The Tory Party: Focus on Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)
You’re going to watch Thatcher’s video obituary, edited by The Guardian. It comes back on the important
dates, achievements and failures that marked Thatcher’s 11 years in power in Downing Street. Try to fill
in the table below with events, quotes from Thatcher and quotes from the people’s interviews from the
video. (see next page)
DATE
October 1961
January 1976
May 1979
October 1980
June 1982
June 1984
October 1990
What happens?
Quote from
Thatcher
Other quote about
Thatcher
Major events happening in Britain:
1. austerity budget, public spending cuts, rise of unemployment
2. the miners’ strike and the fight against the trade unions
3. opposition to further European integration
4. Thatcher becomes a Member of Parliament (MP)
5. end of the era of consensus between the two main parties
6. Thatcher becomes Prime Minister for the first time
7. victory in the Falklands War
8. privatization of national industries
9. Thatcher is challenged for the leadership of the party
10. Thatcher leaves Downing Street in tears
11. Thatcher is the new leader of the Tory Party.
Quotes from Margaret Thatcher:
1. “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning”
2. “The Iron Lady of the Western World”
3. “No, no, no”
4. “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony”
Quotes from other people’s interviews:
1. she was a catastrophe for the well-being of the country
2. she split the country in two
3. her style of governance was different: uncompromising, direct
4. after winning against the enemy abroad, she could concentrate on winning against the
enemy at home: the trade unions
Thatcher’s legacy: circle the right answer each time.
a) Thatcher was a feminist. She helped promote the cause of women and appointed many
women in top positions.
b) Thatcher was anti-feminist. She didn’t promote any woman. But after her, no one could
ever say again “no woman can”.
a) Before Thatcher was elected, 1 in 7 children lived below the poverty line. After
Thatcher, 1 in 3 children lived in poverty.
b) Before Thatcher was elected, 1 in 3 children lived below the poverty line. After
Thatcher, 1 in 7 children lived in poverty.
a) Her legacy is that she convinced Great Britain that it was a deeply conservative country.
The Labour Party was scared of her, and they took up some of her policies later.
b) Her legacy is that she convinced Great Britain that it was not a conservative country.
The Labour Party fought her on all her ideas and clearly departed from her policies later.
The reluctant European, The Economist, Oct 17th, 2015
Though Britain has always been rather half-hearted about the European Union, its
membership has been beneficial for all concerned, argues John Peet. It should stay in the
club.
THE QUESTION THAT will be put to British voters, probably in the autumn of 2016, sounds
straightforward: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union, or leave the
European Union?” When David Cameron, Britain’s Conservative prime minister, first proposed a
referendum in early 2013, he was hoping that the answer would also be straightforward. Once he had
successfully renegotiated some of Britain’s membership terms, the electorate would duly endorse him by
voting to stay in.
But referendums are by their nature chancy affairs, as a string of previous European examples have
shown. Mr Cameron is well aware that the September 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, an
issue about which he said he felt far more strongly than he does about the EU, became a closer-run thing
than expected. There is no guarantee that the EU referendum will go his way, and if voters chose to leave
it would cause great uncertainty not only for business and the economy but for Mr Cameron himself.
Assuming that he campaigns for Britain to stay in, which seems a near-certainty, it is hard to see how he
could remain prime minister if he lost the vote. Moreover, the Scottish Nationalists have said that if
Britain were to withdraw from the EU, they would press for another referendum on Scottish
independence, which they might expect to win. So Brexit could, in due course, lead to the break-up of the
United Kingdom. The EU referendum will thus become a defining moment not just for Britain’s
relationship with the rest of Europe but for the future of the country itself.
When Mr Cameron became Tory leader in 2005, and then prime minister of a Tory-Liberal Democrat
coalition government in 2010, he had a moderately Eurosceptic reputation. Mr Cameron has often found
it hard to form alliances with other European centre-right leaders, notably Germany’s Angela Merkel. Yet
although Mr Cameron has also urged his party to stop “banging on about Europe”, his Eurosceptic
backbenchers, scared witless by the rise of Nigel Farage’s virulently anti-EU UK Independence Party
(UKIP), have constantly hassled him to adopt a tougher line with Brussels. His response has generally
been to appease them.
His proposals can be summarised under six broad headings. First, migration. Mr Cameron is seeking to
put a stop to “welfare tourism” by limiting some benefits for new immigrants. In particular, he wants a
four-year ban on benefits, including those paid to people in work, being claimed by migrants who arrive
from the rest of the EU. Second, he is looking for a general reduction in EU regulation, and in some cases
a repatriation of regulatory powers from Brussels to national capitals. Third, he would like to see a
stronger push to complete the single market in such fields as services, digital technology and energy.
Fourth, he is demanding some form of opt-out for Britain from the treaties’ objective of “ever closer union
among the peoples of Europe”. Fifth, he is determined to give national parliaments, which he calls the
true source of democratic authority in the European project, greater powers to block EU legislation. And
finally, he wants a guarantee that an increasingly integrated euro zone will not act against the interests of
EU countries that remain outside it.
Questions on the audio document from The Economist
- Why are the polls narrowing between the potential in and out votes at the moment?
- What do Eurosceptics want? Since when have they been active in Britain?
- What are the advantages of staying in the EU according to John Peet?