Margaret Thatcher was an icon for free market
Regardless of whether one is an ardent supporter or a staunch critic of Margaret Thatcher, whose politics and policies have impacted the Western world like little else has, there is no denying that the controversial British Prime Minister was a trail-blazer in her own right. At a time when politics was an entirely male-dominated field and when she herself had said that Britain would not have a woman Prime Minister in her lifetime, Thatcher not just broke the glass ceiling but shattered it to a million pieces. The daughter of a grocer who studied at Oxford, she quickly rose through the ranks of the Conservative Party entirely on the basis of her own strength and perseverance to eventually become the Prime Minister of Britain — not for one but for three consecutive terms. Her unflinching faith in the principles of liberal economics and in the free market saw her privatise key public assets including essential services such as gas, water and electricity. This not only added much-needed billions to the state coffer but also allowed the common man a stake in the British economy that he never had before. However, while privatisation brought in increased efficiency, it also led to soaring prices which earned Thatcher much public ire.
But the Prime Minister remained steadfast in her belief that the overwhelming presence of the state had to be rolled back, so as to allow industry and entrepreneurship to fuel economic growth. In the process, she valiantly fought back Britain's powerful trade unions which had effectively brought industrial activity to a grinding halt by the 1979 ‘winter of discontent'. Of course, the manner in which she curbed union militancy only brought her more censure from the left; so much so that by 1981, Thatcher's approval ratings had dropped to a historic low of 25 per cent. But the Iron lady, as Thatcher had come to be known by then, turned the tide in her favour when she scripted a strong and decisive response to the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982. This, alongside the visible benefits of economic recovery, ensured Thatcher her third electoral victory in 1987. But her last term ended prematurely in 1990 when she faced a leadership challenge from within her own party that had tired of the Iron lady's often domineering ways. Consensus-building was never one of Thatcher's strengths, but that stemmed from her belief that some principles should never be compromised upon.