Word: thatchers
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...family's life-style is comfortable, conventional, squarely middle class. Thatcher has few close friends and no real intellectual interests outside politics. She reads primarily "to keep up," as she puts it, much prefers Rudyard Kipling to T.S. Eliot, rarely dines out or sees a play. Her only hobby is collecting Royal Crown Derby china. At the end of a day, she and Denis like to relax over a drink: hers is Scotch, neat and usually just...
...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...
After that, Thatcher's star began to rise rapidly. She became a junior minister for pensions in 1961, and three years later, when the Conservatives were in opposition, she was promoted to the front bench, which allowed her to shine in debate. In 1967 she joined the shadow cabinet and held a number of portfolios, including housing, transport and education. She also spoke up on treasury matters. Some Tory backbenchers remember vividly the verbal exchange that marked Thatcher as a fighting lady to be reckoned with. Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, who is renowned for his brutal...
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...
...Joseph and Edward Du Cann, declined to run for the leadership, while Heath could not make up his mind whether to fight or resign. Backed by Joseph, Norman St. John-Stevas, a Tory intellectual, and Airey Neave, who became her campaign manager and one of her closest advisers,?Thatcher stepped boldly into the arena. At a party caucus on Feb. 11, 1975, she defeated the acknowledged favorite, William Whitelaw, 146 to 79, thus becoming the first woman in history to lead a major British political party...