Word: primed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Labor Party headquarters a few blocks away, "Sunny Jim" Callaghan, 67, spoke of his defeat with the same reserve and gentle dignity that marked his campaign. He publicly congratulated his successor as Prime Minister. "It is a great office," he said, "a wonderful privilege, and for a woman to occupy that office is, I think, a tremendous moment in the country's history. Therefore, everybody must on behalf of all our people wish her well and wish her success...
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...
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...
Edward Heath became Prime Minister when Labor was upset in the 1970 election, and Thatcher was soon named Secretary of State for Education and Science, where she gained a reputation for toughness. While demanding more money for her department, she cut out free milk for elementary school children, thus earning the cruel sobriquet "Thatcher the Milk Snatcher." Heath had agreed to her appointment only because he felt it was good politics to have a woman in the Cabinet. "The chemistry between them was not good," recalls a Cabinet colleague...
Unlike a U.S. President, a British Prime Minister is the first among supposed equals in the Cabinet. Cajolery is as vital a quality as conviction, and some Tories wonder whether Thatcher has the skills necessary to keep dissident ministers in line. Because of her authoritarian air, she sometimes appears to be rather like a headmistress dealing sternly with rowdy students. In discussions around the shadow cabinet table, says one associate, "she can be very sharp, steely in cutting somebody short if she has lost interest in what is being said...