Bloomberg: U.K. "Iron Lady" Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Dies

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:32:00 --0100

Margaret Thatcher, the former U.K. prime minister who helped end the Cold War and was known as the “Iron Lady” for her uncompromising style, died today. She was 87.

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Photographer: David Montgomery/Getty Images

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April 8 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's Guy Johnson reports on the death of former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who passed away at age 87. Thatcher took office in 1979 and led the country until 1990. He speaks on Bloomberg Television's "In The Loop."

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April 8 (Bloomberg) -- Margaret Thatcher, the former U.K. prime minister who helped end the Cold War and was known as the "Iron Lady" for her uncompromising style, died today. She was 87. Michael McKee reports on Bloomberg Television's "In The Loop." (Source: Bloomberg)

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Margaret Thatcher died today. She was 87. Photographer: Terry O'Neill/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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Prime Minister Margaret speaks at a Tory Party conference in 1987. Thatcher served as British Prime Minister from 1979-1990. Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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Miss Margaret Roberts (later Margaret Thatcher) poses for a photograph during a local election campaign in Dartford, London, in 1951. Photographer: Fox Photos/Getty Images

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The Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher, center, visits the London Stock Exchange in Feb. 1979. Photographer: Steve Burton/Keystone/Getty Images

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Margaret Thatcher celebrates victory at the Conservative Party headquarters after being voted in as the U.K.'s first female prime minister in London, May, 1979. Photographer: John Minihan/Getty Images

Margaret Thatcher leaves her Chelsea home to attend the ballot for election as leader of the Conservative Party in London, on Feb. 11, 1975. Photographer: Roger Jackson/Central Press/Getty Images

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Thatcher speaks during a visit with then U.S. President Ronald Reagan at the White House. Photographer: Howard Sachs/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images

Thatcher suffered a stroke this morning and died peacefully, her spokesman, Tim Bell, said on Sky News television.

When Thatcher’s Conservative Party took office in 1979, Britain’s trade unions were strong enough to knock out party leaders they opposed, and key industries, including utilities, were state-owned. By the time she stepped down 11 years later, her arguments for free-market economics, lower taxes and deregulated financial markets had been adopted across the nation’s political spectrum.

The transition was painful. Unemployment (UKUEILOR)peaked at more than 3 million in the mid-1980s, and many places in the north of the country that had been world centers of manufacturing struggled to adapt to the new service economy.

“Very few leaders get to change not only the political landscape of their country but of the world,” Tony Blair, whose Labour Party ousted the Tories from power in 1997, said in a statement on his website. “Margaret was such a leader. Her global impact was vast. And some of the changes she made in Britain were, in certain respects at least, retained by the 1997 Labour government, and came to be implemented by governments around the world.”

Thatcher will be given a ceremonial funeral with military honors, to be held at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said in a statement. A similar funeral was held for the Queen Mother in 2002. No date was announced.

‘The Greatest’

“She did not just lead our country, she saved our country,” Cameron said in televised comments from Madrid. “I believe she’ll go down as the greatest British peacetime prime minister.”

Thatcher was defined by the battles she took on: she waged war against Argentina, clashed with striking miners and forced fellow leaders to cut Britain’s financial contributions to the forerunner of the European Union.

She survived an assassination attempt in 1984 when the Irish Republican Army bombed her hotel in Brighton during the Conservatives’ annual conference, killing five people. She stuck to her schedule and addressed party members the following morning.

“Margaret Thatcher did great hurt to the Irish and British people during her time as British prime minister,” Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s former political wing, said in a statement. “In Ireland, her espousal of old draconian militaristic policies prolonged the war and caused great suffering.”

Property Tax

After winning three elections, Thatcher was forced out of office by her own party after she refused to compromise either on her policies toward Europe or on a property tax that had led to mass non-payment and violent riots.

“Always a warrior rather than a healer, her deeply ideological determination alienated those who believed in consensus rather than in confrontation,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London and author of “The Conservative Party From Thatcher To Cameron” (2010). “But her policies and her personality ushered in changes -- social, economic, political, diplomatic and even military -- so profound that the consequences will continue to play out for decades, even centuries, to come.”

She formed a close bond with President Ronald Reagan, whose time in office and political ideology coincided with her own.

‘Always Frank’

“Margaret was always frank and forthright in her dealings with us,” Reagan wrote in the National Review in 1989. “Generally, she and I agreed with each other. Whet

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Bloomberg: U.K. "Iron Lady" Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Dies

‘The Greatest’

Property Tax

‘Always Frank’

Dame Shirley Bassey: Goldfinger

Great Britain Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert Fireworks