Word: whitelaw
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
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...
...Britain. Winning seven votes more than the mandatory majority of 139, Mrs. Thatcher, who had toppled former Prime Minister Edward Heath from his ten-year reign as Conservative Party chief the week before, soundly defeated a formidable array of four male challengers. Her leading opponent, Party Chairman William Whitelaw, drew only 79 votes...
...odds makers who had originally predicted a third-ballot victory for amiable William Whitelaw apparently underestimated the intensity of anti-Heath feeling within the party-a sentiment that damned Whitelaw, who was one of the former Prime Minister's closest party associates. Said one Tory backbencher: "The constituencies were pro-Heath, but in the parliamentary party there were just too many people who couldn't stand him any longer...
...first day as party leader, Mrs. Thatcher fixed herself a boiled egg for breakfast in her tony Flood Street house in Chelsea. Then she went to face ten party elders, including Whitelaw and Heath's shadow Chancellor Robert Carr, who warned her that they would refuse to serve in the shadow cabinet if she appointed Sir Keith Chancellor. Since Whitelaw accepted Mrs. Thatcher's offer of party deputy leadership later in the week, it is assumed that Sir Keith will have to settle for a less sensitive portfolio...