Word: heathe
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...like a dream, that the next name in the lists after Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Edward Heath is Margaret Thatcher." With those uncharacteristically emotional words, the coolly competent M.P. for Finchley accepted her triumph as the first woman ever to head a political party in Britain. Winning seven votes more than the mandatory majority of 139, Mrs. Thatcher, who had toppled former Prime Minister Edward Heath from his ten-year reign as Conservative Party chief the week before, soundly defeated a formidable array of four male challengers. Her leading opponent, Party Chairman William Whitelaw, drew only...
...odds makers who had originally predicted a third-ballot victory for amiable William Whitelaw apparently underestimated the intensity of anti-Heath feeling within the party-a sentiment that damned Whitelaw, who was one of the former Prime Minister's closest party associates. Said one Tory backbencher: "The constituencies were pro-Heath, but in the parliamentary party there were just too many people who couldn't stand him any longer...
Although his election defeats and faltering economic policies were significant factors, in many cases the antipathy to Heath was based on personal rather than policy differences. "He never knew how to soothe people's egos," said another Tory veteran. "He made enemies needlessly when a bit of patronage, a knighthood to flatter an ego or satisfy the social ambitions of a disgruntled wife, was all that was needed...
...irony of her victory is that in many ways, Margaret Thatcher seems to be Ted Heath's female Doppelgänger. Although her garden party hats and porcelain-voweled laments over "the twilight of the middle class" belie it, Mrs. Thatcher shares Heath's relatively humble background-the one the daughter of a Lincolnshire grocer, the other the son of a Kentish carpenter. Both have been characterized as being almost frostily reserved and unassailably self-confident. Both owe their political rise to impressive performances as Tory spokesmen on financial affairs, Thatcher in the past few months, Heath...
Although aligned ideologically with the Conservative Party's right wing, she has won respect-and perhaps some support-from the left and center as well. The energy apparent in her spirited, sure-footed performances in the House has injected new life into a flagging party. After Heath's lackluster performance for most of last year, this vigor alone accounts for much of Mrs. Thatcher's appeal. "I just make lists of things to do and get a lot of pleasure in ticking them off," she once explained. And she has a long, long list...