within her party or the government, and some British feminists regarded her as "an enemy".
[247]
Her stance on immigration was perceived by some as part of a rising
racist public discourse, which Professor Martin Barker has called "
new racism".
[248]
Influenced at the outset by
Keith Joseph,
[249] the term "
Thatcherism" came to refer to her policies as well as aspects of her ethical outlook and personal style, including
moral absolutism,
nationalism,
interest in the individual, and an uncompromising approach to achieving political goals.
[nb 4]
The nickname "Iron Lady", originally given to her by the Soviets,
became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style.
[250][251][252]
Thatcher's tenure of 11 years and 209 days as Prime Minister was the longest since
Lord Salisbury (13 years and 252 days in three spells starting in 1885), and the longest continuous period in office since
Lord Liverpool (14 years and 305 days starting in 1812).
[189][253] She was voted the fourth-greatest British Prime Minister of the 20th century in a poll of 139 academics organised by
MORI,
[254] and in 2002 was ranked number 16 in the BBC poll of the
100 Greatest Britons.
[255] In 1999,
TIME named Thatcher one of the
100 Most Important People of the 20th Century.
[256]
Thatcher's death prompted
mixed reactions, including reflections of criticism as well as praise.
[257][258][259] Groups celebrated her death in Brixton, Leeds, Bristol and Glasgow,
[260][261][262] and a crowd of 3000 gathered in
Trafalgar Square to celebrate her demise and protest against her legacy.
[263]
Shortly after Thatcher's death, Scotland's
First Minister Alex Salmond argued that her policies had the "unintended consequence" of encouraging Scottish devolution.
[264] Lord Foulkes agreed on
Scotland Tonight that she had provided "the impetus" for devolution.
[265]
Honours
Thatcher became a
Privy Councillor (PC) upon becoming Secretary of State for Education and Science in 1970.
[266] She was appointed a
Member of the Order of Merit (OM) (an order within the personal gift of the Queen) within two weeks of leaving office. Denis Thatcher was made a
Baronet at the same time.
[267] She became a peer in the House of Lords in 1992 with a
life peerage as
Baroness Thatcher,
of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire.
[196][268] She was appointed a Lady Companion of the
Order of the Garter, the UK's highest order of
chivalry, in 1995.
[269]
She was elected as a
Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1983, which caused controversy among the existing Fellows.
[22]
She was the first woman entitled to full membership rights as an honorary member of the
Carlton Club on becoming leader of the Conservative Party in 1975.
[270]
In the Falklands, Margaret Thatcher Day has been marked every 10 January since 1992,
[271] commemorating her visit in 1983.
[272] Thatcher Drive in
Stanley is named for her, as is
Thatcher Peninsula in
South Georgia, where the task force troops first set foot on the Falklands.
[271]
Thatcher was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour awarded by the US.
[273] She was a patron of
The Heritage Foundation,
[274] which established the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom in 2005.
[275] Speaking of Heritage president
Ed Feulner,
at the first Clare Booth Luce lecture in September 1993, Thatcher said:
"You didn't just advise President Reagan on what he should do; you told
him how he could do it. And as a practising politician I can testify
that that is the only advice worth having."
[276]
Cultural depictions
Thatcher was the subject or the inspiration for 1980s
protest songs.
Billy Bragg and
Paul Weller helped to form the
Red Wedge collective to support Labour in opposition to Thatcher.
[277]
Thatcher was lampooned by satirist
John Wells in several media. Wells collaborated with
Richard Ingrams on the spoof "
Dear Bill" letters which ran as a column in
Private Eye magazine, were published in book form, and were then adapted into a West End stage revue as
Anyone for Denis?, starring Wells as Denis Thatcher. The stage show was followed by a
1982 TV special directed by
Dick Clement.
[278] Spitting Image, a British TV show, satirised Thatcher as a bully who ridiculed her own ministers.
[279] She was voiced by
Steve Nallon.
[280]
One of the earliest satires of Thatcher as Prime Minister involved Wells (as writer/performer),
Janet Brown (voicing Thatcher) and future
Spitting Image producer
John Lloyd who in 1979 were teamed up by producer
Martin Lewis for the satirical audio album
The Iron Lady
consisting of skits and songs satirising Thatcher's rise to power. The
album was released in September 1979, four months after Thatcher became
Premier.
[281][282]
Margaret Thatcher has been depicted in many television programmes, documentaries, films and plays. She was played by
Patricia Hodge in
Ian Curteis's long unproduced
The Falklands Play (2002) and by
Andrea Riseborough in the TV film
The Long Walk to Finchley (2008). She is the titular character in two films, portrayed by
Lindsay Duncan in
Margaret (2009) and by
Meryl Streep in
The Iron Lady (2011),
[283] in which she is depicted as having
Alzheimer's disease.
[284]
