Word: thatcherism
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Williams has seen her share of success and failure in British politics. After three tries, she won a seat in the House of Commons in 1964 as a member of the Labour Party. Fifteen eventful years later, Williams was ousted in Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party landslide. "It is a difficult thing, the British system of politics," she says. "The party is terribly important. You go up and down with...
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...