Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher was the only woman Prime Minister in the history of the United

Kingdom and the longest serving since Lord North in 1827. She was born on 13 October 1925 in Grantham, Lincolnshire, the daughter of a grocer,Alfred Roberts and his wife, Beatrice. She was first selected as a candidate in the constituency of Dartford in Kent for the 1950/51 elections. Her failure to win the relatively safe labour seat did not discourage her and after marring her husband Dennis Thatcher in 1951 became a barrister , qualifying in 1953. In 1959 she won the seat of Finchly for the Conservative party. Within 2 years she was a minister and by 1964 a member of the shadow cabinet. She went on to become Education Secretary, managing unprecedented cuts, some of which she disagreed with, such as cutting free school milk which she saw as of little financial benefit but huge political costs. This led to the cry of 'Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher'. She later wrote: "I learned a valuable lesson. I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit." However she often introduced policies which have caused problems to this day. One of her biggest mistakes was joining the European Community and later the European Exchange Rate Mechanism , which led to interest rates in excess of twenty percent under her successor John Major. The Handover of Hong Kong preceded it becoming a major world financial centre and to this day Hong Kong is used to ship thousands of tonnes of Chinese tat to Britain avoiding import taxes and customs checks. This aside however Margaret Thatcher had huge political triumphs. She crushed the militant NUM and their socialist leader Arthur Scargill, who had brought countless governments , both Labour and Tory to their kness. Another of her greatest achievements was defeating the Argentine Junta in the Falkland Islands, in a situation where many lesser leaders would have backed down. The Right to Buy scheme was revolutionary and allowed people to get free from the oppressive welfare state but it was unfortunate that the money was not reinvested into new housing stock. Margaret Thatcher was a strong and decisive, if slightly controversial leader, who lead the Tories to their greatest victories of modern times and helped dismantle the soviet bloc. If the likes of David Cameron were more like her it is safe to say that Britain would still have a triple A credit rating and not be part of a jumped up trading bloc. In her own words : What we should grasp, however, from the lessons of European history is that, first, there is nothing necessarily benevolent about programmes of European integration; second, the desire to achieve grand utopian plans often poses a grave threat to freedom; and third, European unity has been tried before, and the outcome was far from happy.