Word: leaders
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Callaghan, who easily recaptured his home constituency in Wales, now becomes leader of the opposition. He will be less tormented by the Labor Party's left wing, many of whose zealous members went down to defeat in marginal districts. So did the most able woman in his Cabinet, former Education Secretary Shirley Williams, 48. Another loser, predictably, was onetime Liberal Leader Jeremy Thorpe, 50, who soon faces trial on charges of conspiracy and incitement to murder a man who claimed to be his lover. A Tory easily bested eight other candidates to take Thorpe's North Devon seat...
...powerful trade unions. As the campaign continued, the Tory lead steadily dwindled; two days before the election one poll even showed a slight Labor edge. There seemed little doubt about the reason for the decline: the personality of Margaret Thatcher. To avoid a major gaffe by their outspoken leader, Tory strategists designed a media campaign to keep her on camera but away from confrontation. Nevertheless, Thatcher's sometimes hectoring, sometimes condescending manner irritated many voters. In one poll last week, she ranked behind both Callaghan and the Liberals' David Steel as a campaign performer. In the end, though, the desire...
...Dartford, then a safe Labor seat in Kent. Being chosen as a sacrificial lamb is the classic way to begin a career in British politics, and Margaret eagerly accepted. In the 1950 election Margaret, then 24, was the youngest woman running for Parliament. She lost, but Kingsley Wood, then leader of the Tories on the Dartford Council, recalls that "we all knew she was something different. She worked tirelessly and had the knack of remembering everyone's name...
When Thatcher first took her place on the back benches, there was no reason for anyone to mark her as a future Tory leader, much less Britain's first woman Prime Minister. She was not a member of any inner circle, not a protégée of any powerful party figure. Attractive in almost too meticulous a way, with a complexion as English as Devonshire cream and the instant smile of a doctor's receptionist, she looked rather like the chairman of a garden club in an affluent suburb. But in her first year as an M.P. she managed...
Thatcher immediately made it clear that there would be nothing demure or retiring about her leadership. In her words: "I am not a consensus politician. I am a conviction politician." Before Thatcher's victory last week, onetime rival Whitelaw declared: "She is a brilliant leader of the opposition, the best in a long, long time." Privately, however, some of her colleagues are more critical. Says one senior Tory: "She can be very petulant when up against criticism. When she gets into an argument she talks all the time. Talk. Talk. Talk. Because of this she is not a very good...