Winston Churchill

The Right Honourable Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, FRS (November 30, 1874 - January 24, 1965) was a British politician, best known as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World War II. At various times an author, soldier, journalist, legislator and painter, Churchill is generally regarded as one of the most important leaders in British and world history.

Early career

Born at Blenheim Palace, near Woodstock in Oxfordshire, Winston Churchill was a descendant of the first famous member of the Churchill family: John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (whose father was also a "Sir Winston Churchill"). Winston's politician father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was the third son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough; Winston's mother was Lady Randolph Churchill (née Jeanette "Jennie" Jerome) of Brooklyn, New York, daughter of American millionaire Leonard Jerome.

As per tradition, Churchill spent much of his childhood at boarding schools, rarely visited by his mother, whom he worshipped, despite his letters begging her to either come or let his father let him come home. He had a distant relationship with his father, despite keenly following his father's career.

Once in 1886 he is reported to have proclaimed "My daddy is Chancellor of the Exchequer and one day that's what I'm going to be." His desolate, lonely childhood stayed with him throughout his life. He was very close to his nursemaid, and deeply saddened when she died. In 1893 he enrolled in the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He graduated two years later ranked eighth in his class. He was appointed Second Lieutenant in the 4th Hussars cavalry. In 1895, he went to Cuba as a military observer with the Spanish army in its fight against the independentists. He also reported for the Saturday Review. In 1898 he rode as a reporter with the 21st Lancers at the Battle of Omdurman. As the son of a prominent politician it was unsurprising that Churchill was soon drawn into politics himself. He started speaking at a number of Conservative meetings in the 1890s. It was noticeable that in the first few years of his political career, and again in the mid-1920s, he frequently used his father's slogan of "Tory Democracy". Many were to regard Churchill in his early years as being obsessed with continuing his father's battles from fifteen years earlier. In 1899 he was considered as a prospective candidate for Oldham. One of the town's two MPs had died, and with the other in ill health he was persuaded to resign so that both seats could be elected together. Churchill found himself thrust into a prominent by-election, alongside James Mawdsley, the Lancashire general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Cotton Spinners and one of the few prominent Conservative trade unionists. The Liberal candidates were Alfred Emmott and Walter Runciman, who later sat in the Cabinet alongside Churchill. The by-election was dominated by a number of issues, including a Clerical Tithes Bill in Parliament, the brunt of criticism for which fell upon Churchill as a candidate for the governing party and the only Anglican of the four (though he was non-practicising). Facing attacks on the Bill, Churchill repudiated it. He later commented "This was a frightful mistake. It is not the slightest use defending Governments or parties unless you defend the worst thing about which they are attacked." The Conservative leader in the Commons, Arthur Balfour commented "I thought he was a young man of promise, but it appears he is a young man of promises." Despite this, Churchill and Mawdsley narrowly lost the marginal seat, though with no harm to themselves as the Conservative government was facing a period of unpopularity. Runciman is reported to have commented to Churchill: "Don't worry, I don't think this is the last the country has heard of either of us." Churchill then became a war correspondent in the second Anglo-Boer war between Britain and self-proclaimed Afrikaaners in South Africa. He was captured in a Boer ambush of a British Army train convoy, but managed a high profile escape and eventually crossed the South African border to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo in Mozambique). Churchill returned to Oldham and used the status achieved to stand again for the seat in the 1900 general election when he was narrowly elected for the seat. It was the successful launch of a Parliamentary career which would last a total of sixty-two years, serving as an MP in the House of Commons from 1900 to 1922 and from 1924 to 1964. He remained politically active even in his brief years out of the Commons. At first a member of the Conservative Party, he 'crossed the floor' in 1904 to join the Liberals over the issue of protective tariffs. In the 1906 general election, Churchill won a seat in Manchester. In the Liberal government of Henry Campbell-Bannerman he served as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. Churchill soon became the most prominent member of the Government outside the Cabinet, and when Campbell-Bannerman was succeeded by Herbert Henry Asquith in 1908, it came as little surprise when Churchill was promoted to the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. Under the law at the time, a newly appointed Cabinet Minister was obliged to seek re-election at a by-election. Churchill lost his Manchester seat to the Conservative William Joynson-Hicks, but was soon elected in another by-election at Dundee. As President of the Board of Trade he pursued radical social reforms in conjunction with David Lloyd George, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1910 Churchill was promoted to Home Secretary, where he was to prove somewhat controversial. A famous photograph from the time shows the impetuous Churchill taking personal charge of the January 1911 Sidney Street Siege, peering around a corner to view a gun battle between cornered anarchists and Scots Guards. His role attracted much criticism. Arthur Balfour asked, "He [Churchill] and a photographer were both risking valuable lives. I understand what the photographer was doing but what was the Right Honourable gentleman doing?" In 1911, Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty, a post he would hold into the First World War. He was one of the political and military engineers of the disastrous Gallipoli landings on the Dardanelles during World War I, which led to his description as "the butcher of Gallipoli". When Asquith formed an all-party coalition government, the Conservatives demanded Churchill's demotion as the price for entry. For several months Churchill served in the non-portfolio job of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, before resigning from the government feeling his energies were not being used. He rejoined the army, though remained an MP, and served for several months on the Western Front. During this period his second in command was a young Archibald Sinclair who would later lead the Liberal Party. In December 1916, Asquith fell and was replaced by Lloyd George, however the time was thought to not yet be right to risk the Conservatives' wrath by bringing Churchill back into government. However in July 1917 Churchill was appointed Minister of Munitions. After the ending of the war Churchill served as both Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air (1919-1921). Churchill suggested chemical weapons be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment". He said, "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected." During this time (1919-1921), he undertook with surprising zeal the cutting of military expenditure. However, the major preoccupation of his tenure in the War Office was the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Churchill was a staunch advocate of foreign intervention, declaring that Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle". He secured from a divided and loosely organized Cabinet an intensification and prolongation of the British involvement beyond the wishes of any major group in Parliament or the nation--and in the face of the bitter hostility of labour. In 1920, after the last British forces had been withdrawn, Churchill was instrumental in having arms sent to the Poles when they invaded the Ukraine. He became Secretary of State for the Colonies 1921 and was a signatory of the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 which established the Irish Free State. In October 1922, Churchill underwent an operation to remove his appendix. Upon his return, he learnt that the government had fallen and a General Election was looming. The Liberal Party was now beset by internal division and Churchill's campaign was weak. He lost his seat at Dundee, quipping that he had lost his ministerial office, his seat and his appendix all at once. The victorious candidates for the two-member seat included the Prohibitionist Edwin Scrymgeour. Churchill stood for the Liberals again in the 1923 general election, but over the next twelve months he moved towards the Conservative Party, though initially using the labels "Anti-Socialist" and "Constitutionalist". Two years later in the General Election of 1924 he was elected to represent Epping (where there is now a statue of him) as a "Constitutionalist" with Conservative backing. The following year he formally rejoined the Conservative Party, commenting that, "Anyone can rat [change parties], but it takes a certain ingenuity to rerat." He was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924 under Stanley Baldwin and oversaw the UK's disastrous return to the Gold Standard, which resulted in deflation, unemployment, and the miners' strike that led to the General Strike of 1926. During the General Strike of 1926, Churchill was reported to have suggested that machine guns should be used on the striking miners. Churchill edited the Government's newspaper, the British Gazette, and during the dispute he argued that "either the country will break the General Strike, or the General Strike will break the country". Furthermore, he was to controversially claim that the Fascism of Benito Mussolini had "rendered a service to the whole world", showing as it had "a way to combat subversive forces" — that is, he considered the regime to be a bulwark against the perceived threat of Communist revolution. The Conservative government was defeated in the 1929 General Election. In the next two years Churchill became estranged from the Conservative leadership over the issues of protective tariffs and Indian Home Rule. When Ramsay MacDonald formed the National Government in 1931 Churchill was not invited to join the Cabinet. He was now at the lowest point in his career in a period known as 'the wilderness years.' He spent much of the next few years concentrating on his writing, including A History of the English Speaking Peoples (which was not published until well after WWII). He became most notable for his outspoken opposition towards the granting of independence to India. Soon though, his attention was drawn to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Germany's rearmament. For a time he was a lone voice calling on Britain to re-arm itself and counter the belligerence of Germany. Churchill was a fierce critic of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler. He was also an outspoken supporter of Edward VIII during the Abdication Crisis leading to some speculation that he might be appointed Prime Minister if the King refused to take Baldwin's advice and consequently the government resigned. However this did not happen and Churchill found himself isolated and in a bruised position for some time after this. Role as wartime Prime Minister At the outbreak of the Second World War Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. In this job he proved to be one of the highest profile ministers during the so called "Bore War" when the only noticeable action was at sea. On Chamberlain's resignation in May, 1940, Churchill was appointed Prime Minister and formed an all-party government. In response to previous criticisms that there had been no clear single minister in charge of the prosecution of the war, he created and took the additional position of Minister of Defence. He immediately put his friend and confidant, the industrialist and newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook in charge of aircraft production. It was Beaverbrook's astounding business acumen that allowed Britain to quickly gear up aircraft production and engineering that eventually made the difference in the war. His speeches were a great inspiration to the embattled United Kingdom. His famous "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech was his first as Prime Minister. He followed that closely, before the Battle of Britain, with "We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." Additional speeches: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few....The task which lies before us immediately is at once more practical, more simple and more stern. I hope-indeed, I pray-that we shall not be found unworthy of our victory if after toil and tribulation it is granted to us. For the rest, we have to gain the victory. That is our task." and This was their finest hour. His good relationship with Franklin Roosevelt secured the United Kingdom vital supplies via the North Atlantic Ocean shipping routes. It was for this reason that Churchill was relieved when Roosevelt was re-elected. Upon re-election, Roosevelt immediately set about implementing a new method of not only providing military hardware to Britain without the need for monetary payment, but also of providing, free of fiscal charge, much of the shipping that transported the supplies. Put simply, Roosevelt persuaded congress that repayment for this immensely costly service would take the form of defending the USA; and so Lend-lease was born. Churchill initiated the Special Operations Executive (SOE), under Hugh Dalton's Ministry of Economic Warfare, which established, conducted and fostered covert, subversive and partisan operations in occupied territories with notable success; and also the Commandos which established the pattern for most of the world's current Special Forces. The Russians referred to him as the "British Bulldog". However, some of the military actions during the war remain controversial. Churchill was at best indifferent and perhaps complicit in the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 which took the lives of at least 2.5 million Bengalis. Japanese troops were threatening British India after having successfully taken neighbouring British Burma. Some consider the British government's policy of denying effective famine relief a deliberate and callous scorched earth policy adopted in the event of a successful Japanese invasion. Churchill supported the bombing of Dresden shortly before the end of the war; Dresden was a mostly civilian target with many refugees from the East and of allegedly little military value. However, the bombing was helpful to the allied Soviets. Churchill was party to treaties that would re-draw post-WWII European and Asian boundaries. The boundary between North Korea and South Korea was proposed at the Yalta Conference, as well as the expulsion of Japanese forces from those countries. Proposals for European boundaries and settlements were discussed as early as 1943 by Roosevelt and Churchill; the settlement was officially agreed to by Truman, Churchill, and Stalin at Potsdam (Article XIII of the Potsdam protocol). One of these settlements was about the borders of Poland, i.e. the boundary between Poland and the Soviet Union, the so called Curzon line, and between Germany and Poland, the so called the Oder-Neisse line. Despite the fact that Poland was the first country that resisted Hitler, Polish borders and government were determined by the Great Powers without asking the voice of the Polish government in exile. Poles who had fought alongside Britain throughout the war felt betrayed. Churchill himself opposed the effective annexation of Poland by the Soviet Union and wrote bitterly about it in his books, but he was unable to prevent it at the conferences.

A part of the settlement was an agreement to transfer the remaining citizens of Germany from the area. (Transfer of Poles didn't need to be approved.) The exact numbers and movement of ethnic populations over the Polish-German and Polish-USSR borders in the period at the end of World War II is extremely difficult to determine. This is not least because, under the Nazi regime, many Poles were replaced in their homes by the conquering Germans in an attempt to consolidate Nazi power.

In the case of the post-WWII settlement, Churchill was convinced that the only way to alleviate tensions between the two populations was the transfer of people, to match the national borders. As Churchill expounded in the House of Commons in 1944, "Expulsion is the method which, in so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble... A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by these transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions." Although the importance of Churchill's role in World War II was undeniable, he produced many enemies in his own country. His expressed contempt for ideas such as public health care and for better education for the majority of the population in particular produced much dissatisfaction amongst the population, particularly those who had fought in the war. Immediately following the close of the war in Europe Churchill was heavily defeated at election by Clement Attlee and the Labour Party. Winston Churchill was an early supporter of the pan-Europeanism that eventually lead to the formation of the European Common market and later the European Union (for which one of the three main buildings of the European Parliament is named in his honour). Churchill was also instrumental in giving France a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (which he supported in order to have another European power to counter-balance the Soviet Union's permanent seat). At the beginning of the Cold War he coined the term the "Iron Curtain," a phrase originally created by Joseph Goebbels that entered the public consciousness after a 1946 speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri when Churchill famously declared "From Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere." Second term Following Labour's defeat in the General Election of 1951, Churchill again became Prime Minister. His third government - after the wartime national government and the short caretaker government of 1945, would last until his resignation in 1955. During this period he renewed what he called the "special relationship" between Britain and the United States, engaged himself in the formation of the post-War order. His domestic priorities were, however, overshadowed by a series of foreign policy crisises, which were the result of the continued decline of British military and imperial prestige. Being a strong proponent of Britain as an international power, Churchill would often meet such moments with direct action. Anglo-Iranian Oil Dispute The crisis began under the government of Clement Attlee, in March of 1951, the Iranian parliament—the Majlis—voted to nationalize the A.I.O.C. and its holdings by passing a bill strongly backed by the elderly statesman Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who was elected Prime Minister the following April by a large majority of the parliament. The International Court of Justice was called into settle the dispute, but a 50-50 profit sharing arrangement, with recognition of nationalization, was rejected by Mossadegh. Direct negotiations between the British and the Iranian government ceased, and over the course of 1951, the British racheted up the pressure on the Iranian government, and explored the possibility of a coup against it. American President Harry Truman was reluctant to agree, given the priority of the Korean War. The effects of the blockade and embargo were staggering, and lead to a virtual shutdown of Iran’s oil exports. Churchill's coming to power brought with it a policy of undermining the Mossadegh government. While counter-proposals from Mossadegh's government, including a deal to give the British 25% of the profits in the nationalized oil company were floated, the British were not interested, and wanted a return to the previous arrangement as well as a removal of Mossadegh. As the blockade's political and economic costs mounted inside Iran, coup plots rose from the army, the "National Front" and from pro-British factions in the Majlis. Churchill and his Foreign Secretary pursued two mutually exclusive goals. On one hand they wanted "development and reform" in Iran, on the otherhand, they did not want to give up the control or revenue from AOIC that would have permitted that development and reform to go forward. Initially they backed Sayyid Zia as an individual they could do business with, but as the embargo dragged on, they turned more and more to an alliance with the military. Churchill's government had come full circle, from ending the Attlee plans for coup, to planning one itself. The crisis dragged on until 1953, Churchill, approves a plan with help from American President Dwight Eisenhower back a coup in Iran. The combination of external and internal political pressure converged around Fazlollah Zahedi. Over the course of the Summer of 1953, demonstrations grew in Iran, and with the failure of a plebescite, the government was destabilized. Zahedi, using financing from the outside, took power, and Mossadegh surrendered to him on August 20th, 1953. The coup pointed to an underlying tension within the post-War order: the industrialized Democracies, hungry for resources to rebuild in the wake of World War II, and to engage the Soviet Union in the Cold War, dealt with emerging states such as Iran as they had with colonies in a previous era. On one hand, spurred by the fear of a third world war against the USSR, and committed to a policy of containment at any cost, they were more than willing to circumvent local political perogatives, on the other hand, many of these local governments were both unstable and corrupt. The two factors formed a vicious circle - intervention lead to more dicatorial rule and corruption, which made intervention rather than establishment of strong local political institutions a greater and greater temptation. The Mau Mau Rebellion In 1951, greivances against the colonial distribution of land came to a head with the Kenya Africa Union demanding greater represenation and land reform, when these demands were rejected, more radical elements came forward and launched the Mau Mau rebellion in 1952. On 17 August 1952, a state of emergency was declared, and British troops were flown to Kenya to deal with the rebellion. As both sides increased the ferocity of their attacks, the country moved to full scale civil war. In 1953 the Lari massacre, perpetrated by Mau-Mau insurgents against Kikuyu loyal to the British changed the political complexion of the rebellion, and gave the public relations advantage to the British. Churchill's strategy was to use a military stick, combined with implementing many of the concessions that Attlee's government had blocked in 1951. He ordered an increased military presence and appointed General Sir George Erskine, who would implement Operation Anvil in 1954 that broke the back of the rebellion in the city of Nairobi, and Operation Hammer which was designed to root out rebels in the country-side. Churchill ordered peace talks opened, but these collapsed shortly after his leaving office. Malaya Emergency In Malaysia a rebellion against British rule had been in progress since 1948, and on October 7, 1951, the British High Commissioner Henry Gurney. Once again, Churchill's second government inherited a crisis, and once again Churchill chose to use direct military action against those in rebellion, while attempting to build an alliance with those who were not. He stepped up the implementation of a "hearts and minds" campaign, and approved the creation of villages, a tactic that would become a recurring part of Western military strategy in South-East Asia. (See Vietnam War). The Malaya Emergency was a more direct case of a guerilla movement, centered in an ethnic group, but backed by the Soviety Union. As such, Britian's policy of direct confrontation and military victory had a great deal more support than in Iran or in Kenya. At the highpoint of the conflict, over 35,000 British troops were stationed in Malaysia. As the rebellion lost ground, it began to lose favor with the local population. While the rebellion was slowly being defeated, it was equally clear that colonial rule from Britain was no longer tenable, in 1953 plans began to be drawn up for independence for Singapore and the other crown colonies in the area. The first elections were held in 1955, just days before Churhill's own resignation, and by 1957, under Anthony Eden, Malaysia became independent. Honours for Churchill In 1953 he was awarded two major honours. He was knighted and became Sir Winston Churchill and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values". A stroke in June of that year led to him being paralysed down his left side. He retired because of his health on April 5, 1955 but retained his post as Chancellor of the University of Bristol. In 1956 he received the Karlspreis (engl.: Charlemagne Award) an Award by the German city of Aachen to people who contributed to the European idea and European peace. During the next few years he revised and finally published A History of the English Speaking Peoples in four volumes. In 1959 Churchill inherited the title of Father of the House, becoming the MP with the longest continuous service — since 1924. He was to hold the position until his retirement from the Commons in 1964, the position of Father of the House passing to Rab Butler. Family On September 2, 1908, at the socially desirable St. Margaret's, Westminster, Churchill married Clementine Hozier, a dazzling but largely penniless beauty whom he met at a dinner party that March (he had proposed to actress Ethel Barrymore, but was turned down). They had five children: Diana; Randolph; Sarah, who co-starred with Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding; Marigold; and Mary, who has written a book on her parents. Clementine's mother was Lady Blanche Henrietta Ogilvy, second wife of Sir Henry Montague Hozier and a daughter of the 7th Earl of Airlie. Clementine's paternity, however, is open to healthy debate. Lady Blanche was well known for sharing her favours and was eventually divorced as a result. She maintained that Clementine's father was Capt. William George "Bay" Middleton, a noted horseman. But Clementine's biographer Joan Hardwick has surmised, due to Sir Henry Hozier's reputed sterility, that all Lady Blanche's "Hozier" children were actually fathered by her sister's husband, Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford, better known as a grandfather of the infamous Mitford sisters of the 1920s. Churchill's son, Randolph, and grandson, Winston, both followed him into Parliament. Last days On January 15, 1965 Churchill suffered another stroke — a severe cerebral thrombosis — that left him gravely ill. He died nine days later on January 24, 1965, 70 years to the day of his father's death. His body lay in State in Westminster Hall for three days and a state funeral service was held at St Paul's Cathedral. This was the first state funeral for a commoner since that of Field Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar in 1914. It was Churchill's wish that, were de Gaulle to outlive him, his (Churchill's) funeral procession should pass through Waterloo Station. As his coffin passed down the Thames on a boat, the cranes of London's docklands bowed in salute. At Churchill's request, he was buried in the family plot at Saint Martin's Churchyard, Bladon, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. Writings Churchill was also a notable historian, producing many works. Some of his twentieth century writings such as The World Crisis (detailing the First World War) and The Second World War are highly autobiographical, telling the story of the conflict. Initially Churchill used the name Winston Churchill for his books. However early on he discovered that there was also an American writer of the same name, who had been published first. So as to prevent the two being confused, they agreed that the American would publish as Winston Churchill, and the Englishman as Winston Spencer Churchill (sometimes abbreviated to Winston S. Churchill). Churchill's works include: The River War - Published in 1899 (2 vols) Kitchner's reconquest of the Sudan in 1898. Also published in a 1 vol abridged edn. Savrola - Churchill's only novel. Published in 1900 Lord Randolph Churchill - A two-volume biography of his father. The World Crisis - Six volumes covering the Great War My African Journey - African travels and experiences. Published in 1908. My Early Life - An autobiography covering the first quarter century of his career. Marlborough: His Life and Times - A biography of his ancestor, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, published in 4-, 6-, and 2-volume editions. ISBN 0226106330 The Second World War 6 volumes (sometimes reprinted as 12) A History of the English Speaking Peoples - used as the basis of the BBC radio series This Sceptred Isle The Scaffolding of Rhetoric - a 1,763-word essay on oratory; unpublished, written 1897. Painting as a Pastime - a short appreciation of painting Miscellany Churchill was an ardent supporter of Zionism, following his meetings with Chaim Weizmann and the visits in Eretz Israel - Palestina. He kept supporting it (and later, Israel) even after WWII. Churchill College, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, was founded in 1960 as the national and commonwealth memorial to Winston Churchill. The Churchill tank, a heavy infantry tank of World War II, was named in his honour. Many attribute some of Churchill’s extraordinary abilities to his being affected by bipolar disorder, commonly known as manic depression. You can see with whom he shares this identification by clicking on the People with Bipolar Disorder category link at the foot of this page. In his last years, Churchill is believed by several writers to have suffered from Alzheimer's disease, though the Churchill Centre disputes this. Certainly he suffered from fits of depression that he called his "black dog," Some researchers also believe that Churchill was dyslexic, based on the difficulties he described himself having at school. However, the Churchill Centre strongly refutes this. The United States Navy destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG-81) is named in his honour. Churchill was the first person to be made an Honorary Citizen of the United States. Churchill's mother was American and some, including Churchill himself, have said that his maternal grandmother was an Iroquois, which would make Churchill the only British Prime Minister of Native American descent. Research has failed to validate this contention, and some doubt its accuracy. Churchill was voted as "The Greatest Briton" in 2002 "100 Greatest Britons" poll sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public. He was also named Time Magazine "Man of the Half-Century" in the early 1950s. The American song writer Jerome Kern was christened Jerome because his parents lived near a park named Jerome Park. This park was in turn named after Churchill's grandfather (the father of Churchill's mother Jennie Jerome). The Churchill cigar size actually was named after him. Churchill's war cabinet, May 1940 - May 1945 Winston Churchill - Prime Minister, Minister of Defence and Leader of the House of Commons. Neville Chamberlain - Lord President of the Council Clement Attlee - Lord Privy Seal and effective Deputy Leader of the House of Commons. Lord Halifax - Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Arthur Greenwood - Minister without Portfolio Changes August 1940: Lord Beaverbrook, Minister of Aircraft Production, joins the War Cabinet October 1940: Sir John Anderson succeeds Neville Chamberlain as Lord President. Sir Kingsley Wood, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour, enter the War Cabinet. Lord Halifax assumes the additional job of Leader of the House of Lords. December 1940: Anthony Eden succeeds Lord Halifax as Foreign Secretary. Halifax remains nominally in the Cabinet as Ambassador to the United States. His successor as Leader of the House of Lords is not in the War Cabinet. May 1941: Lord Beaverbrook ceased to be Minister of Aircraft Production, but remains in the Cabinet as Minister of State. His successor was not in the War Cabinet. June 1941: Lord Beaverbrook becomes Minister of Supply, remaining in the War Cabinet. 1941: Oliver Lyttelton enters the Cabinet as Minister Resident in the Middle East. 4 February 1942: Lord Beaverbrook becomes Minister of War Production, his successor as Minister of Supply is not in the War Cabinet. 19 February 1942: Beaverbrook resigns and no replacement Minister of War Production is appointed for the moment. Clement Attlee becomes Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister. Sir Stafford Cripps succeeds Attlee as Lord Privy Seal and takes over the position of Leader of the House of Commons from Churchill. Sir Kingsley Wood leaves the War Cabinet, though remaining Chancellor of the Exchequer. 22 February 1942: Arthur Greenwood resigns from the War Cabinet. March 1942: Oliver Lyttelton fills the vacant position of Minister of Production ("War" was dropped from the title). Richard Gardiner Casey (a member of the Australian Parliament) succeeds Oliver Lyttelton as Minister Resident in the Middle East. October 1942: Sir Stafford Cripps retires as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons and leaves the War Cabinet. His successor as Lord Privy Seal is not in the Cabinet, Anthony Eden takes the additional position of Leader of the House of Commons. The Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, enters the Cabinet. September 1943: Sir John Anderson succeeds Sir Kingsley Wood (deceased) as Chancellor of the Exchequer, remaining in the War Cabinet. Clement Attlee succeeds Anderson as Lord President, remaining also Deputy Prime Minister. Attlee's successor as Dominions Secretary is not in the Cabinet. November 1943: Lord Woolton enters the Cabinet as Minister of Reconstruction. Winston Churchill's caretaker cabinet, May - July 1945 Winston Churchill - Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Lord Woolton - Lord President of the Council Lord Beaverbrook - Lord Privy Seal Sir John Anderson - Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Donald Bradley Somervell - Secretary of State for the Home Department Anthony Eden - Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Leader of the House of Commons Oliver Stanley - Secretary of State for the Colonies Lord Cranborne - Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs and Leader of the House of Lords Sir P.J. Grigg - Secretary of State for War Leo Amery - Secretary of State for India and Burma Lord Rosebery - Secretary of State for Scotland Harold Macmillan - Secretary of State for Air Brendan Bracken - First Lord of the Admiralty Oliver Lyttelton - President of the Board of Trade and Minister of Production Robert Hudson - Minister of Agriculture Rab Butler - Minister of Labour Winston Churchill's third cabinet, October 1951 - April 1955 Winston Churchill - Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Lord Simonds - Lord Chancellor Lord Woolton - Lord President of the Council Lord Salisbury - Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords Rab Butler - Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe - Secretary of State for the Home Department Anthony Eden - Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Oliver Lyttelton - Secretary of State for the Colonies Lord Ismay - Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations James Stuart - Secretary of State for Scotland Peter Thorneycroft - President of the Board of Trade Lord Cherwell - Paymaster-General Sir Walter Monckton - Minister of Labour Henry Crookshank - Minister of Health and Leader of the House of Commons Harold Macmillan - Minister of Housing and Local Government Lord Leathers - Minister for the Co-ordination of Transport, Fuel, and Power Changes March 1952: Lord Salisbury succeeds Lord Ismay as Commonwealth Relations Secretary. Salisbury remains also Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords. Lord Alexander succeeds Churchill as Minister of Defence. May 1952: Henry Crookshank succeeds Lord Salisbury as Lord Privy Seal. Salisbury remains Commonwealth Relations Secretary and Leader of the House of Lords. Crookshank's successor as Minister of Health is not in the Cabinet. November 1952: Lord Woolton becomes Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Lord Salisbury succeeds Lord Woolton as Lord President. Lord Swinton succeeds Lord Salisbury as Commonwealth Relations Secretary. September 1953: Florence Horsbrugh, the Minister of Education, Sir Thomas Dugdale, the Minister of Agriculture, and Gwilym Lloyd George, the Minister of Food, enter the cabinet. The Ministry for the Co-ordination of Transport, Fuel, and Power, is abolished, and Lord Leathers leaves the Cabinet. October 1953: Lord Cherwell resigns as Paymaster General. His successor is not in the Cabinet. July 1954: Alan Lennox-Boyd succeeds Oliver Lyttelton as Colonial Secretary. Derick Heathcoat Amory succeeds Sir Thomas Dugdale as Minister of Agriculture. October 1954: Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, now Lord Kilmuir, succeeds Lord Simonds as Lord Chancellor. Gwilym Lloyd George succeeds him as Home Secretary. The Food Ministry is merged into the Ministry of Agriculture. Sir David Eccles succeeds Florence Horsbrugh as Minister of Education. Harold Macmillan succeeds Lord Alexander as Minister of Defence. Duncan Sandys succeeds Macmillan as Minister of Housing and Local Government. Osbert Peake, the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, enters the Cabinet.

Tony Blair

The Right Honourable Anthony Charles Lynton "Tony" Blair (born 6 May 1953) has served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 1997, when he brought the Labour Party into power after 18 consecutive years of Conservative government.

After becoming the Leader of the Labour Party in 1994 following the death of John Smith, Blair led the party towards the centre of British politics, using the term "New Labour" as a slogan to describe a party more favourable to private industry. However, critics to the left feel that in the process he has compromised its founders' principles, and that the government places insufficient emphasis on the redistribution of wealth. Since the September 11th terrorist attack his agenda has been dominated by foreign affairs, where he has supported the USA in the "War on Terror" and sent British forces to participate in the 2003 Iraq War and its aftermath.

Early life

Blair was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father Leo was a barrister and later a law lecturer who was active in the Conservative Party

Leo Blair had ambitions to stand for Parliament in Durham but was thwarted when he had a stroke when Blair was 11, an event which affected Blair deeply. He spent most of his childhood years in Durham, where between the age of 13 and 15 he worked during the school holidays as a bicycle repairer in the local hardware store, "Jonathon Willikstop's". After attending the Durham Choristers School, Blair was educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh (sometimes called the "Eton of Scotland"), where he met Charlie Falconer whom he would later make Lord Chancellor. He read law at St. John's College, Oxford. During his college years he also played guitar and sang for a rock band called Ugly Rumours. He obtained a degree and went on to enroll as a pupil barrister in the Chambers of Derry Irvine where he met his future wife, Cherie Booth.

Begins political career

Shortly after graduation in 1975, Blair joined the Labour Party. During the early 1980s, he was involved in the Hackney South Labour Party, where he aligned himself with the "soft left" who appeared to be taking control of the party. However, his attempt to secure selection as a candidate for Hackney Borough Council was unsuccessful. Through his father-in-law he contacted Tom Pendry, a Labour MP, to ask for help in how to start his Parliamentary career; Pendry gave him a tour of the House of Commons and advised him to run for selection in a by-election due to be held in the safe Conservative seat of Beaconsfield in 1982, where Pendry knew a senior member of the local party. Blair was chosen as the candidate; he won only 10% of the vote and lost his deposit, but impressed the then Labour Party leader Michael Foot and got his name noticed within the party.

In 1983, Blair found that the newly-created seat of Sedgefield, near where he had grown up in Durham, had no Labour candidate. Several sitting MPs displaced by boundary changes were interested, but Blair managed to win the nomination. The seat was safely Labour despite the party's collapse in the 1983 UK general election; Blair was helped on the campaign trail by soap actress Patricia Phoenix, the girlfriend of his father-in-law Anthony Booth.

In opposition

Once in Parliament, Blair's ascent was rapid. He was given his first shadow post in 1984, aligning himself firmly with the reforming tendencies in the party, headed by leader Neil Kinnock. He entered the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Energy in 1989, and worked to produce a more moderate and electable party. When Kinnock resigned after defeat by John Major in the 1992 UK general election, Blair became Shadow Home Secretary under John Smith.

Smith died suddenly in 1994 of a heart attack. Blair and close friend Gordon Brown had both been considered as possible leadership contenders and had always agreed that they would not fight each other. Brown had previously been thought the most senior and understood this to mean that Blair would give way to him; however, it soon became apparent that Blair now had greater support. A MORI opinion poll published in the Sunday Times on 15 May found that among the general public, Blair had the support of 32%, John Prescott, 19%, Margaret Beckett 14%, Gordon Brown 9%, and Robin Cook 5%. At the Granita restaurant in Islington on 31 May, Brown agreed to give way. There is no conclusive evidence of the terms of any wider "Granita Pact" but supporters of Brown maintain that Blair undertook to resign from the Prime Ministership after a set period in favour of Brown. The Labour Party Electoral College elected Tony Blair as Party Leader on 21 July 1994. The other candidates were John Prescott and Margaret Beckett.

Leader of the Labour Party

Shortly after his election as Leader, Blair announced at the conclusion of his 1994 conference speech that he intended to propose a new statement of aims and values for the Labour Party to replace the charter originally drawn up in 1918. This involved the deletion of Clause IV which had committed the party to 'the common ownership of the means of production' (widely interpreted as wholesale nationalisation). A special conference of the party approved the change in March 1995.

While in opposition, Blair also revised party policy in a manner which enhanced the image of Labour as competent and modern. He used the term "New Labour" to distinguish the party under his leadership from what had gone before. Although the transformation aroused much criticism (its alleged superficiality drawing fire both from political opponents and traditionalists within the "rank and file" of his own party), it was nevertheless successful in changing public perception. At the 1996 Labour party conference, Blair stated that his three top priorities on coming to office were "education, education, education".

Aided by disaffection with the Conservative government (who were dogged by allegations of corruption, and long running divisions over Europe), "New Labour" achieved a landslide victory over John Major in the 1997 UK general election.

First term 1997–2001

Immediately after taking office, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown gave the Bank of England the power to set the base rate of interest autonomously. The traditional tendency of governments to manipulate interest rates around the time of General Elections for political gain is thought to have been deleterious to the UK economy and helped reinforce a cyclical pattern of boom and bust, for which Blair frequently criticises previous governments. Brown's decision was popular with the City, which the Labour Party had been courting since the early 1990s. Together with the government's avowed determination to remain within projected Conservative spending limits, it helped to reassure sceptics of the Labour Party's new-found fiscal "prudence". Brown, who had his own following within the Labour Party, was a powerful and independent Chancellor who was given exceptional freedom to act by Blair, although later reports by Downing Street insiders have said that Blair grew to regret this as he was cut out of important fiscal decisions.

A significant achievement of Blair's first term was the negotiation of the Belfast Agreement, commonly called the Good Friday Agreement, in which the British and Irish Governments and most Northern Irish political parties established an "exclusively peaceful and democratic" framework for power-sharing in Northern Ireland. Negotiations for this accord had begun under the previous Prime Minister, John Major. The agreement was finally signed on 10 April 1998, and on 26 November 1998 Blair became the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to address the Republic of Ireland's parliament. Though the agreement has yet to be implemented in full, the ceasefires and political structures it brought into being have increased the chances of a sustained peace.

Blair's first term saw an extensive programme of constitutional reform. A Human Rights Act was introduced in 1998, a Welsh Assembly and a Scottish Parliament were both set up, and most hereditary peers were removed from the House of Lords, in 1999, the Greater London Authority was established in 2000, and the Freedom of Information Act was passed later that year, with its provisions coming into effect over the next decade. This latter proposal disappointed campaigners whose hopes had been raised by a White Paper of 1998 which promised a more robust Act.

In 1999, Blair presided over British involvement in the Kosovo War. The Labour Party in opposition had criticised the Conservative government for weakness over Bosnia, and Blair was one of those urging a strong line by NATO against Slobodan Milosevic. He persuaded the US Clinton administration to support the use of ground troops should aerial bombardment fail to win the war, although in the event they were not needed. His speech setting out the Blair Doctrine of the International Community was made one month into the war, in Chicago on April 22, 1999.

In the 2001 UK general election, Blair defined the election as being about improvements to public service. This specifically included the National Health Service. The Conservatives largely ignored the issue of public services in favour of opposing British membership of European Monetary Union, which proved to do little to win over floating voters: the Labour Party preserved its majority, and Blair became the first Labour Prime Minister to win a full second term. However the election was notable for a sudden and large fall in voter turnout. The leader of the Conservative Party, William Hague, resigned, becoming the first Conservative Party leader never to have served as Prime Minister; his successor Iain Duncan Smith became the second, and currently last, holder of this distinction (though Austen Chamberlain never became Prime Minister, he only led the Conservative MPs, and thus technically was never the leader of the Conservative Party).

Second term 2001–present

Following the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, Blair was very quick to align the UK with the US, engaging in a round of shuttle diplomacy to help form and maintain the allied coalition prior to their attack on Afghanistan (in which British troops participated). He maintains this role to this day, showing a willingness to visit countries on diplomatic missions that other world leaders might consider too dangerous to visit.

Iraq war

Blair was a strong supporter of U.S. President George W. Bush's controversial plan to invade Iraq and overthrow dictator Saddam Hussein. Blair soon became the face of international support for the war, often clashing with French President Jacques Chirac, who became the face of international opposition. Regarded by many as a more persuasive orator than Bush, Blair gave many speeches arguing for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in the days leading up to war.

Blair made a case for war against Saddam based on Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction and breach of UN resolutions, but was wary of making a direct appeal for regime change. 46,000 British troops, one third of the total strength of the UK armed forces, were deployed to assist with the 2003 invasion of Iraq. When after the war it was established that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction, Blair's pre-war statements became a major domestic controversy. Many members of the Labour Party, not only those who were opposed to the Iraq war, were among those critical; among opponents of the war, accusations that Blair had deliberately exaggerated the threat were made. However, successive inquiries (including those by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons, Lord Hutton and Lord Butler) have found that Blair honestly stated what he believed to be true at the time.

Blair and Bush were unsuccessfully nominated in 2004 for the Nobel Peace Prize by Jan Simonsen, a maverick Norwegian politician. Several anti-war pressure groups want to try Blair for war crimes in Iraq at the International Criminal Court (Bush cannot be tried because the USA is not a signatory to the treaty). The Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, stated that the invasion was "illegal" in September 2004.

The United Kingdom armed forces remain in southern Iraq to stabilise the country in preparation for impending elections. In October 2004 the UK government agreed to a request from US forces to send a battalion of the Black Watch regiment to the American sector to free up US troops for an assault on Fallujah. After the US election, Blair has tried to use his personal closeness to President Bush to bring pressure on the US administration on Israel and Palestine. He has supported the Israeli government's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.

Domestic politics

After fighting the 2001 election on the theme of improving public services, Blair's government raised taxes to increase spending on education and health in 2002. Blair insisted that the increased funding must be matched by internal reforms. The government introduced a scheme to allow local NHS hospitals financial freedom, although the eventual shape of the proposals allowed somewhat less freedom than Blair would have liked after an internal struggle. Despite a manifesto pledge in 2001 not to introduce additional "top-up" tuition fees in universities, Blair announced that such a scheme would eventually be brought in.

On 1 August 2003 Blair became the longest continuously serving Labour Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, surpassing Harold Wilson's 1964–1970 term. However, because of the crisis over the suicide of Dr David Kelly, a government scientist who had spoken to a BBC journalist precipitating a major fight between the BBC and the government, there were no celebrations. Blair set up an inquiry under the senior Law Lord Lord Hutton.

The second reading vote on the Higher Education Bill bringing in top-up fees was held on January 27, 2004 and saw the government scrape a majority of 5 due to a Labour rebellion. A first House of Commons defeat had been possible but averted when a small number of Gordon Brown's backbench allies switched sides at the last minute. The next day the Hutton Inquiry reported on the circumstances surrounding the death of David Kelly. The Inquiry was widely expected to criticise Blair and his government. In the event, Hutton absolved Blair and his government of deliberately inserting false intelligence into its dossier, but criticised the BBC editorial process which had allowed unfounded allegations to be broadcast. The report did not satisfy opponents of Blair and of the Iraq war.

Although the Hutton Inquiry had vindicated Blair, evidence to the inquiry raised questions over the use of intelligence in the run up to the war in Iraq. Hutton was the subject of criticism for strictly interpreting his remit; after a similar decision by President Bush, Blair initiated another inquiry (the Butler Review) into the accuracy and presentation of pre-war intelligence. Opponents of the war, especially the Liberal Democrats, refused to participate as it did not meet their demands for a public inquiry into whether the war was justified.

In April 2004, Blair announced that a referendum would be held on the ratification of the EU Constitution. This represents a significant change in British politics, where only one nationwide referendum has been held (this was the 1975 referendum on whether Britain should remain in the EEC). It was a dramatic U-turn for Blair, who had previously dismissed calls for a referendum unless the constitution fundamentally altered Britain's relationship with the EU; Michael Howard eagerly seized on the "EU-turn", reminding Blair of his 2003 conference oration that "I can only go one way. I haven't got a reverse gear". The referendum is expected to be held in early 2006.

During his second term Blair has increasingly become the target for protests. On 19 May 2004, he was hit by two condoms filled with purple flour in the House of Commons, thrown by Fathers 4 Justice. His speech to the 2004 Labour Party conference was interrupted both by a protester against the Iraq war and then by a group who opposed the government's decision to allow the House of Commons to ban fox hunting.

On 15 September 2004, Tony Blair delivered a speech on the environment and the 'urgent issue' of climate change. In unusually direct language he concluded that If what the science tells us about climate change is correct, then unabated it will result in catastrophic consequences for our world... The science, almost certainly, is correct. The action he proposed to take appeared to be based on business and investment rather than any tax or legislative attempts to reduce CO2 emissions: ...it is possible to combine reducing emissions with economic growth... investment in science and technology and in the businesses associated with it... The G8 next year, and the EU presidency provide a great opportunity to push this debate to a new and better level that, after the discord over Kyoto, offers the prospect of agreement and action. [2] (http://politics.guardian.co.uk/green/story/0,9061,1305030,00.html). If he does press the issue at the G8, this would be expected to lead to conflict with the United States, which has opposed the Kyoto Protocol.

Attempted impeachment

On 25 August 2004, Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price announced that he would attempt to impeach Blair. Price argued that Blair has "caused injury to the state" and "breached his constitutional duties" by lying to Parliament. Price had the support of all Plaid Cymru and Scottish nationalist MPs, and claimed that a number of Labour backbenchers have expressed support, though only one (Peter Kilfoyle) has revealed his support to the public. The campaign is supported by the right-wing Spectator magazine and its editor, Conservative MP Boris Johnson, and has its own web site, ImpeachBlair.org. The impeachment charge is summarised into four specific charges laid against Blair, all relating to the Iraq war:

misleading Parliament and the country;
incompetence and negligence;
undermining the constitution; and
entering into a secret agreement with the President of the United States.
Impeachment is an archaic method of bringing to trial those who cannot or should not be tried by a lesser court than Parliament. An impeachment process could be initiated by a single MP, but must be approved by a vote of the House of Commons, in which the Government has a large majority. If this resolution passes, Blair would be brought to trial before the House of Lords; if found guilty, he would be removed from office. However, the procedure cannot begin until the Speaker of the House of Commons allows debate on the impeachment motion. The impeachment campaign has drafted a motion for a Select Committee to investigate the charges and bring in an impeachment resolution, and this motion is currently open for MPs to sign. The Speaker will decide whether to order a debate after assessing the number of signatures. No impeachment has been attempted for one hundred and fifty years, and no impeachment resolution has been passed since 1806; the last two impeachment trials resulted in acquittals.

Private life

Blair married fellow barrister and QC Cherie Booth on 29 March 1980. They had met in 1976 whilst both were pupil barristers in the same Chambers. They have three sons (Euan, Nicky, and Leo) and one daughter (Kathryn). Leo holds the distinction of being the first child officially born to a sitting Prime Minister in 150 years, since Francis Albert Rollo Russell was born to Lord John Russell on 11 July 1849. While the Blairs have been keen to shield their children from the media spotlight, this has not always been possible. Leo became a focal point for a debate over the MMR vaccine when Tony Blair refused to confirm whether his son had received the controversial treatment.

Euan Blair hit the headlines after police found him "drunk and incapable" in Leicester Square, London while out celebrating the end of his GCSE exams in July 2000, just days after his father had proposed on-the-spot fines for drunken and yobbish behaviour. Blair has twice lodged complaints about press stories concerning his children. However, the fact that the family have occasionally held photocalls together has led some to accuse him of exploitation, and such photographs have been used on Private Eye covers.

Blair is an Anglican of the High Church or Anglo-Catholic tendency, while his wife is Roman Catholic and his children are (according to Catholic doctrine) brought up in that faith. Blair has not sought to make a political issue of his faith, though biographers agree that his political beliefs have been profoundly influenced by it. One name often mentioned as a theological influence is the Scottish Christian philosopher John Macmurray. Some have suggested Tony Blair is the most devout Prime Minister since William Ewart Gladstone.

Health problems

On 19 October 2003 it emerged that Blair had received treatment for an irregular heartbeat. Having felt ill the previous day, he went to hospital and was diagnosed with supraventricular tachycardia. He was given a small electric shock to correct the heartbeat and returned home that night. He took the following day (20 October) a little more gently than usual and returned to a full schedule on 21 October. Downing Street aides later suggested that the palpitations had been brought on by Blair drinking lots of strong coffee at an EU summit and then working out vigorously in the gym. However, former Armed Forces minister Lewis Moonie, a doctor, said that the treatment was more serious than Number 10 had admitted: "Anaesthetising somebody and giving their heart electric shocks is not something you just do in the routine run of medical practice", he claimed.

Family problems in the spring of 2004 fueled speculation that Blair was on the brink of stepping down. Lord Bragg, a close friend of the Blair family, admitted that Blair was "under colossal strain", that "considerations of his family became very pressing" and that Blair had thought "things over very carefully." This led to a surge in speculation that Blair would resign. Several cabinet ministers urged Blair to continue.

Blair underwent a catheter ablation to correct his irregular heartbeat on 1 October 2004, having announced the procedure the day before in a series of interviews in which he also declared that he would seek a third term but not a fourth. The planned procedure was carried out at London's Hammersmith hospital. At the same time it was disclosed that the Blairs had purchased a house at No.29 Connaught Square, London, for a reported £3.5 million. Some have speculated that part of No.29 is to be converted into offices for a future Blair Foundation. The purchase also fuelled speculation that Blair was preparing for life after government.

Satirical caricature

As is usually the fate with British Prime Ministers, he has become the central focal point of satire in the magazine Private Eye. A regular feature is the St Albion Parish News, in which recent political events and Blair's penchant for spin and his zealous enthusiasms are pilloried. In this series the parish incumbent (Rev. A.R.P. Blair MA (Oxon)) combines a relentless trendiness with a tendency to moralise and to exclude all those who criticise him.

Blair has avoided traditional pigeon holes of British political leaders. He has been labelled as insincere ("King of Spin", "Phoney Tony") and accused of "cronyism" due to his perceived penchant for promoting his friends to top jobs; the fact that "Tony" rhymes with "crony" has helped make this into easy slogans. Since 2001, he has been called "Bush's poodle" or the governor of the 51st state due to his co-operation with the USA — an alliance somewhat upsetting to many supporters of his party, which traditionally allies with the Democrats.

His name is commonly deliberately mis-spelled as Tony Bliar (or simply "B. Liar") by people who don't like what he has done, what they think he has done, his policies (particularly his stance on Iraq, something opposed by many people who otherwise would support him), or who simply dislike him personally. This originates from the belief that he deliberately lied to parliament over the threat Iraq posed. He has also been parodied in the comic 2000 AD in the series B.L.A.I.R 1 where he acts as a sort of futuristic crime fighter controlled by an artificial intelligence known as "Doctor Spin".

Quotations

"But what has come home to me more than anything else is the utter futility of Opposition. I did not join the Labour Party to protest. I joined it as a party of government and I will make sure that it is a party of government." - From Tony Blair's speech to the TUC, September 1995
"Ask me my three main priorities for government, and I will tell you: Education, education, and education" - From Tony Blair's speech to the Labour Party Conference, October 1, 1996
"She was the people's princess and that is how she will stay, how she will remain in our hearts and minds forever." - Remarks in Sedgefield on the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, August 31, 1997
"As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible, but, in fact, it is transient. The question is: What do you leave behind? And what you can bequeath to this anxious world is the light of liberty" — From Tony Blair's speech to the U.S. Congress, 18 July 2003
"I can only go one way. I've not got a reverse gear." — From Tony Blair's speech to the Labour Party Conference, 30 September 2003
"My prediction that he would be a disaster has turned out to be wrong and I think when that happens in politics you should just be open about it..." — On London Mayor Ken Livingstone's readmission to the Labour Party
"A day like today isn't time for soundbites — we can leave them at home, but I feel that the hand of history is on our shoulder, I really do." — On negotiating the Good Friday Agreement
"This is the time for this house, not just this government or indeed this prime minister, but for this house to give a lead, to show that we will stand up for what we know to be right, to show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk, to show at the moment of decision that we have the courage to do the right thing." — The closing of Tony Blair's speech to the House of Commons opening the debate on the 2003 Iraq War

Tony Blair's First Cabinet, May 1997–June 2001

Tony Blair — Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, and Minister for the Civil Service
John Prescott — Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions
Gordon Brown — Chancellor of the Exchequer and Second Lord of the Treasury
Lord Irvine of Lairg — Lord Chancellor
Ann Taylor — Leader of the House of Commons
Lord Richard — Leader of the House of Lords
Alistair Darling — Chief Secretary to the Treasury
David Clark — Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Cabinet Office Minister
Robin Cook — Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
Jack Straw — Secretary of State for the Home Department
Jack Cunningham — Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
Frank Dobson — Secretary of State for Health
George Robertson — Secretary of State for Defence
Harriet Harman — Secretary of State for Social Security and Minister for Women and Equality
David Blunkett — Secretary of State for Education and Employment
Margaret Beckett — Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade
Chris Smith — Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Clare Short — Secretary of State for International Development
Mo Mowlam — Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
Donald Dewar — Secretary of State for Scotland
Ron Davies — Secretary of State for Wales
Gavin Strang — Minister for Transport
Peter Mandelson — Minister without Portfolio (non-cabinet)

Changes

July 1998 — Margaret Beckett becomes Leader of the House of Commons. Baroness Jay of Paddington becomes Leader of the House of Lords and Minister for Women. Stephen Byers becomes Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Ann Taylor becomes Chief Whip, which is now a cabinet position. Jack Cunningham becomes Cabinet Office Minister and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Nick Brown becomes Agriculture Minister. Alistair Darling becomes Social Security Secretary. Peter Mandelson enters the cabinet as Trade & Industry Secretary. Alun Michael becomes Welsh Secretary. John Reid becomes Transport Minister, which is no longer a cabinet position (although Dr Reid will continue attending cabinet meetings). Lord Richard, Harriet Harman, Ron Davies, David Clark, and Gavin Strang leave the cabinet. The President of the Board of Trade is no longer a title used by the Trade Secretary. There is no longer a Minister without Portfolio.
December 1998 — Stephen Byers becomes Trade & Industry Seretary. Alan Milburn becomes Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Peter Mandelson leaves the cabinet.
October 1999 — Andrew Smith becomes Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Geoff Hoon becomes Defence Secretary. Alan Milburn becomes Health Secretary. Peter Mandelson returns to the cabinet as Northern Ireland Secretary. Mo Mowlam becomes Cabinet Office Minister and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. John Reid becomes Scottish Secretary. Paul Murphy becomes Welsh Secretary. George Robertson, Frank Dobson, Donald Dewar, and Alun Michael leave the cabinet.
January 2001 — Peter Mandelson resigns as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and is succeeded by John Reid. Helen Liddell enters the cabinet and succeeds John Reid as Secretary of State for Scotland.

Tony Blair's Second Cabinet, June 2001–present

Tony Blair — Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, and Minister for the Civil Service:
John Prescott — Deputy Prime Minister
Gordon Brown — Chancellor of the Exchequer and Second Lord of the Treasury
Lord Irvine of Lairg — Lord Chancellor
Robin Cook — Leader of the House of Commons
Lord Williams of Mostyn — Leader of the House of Lords
Andrew Smith — Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Jack Straw — Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
David Blunkett — Secretary of State for the Home Department
Margaret Beckett — Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Stephen Byers — Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions
Alan Milburn — Secretary of State for Health
Geoff Hoon — Secretary of State for Defence
Alistair Darling — Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
Estelle Morris — Secretary of State for Education and Skills
Patricia Hewitt — Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and Minister for Women and Equality
Tessa Jowell — Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Clare Short — Secretary of State for International Development
John Reid — Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
Helen Liddell — Secretary of State for Scotland
Paul Murphy — Secretary of State for Wales
Charles Clarke — Minister without Portfolio

Changes

May 2002 — Stephen Byers resigns and the Department of Transport, Local Government & the Regions is broken up. Alistair Darling becomes Secretary of State for Transport. John Prescott's Office of the Deputy Prime Minisiter assumes the Local Government & the Regions portfolio. Andrew Smith becomes Work & Pensions Secretary. Paul Boateng becomes Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Complete list of changes October 2002 — Estelle Morris resigns. Charles Clarke becomes Education Secretary; John Reid becomes Minister without Portfolio. Paul Murphy becomes Northern Ireland Secretary. Peter Hain becomes Welsh Secretary.
March 2003 — Robin Cook resigns. John Reid becomes Leader of the House of Commons. Ian McCartney becomes Minister without Portfolio.
May 2003 — Clare Short resigns and is succeed by Baroness Amos as International Development Secretary.
June 2003 — In a reshuffle John Reid becomes Health Secretary. Lord Falconer of Thoroton assumes the new position of Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, also becoming Lord Chancellor. Alistair Darling becomes Scottish Secretary remaining also Transport Secretary. Peter Hain becomes Leader of the House of Commons, remaining also Welsh Secretary. Alan Milburn, Lord Irvine of Lairg, and Helen Liddell leave the Cabinet. Complete list of changes
October 2003 — Baroness Amos becomes Leader of the House of Lords, following the death of Lord Williams of Mostyn. Hilary Benn becomes International Development Secretary.
September 2004 — Andrew Smith resigns as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and is succeeded by Alan Johnson. Alan Milburn returns to government with a seat in the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster mainly at the head of policy co-ordination; he replaces Douglas Alexander, who was not in the Cabinet.

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS (born October 13, 1925) is a British politician and the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a position she held from 1979 to 1990. She is a member of the Conservative Party and still the figurehead for a brand of politics known as Thatcherism involving reduced government spending and privatization of government owned industries. Even before coming to power she was nicknamed The Iron Lady in Soviet propaganda, an appellation which stuck.

Thatcher served as Education Secretary in the government of Edward Heath from 1970 to 1974, and successfully challenged Heath for the Conservative leadership in 1975. She was undefeated at the polls, winning the 1979, 1983 and 1987 general elections, and became the longest serving Prime Minister of the 20th century. However, Thatcher was a divisive leader and broke the power of the trade unions in the miners' strike of 1984-5.

In foreign relations, Thatcher maintained the special relationship with the United States, and formed a close bond with Ronald Reagan. When Argentina invaded Falkland Islands in 1982, Thatcher dispatched a Royal Navy task force to retake the islands in the Falklands War, a policy that proved hugely popular at home.

Her popularity finally declined when she introduced a new tax to pay for local government which opponents called the poll tax, and the Conservative Party began to split over her sceptical approach to European Economic and Monetary Union. Her leadership was challenged from within and she was forced to resign in 1990. Since 1992 she has been known as Baroness Thatcher, with her direct political work limited to membership of the House of Lords and as head of the Thatcher Foundation.

Early life and education

Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts in the town of Grantham in Lincolnshire in eastern England. Her father was Alfred Roberts who ran a grocers' shop in the town and was active in local politics, serving as an Alderman (while officially described as 'Liberal Independent', in practice he supported the local Conservatives). When the Labour Party won control of Grantham Council in 1945, Alfred Roberts was not re-elected as an Alderman, a decision which affected Thatcher deeply.

She did well at school, going on to a girls' grammar school and then to Somerville College, Oxford from 1944 where she studied chemistry. She became Chairman of Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946, the third woman to hold the post. She obtained a second class degree and worked as a research chemist for British Xylonite and then Lyons & Company, where she helped develop methods for preserving ice cream.

Political career between 1950 and 1970

In the election of 1950 she was the youngest woman Conservative candidate but fought in the safe Labour seat of Dartford. She fought the seat again in the 1951 election. Her activity in the Conservative Party in Kent brought her into contact with Denis Thatcher; they fell in love and were married later in 1951. Denis Thatcher was a wealthy businessman and funded his wife to read for the Bar. She qualified as a Barrister in 1953, the same year that her twin children, Carol and Mark were born. On returning to work, she specialised in tax issues.

Thatcher had begun to look for a safe Conservative seat, and was narrowly rejected as candidate for Orpington in 1954. She had several other rejections before being selected for Finchley in April 1958. She easily won the seat in the 1959 election and took her seat in the House of Commons. Unusually, her maiden speech was made in support of her Private Member's Bill which was successful and forced local councils to hold meetings in public.

She was given an early promotion to the front bench as Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in September 1961, keeping the post until the Conservatives lost power in the 1964 election. When Sir Alec Douglas-Home stepped down, Thatcher voted for Edward Heath in the leadership election over Reginald Maudling, and was rewarded with the job of Conservative spokesman on Housing and Land. She moved to the Shadow Treasury Team after 1966.

Thatcher was one of few Conservative MPs to support the Bill to decriminalise male homosexuality, and she voted in favour of the principle of David Steel's Bill to legalise abortion. However she was opposed to the abolition of capital punishment. She made her mark as a conference speaker in 1966 with a strong attack on the taxation policy of the Labour Government as being steps "not only towards Socialism, but towards Communism". She won promotion to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Fuel Spokesman in 1967, and was then promoted to shadow Transport and finally Education before the 1970 general election.

In Heath's Cabinet

When the Conservatives won the election, Thatcher became Secretary of State for Education and Science. In her first months in office, forced to administer a cut in the Education budget, she decided that abolishing free milk in schools would be less harmful than other measures. Nevertheless, this provoked a storm of public protest, earning her the nickname "Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher", coined by The Sun. Her term was marked by many proposals for more local education authorities to adopt comprehensive secondary education, of which she approved 96%. Thatcher also defended the budget of the Open University from attempts to cut it.

After the Conservative defeat in February 1974, she was again promoted to be Shadow Environment Secretary. In this job she promoted a policy of abolishing the rating system that paid for local government services, which proved a popular policy within the Conservative Party. However she agreed with Sir Keith Joseph that the Heath Government had lost control of monetary policy. After Heath lost the second election that year, Joseph and other right-wingers declined to challenge his leadership but Thatcher decided that she would. Unexpectedly she outpolled him on the first ballot and won the job on the second, in February 1975. She appointed Heath's preferred successor William Whitelaw as her Deputy.

As Leader of the Opposition

On 19 January 1976 she made a speech at Kensington Town Hall in which she made a scathing attack on the Soviet Union. The most controversial part of her speech ran:

"The Russians are bent on world dominance, and they are rapidly acquiring the means to become the most powerful imperial nation the world has seen. The men in the Soviet Politburo do not have to worry about the ebb and flow of public opinion. They put guns before butter, while we put just about everything before guns."
In response, the Soviet Defence Ministry newspaper Red Star gave her the nickname The Iron Lady, which was soon publicised by Radio Moscow world service. She took delight in the name and it soon became associated with her image as an unwavering and steadfast character. She acquired many other nicknames such as The Great She-Elephant, Attilla the Hen, and The Grocer's Daughter (due to her father's profession, but coined at a time when she was considered as Edward Heath's ally; he had been nicknamed The Grocer).

At first she appointed many Heath supporters in the Shadow Cabinet and throughout her administrations sought to have a cabinet that reflected the broad range of opinions in the Conservative Party. Thatcher had to act cautiously in converting the Conservative Party to her monetarist beliefs. She reversed Heath's support for devolution to Scotland. An interview she gave to Granada Television's World in Action programme in 1978 spoke of her concern of immigrants "swamping" Britain aroused particular controversy. Most opinion polls showed that voters preferred James Callaghan as Prime Minister even when the Conservative Party was in the lead, but the Labour Government's severe difficulties with the Trades Unions over the winter of 1978–1979 (dubbed the 'Winter of Discontent') put the Conservatives well ahead in the 1979 election and Thatcher became the first female Prime Minister.

As Prime Minister

1979–1983
She formed a government on 4 May 1979, with a mandate to reverse Britain's economic decline and to reduce the extent of the state. Thatcher was incensed by one contemporary view within the Civil Service that its job was to manage Britain's decline from the days of Empire, and wanted the country to punch above its weight in international affairs. She was a philosophic soulmate with Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980 in the United States, and to a lesser extent Brian Mulroney, who was elected around the same time in Canada. It seemed for a time that conservatism might be the dominant political philosophy in the major English-speaking nations for the era.

Thatcher began by increasing interest rates to drive down inflation. This move hit businesses, especially in the manufacturing sector, and unemployment rose sharply. However her early tax policy reforms were based on supply-side economics. There was a severe recession in the early 1980s, and the Government's economic policy was widely blamed. Political commentators harked back to the Heath Government's "U-turn" and speculated that Mrs Thatcher would follow suit, but she repudiated this approach at the 1980 Conservative Party conference, telling the party "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning". That she meant what she said was confirmed in the 1981 budget, when despite an open letter from 364 economists, taxes were increased in the middle of a recession. Though unemployment reached 3 million in January 1982, the inflation rate dropped to low single figures and interest rates were able to fall. By the time of the 1983 election the economy was recovering well.

On 2 April 1982, Argentinian forces invaded the Falkland Islands, a British territory claimed by Argentina (see History of the Falkland Islands). Thatcher immediately sent a naval task force to the Falklands which defeated the Argentinians (see Falklands War), resulting in a wave of patriotic enthusiasm for her personally. The landslide victory of the Conservatives in the June 1983 general election is often ascribed to the 'Falklands Effect'. Her 'Right to Buy' policy of allowing residents of council housing to buy their homes at a discount did much to increase her popularity in working-class areas.

1983–1987
Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the trade unions but unlike the Heath government, proceeded by way of incremental change rather than a single Act. Several unions decided to launch strikes which were wholly or partly aimed at damaging her politically, in particular the National Union of Mineworkers. Thatcher had made preparations for the strike by building up coal stocks and there were no power cuts, and picket line violence, combined with the fact that the NUM had not held a ballot to approve strike action, contrived to swing public opinion on her side. The Miners' Strike lasted a full year (1984–1985) before the miners were forced to give in and go back to work without a deal. After this strike, trade union resistance to reform was much reduced and a succession of changes were made.

During the middle of the strike, on the early morning of 12 October 1984, Thatcher escaped injury from a bomb planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Brighton's Grand Hotel during the Conservative Party conference. Five people died in the attack, including the wife of Government Chief Whip, John Wakeham. A prominent member of the Cabinet, Norman Tebbit, was injured, along with his wife, Margaret, who was left paralyzed. Thatcher insisted that the Conference open on time the next day and made her speech as planned.

Thatcher's political and economic philosophy emphasised free markets and entrepreneurialism. Since gaining power, she had experimented in selling off a small nationalised industry, the National Freight company, to the public, with a surprisingly large response. After the 1983 election, the Government became bolder and sold off most of the large utilities which had been in public ownership since the late 1940s. Many in the public took advantage of share offers, although many sold their shares immediately for a quick profit. The policy of privatisation became synonymous with Thatcherism and has since been exported across the globe.

In the Cold war Mrs Thatcher supported Reagan's policies of deterrence against the Soviets. United States forces were permitted by Mrs Thatcher to station nuclear cruise missiles at British bases, arousing mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She had no objections to the US bombing raid on Libya from bases in Britain in 1986, and her liking for defence ties with the USA was demonstrated in the Westland affair when she acted with colleagues to prevent the helicopter manufacturer Westland (a vital defence contractor) from linking with the Italian firm Agusta in favour of a link with Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation of the USA. Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine, who had pushed the Agusta deal, resigned in protest at her style of leadership, and thereafter became known as a potential leadership challenger.

In 1985, the University of Oxford voted to refuse her an honorary degree in protest against her cuts in funding for education. This award had always previously been given to Prime Ministers who had been educated at Oxford.

Between 1983 and 1987, Thatcher had two noted foreign policy successes. In 1984 she visited China and signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration with Deng Xiaoping on 19 December stating the basic policies of the People's Republic of China (PRC) regarding Hong Kong after the handover in 1997. At the Fontainebleau summit of 1984, Thatcher argued that the UK paid far more to the EEC than it received in spending and negotiated a budget rebate. She was widely quoted as saying "We want our money back".

1987–1990
By winning the 1987 general election she became the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to win three consecutive general elections since Lord Liverpool (in office from 1812–1827). Most United Kingdom newspapers supported her, with the exception of The Daily Mirror and The Guardian, and were rewarded with regular press briefings by her press secretary, Bernard Ingham. She was known as "Maggie" in the tabloids, which in turn led to the well-known "Maggie Out!" protest song, sung throughout that period by her opponents.

In the late 1980's Thatcher began to be concerned by environmental policy, which she had previously dismissed. In 1988 she made a major speech accepting the problems of global warming, ozone depletion and acid rain and in 1990 she opened the Hadley Centre for climate prediction and research that she had caused to be founded.

At Bruges in 1988 Thatcher made a speech in which she outlined her opposition to proposals from the European Communities for a federal structure and increasing centralisation of decision-making. Although she had supported British membership, Thatcher believed that the role of the EC should be limited to ensuring free trade and effective competition, and feared that new EC regulations would reverse the changes she was making in Britain. She was specifically against Economic and Monetary Union, through which a single currency would replace national currencies, and for which the EC was making preparations.

Thatcher started to lose popularity in 1989, as the economy suffered from high interest rates imposed to stop an unsustainable boom. She blamed her Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, who had been following an economic policy which was a preparation for monetary union; Thatcher claimed not to have been told and did not approve. At the Madrid European summit, Lawson and Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe forced Thatcher to agree the circumstances in which she would join the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a preparation for monetary union. Thatcher took revenge on both by demoting Howe and listening more to her adviser Sir Alan Walters on economic matters. Lawson resigned that October, feeling that Thatcher had undermined him.

That November, Thatcher was challenged for the leadership of the Conservative Party, by Sir Anthony Meyer. As Meyer was a virtually unknown backbench MP, he was viewed as a "stalking horse" candidate for more prominent members of the party. Thatcher easily defeated Meyer's challenge, but there were a surprisingly large number of ballot papers either cast for Meyer or abstaining.

Thatcher's new system to replace local government rates was introduced for Scotland in 1989 and for England and Wales in 1990. She replaced them with the "Community Charge" which applied at the same amount to every individual resident, with only limited discounts for low earners. The indiscriminate nature of the charge led to it being the most unpopular policy of her premiership and it was almost universally known as the Poll Tax. The Charge was introduced early in Scotland because the rateable values would in any case have been reassessed in 1989; however, it led to accusations that Scotland was a 'testing ground' for the tax. Thatcher fully belived that the new tax would be popular, and had been persuaded by Scottish Conservatives to bring it in early and in one go. Despite her hopes, the early introduction led to a sharp decline in the popularity of the Conservative party in Scotland.

A large London demonstration against the poll tax on 31 March 1990 (the day before it was introduced in England and Wales) turned into a riot. Millions of people resisted paying the tax. Opponents of the tax banded together to resist bailiffs and disrupt court hearings of poll tax debtors. Mrs Thatcher refused to compromise and change the tax, and its unpopularity was a major factor in Thatcher's downfall. One of her final acts in office was to pressure US President George H. W. Bush to deploy troops to the Middle East to drive Saddam Hussein's army out of Kuwait. Bush was somewhat apprehensive about the plan, but Thatcher famously told him that this was "no time to go wobbly!"

On the Friday before the Conservative Party conference in October 1990, Thatcher persuaded her new Chancellor John Major to reduce interest rates by 1%. Major persuaded her that the only way to maintain monetary stability was to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism at the same time, despite not meeting the 'Madrid conditions'. The conference that year saw a degree of unity break out within the Conservative Party. Few who attended could have realised that Mrs Thatcher had only a matter of weeks left in office.

Fall from power
By 1990 opposition to Thatcher's policies on local government taxation, her Government's handling of the economy, her perceived arrogance and her reluctance to commit Britain to economic integration with Europe made her politically vulnerable. A challenge was precipitated by the resignation of Sir Geoffrey Howe on 1 November, whom Thatcher had been humiliating in Cabinet meetings. Howe condemned Thatcher's policy on the European Communities and openly invited "others to consider their own response", which led Michael Heseltine to announce his challenge. In the first ballot, Thatcher was two votes short of winning re-election, but on consulting with cabinet colleagues found a vast majority thought that she could not win on the second ballot.

On 22 November, at just after 9:30 AM, Mrs Thatcher announced that she would not be a candidate in the second ballot and therefore her term of office would come to an end. She supported John Major as her successor, and retired from Parliament at the 1992 election.

Post-political career

In 1992 she was created Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire, and entered the House of Lords. In addition, Denis Thatcher, her husband, was given a Baronetcy (ensuring that their son, Mark, would inherit a title).

She wrote her memoirs in two volumes. Although she remained supportive in public, in private she made her displeasure with many of John Major's policies plain, and her views were conveyed to the press and widely reported. Major later said he found her behaviour in retrospect to have been intolerable. She publicly endorsed William Hague for the Conservative leadership in 1997.

In 1998 she made a highly publicised and controversial visit to the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet during the time he was under house arrest in London facing charges of torture, conspiracy to torture and conspiracy to murder, and expressed her support and friendship for him.

She made many speaking engagements around the world, and actively supported the Conservative election campaign in 2001. However, on 22 March 2002 she was told by her doctors to make no more public speeches on health grounds, having suffered several small strokes which left her in a very frail state. Since then she visited Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York (in 2003), and compared his offices to those of Winston Churchill's War Room. Although she was able to attend the funeral in June 2004 of former US President Ronald Reagan, her eulogy for him was pre-taped to prevent undue stress.

She remains involved with various Thatcherite groups, including being president of the Conservative Way Forward group (who held a dinner at the Savoy Hotel in honour of the 25th Anniversary of her election). She is honorary president of the Bruges Group, which takes its name from her 1988 speech at Bruges where she was first openly hostile to developments in the European Union. She was widowed on 26 June 2003.

Legacy

Many United Kingdom citizens remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard that Margaret Thatcher had resigned and what their reaction was. She brings out strong responses in people. Some people credit her with rescuing the British economy from the stagnation of the 1970s and admire her committed radicalism on social issues; others see her as authoritarian, egotistical and responsible for the dismantling of the Welfare State and the destruction of many manufacturing industries. Britain was widely seen as the "sick man of Europe" in the 1970s, and some argued that it would be the first developed nation to return to the status of a developing country. By the late 1990s, Britain emerged with a comparatively healthy economy, at least by previous standards. Her supporters claim that this was due to Margaret Thatcher's policies.

However, critics claim that the economic problems of the 1970s were exaggerated, and caused largely by factors outside of any UK government's control, such as high oil prices caused by the oil crisis which caused high inflation and damaged the economies of nearly all major industrial countries. Accordingly, they also argue that the economic downturn was not the result of socialism and trade unions, as Thatcherite supporters claim. Critics also argue that the Thatcher period in government coincided with a general improvement in the world economy, and the buoyant tax revenues from North Sea oil, which critics contend was the real cause of the improved economic environment of the 1980s and not Margaret Thatcher's policies.

Perceptions of Margaret Thatcher are mixed in the view of the British public. A clear illustration of the divisions of opinion over Thatcher's leadership can be found in recent television polls: Thatcher appears at Number 16 in the 2002 List of "100 Greatest Britons" (sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public), she also appears at Number 3 in the 2003 List of "100 Worst Britons" (sponsored by Channel Four and also voted for by the public), narrowly missing out on the top spot, which went to Tony Blair. In the end, however, few could argue that there was a woman who played a more important role on the world stage in the Twentieth Century, and even the Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair has implicitly and explicitly acknowledged her importance by continuing many of her economic policies.

Many of her policies have proved to be divisive. In Scotland, Wales and the urban and former mining areas of northern England she is still unpopular and many retain strong feelings about her. Many people remember the hardships of the miners strike, which destroyed many mining communities and the decline of industry as service industries boomed. This was reflected in the 1987 general election, which she won by a landslide through winning large numbers of seats in southern England and the rural farming areas of northern England while winning few seats in the rest of the country.

Her son Mark has been dogged by a series of controversies. As of late 2004, he was under house arrest in South Africa facing charges of abetting a coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea. These reports have been received with considerable schadenfreude by those in Britain less than impressed by the Thatcher legacy.

Quotes

"If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman."
"There's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families." (in an interview for Woman's Own magazine on 23 September 1987 at 10 Downing Street).
"Every Prime Minister needs a Willie" (a reference to her Deputy Prime Minister William Whitelaw; Mrs Thatcher was deaf to any more euphemistic interpretation).
"We have become a grandmother" (March 3, 1989, on the birth of her first grandchild; this was controversial for her apparent use of the Royal we).

Books

Statecraft: Strategies for Changing World by Margaret Thatcher (HarperCollins, 2002) ISBN 0060199733
The Collected Speeches of Margaret Thatcher by Margaret Thatcher (HarperCollins, 1999) ISBN 0060187344
The Collected Speeches of Margaret Thatcher by Margaret Thatcher, Robin Harris (editor) (HarperCollins, 1997) ISBN 0002557037
The Path to Power by Margaret Thatcher (HarperCollins, 1995) ISBN 0002550504
The Downing Street Years by Margaret Thatcher (HarperCollins, 1993) ISBN 0002553546
Biographies
Memories of Maggie Edited by Iain Dale (Politicos, 2000) ISBN 190230151X
Britain Under Thatcher by Anthony Seldon & Daniel Collings (Longman, 1999) ISBN 0582317142
Thatcher for Beginners by Peter Pugh and Paul Flint (Icon Books, 1997) ISBN 1874166536
One of Us: Life of Margaret Thatcher by Hugo Young (Macmillan, 1989) ISBN 0333344391
The Iron Lady: A Biography of Margaret Thatcher by Hugo Young (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1989) ISBN 0374226512
Margaret, daughter of Beatrice by Leo Abse (Jonathan Cape, 1989) ISBN 0224027263
Mrs.Thatcher's Revolution: Ending of the Socialist Era by Peter Jenkins (Jonathan Cape, 1987) ISBN 0224025163
The Thatcher Phenomenon by Hugo Young (BBC, 1986) ISBN 0563204729