Word: british
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...from the English Midlands, who last week led her Conservative Party to a decisive victory over James Callaghan's Labor Party. The Tories won a solid majority of 43 seats in the 635-member House of Commons,* and Thatcher thereby became not only the first woman to head a British government but the first to lead a major Western nation...
Following an audience that lasted 45 minutes, the Thatchers drove in a black Rover limousine to No. 10 Downing Street, the official residence of Prime Ministers. The Callaghans had already packed and left, not in haste but in keeping with a longstanding British tradition that the transfer of power in all its aspects should be quick and decorous...
Throughout the four-week campaign, which was brought about when Callaghan's government narrowly lost a vote of confidence in March, both major parties emphasized that Britain faced a clear choice. Callaghan offered a continuation of the moderate social democratic policies that have dominated British political and economic life since the end of World War II. Thatcher presented a clear break with the socialist past, advocating a return to the market economy and a retrenching of Britain's welfare state. As some commentators saw it, Labor, in a reversal of traditional roles, had become the party of established orthodoxy, while...
Thatcher thus takes her place alongside Israel's Golda Meir, India's Indira Gandhi and Sri Lanka's Sirimavo Bandaranaike as modern women politicians who have made it to the top. In keeping with British tradition, Thatcher will be addressed simply as "Prime Minister." Even before she paid her first visit to Downing Street, her campaign aides had arrived, their arms loaded with paper work. The government of a determined woman whose work ethic had been forged in the heartland of England was taking shape with no delay...
...Somerville College, Margaret studied chemistry, not out of any basic interest, but because she knew it would guarantee a job. She became president of the Oxford University Conservative Association, but she was not allowed to participate in debates of the prestigious Oxford Union, long a training ground for British political leaders; not until 1963 were women admitted as members. She was graduated with a bachelor of science degree, an upper-class accent acquired by elocution lessons, and an unflagging determination to enter politics...