Former Prime Minister, Margaret Hilda Roberts Thatcher was born on 13 October 1925 in Grantham, Lincolnshire. She is, famously, the daughter of a grocer.
Margaret Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford. In 1951 she married businessman Denis Thatcher.
She entered Parliament when she won the Finchley constituency in 1959. Margaret Thatcher was heavily criticised when as Secretary of State for Education and Science (a post she held in the Heath government of 1970-1974), she abolished free milk for over eights at school.
Thatcher was Conservative Party leader 1975-1990, replacing Heath, and went to on to become Britain’s first woman Prime Minister from 1979-1990.
Originally dubbed the ‘Iron Lady’ by a Soviet newspaper, Red Star, Margaret Thatcher took a tough stance not just on the Cold War but on most things. She significantly decreased the power of the Unions. She also appealed to the patriotic vote when she took Britain to war to recapture The Falklands from Argentina.
In 1984 she faced down a 12 month miners’ strike. In October that year she narrowly escaped death when the IRA bombed her hotel at the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton.
Thatcher had enforced right-wing politics, with greater scope for the free-market, and a programme of privatisation; but towards the end of her period in charge she faced growing dismay over the ‘poll tax’ (from the country) and her Eurosceptic stance (from senior figures in the Conservative party).
Thatcher’s leadership was challenged in November 1990 and she was eventually replaced by John Major.
