Word: thatcherism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Just before Margaret Thatcher's visit to Poland last week, Prime Minister Mieczyslaw Rakowski had nothing but praise for her firmness in tackling Britain's economic problems. "I would very much like to be a pupil in her school," said Rakowski. Polish officials admired her effectiveness in curbing unions that blocked industrial reorganization...
...Thatcher was hardly pleased, however, when Rakowski cited her policies as a precedent for another government assault on the outlawed Solidarity movement. As part of Rakowski's new economic reform program, the government announced, it would close down on Dec. 1 the famous Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, whose workers gave birth to Solidarity during a strike in 1980. Its 11,000 employees, including Solidarity's founder, Lech Walesa, a shipyard electrician for 21 years, would be forced to find jobs elsewhere...
...Thatcher did little to hide her sympathies. She paid an emotional visit to the Warsaw grave of Jerzy Popieluszko, the priest murdered by government security agents in 1984. The next day Thatcher became the first Western leader permitted to visit Gdansk for a meeting there with Walesa, receiving a rousing welcome from thousands of Poles chanting "Solidarnosc! Solidarnosc!" "You have achieved so much," she told Walesa and other Solidarity officials after lunch at St. Brigid's presbytery. Polish intellectuals pointed out a crucial difference between Thatcher's efforts to rein in British trade unions and Rakowski's confrontation with Solidarity...
...Thatcher made a modest offer to give Poles management training but snubbed the government's pleas for Western loans and relief on Poland's $36.4 billion foreign debt. The day when Polish officials grant real political freedoms, she said, "you will find your friends ready, not just to stand and cheer, but to help in practical ways...
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has often proclaimed that terrorists must be deprived of the "oxygen of publicity." Last week she tried to cut off the air supply of the Irish Republican Army by banning radio and television interviews with members of the outlawed guerrilla group and its political arm, Sinn Fein (including Gerry Adams, the party's sole representative in Parliament). The action, which also applied to some Protestant extremist groups, marked the most sweeping British censorship decision since World War II. The Republic of Ireland has maintained a similar ban since...