由於 Margaret Thatcher是要人. 我在其他Blogs"書海"和"英國風"另有資料.....
自由經濟鬥士：柴契爾夫人
2013-04-15
Web only
作者：經濟學人
只有少數身處和平時代的政治人物可以聲稱自己改變了世界，柴契爾夫人就是其中之一。她不但改變了保守黨，也改變了整個英國政治；她
對私有化的熱衷帶動了全球性革命，她勇於面對專制，也協助終結了蘇聯。柴契爾主義的基本元素，就是反對現狀並將賭注押在自由之上。她認為，唯有個人獲得自
由，國家才能強大。
柴契爾夫人從政初期，自由經濟正在消退，蘇聯正在擴展勢力；而在英國，政府與工會過從甚密，為衰退的國有化產業提供補助。
1979年，柴契爾當選首相之時，她的激進想法大多藏了起來。隨之而來的則是經濟革命；她將國有企業私有化、拒絕與工會協商、廢除國家掌控、擊垮罷工礦工，並以傅利曼的貨幣主義取代凱因斯主義。通膨、罷工日數大減，最高稅率也從83%降至40%。
她不願改變方向，但也知道該如何妥協，例如她不顧美國鷹派的警告，把握住戈巴契夫；她在1981年與礦工妥協，等到儲存了足夠的煤礦才開始行動。
對柴契爾的批評主要有二。其一，她其實可以成就更多事，有時也確實會被恨意矇蔽。其二，有人認為她的改革為最近的金融危機埋下了種子；有些看法是對的，但如果沒有柴契爾主義，英國經濟將依舊陷於國家掌控的泥沼。
由於金融危機，鐘擺已逐漸搖離柴契爾支持的原則。在多數富有國家，政府在經濟中的佔比大增，規範也困住了私人部門。對於一個亟需成長的世界來說，這是個錯誤的方向。此時此刻，守住柴契爾夫人的核心看法極為重要：人民必須推阻步步進逼的政府，國家才能繁榮。（黃維德譯）
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013
1979年，柴契爾當選首相之時，她的激進想法大多藏了起來。隨之而來的則是經濟革命；她將國有企業私有化、拒絕與工會協商、廢除國家掌控、擊垮罷工礦工，並以傅利曼的貨幣主義取代凱因斯主義。通膨、罷工日數大減，最高稅率也從83%降至40%。
她不願改變方向，但也知道該如何妥協，例如她不顧美國鷹派的警告，把握住戈巴契夫；她在1981年與礦工妥協，等到儲存了足夠的煤礦才開始行動。
對柴契爾的批評主要有二。其一，她其實可以成就更多事，有時也確實會被恨意矇蔽。其二，有人認為她的改革為最近的金融危機埋下了種子；有些看法是對的，但如果沒有柴契爾主義，英國經濟將依舊陷於國家掌控的泥沼。
由於金融危機，鐘擺已逐漸搖離柴契爾支持的原則。在多數富有國家，政府在經濟中的佔比大增，規範也困住了私人部門。對於一個亟需成長的世界來說，這是個錯誤的方向。此時此刻，守住柴契爾夫人的核心看法極為重要：人民必須推阻步步進逼的政府，國家才能繁榮。（黃維德譯）
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013
Freedom fighter
Margaret Thatcher
By The Economist
From The Economist
Published: April 15, 2013
From The Economist
Published: April 15, 2013
Apr 13th 2013 |From the print edition
Now especially, the world needs to hold fast to Margaret Thatcher's principles.
ONLY a handful of peacetime politicians can claim to have changed the world. Margaret Thatcher was one. She transformed not just her own Conservative Party, but the whole of British politics. Her enthusiasm for privatisation launched a global revolution and her willingness to stand up to tyranny helped to bring an end to the Soviet Union. Winston Churchill won a war, but he never created an "-ism".
The essence of Thatcherism was to oppose the status quo and bet on freedom—odd, since as a prim, upwardly mobile striver, she was in some ways the embodiment of conservatism. She thought nations could become great only if individuals were set free. Unlike Churchill's famous pudding, her struggles had a theme: the right of individuals to run their own lives, as free as possible from micromanagement by the state.
In her early years in politics, economic liberalism was in retreat, the Soviet Union was extending its empire, and Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek were dismissed as academic eccentrics. In Britain the government hobnobbed with trade unions ("beer and sandwiches in Number 10"), handed out subsidies to failing nationalised industries and primed the pump through Keynesian demand management. To begin with the ambitious young politician went along with this consensus (see article). But the widespread notion that politics should be "the management of decline" made her blood boil. The ideas of Friedman and Hayek persuaded her that things could be different.
Most of this radicalism was hidden from the British electorate that voted her into office in 1979, largely in frustration with Labour's ineptitude. What followed was an economic revolution. She privatised state industries, refused to negotiate with the unions, abolished state controls, broke the striking miners and replaced Keynesianism with Friedman's monetarism. The inflation rate fell from a high of 27% in 1975 to 2.4% in 1986. The number of working days lost to strikes fell from 29m in 1979 to 2m in 1986. The top rate of tax fell from 83% to 40%.
Not for turning
Her battles with the left—especially the miners—gave her a reputation as a blue-rinse Boadicea. But she was just as willing to clobber the right, sidelining old-fashioned Tory "wets" and unleashing her creed on conservative strongholds, notably by setting off the "big bang" in the City of London. Many of her pithiest put-downs were directed at her own side: "U-turn if you want to," she told the Conservatives as unemployment passed 2m. "The lady's not for turning." She told George Bush senior: "This is no time to go wobbly!" Ronald Reagan was her soulmate but lacked her sharp elbows and hostility to deficits.
She might not be for turning, but she knew how to compromise. She seized on Mikhail Gorbachev as a man she "could do business with" despite warnings from American hawks. She backed down from a battle with the miners in 1981, waiting until she had built up sufficient reserves of coal three years later. For all her talk about reforming the welfare state, the public sector consumed almost the same proportion of GDP when she left office as when she came to it.
She was also often outrageously lucky: lucky that the striking miners were led by Arthur Scargill, a hardline Marxist; lucky that the British left fractured and insisted on choosing unelectable leaders; lucky that General Galtieri decided to invade the Falkland Islands when he did; lucky that she was a tough woman in a system dominated by patrician men (the wets never knew how to cope with her); lucky in the flow of North Sea oil; and above all lucky in her timing. The post-war consensus was ripe for destruction, and a host of new forces, from personal computers to private equity, aided her more rumbustious form of capitalism.
The verdict of history
Criticism of her comes in two forms. First, that she could have done more had she wielded her handbag more deftly. Hatred, it is true, sometimes blinded her. Infuriated by the antics of left-wing local councils, she ended up centralising power in Whitehall. Her hostility to Eurocrats undermined her campaign to stop the drift of power to Brussels. Her stridency, from her early days as "Thatcher the milk snatcher" to her defenestration by her own party, was divisive. Under her the Conservatives shrank from a national force to a party of the rich south (see Bagehot). Tony Blair won several elections by offering Thatcherism without the rough edges.
The second criticism addresses the substance of Thatcherism. Her reforms, it is said, sowed the seeds of the recent economic crisis. Without Thatcherism, the big bang would not have happened. Financial services would not make up such a large slice of the British economy and the country would not now be struggling under the burden of individual debt caused by excessive borrowing and government debt caused by the need to bail out the banks. Some of this is true; but then without Thatcherism Britain's economy would still be mired in state control, the commanding heights of its economy would be owned by the government and militant unions would be a power in the land.
Because of the crisis, the pendulum is swinging dangerously away from the principles Mrs Thatcher espoused. In most of the rich world, the state's share of the economy has stubbornly risen. Regulations—excessive as well as necessary—are tying up the private sector. Businesspeople are under scrutiny as they have not been for 30 years and bankers are everyone's favourite bogeyman. And with the rise of China state control, not economic liberalism, is being hailed as a model for emerging markets.
For a world in desperate need of growth, this is the wrong direction. Europe will never thrive until it frees up its markets. America will throttle its recovery unless it avoids overregulation. China will not sustain its success unless it starts to liberalise. This is a crucial time to hang on to Margaret Thatcher's central perception: that for countries to flourish, people need to push back against the advance of the state. What the world needs now is more Thatcherism, not less.
From the print edition: Leaders
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013
Now especially, the world needs to hold fast to Margaret Thatcher's principles.
ONLY a handful of peacetime politicians can claim to have changed the world. Margaret Thatcher was one. She transformed not just her own Conservative Party, but the whole of British politics. Her enthusiasm for privatisation launched a global revolution and her willingness to stand up to tyranny helped to bring an end to the Soviet Union. Winston Churchill won a war, but he never created an "-ism".
The essence of Thatcherism was to oppose the status quo and bet on freedom—odd, since as a prim, upwardly mobile striver, she was in some ways the embodiment of conservatism. She thought nations could become great only if individuals were set free. Unlike Churchill's famous pudding, her struggles had a theme: the right of individuals to run their own lives, as free as possible from micromanagement by the state.
In her early years in politics, economic liberalism was in retreat, the Soviet Union was extending its empire, and Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek were dismissed as academic eccentrics. In Britain the government hobnobbed with trade unions ("beer and sandwiches in Number 10"), handed out subsidies to failing nationalised industries and primed the pump through Keynesian demand management. To begin with the ambitious young politician went along with this consensus (see article). But the widespread notion that politics should be "the management of decline" made her blood boil. The ideas of Friedman and Hayek persuaded her that things could be different.
Most of this radicalism was hidden from the British electorate that voted her into office in 1979, largely in frustration with Labour's ineptitude. What followed was an economic revolution. She privatised state industries, refused to negotiate with the unions, abolished state controls, broke the striking miners and replaced Keynesianism with Friedman's monetarism. The inflation rate fell from a high of 27% in 1975 to 2.4% in 1986. The number of working days lost to strikes fell from 29m in 1979 to 2m in 1986. The top rate of tax fell from 83% to 40%.
Not for turning
Her battles with the left—especially the miners—gave her a reputation as a blue-rinse Boadicea. But she was just as willing to clobber the right, sidelining old-fashioned Tory "wets" and unleashing her creed on conservative strongholds, notably by setting off the "big bang" in the City of London. Many of her pithiest put-downs were directed at her own side: "U-turn if you want to," she told the Conservatives as unemployment passed 2m. "The lady's not for turning." She told George Bush senior: "This is no time to go wobbly!" Ronald Reagan was her soulmate but lacked her sharp elbows and hostility to deficits.
She might not be for turning, but she knew how to compromise. She seized on Mikhail Gorbachev as a man she "could do business with" despite warnings from American hawks. She backed down from a battle with the miners in 1981, waiting until she had built up sufficient reserves of coal three years later. For all her talk about reforming the welfare state, the public sector consumed almost the same proportion of GDP when she left office as when she came to it.
She was also often outrageously lucky: lucky that the striking miners were led by Arthur Scargill, a hardline Marxist; lucky that the British left fractured and insisted on choosing unelectable leaders; lucky that General Galtieri decided to invade the Falkland Islands when he did; lucky that she was a tough woman in a system dominated by patrician men (the wets never knew how to cope with her); lucky in the flow of North Sea oil; and above all lucky in her timing. The post-war consensus was ripe for destruction, and a host of new forces, from personal computers to private equity, aided her more rumbustious form of capitalism.
The verdict of history
Criticism of her comes in two forms. First, that she could have done more had she wielded her handbag more deftly. Hatred, it is true, sometimes blinded her. Infuriated by the antics of left-wing local councils, she ended up centralising power in Whitehall. Her hostility to Eurocrats undermined her campaign to stop the drift of power to Brussels. Her stridency, from her early days as "Thatcher the milk snatcher" to her defenestration by her own party, was divisive. Under her the Conservatives shrank from a national force to a party of the rich south (see Bagehot). Tony Blair won several elections by offering Thatcherism without the rough edges.
The second criticism addresses the substance of Thatcherism. Her reforms, it is said, sowed the seeds of the recent economic crisis. Without Thatcherism, the big bang would not have happened. Financial services would not make up such a large slice of the British economy and the country would not now be struggling under the burden of individual debt caused by excessive borrowing and government debt caused by the need to bail out the banks. Some of this is true; but then without Thatcherism Britain's economy would still be mired in state control, the commanding heights of its economy would be owned by the government and militant unions would be a power in the land.
Because of the crisis, the pendulum is swinging dangerously away from the principles Mrs Thatcher espoused. In most of the rich world, the state's share of the economy has stubbornly risen. Regulations—excessive as well as necessary—are tying up the private sector. Businesspeople are under scrutiny as they have not been for 30 years and bankers are everyone's favourite bogeyman. And with the rise of China state control, not economic liberalism, is being hailed as a model for emerging markets.
For a world in desperate need of growth, this is the wrong direction. Europe will never thrive until it frees up its markets. America will throttle its recovery unless it avoids overregulation. China will not sustain its success unless it starts to liberalise. This is a crucial time to hang on to Margaret Thatcher's central perception: that for countries to flourish, people need to push back against the advance of the state. What the world needs now is more Thatcherism, not less.
From the print edition: Leaders
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013
我1978年10月從英國回台灣 與英國"變天"錯過. 不過很能了解她的故事:
1979 and Margaret Thatcher
When the world changed
Why that year was a turning-point in history
The World-Changing Margaret Thatcher
PAUL JOHNSON
Margaret Thatcher had more impact on the world than any woman ruler since Catherine the Great of Russia. Not only did she turn around─decisively─the British economy in the 1980s, she also saw her methods copied in more than 50 countries. 'Thatcherism' was the most popular and successful way of running a country in the last quarter of the 20th century and into the 21st.
Her origins were humble. Born Oct. 13, 1925, she was the daughter of a grocer in the Lincolnshire town of Grantham. Alfred Roberts was no ordinary shopkeeper. He was prominent in local government and a man of decided economic and political views. Thatcher later claimed her views had been shaped by gurus like Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek, but these were clearly the icing on a cake baked in her childhood by Councillor Roberts. This was a blend of Adam Smith and the Ten Commandments, the three most important elements being hard work, telling the truth, and paying bills on time.
Hard work took Miss Roberts, via a series of scholarships, to Grantham Girls' School, Somerville College, Oxford, and two degrees, in chemistry and law. She practiced in both professions, first as a research chemist, then as a barrister from 1954. By temperament she was always a scholarship girl, always avid to learn, and even when prime minister still carried in her capacious handbag a notebook in which she wrote down anything you told her that she thought memorable.
At the same time, she was intensely feminine, loved buying and wearing smart clothes, had the best head of hair in British politics and spent a fortune keeping it well dressed. At Oxford, punting on the Isis and Cherwell rivers, she could be frivolous and flirtatious, and all her life she tended to prefer handsome men to plain ones. Her husband, Denis Thatcher, whom she married in 1951 and by whom she had a son and daughter, was not exactly dashing but he was rich (oil industry), a capable businessman, a rock on which she could always lean in bad times, and a source of funny 19th-hole sayings.
Denis was amenable (or resigned) to her pursuing a political career, and in 1959 she was elected MP for Finchley, a London suburb. She was exceptionally lucky to secure this rock-solid Tory seat, so conveniently placed near Westminster and her home. She held the seat without trouble until her retirement 33 years later. Indeed, Thatcher was always accounted a lucky politician. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan soon (in 1961) gave her a junior office at Pensions, and when the Conservatives returned to power in 1970, she was fortunate to be allotted to the one seat in the cabinet reserved for a woman, secretary of state for education.
There she kept her nose clean and was lucky not to be involved in the financial and economic wreckage of the disastrous Ted Heath government. The 1970s marked the climax of Britain's postwar decline, in which 'the English disease'─overweening trade-union power─was undermining the economy by strikes and inflationary wage settlements. The Boilermakers Union had already smashed the shipbuilding industry. The Amalgamated Engineers Union was crushing what was left of the car industry. The print unions were imposing growing censorship on the press. Not least, the miners union, under the Stalinist Arthur Scargill, had invented new picketing strategies that enabled them to paralyze the country wherever they chose.
Attempts at reform had led to the overthrow of the Harold Wilson Labour government in 1970, and an anti-union bill put through by Heath led to the destruction of his majority in 1974 and its replacement by another weak Wilson government that tipped the balance of power still further in the direction of the unions. The general view was that Britain was 'ungovernable.'
Among Tory backbenchers there was a growing feeling that Heath must go. Thatcher was one of his critics, and she encouraged the leader of her wing of the party, Keith Joseph, to stand against him. However, at the last moment Joseph's nerve failed him and he refused to run. It was in these circumstances that Thatcher, who had never seen herself as a leader, let alone prime minister, put herself forward. As a matter of courtesy, she went to Heath's office to tell him that she was putting up for his job. He did not even look up from his desk, where he was writing, merely saying: 'You'll lose, you know'─a characteristic combination of bad manners and bad judgment. In fact she won handsomely, thereby beginning one of the great romantic adventures of modern British politics.
The date was 1975, and four more terrible years were to pass before Thatcher had the opportunity to achieve power and come to Britain's rescue. In the end, it was the unions themselves who put her into office by smashing up the James Callaghan Labour government in the winter of 1978-79─the so-called Winter of Discontent─enabling the Tories to win the election the following May with a comfortable majority.
Thatcher's long ministry of nearly a dozen years is often mistakenly described as ideological in tone. In fact Thatcherism was (and is) essentially pragmatic and empirical. She tackled the unions not by producing, like Heath, a single comprehensive statute but by a series of measures, each dealing with a particular abuse, such as aggressive picketing. At the same time she, and the police, prepared for trouble by a number of ingenious administrative changes allowing the country's different police forces to concentrate large and mobile columns wherever needed. Then she calmly waited, relying on the stupidity of the union leaders to fall into the trap, which they duly did.
She fought and won two pitched battles with the two strongest unions, the miners and the printers. In both cases, victory came at the cost of weeks of fighting and some loss of life. After the hard men had been vanquished, the other unions surrendered, and the new legislation was meekly accepted, no attempt being made to repeal or change it when Labour eventually returned to power. Britain was transformed from the most strike-ridden country in Europe to a place where industrial action is a rarity. The effect on the freedom of managers to run their businesses and introduce innovations was almost miraculous and has continued.
Thatcher reinforced this essential improvement by a revolutionary simplification of the tax system, reducing a score or more 'bands' to two and lowering the top rates from 83% (earned income) and 98% (unearned) to the single band of 40%.
She also reduced Britain's huge and loss-making state-owned industries, nearly a third of the economy, to less than one-tenth, by her new policy of privatization─inviting the public to buy from the state industries, such as coal, steel, utilities and transport by bargain share offers. Hence loss-makers, funded from taxes, became themselves profit-making and so massive tax contributors.
This transformation was soon imitated all over the world. More important than all these specific changes, however, was the feeling Thatcher engendered that Britain was again a country where enterprise was welcomed and rewarded, where businesses small and large had the benign blessing of government, and where investors would make money.
As a result Britain was soon absorbing more than 50% of all inward investment in Europe, the British economy rose from the sixth to the fourth largest in the world, and its production per capita, having been half that of Germany's in the 1970s, became, by the early years of the 21st century, one-third higher.
The kind of services that Thatcher rendered Britain in peace were of a magnitude equal to Winston Churchill's in war. She also gave indications that she might make a notable wartime leader, too. When she first took over, her knowledge of foreign affairs was negligible. Equally, foreigners did not at first appreciate that a new and stronger hand was now in control in London. There were exceptions. Ronald Reagan, right from the start, liked what he heard of her. He indicated that he regarded her as a fellow spirit, even while still running for president, with rhetoric that was consonant with her activities.
Once Reagan was installed in the White House, the pair immediately reinvigorated the 'special relationship.' It was just as well. Some foreigners did not appreciate the force of what the Kremlin was beginning to call the Iron Lady. In 1982, the military dictatorship in Argentina, misled by the British Foreign Offices's apathetic responses to threats, took the hazardous step of invading and occupying the British Falkland Islands. This unprovoked act of aggression caught Thatcher unprepared, and for 36 hours she was nonplused and uncertain: The military and logistical objections to launching a combined-forces counterattack from 8,000 miles away were formidable.
But reassured by her service chiefs that, given resolution, the thing could be done, she made up her mind: It would be done, and thereafter her will to victory and her disregard of losses and risks never wavered. She was also assured by her friend Reagan that, short of sending forces, America would do all in its considerable power to help─a promise kept. Thus began one of the most notable campaigns in modern military and moral history, brought to a splendid conclusion by the unconditional surrender of all the Argentine forces on the islands, followed shortly by the collapse of the military dictatorship in Buenos Aires.
This spectacular success, combined with Thatcher's revival of the U.K. economy, enabled her to win a resounding electoral victory in 1983, followed by a third term in 1987. Thatcher never had any real difficulty in persuading the British electorate to back her, and it is likely that, given the chance, she would have won her fourth election in a row.
But it was a different matter with the Conservative Party, not for nothing once categorized by one of its leaders as the 'stupid party.' Some prominent Tories were never reconciled to her leadership. They included in particular the supporters of European federation, to which she was implacably opposed, their numbers swollen by grandees who had held high office under her but whom she had dumped without ceremony as ministerial failures. It was, too, a melancholy fact that she had become more imperious during her years of triumph and that power had corrupted her judgment.
This was made clear when she embarked on a fundamental reform of local-government finance. The reform itself was sensible, even noble, but its presentation was lamentable and its numerous opponents won the propaganda battle hands down. In the midst of this disaster, her Europhile opponents within her party devised a plot in 1990 to overthrow her by putting up one of their number (sacked from the cabinet for inefficiency) in the annual leadership election. Thatcher failed to win outright and was persuaded by friends to stand down. Thus ended one of the most remarkable careers in British political history.
Thatcher's strongest characteristic was her courage, both physical and moral. She displayed this again and again, notably when the IRA tried to murder her during the Tory Party Conference in 1984, and nearly succeeded, blowing up her hotel in the middle of the night. She insisted on opening the next morning's session right on time and in grand style. Immediately after courage came industry. She must have been the hardest-working prime minister in history, often working a 16-hour day and sitting up all night to write a speech. Her much-tried husband once complained, 'You're not writing the Bible, you know.'
She was not a feminist, despising the genre as 'fashionable rot,' though she once made a feminist remark. At a dreary public dinner of 500 male economists, having had to listen to nine speeches before being called herself, she began, with understandable irritation: 'As the 10th speaker, and the only woman, I wish to say this: the cock may crow but it's the hen who lays the eggs.'
Her political success once again demonstrates the importance of holding two or three simple ideas with fervor and tenacity, a virtue she shared with Ronald Reagan. One of these ideas was that the 'evil empire' of communism could be and would be destroyed, and together with Reagan and Pope John Paul II she must be given the credit for doing it.
Among the British public she aroused fervent admiration and intense dislike in almost equal proportions, but in the world beyond she was recognized for what she was: a great, creative stateswoman who left the world a better and more prosperous place, and whose influence will reverberate well into the 21st century.
(Mr. Johnson is a historian.)
改變了世界的撒切爾夫人
PAUL JOHNSON
瑪
格
麗特•撒切爾(Margaret Thatcher)是自俄羅斯帝國的凱瑟琳大帝(Catherine the
Great)以來對世界影響最大的女性領導人。她不僅毅然決然地在上世紀80年代扭轉了英國經濟﹐同時還見證自己的方法被50多個國家效仿。在20世紀後
半葉以及21世紀初﹐“撒切爾主義”是最流行、最成功的治國之道。
John Minihan/Evening Standard/Getty Images
圖片：緬懷撒切爾夫人
憑 借勤奮﹐瑪格麗特•羅伯茨獲得了一系列獎學金﹐先後就讀於格蘭瑟姆女子學校(Grantham Girls' School)和牛津大學薩莫維爾學院(Somerville College, Oxford)﹐並獲得了化學和法學兩個學位。這兩種職業她都從事過﹐先是當了從事研究的化學家﹐後來從1954年開始擔任律師。從性格上說﹐她一直是個 好學的女孩﹐時刻保持著學習的熱情﹐甚至在當上首相之後﹐她仍在自己大大的手提包內放著一個筆記本﹐只要聽到她覺得值得記下來的事情就會寫在上面。
相關閱讀
丹尼斯願意（或者說聽之任 之）讓她追求政治事業﹐1959年﹐她當選為代表倫敦郊區芬奇利市的議員。她獲得這個堅如磐石的保守黨席位極為幸運﹐此地靠近英國議會所在地威斯敏斯特﹐ 離她家也很近﹐十分方便。她毫無阻礙地一直保有這個席位﹐直到33年後退休。事實上﹐撒切爾一直算是一位幸運的政治家。英國首相哈羅德•麥克米倫 (Harold Macmillan)不久後（1961年）任命她擔任退休金部門的次官﹐當1970年保守黨重新掌權時﹐她幸運地被分到了內閣中唯一由女性出任的職位上﹐ 擔任教育和科學大臣。
她在這個職位上潔身自好﹐幸運地避免了被捲入災難性的泰德•希思(Ted Heath)政府的金融和經濟重創。70年代是英國戰後衰退的頂點﹐“英國病”（即過大的工會權力）通過罷工和不斷膨脹的工資方案破壞了經濟。鍋爐工工會 (Boilermakers Union)已經重創了造船行業。工程師總工會(Amalgamated Engineers Union)沖擊著汽車產業殘留的部分。印刷業工會對媒體實施著越來越多的審查。尤其是﹐在斯大林主義者阿瑟•斯卡吉爾(Arthur Scargill)領導下的礦工工會發明瞭新的糾察策略﹐使得他們能夠在任何時候讓整個國家癱瘓。
Corbis
1982年6月，美國總統里根與英國首相撒切爾夫人在白宮。
在保守黨的普通議員中﹐越來越多的人認為希思必須下台。撒切爾 是希思的反對者之一﹐她鼓勵她所在的政黨派系的領袖約瑟夫(Keith Joseph)與希思相抗衡。不過﹐約瑟夫在最後關頭害怕了﹐他拒絕參選。正是在這種形勢下﹐從來沒認為自己能夠勝任領袖更不用說首相一職的撒切爾走到了 台前。出於禮貌﹐她來到了希思的辦公室﹐告訴他自己要爭奪他的位置。希思當時正桌子前寫東西﹐他甚至沒有抬頭看撒切爾一眼﹐只是說﹐你知道﹐你會輸的。希 思的無禮和誤判由此可見一斑。事實上﹐撒切爾後來輕鬆取勝﹐就此開始了當代英國政治史上最具浪漫主義色彩的一段冒險。
當時是1975年﹐ 又過了可怕的四年﹐撒切爾才有機會掌權並拯救英國。最終﹐是工會讓她得到了首相之位。多個工會在1978到1979年的冬天（所謂的“不滿之冬” (winter of discontent)）擊垮了卡拉漢(James Callaghan)的工黨政府﹐使保守黨在隨後的5月輕鬆贏得大選。
視頻：撒切爾夫人一生中的重要時刻
本視頻回顧了英國前首相撒切爾夫人政治生涯中的重要時刻，包括她入主唐寧街10號，發表重要講話以及在掌權11年後被自己的政黨勸退。
本視頻回顧了英國前首相撒切爾夫人政治生涯中的重要時刻，包括她入主唐寧街10號，發表重要講話以及在掌權11年後被自己的政黨勸退。
她經過鬥爭戰勝了兩個最強大的公會──礦工和印刷業者工會。這兩次戰役的勝利都是以長達數週的鬥爭和一些人的犧 牲為代價的。在強硬的工會被打敗後﹐其他的工會投降了﹐當工黨最終奪回權力的時候﹐新的立法被欣然接受﹐沒有人試圖做出任何撤銷或改變。英國從受罷工影響 最嚴重的國家變成了行業性活動相當少見的國家。這對管理者們經營企業和引入創新的自由而言﹐幾乎產生了奇跡般的效果﹐並且一直在繼續。
撒切爾通過對稅制進行了革命性的簡化﹐加強了重要的改革行動﹐她把稅率分級從20多個減少到兩個﹐將最高稅率從83%（工資收入）和98%（非工資收入）下調到40%。
她還縮減了英國龐大且虧損的國有產業﹐使其規模從經濟的三分之一左右減少到不到十分之一﹐方法就是推進私有化：以較低的股價邀請公眾購買煤炭、鋼鐵、公用設施和交通等領域的國有產業。因此﹐原本靠稅收支持的虧損企業成了盈利企業﹐並且成為稅收收入的重要來源。
這種改革很快被世界各國所效仿。不過﹐比這些具體的改革更重要的﹐是撒切爾所營造的氛圍﹐英國重新成為讓企業受到歡迎並獲得回報的地方。在這裡﹐企業不論大小﹐政府都笑臉相迎﹐投資者都能賺到錢。
因此﹐英國在歐洲所吸收的全部投資的佔比很快超過了50%﹐英國的經濟規模從世界第六升至第四位﹐人均產出在上世紀70年代曾經是德國的一半﹐而在本世紀頭幾年已經比德國高出三分之一。
撒 切爾在和平時期對英國的治理與丘吉爾在戰爭時期對英國的治理具有同等重要的意義。如果是在戰時﹐或許她也會成為一名卓越的領導人。剛開始執政時﹐她對外交 的瞭解微乎其微。同樣﹐外國人一開始也不樂意看到一個新的更強硬領導人控制英國。但也有例外。里根從一開始聽說撒切爾就喜歡上了她的風格。他表示﹐他和撒 切爾在精神上是同一類人﹐即便當時他仍在競選總統﹐他的言論也與撒切爾的行為互相呼應。
里根剛成功入主白宮﹐他和撒切爾夫人立即讓美國和 英國恢復了“特殊關係”。這再好不過了。一些外國人並未重視這位開始被克里姆林宮稱作鐵娘子的人物的力量。1982年﹐阿根廷的軍事獨裁政權被英國外交部 對阿方威脅的冷淡應對所誤導﹐邁出了入侵並佔領英國福克蘭群島這一危險步驟。這一無緣無故的侵略行動讓撒切爾夫人猝不及防﹐有36個小時的時間她陷入了不 知所措和猶豫不決的境地：英國軍方和後勤部門反對政府派遣聯合作戰部隊從距福克蘭群島8,000英里以外的地方對阿根廷發起反擊﹐這種反對聲音當時是相當 強大。
但英國後勤事務主管官員們的話給撒切爾夫人吃了定心丸﹐他們說只要下定決心﹐任務就有可能完成。撒切爾夫人最終下了決心：需要對阿 根廷做出反擊。自那以後﹐她取得勝利的意志﹐她不理睬損失和風險的態度從未動搖過。他的朋友里根當時還保證說﹐除了派兵﹐美國會動用其龐大國力在其他任何 方面向英國提供幫助﹐里根信守了這一諾言。此後現代軍事和道德歷史上最著名的戰役之一開始了﹐英國最終贏得了福克蘭群島上所有阿根廷軍隊的無條件投降這一 輝煌戰果﹐戰爭結束後不久阿根廷的軍人獨裁政權也垮台了。
這一軍事上的驚人成功﹐再加上撒切爾夫人使英國經濟實現復興﹐使她在1983年 的大選中以明顯優勢贏得了勝利。此後撒切爾夫人又於1987年第三次贏得大選。撒切爾夫人在勸說英國選民支持她方面從未遇到任何真正的困難﹐如果有機會繼 續參選的話﹐她預計會連續贏得第四次大選。
但撒切爾夫人要想讓她所在的英國保守黨順從地支持她﹐卻又是另外一碼事了。由此看來﹐保守黨曾 被它的一位領袖稱作“笨蛋黨”不是沒有理由的。一些保守黨的顯要人物從未甘心服從於撒切爾夫人的領導﹐這其中尤其包括那些支持建立歐洲聯邦 (European federation)的人﹐而撒切爾夫人則執拗的反對歐洲聯邦。保守黨一些顯要人物的加盟壯大了黨內反撒切爾夫人的陣營﹐這些人曾在她手下擔任要職﹐但 後來都被她毫不客氣地棄用了。這一現象也反映了一個令人悲哀的事實﹐即多年的一路勝利使撒切爾夫人變得更為專橫﹐權力敗壞了她的判斷力。
這 一點在她著手改革英國地方政府的財政時明顯地顯現出來。改革本身是明智的﹐甚至是崇高的﹐但這一改革的具體推介過程卻讓人不敢恭維﹐這項改革的眾多反對者 輕而易舉地就贏得了宣傳戰。在這場災難逐步發生的過程中﹐撒切爾夫人在保守黨內那些持親歐盟態度的反對者們1990年策劃了一場旨在推翻她的陰謀﹐他們讓 自己陣營的一個人成為保守黨領導人年度選舉的一名候選人（此人曾因工作缺乏效率而被解除了在內閣的職務）。撒切爾夫人在選舉中未能完勝﹐她在朋友們的勸說 下辭去了保守黨領袖的職務。英國政治史上一段最不尋常的從政生涯也因此而告終結。
撒切爾夫人最強烈的特徵是她身體上和道德上所具有的勇 氣。而她也一次又一次地展示了這種勇氣﹐其中引人注目的一次是愛爾蘭共和軍(IRA)在英國保守黨1984年召開大會期間試圖謀殺她。那次謀殺幾乎得手﹐ 她居住的酒店在午夜時分被炸毀。撒切爾夫人堅持第二天的會議準時隆重召開。她僅次於勇氣的另一性格特徵是勤勉。撒切爾夫人肯定是英國歷史上最勤奮的首相﹐ 她經常每天工作16小時﹐常常徹夜不睡撰寫演講稿。她的丈夫雖然早已習慣了她的這種工作習慣﹐但曾經依然忍不住抱怨說：你要明白﹐你不是在寫《聖經》。
撒 切爾夫人不是一位女權主義者﹐她將女權人士貶斥為“時尚的腐爛物”﹐不過她確也曾經講過一句具有女權主義色彩的話。在一次有500名男性經濟學家出席的冗 長公共晚宴上﹐撒切爾夫人在耐著性子聽完九個人的演講後終於輪到了她來發言﹐她此時的興奮之情是可以理解的。撒切爾夫人開講後的第一句話就是：作為第十位 發言者以及唯一一名女性發言人﹐我想說的是﹐公雞或許能夠打鳴﹐但下蛋的是母雞。
撒切爾夫人在政治上的成功再次證明﹐懷著熱情和韌性堅持 兩到三個信念對政治人物而言具有重要意義﹐里根也有同樣的優點。其中一個信念是﹐共產主義“邪惡帝國”能夠被摧毀也終將被摧毀。撒切爾夫人與里根及羅馬教 皇約翰•保羅二世(John Paul II)肯定應該因促成這一“邪惡帝國”的垮台而被記上一功。
在英國公眾中﹐強烈讚美撒切爾夫人和十分反感她的人幾乎佔有相同的比例﹐但在世界其他地區﹐她則被公認為一位偉大而富有創造性的政治人物﹐人們認為她讓世界變得更好、更繁榮﹐她的影響在21世紀的很長一段時間都將繼續存在。
（編者按：本文作者PAUL JOHNSON是一位歷史學家。）
Margaret Thatcher, Conservative Who Reforged Britain, Dies at 87
April 10, 2013
Daniel Janin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Prime Minister Thatcher greeted residents who gathered to see her in Moscow during a visit in 1987.
Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady” of
British politics, who put her country on a rightward economic course,
led it to victory in the Falklands war and helped guide the United
States and the Soviet Union through the cold war’s difficult last years,
died on Monday. She was 87.
Her spokesman, Tim Bell, said the cause was a stroke. She had been in poor health for months and had dementia.
Her death brought tributes from Prime Minister David Cameron, who cut
short a visit to Continental Europe to return to Britain, and Queen
Elizabeth II, who authorized a ceremonial funeral — a step short of a
state funeral — to be held at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London with
military honors. A statement from the White House said that “the world
has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America
has lost a true friend.” Mrs. Thatcher was the first woman to become
prime minister of Britain and the first to lead a major Western power in
modern times. Hard-driving and hardheaded, she led her Conservative
Party to three straight election victories and held office for 11 years —
May 1979 to November 1990 — longer than any other British politician in
the 20th century. The tough economic medicine Mrs. Thatcher
administered to a country sickened by inflation, budget deficits and
industrial unrest brought her wide swings in popularity, culminating
with a revolt among her own cabinet ministers in her final year and her
shout of “No! No! No!” in the House of Commons to any further
integration with Europe.
But by the time she left office, the principles known as Thatcherism — the belief that economic freedom and individual liberty are interdependent, that personal responsibility and hard work are the only ways to national prosperity, and that the free-market democracies must stand firm against aggression — had won many disciples. Even some of her strongest critics accorded her a grudging respect.
At home, Mrs. Thatcher’s political successes were decisive. She broke the power of the labor unions and forced the Labour Party to abandon its commitment to nationalized industry, redefine the role of the welfare state and accept the importance of the free market.
Abroad, she won new esteem for a country that had been in decline since its costly victory in World War II. After leaving office, she was honored as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven. But during her first years in power, even many Tories feared that her election might prove a terrible mistake.
In October 1980, 17 months into her first term, Mrs. Thatcher faced disaster. More businesses were failing and more people were out of work than at any time since the Great Depression. Racial and class tensions smoldered so ominously that even close advisers worried that her push to stanch inflation, sell off nationalized industry and deregulate the economy was devastating the poor, undermining the middle class and courting chaos.
At the Conservative Party conference that month, the moderates grumbled that they were being led by a free-market ideologue oblivious to life on the street and the exigencies of realpolitik. With electoral defeat staring them in the face, cabinet members warned, now was surely a time for compromise.
To Mrs. Thatcher, they could not be more wrong. “I am not a consensus politician,” she had often declared. “I am a conviction politician.”
In an address to the party, she played on the title of Christopher Fry’s popular play “The Lady’s Not for Burning” in insisting that she would press forward with her policies. “You turn if you want to,” she told the faltering assembly. “The lady’s not for turning.”
Her tough stance did the trick. A party revolt was thwarted, the Tories hunkered down, and Mrs. Thatcher went on to achieve great victories. She turned the Conservatives, long associated with the status quo, into the party of reform. Her policies revitalized British business, spurred industrial growth and swelled the middle class.
But her third term was riddled with setbacks. Dissension over monetary policy, taxes and Britain’s place in the European Community caused her government to give up hard-won gains against inflation and unemployment. By the time she was ousted in another Tory revolt — this time over her resistance to expanding Britain’s role in a European union — the economy was in a recession and her reputation tarnished.
To her enemies she was — as Denis Healey, chancellor of the Exchequer in Harold Wilson’s government, called her — “La Pasionaria of Privilege,” a woman who railed against the evils of poverty but who was callous and unsympathetic to the plight of the have-nots. Her policies, her opponents said, were cruel and shortsighted, widened the gap between rich and poor and worsened the plight of the poorest.
Her relentless hostility to the Soviet Union and her persistent call to modernize Britain’s nuclear forces fed fears of nuclear war and even worried moderates in her own party. It also caught the Kremlin’s attention. After a hard-line speech in 1976, the Soviet press gave her a sobriquet of which she was proud: the Iron Lady.
Yet when she saw an opening, she proved willing to bend. She was one of the first Western leaders to recognize that the Soviets would soon be led by a member of a new generation, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, and invited him to Britain in December 1984, three months before he came to power. “I like Mr. Gorbachev,” she declared. “We can do business together.”
Her rapport with the new Soviet leader and her friendship with President Ronald Reagan made her a vital link between the White House and the Kremlin in their tense negotiations to halt the arms race of the 1980s.
Brisk and argumentative, she was rarely willing to concede a point and loath to compromise. Colleagues who disagreed with her were often deluged in a sea of facts, or what many referred to as being “handbagged.”
“She had high standards, and she expected everyone to do their work,” John O’Sullivan, a special adviser to the prime minister, recalled in 1999. “But there was a distinction. She was tougher on her ministers than she was on her personal staff. The more humble the position, the nicer she was.”
The Grocer’s Daughter
Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on Oct. 13, 1925, in Grantham, Lincolnshire, 100 miles north of London. Her family lived in a cold-water flat above a grocery store owned by her father, Alfred, the son of a shoemaker. Alfred Roberts was a Methodist preacher and local politician, and he and his wife, Beatrice, reared Margaret and her older sister, Muriel, to follow the tenets of Methodism: personal responsibility, hard work and traditional moral values.
Margaret learned politics at her father’s knee, joining him as he campaigned as an independent candidate for alderman and borough councilman. “Politics was in my bloodstream,” she said.
She won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls School. In 1943, at 17, she was admitted to Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied chemistry. Barred from joining the Oxford Union debating society — it did not admit women until 1963 — she became a member of the Oxford University Conservative Association and its president in 1946. She graduated in 1947 and later earned a master’s degree in chemistry, then worked as a chemical researcher and studied law.
Politics exerted an even stronger pull, and at 23 she was selected to be a Conservative Party candidate for Parliament. Shortly afterward, in 1949, she met Denis Thatcher, a well-to-do businessman and former artillery officer who had been decorated for bravery during World War II. They married in December 1951. In August 1953, Mrs. Thatcher gave birth to twins, Mark and Carol, who survive her, along with grandchildren. (Sir Denis died in 2003.) That December, she was admitted to the bar and came to specialize in patent and tax law. As the couple prospered, Mrs. Thatcher achieved the financial independence to devote herself to politics. “Being prime minister is a lonely job,” she wrote in her memoirs, “The Downing Street Years,” published in 1993. “It has to be; you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there, I was never alone.”
In 1964, the Tories, exhausted by scandal, a souring economy and internal divisions, lost power to Harold Wilson’s Labour Party. But as the economy grew more feeble and the unions more militant, Mr. Wilson was ousted in 1970 by the Conservative leader, Edward Heath, who pledged to replace the politics of consensus with a “quiet revolution” that would reduce the state’s role in the marketplace and tame the unions.
He appointed Mrs. Thatcher secretary for education. As a Conservative cabinet minister, wrote Hugo Young, journalist and author of a critical 1989 biography, “The Iron Lady,” she fought budget cuts in the British university system and pushed to rebuild schools in poor areas with a zeal that “would have done credit to the best of the socialists.”
But it was her efforts to restrict a program that provided free milk to schoolchildren that made her a national figure. Though poor children were exempt from the cutbacks, and the previous Labour government had also reduced free milk in schools, the opposition leapt to the attack. When she argued in Parliament that the cuts would help finance more worthwhile programs, she was roundly jeered. The tabloids labeled her “Thatcher the Milk Snatcher.” Her husband, worried by the strain on his wife and children, who were being taunted at school, suggested that perhaps she should quit politics.
The government stood firm on the milk issue. But as the economy worsened, Mr. Heath retreated, imposing wage and price controls as inflation surged and igniting strikes. His U-turn angered the Tory right. Moreover, it proved futile. In the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the oil-producing nations of OPEC imposed huge price increases that stoked inflation. By winter 1974 Mr. Wilson was back in power.
The following December, the Conservative Party revised its rules for choosing a leader and opened a series of votes to the rank and file. Mrs. Thatcher, in what many regarded as an act of political gall, declared her candidacy. One British bookmaker, Ladbrokes, put the odds against her at 50 to 1.
Mrs. Thatcher, in an aggressive campaign, finished Mr. Heath on the first ballot, 130 to 119. The margin was not enough for victory, but Mr. Heath was forced to drop out. In the second ballot, on Feb. 11, 1975, Mrs. Thatcher defeated the other contenders, all of them men.
By the mid-1970s, Britain was the sick man of Europe. Nearly half of the average taxpayer’s income went to the state, which now determined compensation for a third of the nation’s work force: those employed by nationalized industries. In late 1978 and early ’79, strikes paralyzed Britain. As the “winter of discontent” dragged on, Prime Minister James Callaghan, of the Labour Party, failed to survive a no-confidence vote and called an election for May 3.
Callaghan, who was known as Sunny Jim, drew higher personal ratings in opinion polls than Mrs. Thatcher. But on election day the Tories walked away with 43.9 percent of the vote. Labour received 37 percent and the Liberals 13.8 percent. It was the largest swing to the right in postwar history.
Mrs. Thatcher moved swiftly. “I came to office with one deliberate intent,” she later said. “To change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society, from a give-it-to-me to a do-it-yourself nation.”
It was a painful beginning. Income tax cuts balanced by rising gasoline duties and sales taxes fueled inflation. Unemployment spread as she slashed subsidies to faltering industries. Tight money policies drove up interest rates to as high as 22 percent, strengthening the pound, hobbling investment at home and hurting competitiveness overseas. A record 10,000 businesses went bankrupt. Saying it would take years to cure Britain of the havoc wrought by socialism, Mrs. Thatcher warned, “Things will get worse before they get better.”
The Fall
In November 1990, tensions among the Tories exploded. The deputy prime minister, Geoffrey Howe, the last survivor of the original Thatcher cabinet of 1979, was known for his loyalty, though he disagreed with the prime minister on Britain’s policy toward Europe. Now that disagreement came to a boil. At a cabinet meeting, “Margaret was incredibly rude to Geoffrey,” Kenneth Baker, another minister, recalled. “It was the last straw for Geoffrey, and he resigned that night.”
The next day Michael Heseltine, a former defense minister who favored greater links with Europe, announced that he would challenge Mrs. Thatcher for the party leadership. On Nov. 20, as the prime minister was attending a summit meeting in Paris, the Tories took a vote. For Mrs. Thatcher, whose approval ratings in the polls were falling, the outcome was bleak: though she beat Mr. Heseltine, 204 votes to 152, under party rules her majority was not strong enough for her to keep her place.
The race, now wide open, took an unexpected turn. Mrs. Thatcher was awaiting the results of the party ballot with her family and friends at 10 Downing Street when she learned that Mr. Heseltine had lost to the soft-spoken chancellor of the Exchequer, John Major, a protégé of hers. When someone remarked that her colleagues had done an awful turn, she replied, “We’re in politics, dear.” Though vowing at first to “fight on and fight to win” the second ballot, she was persuaded to withdraw. After speaking to the queen, calling world leaders and making a final speech to the House of Commons, she resigned on Nov. 28, 1990, leaving 10 Downing Street in tears and feeling betrayed.
After leaving office, Mrs. Thatcher traveled widely and drew huge crowds on the lecture circuit. She sat in the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, wrote her memoirs and devoted herself to the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, set up to promulgate the values she had championed.
She remained forthright in expressing her opinions. During her final months in office, she had bolstered President George Bush in his efforts to build a United Nations coalition to oppose Iraq after it invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990. At the time of the invasion, Mrs. Thatcher was meeting with Mr. Bush and other world leaders at the Aspen Institute in Colorado. “Remember, George,” she is said to have told him, “this is no time to go wobbly.”
In retirement, she continued to call for firmness in the face of aggression, advocating Western intervention to stop the ethnic bloodshed in the Balkans in the early 1990s. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she endorsed President George W. Bush’s policy of sanctioning pre-emptive strikes against governments that sponsored terrorism. She also backed the war to oust the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein.
By then, according to her daughter, Mrs. Thatcher had begun to show signs of the dementia that would overtake her and become, to much criticism, the focus of “The Iron Lady,” a 2011 film about her with Meryl Streep in the title role.
But while she was still of sound mind, Mrs. Thatcher never let up on her anti-Europe views. “In my lifetime, all the problems have come from mainland Europe, and all the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations across the world,” she told the annual Conservative Party conference in 1999. Her words drew predictable outrage, but few people doubted that Mrs. Thatcher, as usual, had meant exactly what she said.
She also did not shy from criticizing her successors’ actions, including Mr. Major’s handling of the economy. Her frankness often embarrassed the Tories. It seemed to many that Mrs. Thatcher preferred Labour’s new leader, Tony Blair, to her former protégé.
That perception was not surprising, since Mr. Blair’s victory over Mr. Major in 1997 seemed in a curious way to emphasize the success of Mrs. Thatcher’s policies. Mr. Blair led his “New Labour” party to victory on a platform that promised to liberate business from government restrictions, end taxes that discouraged investment and reduce dependence on the state.
Mrs. Thatcher’s legacy, “in most respects, is uncontested by the Blair government,” Mr. Young, her biographer, said in a 1999 interview. “It made rather concrete something she once said: ‘My task will not be completed until the Labour Party has become like the Conservative Party, a party of capitalism.’ ”
Her spokesman, Tim Bell, said the cause was a stroke. She had been in poor health for months and had dementia.
But by the time she left office, the principles known as Thatcherism — the belief that economic freedom and individual liberty are interdependent, that personal responsibility and hard work are the only ways to national prosperity, and that the free-market democracies must stand firm against aggression — had won many disciples. Even some of her strongest critics accorded her a grudging respect.
At home, Mrs. Thatcher’s political successes were decisive. She broke the power of the labor unions and forced the Labour Party to abandon its commitment to nationalized industry, redefine the role of the welfare state and accept the importance of the free market.
Abroad, she won new esteem for a country that had been in decline since its costly victory in World War II. After leaving office, she was honored as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven. But during her first years in power, even many Tories feared that her election might prove a terrible mistake.
In October 1980, 17 months into her first term, Mrs. Thatcher faced disaster. More businesses were failing and more people were out of work than at any time since the Great Depression. Racial and class tensions smoldered so ominously that even close advisers worried that her push to stanch inflation, sell off nationalized industry and deregulate the economy was devastating the poor, undermining the middle class and courting chaos.
At the Conservative Party conference that month, the moderates grumbled that they were being led by a free-market ideologue oblivious to life on the street and the exigencies of realpolitik. With electoral defeat staring them in the face, cabinet members warned, now was surely a time for compromise.
To Mrs. Thatcher, they could not be more wrong. “I am not a consensus politician,” she had often declared. “I am a conviction politician.”
In an address to the party, she played on the title of Christopher Fry’s popular play “The Lady’s Not for Burning” in insisting that she would press forward with her policies. “You turn if you want to,” she told the faltering assembly. “The lady’s not for turning.”
Her tough stance did the trick. A party revolt was thwarted, the Tories hunkered down, and Mrs. Thatcher went on to achieve great victories. She turned the Conservatives, long associated with the status quo, into the party of reform. Her policies revitalized British business, spurred industrial growth and swelled the middle class.
But her third term was riddled with setbacks. Dissension over monetary policy, taxes and Britain’s place in the European Community caused her government to give up hard-won gains against inflation and unemployment. By the time she was ousted in another Tory revolt — this time over her resistance to expanding Britain’s role in a European union — the economy was in a recession and her reputation tarnished.
To her enemies she was — as Denis Healey, chancellor of the Exchequer in Harold Wilson’s government, called her — “La Pasionaria of Privilege,” a woman who railed against the evils of poverty but who was callous and unsympathetic to the plight of the have-nots. Her policies, her opponents said, were cruel and shortsighted, widened the gap between rich and poor and worsened the plight of the poorest.
Her relentless hostility to the Soviet Union and her persistent call to modernize Britain’s nuclear forces fed fears of nuclear war and even worried moderates in her own party. It also caught the Kremlin’s attention. After a hard-line speech in 1976, the Soviet press gave her a sobriquet of which she was proud: the Iron Lady.
Yet when she saw an opening, she proved willing to bend. She was one of the first Western leaders to recognize that the Soviets would soon be led by a member of a new generation, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, and invited him to Britain in December 1984, three months before he came to power. “I like Mr. Gorbachev,” she declared. “We can do business together.”
Her rapport with the new Soviet leader and her friendship with President Ronald Reagan made her a vital link between the White House and the Kremlin in their tense negotiations to halt the arms race of the 1980s.
Brisk and argumentative, she was rarely willing to concede a point and loath to compromise. Colleagues who disagreed with her were often deluged in a sea of facts, or what many referred to as being “handbagged.”
“She had high standards, and she expected everyone to do their work,” John O’Sullivan, a special adviser to the prime minister, recalled in 1999. “But there was a distinction. She was tougher on her ministers than she was on her personal staff. The more humble the position, the nicer she was.”
The Grocer’s Daughter
Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on Oct. 13, 1925, in Grantham, Lincolnshire, 100 miles north of London. Her family lived in a cold-water flat above a grocery store owned by her father, Alfred, the son of a shoemaker. Alfred Roberts was a Methodist preacher and local politician, and he and his wife, Beatrice, reared Margaret and her older sister, Muriel, to follow the tenets of Methodism: personal responsibility, hard work and traditional moral values.
Margaret learned politics at her father’s knee, joining him as he campaigned as an independent candidate for alderman and borough councilman. “Politics was in my bloodstream,” she said.
She won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls School. In 1943, at 17, she was admitted to Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied chemistry. Barred from joining the Oxford Union debating society — it did not admit women until 1963 — she became a member of the Oxford University Conservative Association and its president in 1946. She graduated in 1947 and later earned a master’s degree in chemistry, then worked as a chemical researcher and studied law.
Politics exerted an even stronger pull, and at 23 she was selected to be a Conservative Party candidate for Parliament. Shortly afterward, in 1949, she met Denis Thatcher, a well-to-do businessman and former artillery officer who had been decorated for bravery during World War II. They married in December 1951. In August 1953, Mrs. Thatcher gave birth to twins, Mark and Carol, who survive her, along with grandchildren. (Sir Denis died in 2003.) That December, she was admitted to the bar and came to specialize in patent and tax law. As the couple prospered, Mrs. Thatcher achieved the financial independence to devote herself to politics. “Being prime minister is a lonely job,” she wrote in her memoirs, “The Downing Street Years,” published in 1993. “It has to be; you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there, I was never alone.”
In 1964, the Tories, exhausted by scandal, a souring economy and internal divisions, lost power to Harold Wilson’s Labour Party. But as the economy grew more feeble and the unions more militant, Mr. Wilson was ousted in 1970 by the Conservative leader, Edward Heath, who pledged to replace the politics of consensus with a “quiet revolution” that would reduce the state’s role in the marketplace and tame the unions.
He appointed Mrs. Thatcher secretary for education. As a Conservative cabinet minister, wrote Hugo Young, journalist and author of a critical 1989 biography, “The Iron Lady,” she fought budget cuts in the British university system and pushed to rebuild schools in poor areas with a zeal that “would have done credit to the best of the socialists.”
But it was her efforts to restrict a program that provided free milk to schoolchildren that made her a national figure. Though poor children were exempt from the cutbacks, and the previous Labour government had also reduced free milk in schools, the opposition leapt to the attack. When she argued in Parliament that the cuts would help finance more worthwhile programs, she was roundly jeered. The tabloids labeled her “Thatcher the Milk Snatcher.” Her husband, worried by the strain on his wife and children, who were being taunted at school, suggested that perhaps she should quit politics.
The government stood firm on the milk issue. But as the economy worsened, Mr. Heath retreated, imposing wage and price controls as inflation surged and igniting strikes. His U-turn angered the Tory right. Moreover, it proved futile. In the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the oil-producing nations of OPEC imposed huge price increases that stoked inflation. By winter 1974 Mr. Wilson was back in power.
The following December, the Conservative Party revised its rules for choosing a leader and opened a series of votes to the rank and file. Mrs. Thatcher, in what many regarded as an act of political gall, declared her candidacy. One British bookmaker, Ladbrokes, put the odds against her at 50 to 1.
Mrs. Thatcher, in an aggressive campaign, finished Mr. Heath on the first ballot, 130 to 119. The margin was not enough for victory, but Mr. Heath was forced to drop out. In the second ballot, on Feb. 11, 1975, Mrs. Thatcher defeated the other contenders, all of them men.
By the mid-1970s, Britain was the sick man of Europe. Nearly half of the average taxpayer’s income went to the state, which now determined compensation for a third of the nation’s work force: those employed by nationalized industries. In late 1978 and early ’79, strikes paralyzed Britain. As the “winter of discontent” dragged on, Prime Minister James Callaghan, of the Labour Party, failed to survive a no-confidence vote and called an election for May 3.
Callaghan, who was known as Sunny Jim, drew higher personal ratings in opinion polls than Mrs. Thatcher. But on election day the Tories walked away with 43.9 percent of the vote. Labour received 37 percent and the Liberals 13.8 percent. It was the largest swing to the right in postwar history.
Mrs. Thatcher moved swiftly. “I came to office with one deliberate intent,” she later said. “To change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society, from a give-it-to-me to a do-it-yourself nation.”
It was a painful beginning. Income tax cuts balanced by rising gasoline duties and sales taxes fueled inflation. Unemployment spread as she slashed subsidies to faltering industries. Tight money policies drove up interest rates to as high as 22 percent, strengthening the pound, hobbling investment at home and hurting competitiveness overseas. A record 10,000 businesses went bankrupt. Saying it would take years to cure Britain of the havoc wrought by socialism, Mrs. Thatcher warned, “Things will get worse before they get better.”
The Fall
In November 1990, tensions among the Tories exploded. The deputy prime minister, Geoffrey Howe, the last survivor of the original Thatcher cabinet of 1979, was known for his loyalty, though he disagreed with the prime minister on Britain’s policy toward Europe. Now that disagreement came to a boil. At a cabinet meeting, “Margaret was incredibly rude to Geoffrey,” Kenneth Baker, another minister, recalled. “It was the last straw for Geoffrey, and he resigned that night.”
The next day Michael Heseltine, a former defense minister who favored greater links with Europe, announced that he would challenge Mrs. Thatcher for the party leadership. On Nov. 20, as the prime minister was attending a summit meeting in Paris, the Tories took a vote. For Mrs. Thatcher, whose approval ratings in the polls were falling, the outcome was bleak: though she beat Mr. Heseltine, 204 votes to 152, under party rules her majority was not strong enough for her to keep her place.
The race, now wide open, took an unexpected turn. Mrs. Thatcher was awaiting the results of the party ballot with her family and friends at 10 Downing Street when she learned that Mr. Heseltine had lost to the soft-spoken chancellor of the Exchequer, John Major, a protégé of hers. When someone remarked that her colleagues had done an awful turn, she replied, “We’re in politics, dear.” Though vowing at first to “fight on and fight to win” the second ballot, she was persuaded to withdraw. After speaking to the queen, calling world leaders and making a final speech to the House of Commons, she resigned on Nov. 28, 1990, leaving 10 Downing Street in tears and feeling betrayed.
After leaving office, Mrs. Thatcher traveled widely and drew huge crowds on the lecture circuit. She sat in the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, wrote her memoirs and devoted herself to the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, set up to promulgate the values she had championed.
She remained forthright in expressing her opinions. During her final months in office, she had bolstered President George Bush in his efforts to build a United Nations coalition to oppose Iraq after it invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990. At the time of the invasion, Mrs. Thatcher was meeting with Mr. Bush and other world leaders at the Aspen Institute in Colorado. “Remember, George,” she is said to have told him, “this is no time to go wobbly.”
In retirement, she continued to call for firmness in the face of aggression, advocating Western intervention to stop the ethnic bloodshed in the Balkans in the early 1990s. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she endorsed President George W. Bush’s policy of sanctioning pre-emptive strikes against governments that sponsored terrorism. She also backed the war to oust the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein.
By then, according to her daughter, Mrs. Thatcher had begun to show signs of the dementia that would overtake her and become, to much criticism, the focus of “The Iron Lady,” a 2011 film about her with Meryl Streep in the title role.
But while she was still of sound mind, Mrs. Thatcher never let up on her anti-Europe views. “In my lifetime, all the problems have come from mainland Europe, and all the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations across the world,” she told the annual Conservative Party conference in 1999. Her words drew predictable outrage, but few people doubted that Mrs. Thatcher, as usual, had meant exactly what she said.
She also did not shy from criticizing her successors’ actions, including Mr. Major’s handling of the economy. Her frankness often embarrassed the Tories. It seemed to many that Mrs. Thatcher preferred Labour’s new leader, Tony Blair, to her former protégé.
That perception was not surprising, since Mr. Blair’s victory over Mr. Major in 1997 seemed in a curious way to emphasize the success of Mrs. Thatcher’s policies. Mr. Blair led his “New Labour” party to victory on a platform that promised to liberate business from government restrictions, end taxes that discouraged investment and reduce dependence on the state.
Mrs. Thatcher’s legacy, “in most respects, is uncontested by the Blair government,” Mr. Young, her biographer, said in a 1999 interview. “It made rather concrete something she once said: ‘My task will not be completed until the Labour Party has become like the Conservative Party, a party of capitalism.’ ”
瑪格麗特·撒切爾 | 1925-2013
撒切爾夫人，英國因你不同
報道 2013年04月10日
英國政壇“鐵娘子”瑪格麗特·撒切爾(Margaret Thatcher)在周一去世，享年87歲。她讓英國走上了右傾的經濟道路，帶領自己的祖國取得了福克蘭群島戰爭（Falklands，阿根廷稱馬爾維納 斯群島）的勝利，還幫助引領美國和蘇聯度過了冷戰結束前的艱難年月。她的發言人蒂姆·貝爾(Tim Bell)表示，撒切爾夫人死於中風。數月來，她的健康狀況每況愈下，還患有老年痴呆症。
英國首相戴維·卡梅倫(David Cameron)在她逝世後表達了自己的敬意，他縮短了對歐洲大陸的訪問行程，提前回到英國。伊麗莎白女王二世(Queen Elizabeth II)授權為撒切爾夫人在倫敦的聖保羅大教堂(St. Paul's Cathedral)舉行“禮儀葬禮”（其規格比國葬低一級），並享有儀仗隊禮遇。白宮在聲明中表示，“世界失去了自由的偉大捍衛者之一，美國也失去了一 位真正的朋友。”撒切爾夫人是英國歷史上的第一位女首相，也是現代史上第一位執政西方大國的女領袖。大膽進取、冷靜堅強的撒切爾夫人帶領她所在的保守黨 (Conservative Party)連續三次贏得大選，總共執政11年——從1979年5月到1990年11月——其任期長於20世紀的任何一位英國政治人士。撒切爾夫人為深受 通貨膨脹、預算赤字和工業動蕩之苦的英國開出的苦澀經濟藥方讓她經歷了民心背向的大起伏，最終，她自己的內閣大臣在她執政的最後一年群起而反之，而她在下 議院對進一步融入歐洲的提案大聲高呼“反對！反對！反對！”
但在她離任之際，撒切爾主義(Thatcherism)已經擁有眾多追隨者，甚至連一些最反對她的批評者也不得不承認對她心懷敬重。撒切爾主義的理 念是：經濟自由和個人自由是相互依存的；承擔個人責任和勤奮工作是國家繁榮的唯一途徑；自由市場民主政體在面對攻擊時要寸步不退。
在國內，撒切爾夫人的政績是不容置疑的。她使得工會風光不再，迫使工黨放棄了對國有化行業的支持，讓該黨不得不重新定義福利國家的角色，並讓他們接受了自由市場的重要性。
在付出巨大代價打贏二戰之後，英國就一直在走下坡路。而她在國外為英國贏得了新的尊重。離任之後，她被授予凱斯蒂文撒切爾女男爵(Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven)的頭銜。但在她當政的頭幾年，甚至很多保守黨人都擔心她的當選可能是一個嚴重錯誤。
1980年10月，在她首次任期的第17個月，撒切爾夫人遭遇了困境。當時的英國面臨著自大蕭條以來最嚴重的企業凋敝和民眾失業局面。種族矛盾和階 級矛盾不斷發酵，帶來了不詳的預兆，甚至連她的親密顧問也擔心，她在遏制通貨膨脹、出售國有化行業和放鬆經濟監管方面的舉措會給窮人帶來毀滅性的打擊、削 弱中產階級的力量，並引發混亂。
溫和派在當月的保守黨代表大會上抱怨，如今領導他們的是一個無視基層現狀和現實政治緊迫性的自由經濟理論家。眼看着民心在不斷喪失，內閣成員發出警告，稱現在到了妥協之時。
但是在撒切爾夫人看來，他們真是大錯特錯。她曾常說，“我不是一個尋求一致意見的政客，我是一個有着堅定信念的政治家。”
在一次黨內演說中，她借用克里斯托弗·弗賴伊(Christopher Fry)名劇《她不會被燒死》(The Lady’s Not for Burning)的劇名，堅稱她決意推行自己的政策。她說，“如果你們想動搖，你們就動搖吧。但是，她不會動搖。”
她的強硬態度收到理想效果。保守黨內訌平息，黨員堅定了立場，她也繼續前進並獲得巨大成功。她把素有安於現狀之名的保守黨變成了一個改革黨。她的政策使得英國商業重獲活力，推動工業增長並且壯大了中產階級。
但是她的第三次任期卻充滿挫折。由於存在關於貨幣政策、稅收及英國在歐洲共同體(European Community)內地位的分歧，她的政府放棄了在反通脹及反失業方面艱難取得的成就。由於她堅決反對擴大英國對歐共體的參與，在又一次保守黨內訌中， 她被迫出局。彼時，英國經濟已經陷入衰退，她的名聲也被玷污。
對於她的政敵來說，她正如哈羅德·威爾遜(Harold Wilson)政府財政大臣丹尼斯·希利(Denis Healey)所言，是朵“特權狂花”(La Pasionaria of Privilege)，她痛斥貧困的邪惡面，但面對窮人時卻一副鐵石心腸，對其苦難毫不同情。她的對手說，她的政策非常殘酷且目光短淺，擴大了貧富差距， 並且加重了最貧困者的苦難。
她對蘇聯深惡痛絕，而且她堅持不懈地呼籲更新英國的核武器，這加重了人們對核戰爭的恐懼，甚至引起保守黨內溫和派人士的擔憂，也引起了克里姆林宮的注意。她在1976年發表一次強硬演講後，蘇聯媒體給了她一個綽號：鐵娘子。而她則以此為榮。
但是，事實證明，當她看到機會時，她也會彎腰去抓住它。當時，蘇聯的新一代領導人米哈伊爾·S·戈爾巴喬夫(Mikhail S. Gorbachev)很快就要接掌大權，她成為了最早認清這一點的西方領導人之一。於是她邀請戈爾巴喬夫於1984年12月訪問英國。她當時宣布說，“我 喜歡戈爾巴喬夫先生，我們可以一起共事。”那次訪問三個月後，戈爾巴喬夫成為了蘇聯最高領導人。
她與蘇聯新領導人的良好關係，及她與羅納德·里根總統(Ronald Reagan)的友誼，使她在美蘇就終止20世紀80年代軍備競賽的緊張談判中，成為了聯繫白宮和克里姆林宮的關鍵橋樑。
她既活力四射又善於雄辯，很少願意讓步，也痛恨妥協。與她觀點相左的同事，常常被淹沒在論據的海洋中，在這種時候，很多人會說，其人被“手袋砸暈了”。
1999年，首相特別顧問約翰·奧沙利文(John O’Sullivan)回憶道，“她的標準很高，她希望人人都各司其職。但還是有一點區別。她對部長們比對她的幕僚更嚴格。對方的位置越低，她的態度也就越好。”
雜貨店主的女兒
1925年10月13日，瑪格麗特·希爾達·羅伯茨(Margaret Hilda Roberts)出生在倫敦北部100英里處的林肯郡格蘭瑟姆。她的父親阿爾弗雷德·羅伯茨(Alfred Roberts)是鞋匠的兒子，他是衛理公會牧師，也是當地政客，並擁有一家雜貨店。一家人就住在雜貨店樓上沒有熱水的房子里。她的母親叫做比阿特麗絲 (Beatrice)，她的姐姐叫做穆里爾(Muriel)。夫妻二人養育瑪格麗特和穆里爾，讓她們恪守衛理公會教義：個人責任感、勤奮工作及傳統道德 觀。
撒切爾夫人從小在其父膝下了解到了政治，後又參加了父親作為獨立候選人競選市政官和區議員的競選活動。她說，“政治流淌在我的血液中。”
她贏得了凱斯蒂文和格蘭特姆女子中學(Kesteven and Grantham Girls School)的獎學金。1943年，17歲的她考入牛津大學(Oxford)薩默維爾學院(Somerville College)，學習化學專業。由於牛津大學辯論社在1963年之前不允許女生加入，年輕的撒切爾夫人便加入了牛津大學的保守黨協會(Oxford University Conservative Association)，並於1946年成為協會主席。1947年，她從牛津大學畢業，後繼續攻讀化學專業碩士學位，之後成為了一名化學研究員，並開始 學習法律。
政治對她產生了更強的吸引力，23歲時她被選為保守黨議員候選人。不久後的1949年，她與成功的商人丹尼斯·撒切爾(Denis Thatcher)相遇。丹尼斯·撒切爾曾是一名炮兵部隊軍官，因為在二戰期間的英勇表現而被授予勳章。1951年12月他們結為夫婦。1953年8月， 撒切爾夫人產下一對雙胞胎，馬克(Mark)和卡蘿爾(Carol)，他們以及家族的第三代都還在世。（丹尼斯爵士卒於2003年）同年12月，她取得了 律師資格，業務領域為專利和稅法。隨着這對夫婦的生活富裕起來，撒切爾夫人取得了經濟獨立，開始全身心投入到政治當中。她在1993年出版的回憶錄《唐寧 街歲月》(The Downing Street Years)一書中寫到，“首相的工作是孤單的。必須這樣；因為站在人群中是無法領導的。但是和丹尼斯在一起，我從不孤獨。”
1964年，醜聞、經濟不景氣和內部矛盾令保守黨精疲力竭，在競選中輸給了哈羅德·威爾遜(Harold Wilson)領導的工黨(Labour Party)。但是，隨着經濟蕭條的加重，工會也變得更加激進，1970年威爾遜在大選中輸給了保守黨領導人愛德華·希斯(Edward Heath)。希斯發誓要用“無聲的革命”取代共識政治，減少國家在市場中的角色，並馴服工會。
希斯任命撒切爾夫人為教育大臣。作為一名保守黨內閣大臣，她與英國大學體系中的預算削減進行了鬥爭，還推動在貧窮地區重建學校體系，她的這種熱情 “會讓最優秀的社會主義者黯然失色”，1989年的一部重要傳記《鐵娘子》(The Iron Lady)一書的作者兼記者雨果·楊(Hugo Young)這麼寫道。
然而，讓她聞名全國的卻是限制向學生免費提供牛奶的舉措。雖然貧窮孩子不受這一限制的影響，而且此前的工黨政府也曾減少對學校的免費牛奶供應，但反 對派卻大肆向她發起攻擊。當她在國會裡為此辯護，稱這麼做有助於為其他更有意義的項目提供資金時，卻遭到了所有人的嘲笑。小報給她貼上“牛奶掠奪者撒切 爾”(Thatcher the Milk Snatcher)的標籤。她的孩子們也在學校里遭到嘲弄，她的丈夫由於擔心她和孩子們承受的壓力，勸她退出政壇。
政府在牛奶問題上態度強硬。但是隨着經濟形勢愈加惡化，希斯做出了讓步，在通脹飆升時時對工資和物價進行了控制，這引發了罷工浪潮。希斯的大轉彎還 激怒了保守黨的右翼。而且，事實證明這些措施無濟於事。1973年阿以戰爭爆發之後，石油輸出國組織(OPEC)大幅提高石油價格，致使通脹愈演愈烈。 1974年冬天，威爾遜重新上台。
次年12月份，保守黨修訂了選擇領導人的規章，並允許黨內普通成員參加一系列投票。撒切爾夫人宣布參選，許多人當時認為這是政治上的魯莽之舉。英國的立博博彩公司(Ladbrokes)把她獲勝的賠率定在1賠50。
撒切爾夫人的競選活動氣勢逼人，她在第一輪投票中以130票比119票領先於希斯。這個領先優勢不足以讓她成功當選，但希斯被迫退出了競選。在1975年2月11日的第二輪投票中，撒切爾夫人打敗了其他競爭對手，他們都是男性。
到了20世紀70年代中期，英國成為歐洲病夫。普通納稅人幾近一半的收入都歸了國家，政府決定着英國三分之一勞動力的報酬，這些人受雇於國有化的行 業。1978年末和1979年初，罷工讓英國陷入癱瘓。隨着“不滿之冬”(winter of discontent)的持續，工黨首相詹姆斯·卡拉漢(James Callaghan)因不信任動議的通過而宣佈於5月3日舉行選舉。
在民意調查中，被稱作“陽光吉姆”(Sunny Jim)的卡拉漢的支持率高於撒切爾夫人。但在選舉當天，保守黨贏得了43.9%的選票，工黨和自由民主黨(Liberals)的得票率分別為37%和13.8%。這是戰後歷史上最大的一次“右擺”。
撒切爾夫人迅速開始行動。“我是帶着一個經過深思熟慮的目標就任的，”她後來說，“把英國從一個依賴型社會變成一個自立型社會，從一個‘拿來給我’的國家變成一個‘自己動手’的國家。”
那是一個痛苦的開始。所得稅削減的好處被汽油稅的上漲抵消了，銷售稅引發通貨膨脹。隨着她削減了對困難行業的補貼，失業形勢蔓延。收緊的貨幣政策使 得利率上漲至22%，導致英鎊升值，阻礙了國內投資，削弱了海外競爭力。破產企業創紀錄地達到了1萬家。撒切爾夫人表示，要用數年時間才能讓英國擺脫社會 主義帶來的破壞。她警告說，“情況在好轉之前還將繼續惡化。”
失勢
1990年11月，保守黨內部爆發衝突。傑弗里·豪(Geoffrey Howe)是撒切爾夫人1979年第一屆內閣的最後一名倖存者。他當時是副首相，素以忠誠而出名，但在英國對歐洲的政策上，他與撒切爾夫人意見相左。那 時，兩人之間的分歧達到了白熱化的程度。另一位大臣肯尼斯·貝克爾(Kenneth Baker)回憶說，在一次內閣會議上，“瑪格麗特對傑弗里非常無禮。對傑弗里而言，那是最後一根稻草，他當天晚上就辭職了。”
第二天，傾向於與歐洲更緊密合作的前國防大臣邁克爾·夏舜霆(Michael Heseltine)宣布，他將挑戰撒切爾夫人黨內的領導地位。11月20日，就在撒切爾夫人赴巴黎參加峰會時，保守黨舉行了投票。對撒切爾夫人來說，民 調的支持率在下降，投票結果也是令人沮喪的：雖然她以204對152的投票結果戰勝了夏舜霆，但根據保守黨的規定，這樣的優勢不足以保住她的位子。
為此，這場角逐變得非常開放，並在隨後出現了一個意想不到的轉折點。就在撒切爾夫人在唐寧街10號與家人朋友一起等待投票結果時，她得知夏舜霆已經 輸給了聲調柔和的財政大臣約翰·梅傑(John Major)，而後者是她的一個門生。當有人評論說，她的同事們不體面地動搖了，她回答說，“親愛的，這就是政治。”雖然撒切爾夫人一開始發誓將在第二輪 投票中“繼續戰鬥，直到勝利”，但她最終被勸服退出了選舉。經過與女王的交流、與其他世界領導人通話，並在下議院(House of Commons)發表了最後講話，她於1990年11月28日辭職，流着淚離開了唐寧街10號，她感覺自己受到了背叛。
下野之後，撒切爾夫人去了很多地方，在巡迴演講中吸引了大批觀眾。她加入上議院(House of Lords)，成為凱斯蒂文女男爵。她寫了回憶錄，並投身於瑪格麗特·撒切爾基金會(Margaret Thatcher Foundation)的工作之中，這個基金會的成立就是為了傳播她一直以來推崇的價值。
她在表達想法時依然直言不諱。伊拉克於1990年8月2日入侵科威特。在她任首相的最後幾個月里，她支持喬治·布殊(George Bush)總統構建一個聯合國的聯盟以反對伊拉克的行徑。在入侵發生時，撒切爾夫人在科羅拉多的艾斯本研究所(Aspen Institute)與布殊以及其他世界領導人會晤。“喬治，記着，”據說她這樣對布殊說，“現在可不是怯懦不前的時候。”
退休後，撒切爾夫人繼續呼籲，面對侵略行徑應毫不動搖，在20世紀90年代初，她主張西方干預並阻止發生在巴爾幹半島上的種族紛爭和流血衝突。 “9·11”恐怖襲擊發生後，她支持喬治·W·布殊總統(George W. Bush)的政策，對資助恐怖活動的政府進行先發制人的打擊。她還支持了那場趕走伊拉克領導人薩達姆·侯賽因(Saddam Hussein)的戰爭。
據她的女兒說，撒切爾夫人那時已開始出現失智症的癥狀，這一疾病最終擊垮了她，也成為2011年那部廣受批評的以她為主題的電影《鐵娘子》(The Iron Lady)的重點，片中由梅麗爾·斯特里普(Meryl Streep)出演撒切爾夫人。
但在她頭腦還清醒的時候，撒切爾夫人從來沒有停止她的反歐洲言論。“在我一生中，所有的問題都來自於歐洲大陸，而所有的解決方案都來自於世界各地的 英語國家，”她1999年在保守黨的年度會議上說。這番話不出意外地引來一些人的憤怒，但一如往常，很少有人會懷疑撒切爾夫人言不由衷。
她在批評她的繼任者時也毫無顧忌，包括她對梅傑處理經濟問題的不滿。她的坦白常常讓保守黨人尷尬。在很多人看來，比起她的前門徒，撒切爾夫人更偏愛工黨新領袖托尼·布萊爾(Tony Blair)。
這種看法並不意外，自從在1997年擊敗梅傑，布萊爾從某種方面來說強調了撒切爾夫人政策的勝利。布萊爾領導他的“新工黨”獲得勝利，他在競選綱領中承諾讓商業脫離政府的限制、結束影響投資的稅收項目，並減少對國家的依賴。
撒切爾夫人的傳記作者雨果·揚在1999年的一次採訪中說，她的政治遺產，“從很多方面都被布萊爾政府全盤接受。這落實了她曾經說過的：‘除非工黨變得像保守黨一樣，成為一個資本主義政黨，否則我的任務就沒有完成。’”
*****
Thatcher Freed Market Forces, and Europe Is Still Adjusting
April 09, 2013
As word of Margaret Thatcher’s death
spread on Monday, her successor several times removed, Prime Minister
David Cameron, cut short a trip to Spain intended to address what had
been among her greatest concerns — British suspicions about deeper ties
with Europe.
But Mrs. Thatcher’s imprint on the politics and economics of her nation, Europe and the world extended well beyond her proud nationalism. The approach she imposed on a divided and reluctant Britain starting with her election as prime minister in 1979 continue to echo even at her death. It was built on a faith in market forces, a willingness to impose short-term austerity in the service of long-term prosperity and skepticism or even hostility to the fiscal and social costs of the welfare state cherished by much of Europe.
Along with President Ronald Reagan, with whom she helped define
modern conservatism, Mrs. Thatcher developed a strain of capitalism that
became dominant around the world with the fall of communism. But she
also helped unleash market forces and unravel social compacts in ways
that many societies have yet to come to grips with. Even on the day of
her death, leaders and citizens from Cyprus to Portugal to Washington
were enmeshed in emotional debates over the policies that defined her
legacy. Those cross currents continue to play out in her own country, a
laboratory even now for austerity policies.
Mrs. Thatcher, 87, as many of the eulogies pouring in to her said, transformed Britain, battling for a smaller role for the state in the economy, opening the way for sweeping privatization and deregulation, legitimizing wealth, and unleashing acquisitive, entrepreneurial passions among her compatriots that still seem to make continental Europeans uncomfortable.
She also passionately defended her view of Britain as a significant power in the world, with interests and influences of her own that were independent of the 27-nation European Union. Just as Mrs. Thatcher once famously declared ‘'No! No! No!'’ in Parliament to a French-led push for closer European integration, and looked to Britain’s ‘'special relationship'’ with the United States as a way of leveraging Britain’s own weight in international affairs, Mr. Cameron, publicly espousing her legacy, has trodden a broadly similar path.
As Mr. Cameron broke off his European journey to return to London on Monday to oversee preparations for Mrs. Thatcher’s funeral, 10 Downing Street announced that the funeral, to take place next week, would include a service with full military honors, with the service itself at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Officials gave no other details, beyond saying that the arrangements would be similar to those made after the death in a Paris car crash in 1997 of Diana, Princess of Wales, whose coffin was carried through crowds in London on a horse-drawn caisson with an honor guard of military outriders.
The last prime minister to be accorded similar honors was Winston Churchill in 1965, a similarity that spoke for Britain’s sense of Mrs. Thatcher as a historical figure, and as many of her admirers said on Monday, as perhaps the country’s greatest peacetime leader.
But the commemorations were accompanied, too, by more acerbic, even vitriolic, remembrances from those, particularly on the political left, who saw her as a destructive figure, who had ruptured the economic and social fabric of post-war Britain and left a country that was more divided, more selfish, and, for the have-nots, more resentful than at any time in its recent history.
Across the world, as in Europe, the response to Mrs. Thatcher’s death appeared to oscillate between similar poles. Many foreign leaders and commentators spoke about her as President Barack Obama did, as ‘'one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and as an example to women that ‘'there is no glass ceiling that can’t be shattered.'’ However, there were others, particularly on the political left, who spoke with bitterness of the political vogue that spread across the globe in the name of Thatcherism, and which saw the rollback of socialism and the dismantling of command economies in virtually every continent, in favor of an approach that saw the free market as a vehicle to generate wealth and spread prosperity in a way that socialist redistribution never could.
But, where that legacy had its strongest impact, in Europe, it has not brought Britain close to its continental cousins. Since Mrs. Thatcher’s retirement from active politics in 1990, toppled by her own party elite, Britain has drifted further from Europe. It is not a member of key vehicles of integration — the euro currency, the Schengen accord on free travel across the continent’s internal frontiers. Indeed, bowing to the powerful euroskeptic currents in his own party, Mr. Cameron has promised a referendum on continued British membership in the E.U.
So if there was a symbol of the fruits of the Thatcher legacy on Monday it was that of a British prime minister abandoning an overture to Europe to return home to mourn at a shrine to euroskepticism whose influence still tugs at many ideological passions.
Many Britons remembered Mrs. Thatcher as a dominant, divisive and yet revered figure, whose impact on British life and society was enduring and contentious, and whose pervasive influence on political thinking about the role of the state in free societies spread far beyond Britain’s shores. Mrs. Thatcher did not simply lead Britain, Mr. Cameron said as he returned home, ‘'she saved our country.'’
‘'She was the patriot prime minister,'’ Mr. Cameron, recalling her role in shaping Britain’s relationship with the European Union. He said Parliament would be recalled on Wednesday for a special session in her honor.
But Mrs. Thatcher’s imprint on the politics and economics of her nation, Europe and the world extended well beyond her proud nationalism. The approach she imposed on a divided and reluctant Britain starting with her election as prime minister in 1979 continue to echo even at her death. It was built on a faith in market forces, a willingness to impose short-term austerity in the service of long-term prosperity and skepticism or even hostility to the fiscal and social costs of the welfare state cherished by much of Europe.
按图放大
Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
Flowers and tribute notes were left outside the residence of Mrs. Thatcher's home in Chester Square on Monday.
Mrs. Thatcher, 87, as many of the eulogies pouring in to her said, transformed Britain, battling for a smaller role for the state in the economy, opening the way for sweeping privatization and deregulation, legitimizing wealth, and unleashing acquisitive, entrepreneurial passions among her compatriots that still seem to make continental Europeans uncomfortable.
She also passionately defended her view of Britain as a significant power in the world, with interests and influences of her own that were independent of the 27-nation European Union. Just as Mrs. Thatcher once famously declared ‘'No! No! No!'’ in Parliament to a French-led push for closer European integration, and looked to Britain’s ‘'special relationship'’ with the United States as a way of leveraging Britain’s own weight in international affairs, Mr. Cameron, publicly espousing her legacy, has trodden a broadly similar path.
As Mr. Cameron broke off his European journey to return to London on Monday to oversee preparations for Mrs. Thatcher’s funeral, 10 Downing Street announced that the funeral, to take place next week, would include a service with full military honors, with the service itself at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Officials gave no other details, beyond saying that the arrangements would be similar to those made after the death in a Paris car crash in 1997 of Diana, Princess of Wales, whose coffin was carried through crowds in London on a horse-drawn caisson with an honor guard of military outriders.
The last prime minister to be accorded similar honors was Winston Churchill in 1965, a similarity that spoke for Britain’s sense of Mrs. Thatcher as a historical figure, and as many of her admirers said on Monday, as perhaps the country’s greatest peacetime leader.
But the commemorations were accompanied, too, by more acerbic, even vitriolic, remembrances from those, particularly on the political left, who saw her as a destructive figure, who had ruptured the economic and social fabric of post-war Britain and left a country that was more divided, more selfish, and, for the have-nots, more resentful than at any time in its recent history.
Across the world, as in Europe, the response to Mrs. Thatcher’s death appeared to oscillate between similar poles. Many foreign leaders and commentators spoke about her as President Barack Obama did, as ‘'one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and as an example to women that ‘'there is no glass ceiling that can’t be shattered.'’ However, there were others, particularly on the political left, who spoke with bitterness of the political vogue that spread across the globe in the name of Thatcherism, and which saw the rollback of socialism and the dismantling of command economies in virtually every continent, in favor of an approach that saw the free market as a vehicle to generate wealth and spread prosperity in a way that socialist redistribution never could.
But, where that legacy had its strongest impact, in Europe, it has not brought Britain close to its continental cousins. Since Mrs. Thatcher’s retirement from active politics in 1990, toppled by her own party elite, Britain has drifted further from Europe. It is not a member of key vehicles of integration — the euro currency, the Schengen accord on free travel across the continent’s internal frontiers. Indeed, bowing to the powerful euroskeptic currents in his own party, Mr. Cameron has promised a referendum on continued British membership in the E.U.
So if there was a symbol of the fruits of the Thatcher legacy on Monday it was that of a British prime minister abandoning an overture to Europe to return home to mourn at a shrine to euroskepticism whose influence still tugs at many ideological passions.
Many Britons remembered Mrs. Thatcher as a dominant, divisive and yet revered figure, whose impact on British life and society was enduring and contentious, and whose pervasive influence on political thinking about the role of the state in free societies spread far beyond Britain’s shores. Mrs. Thatcher did not simply lead Britain, Mr. Cameron said as he returned home, ‘'she saved our country.'’
‘'She was the patriot prime minister,'’ Mr. Cameron, recalling her role in shaping Britain’s relationship with the European Union. He said Parliament would be recalled on Wednesday for a special session in her honor.
「鐵娘子」辭世，爭議繼續
, 聯合報道 2013年04月09日
瑪格麗特·撒切爾(Margaret
Thatcher)逝世的消息於周一傳出，與她相隔好幾代的繼任者、英國首相戴維·卡梅倫(David
Cameron)隨即縮短了在西班牙的訪問行程。他原本打算通過此行處理撒切爾夫人最擔心的問題之一，即英國對與歐洲建立更深刻聯繫的疑慮。
但是，撒切爾夫人對英國、歐洲以及世界政治和經濟的影響極大地超越了她驕傲的民族主義情懷。從1979年當選首相的時候開始，她就把自己的方針加給 了充滿分歧且不情不願的英國，在她離世之際，這項方針仍然餘音裊裊。它的基礎是對市場力量的信念、不惜為長期繁榮實行短期緊縮的意願，以及對很多歐洲國家 所珍視的福利國家所需要的財政和社會成本所持的懷疑甚至反對立場。
她與羅納德·里根(Ronald Reagan)總統一起定義了現代保守主義。共產主義倒台後，撒切爾夫人創立的那種資本主義理念逐漸風靡全球。此外，她還在釋放市場力量和解決社會難題方 面發揮了作用，她的方法尚待很多社會學習。即使在她辭世的當天，從塞浦路斯到葡萄牙再到美國的各國領導人和公民仍然在就定義了撒切爾政治遺產的那些政策進 行激烈辯論。那些政策今天仍然在她的祖國表現出影響，即便到了現在，英國仍然是緊縮政策的實驗場。
正如紛紛湧現的諸多悼詞所說，87歲的撒切爾夫人改變了英國。她竭力縮減政府在經濟中的作用，為大規模私有化和撤銷管制打通了道路，將財富合法化，並且釋放了同胞們追求回報的創業激情，這樣的激情似乎仍然讓歐洲大陸感到不安。
她還曾經滿懷激情地捍衛自己的觀點，即英國是世界上的一個重要強國，擁有獨立於27個歐盟(European Union)國家之外的利益和影響力。對於由法國牽頭的敦促歐洲進一步實現一體化的舉動，撒切爾夫人曾在議會上發出廣為人知的宣言：“不行！不行！不 行！”她還寄希望於英美兩國的“特殊關係”，打算藉此讓英國對國際事務發揮自身的影響力。卡梅倫公開採用了她的理念，走上了一條大致相同的道路。
卡梅倫中止歐洲之行，於周一返回倫敦視察撒切爾夫人葬禮的準備工作。同日，首相府宣布葬禮將於下周舉行，其中將包括一個按最高軍事禮節舉辦的儀式， 葬禮地點則是聖保羅大教堂(St. Paul’s Cathedral)。官員並未提供其他細節，只是說葬禮安排將與1997年威爾士王妃戴安娜(Diana)在巴黎死於車禍後的安排相似。當年，馬拉的彈 藥車運載着戴安娜的靈柩在軍事儀仗隊的護送下穿過了倫敦的人群。
上一位獲得類似禮遇的首相是1965年逝世的溫斯頓·丘吉爾(Winston Churchill)，這種相似性表明英國將撒切爾夫人視作一位歷史性人物。就像她的很多崇拜者在周一說的那樣，她可能是英國和平時期最偉大的領袖。
但是，紀念活動當中也夾雜着一些尖刻以至刻薄的追憶之詞，這些言論來自那些認為撒切爾夫人具有破壞性的人，尤其是政治左翼人士。那些人認為撒切爾夫人破壞了戰後英國的經濟和社會結構，並使之成為一個更為分裂、更為自私的國家，窮人的不滿情緒比近代史上任何時期都要強烈。
與歐洲的情形一樣，世界各地對撒切爾夫人逝世的反應似乎也出現了類似的兩極分化。許多外國領導人和評論員對她的評價與貝拉克·奧巴馬總統 (Barack Obama)相同，稱她是“自由權利和自由精神的偉大捍衛者，也是女性的典範，證明了世上沒有不能打碎的玻璃天花板。”然而，也有一些人，特別是政治左翼 人士，恨恨不已地提到了以撒切爾主義之名在全球範圍蔓延的政治風尚，這種風尚帶來了社會主義的式微、計劃經濟在所有大陸崩潰，並且提倡這樣一種方針——通 過自由市場來創造財富，共享繁榮，達到社會主義再分配無法達到的目標。
這種思想對歐洲的影響最為強烈，但英國與歐洲大陸國家的關係並沒有因此變得密切。1990年，撒切爾夫人被自己所在政黨的精英推翻，從此淡出政治舞 台，此後，英國與歐洲各國越加疏遠。歐元是實現一體化的重要手段，英國卻沒有加入歐元區，也沒有簽署允許人們自由穿越歐洲大陸內部邊境的申根協議。實際 上，迫於本黨內部強大的歐洲懷疑論潮流，卡梅倫已經承諾就英國是否繼續留在歐盟舉行公投。
因此，要說周一的什麼事件可以象徵撒切爾夫人理念的碩果，那就是英國首相在歐洲之旅伊始放棄行程，回到英國，在這個歐洲懷疑論的聖地進行哀悼，這種懷疑論的影響力仍然在為諸多意識形態激情推波助瀾。
在很多英國人的印象中，撒切爾夫人是一位強勢、備受爭議，但卻受人尊敬的人物，她給英國人的生活和社會造成了持久的爭議性影響。對於有關國家在自由 社會中所任角色的政治思考，她的影響無遠弗屆，遠遠越出了英國國境。回到英國之後，卡梅倫說，撒切爾夫人不只是領導了英國，“她拯救了我們的國家。”
追憶撒切爾夫人在塑造英國與歐盟關係的過程中發揮的作用時，卡梅倫表示，“她是一位熱愛祖國的首相。”卡梅倫表示，議會將於周三召開特別會議，向撒切爾表達敬意。
但是，撒切爾夫人對英國、歐洲以及世界政治和經濟的影響極大地超越了她驕傲的民族主義情懷。從1979年當選首相的時候開始，她就把自己的方針加給 了充滿分歧且不情不願的英國，在她離世之際，這項方針仍然餘音裊裊。它的基礎是對市場力量的信念、不惜為長期繁榮實行短期緊縮的意願，以及對很多歐洲國家 所珍視的福利國家所需要的財政和社會成本所持的懷疑甚至反對立場。
她與羅納德·里根(Ronald Reagan)總統一起定義了現代保守主義。共產主義倒台後，撒切爾夫人創立的那種資本主義理念逐漸風靡全球。此外，她還在釋放市場力量和解決社會難題方 面發揮了作用，她的方法尚待很多社會學習。即使在她辭世的當天，從塞浦路斯到葡萄牙再到美國的各國領導人和公民仍然在就定義了撒切爾政治遺產的那些政策進 行激烈辯論。那些政策今天仍然在她的祖國表現出影響，即便到了現在，英國仍然是緊縮政策的實驗場。
正如紛紛湧現的諸多悼詞所說，87歲的撒切爾夫人改變了英國。她竭力縮減政府在經濟中的作用，為大規模私有化和撤銷管制打通了道路，將財富合法化，並且釋放了同胞們追求回報的創業激情，這樣的激情似乎仍然讓歐洲大陸感到不安。
她還曾經滿懷激情地捍衛自己的觀點，即英國是世界上的一個重要強國，擁有獨立於27個歐盟(European Union)國家之外的利益和影響力。對於由法國牽頭的敦促歐洲進一步實現一體化的舉動，撒切爾夫人曾在議會上發出廣為人知的宣言：“不行！不行！不 行！”她還寄希望於英美兩國的“特殊關係”，打算藉此讓英國對國際事務發揮自身的影響力。卡梅倫公開採用了她的理念，走上了一條大致相同的道路。
卡梅倫中止歐洲之行，於周一返回倫敦視察撒切爾夫人葬禮的準備工作。同日，首相府宣布葬禮將於下周舉行，其中將包括一個按最高軍事禮節舉辦的儀式， 葬禮地點則是聖保羅大教堂(St. Paul’s Cathedral)。官員並未提供其他細節，只是說葬禮安排將與1997年威爾士王妃戴安娜(Diana)在巴黎死於車禍後的安排相似。當年，馬拉的彈 藥車運載着戴安娜的靈柩在軍事儀仗隊的護送下穿過了倫敦的人群。
上一位獲得類似禮遇的首相是1965年逝世的溫斯頓·丘吉爾(Winston Churchill)，這種相似性表明英國將撒切爾夫人視作一位歷史性人物。就像她的很多崇拜者在周一說的那樣，她可能是英國和平時期最偉大的領袖。
但是，紀念活動當中也夾雜着一些尖刻以至刻薄的追憶之詞，這些言論來自那些認為撒切爾夫人具有破壞性的人，尤其是政治左翼人士。那些人認為撒切爾夫人破壞了戰後英國的經濟和社會結構，並使之成為一個更為分裂、更為自私的國家，窮人的不滿情緒比近代史上任何時期都要強烈。
與歐洲的情形一樣，世界各地對撒切爾夫人逝世的反應似乎也出現了類似的兩極分化。許多外國領導人和評論員對她的評價與貝拉克·奧巴馬總統 (Barack Obama)相同，稱她是“自由權利和自由精神的偉大捍衛者，也是女性的典範，證明了世上沒有不能打碎的玻璃天花板。”然而，也有一些人，特別是政治左翼 人士，恨恨不已地提到了以撒切爾主義之名在全球範圍蔓延的政治風尚，這種風尚帶來了社會主義的式微、計劃經濟在所有大陸崩潰，並且提倡這樣一種方針——通 過自由市場來創造財富，共享繁榮，達到社會主義再分配無法達到的目標。
這種思想對歐洲的影響最為強烈，但英國與歐洲大陸國家的關係並沒有因此變得密切。1990年，撒切爾夫人被自己所在政黨的精英推翻，從此淡出政治舞 台，此後，英國與歐洲各國越加疏遠。歐元是實現一體化的重要手段，英國卻沒有加入歐元區，也沒有簽署允許人們自由穿越歐洲大陸內部邊境的申根協議。實際 上，迫於本黨內部強大的歐洲懷疑論潮流，卡梅倫已經承諾就英國是否繼續留在歐盟舉行公投。
因此，要說周一的什麼事件可以象徵撒切爾夫人理念的碩果，那就是英國首相在歐洲之旅伊始放棄行程，回到英國，在這個歐洲懷疑論的聖地進行哀悼，這種懷疑論的影響力仍然在為諸多意識形態激情推波助瀾。
在很多英國人的印象中，撒切爾夫人是一位強勢、備受爭議，但卻受人尊敬的人物，她給英國人的生活和社會造成了持久的爭議性影響。對於有關國家在自由 社會中所任角色的政治思考，她的影響無遠弗屆，遠遠越出了英國國境。回到英國之後，卡梅倫說，撒切爾夫人不只是領導了英國，“她拯救了我們的國家。”
追憶撒切爾夫人在塑造英國與歐盟關係的過程中發揮的作用時，卡梅倫表示，“她是一位熱愛祖國的首相。”卡梅倫表示，議會將於周三召開特別會議，向撒切爾表達敬意。
****
Op-Ed Contributor
Doing Business With the Iron Lady
April 11, 2013
MOSCOW — The news of Margaret Thatcher’s death is very sad news indeed. I was aware of her grave illness; the last time we met was several years ago. I offer my sincere condolences to her family and loved ones.Mrs. Thatcher was a political leader whose words carried great weight. I was aware of this when I prepared for our meeting in 1984. This was the first step in the search for a common language — a most difficult search.
Our very first conversation, over lunch at Chequers, was very sharp at first, almost to the point of a breakdown. Raisa Maksimovna, sitting on the other side of the table, heard this and was very upset. I decided to relieve the tension.
“I know you as a person of conviction, committed to certain principles and values,” I told the “Iron Lady.” “This commands respect. But you should keep in mind that you are sitting next to a person of the same sort. And I must tell you that I have not been instructed by the Politburo to convince you to join the Communist Party.”
Mrs. Thatcher laughed, and the conversation became normal.
There were many meetings after that, many arguments. Often we disagreed. She, for example, was highly alarmed by the talks I had had with Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik about a world without nuclear weapons, about an agreement to eliminate medium-range missiles. “We will not survive another Reykjavik,” she would say. And I would ask, “Are you really so comfortable sitting on a nuclear powder keg?”
Why is it that we were able to reach an understanding in the end? I believe one reason is that we gradually developed a personal rapport that became increasingly friendly over the years. Eventually we reached a degree of mutual trust.
It was very important that Mrs. Thatcher never doubted our intentions, that she argued with those who would assert that perestroika was “an attempt to lower the vigilance of the West,” etc.
And at the critical stage of perestroika, when the need arose for concrete support for reforms in our country, it was Mrs. Thatcher who actively pushed the idea of our participation in the Group of 7 in London, and did a lot to prepare the meeting.
When the actual meeting took place in July 1991, however, she was no longer prime minister. Half a year before that the leadership of the Conservative party in Britain made the decision to replace her. So we met in the Soviet Embassy in London.
I remember our talk. Of course it is good, Mrs. Thatcher said, that your meeting with the G-7 came about; in fact, everything at the meeting was focused on your participation and on bringing the Soviet Union into the world economy. It is now accepted that the Soviet Union has irreversibly entered on the path of reform, and these reforms have the support of the people and deserve the support of the West. But — and here she literally choked up with emotion — she added:
“Why did the leaders of the Seven not go for concrete, practical measures of support? Where were the actual steps? They let you down. But now that they have declared their support and cooperation, they should be grasped. Don’t let them go, demand concrete action!”The August putsch in 1991 interrupted our plans; perestroika was interrupted. It is interesting that Mrs. Thatcher, who always proclaimed her faith in the free market, was skeptical about “shock therapy,” about the approach chosen by our radical reformers.
We met more than once afterwards, and discussed this and many other things, and argued some more, but we always agreed that our generation of politicians was given a major mission: to put an end to the Cold War — and this mission we accomplished.
Margaret Thatcher was a great political leader and an extraordinary personality. She will remain in our memory and in history.
與「鐵娘子」合作的日子
米哈伊爾·戈爾巴喬夫 2013年04月11日
莫斯科——聽聞瑪格麗特·撒切爾(Margaret Thatcher)過世，我感到非常悲痛。此前我已得知她身患重病；我們最後一次見面是幾年前的事情了。我真誠地希望她的親朋摯愛能夠節哀。
撒切爾夫人是一位說話極有分量的政治領袖。1984年，當我準備與她會面時，我就知道這一點。那次會面是我們探求共識的第一步。這種探求是最艱難的。
我們的第一次談話是在契克斯鄉間別墅的午餐上，一開始言語很尖銳，幾乎要不歡而散。賴莎·戈爾巴喬娃(Raisa Maksimovna)坐在桌子另一邊非常不安地聽着。我決定緩和這種緊張氣氛。
我對“鐵娘子”說，“我知道你是個有信念的人，有自己堅守的原則和價值觀。這令人尊敬。但是，你要知道坐在你身邊的這個人也是如此。而且我必須告訴你，政治局沒有命令我來說服你加入共產黨。”
撒切爾夫人大笑，談話恢復正常。
後來我們多次會面，多次爭辯。我們常常意見相左。例如，我和羅納德·里根(Ronald Reagan)在雷克雅未克就世界無核化、協商銷毀中程導彈的對話，令她感到極其震驚。她會說：“再來一次雷克雅未克我們就活不下去了。”我會反問：“你坐在核炸藥桶上，當真感到很舒服嗎？”
我們最後又是怎麼能夠達成諒解呢？我相信其中一個原因是，多年來我們逐步建立了一種日益友好的私人情誼。最終我們形成了一定程度的互相信任。
撒切爾夫人從未懷疑過我們的意圖，而且當有人斷定蘇聯經濟改革是“試圖讓西方放鬆警惕”時，她會與之爭論，還有她的種種做法，都非常重要。
在經濟改革的關鍵階段，我們的國家需要一些具體的支持，是撒切爾夫人在倫敦積極推動我們加入七國集團(Group of 7)，並為大會的籌備做了大量工作。
然而，當會議於1991年7月召開時，她已經不是首相了。半年前，英國保守黨的領導層決定換下她。因此，我們是在倫敦的蘇聯大使館會面的。
我還記得我們之間的交談。撒切爾夫人說，你們同七國集團的會談能舉行當然很好；實際上，大會的重點在於你們的參與，讓蘇聯融入世界經濟。人們現在認 為，蘇聯已不可逆轉地走上了改革的道路，而且這些改革得到了人民的支持，也值得西方支持。但說到這兒，她激動地哽咽起來，接著說：
我們後來見了不止一次，對“休克療法”和許多其他事情進行了討論，也有不少爭吵，但有一點始終是一致的，我們這一代政治人物被賦予了一項重大使命：結束冷戰，而我們完成了這項使命。
瑪格麗特·撒切爾是一位偉大的政治領袖，是一位傑出人物。她將永遠活在我們的記憶里，名垂青史。
撒切爾夫人是一位說話極有分量的政治領袖。1984年，當我準備與她會面時，我就知道這一點。那次會面是我們探求共識的第一步。這種探求是最艱難的。
我們的第一次談話是在契克斯鄉間別墅的午餐上，一開始言語很尖銳，幾乎要不歡而散。賴莎·戈爾巴喬娃(Raisa Maksimovna)坐在桌子另一邊非常不安地聽着。我決定緩和這種緊張氣氛。
我對“鐵娘子”說，“我知道你是個有信念的人，有自己堅守的原則和價值觀。這令人尊敬。但是，你要知道坐在你身邊的這個人也是如此。而且我必須告訴你，政治局沒有命令我來說服你加入共產黨。”
撒切爾夫人大笑，談話恢復正常。
後來我們多次會面，多次爭辯。我們常常意見相左。例如，我和羅納德·里根(Ronald Reagan)在雷克雅未克就世界無核化、協商銷毀中程導彈的對話，令她感到極其震驚。她會說：“再來一次雷克雅未克我們就活不下去了。”我會反問：“你坐在核炸藥桶上，當真感到很舒服嗎？”
我們最後又是怎麼能夠達成諒解呢？我相信其中一個原因是，多年來我們逐步建立了一種日益友好的私人情誼。最終我們形成了一定程度的互相信任。
撒切爾夫人從未懷疑過我們的意圖，而且當有人斷定蘇聯經濟改革是“試圖讓西方放鬆警惕”時，她會與之爭論，還有她的種種做法，都非常重要。
在經濟改革的關鍵階段，我們的國家需要一些具體的支持，是撒切爾夫人在倫敦積極推動我們加入七國集團(Group of 7)，並為大會的籌備做了大量工作。
然而，當會議於1991年7月召開時，她已經不是首相了。半年前，英國保守黨的領導層決定換下她。因此，我們是在倫敦的蘇聯大使館會面的。
我還記得我們之間的交談。撒切爾夫人說，你們同七國集團的會談能舉行當然很好；實際上，大會的重點在於你們的參與，讓蘇聯融入世界經濟。人們現在認 為，蘇聯已不可逆轉地走上了改革的道路，而且這些改革得到了人民的支持，也值得西方支持。但說到這兒，她激動地哽咽起來，接著說：
“為什麼七國集團的領導人不談些具體的、實用的支持措施？實際步驟在哪裡？他們讓你失望了。但既然他們已經聲稱要提供支持和合作，就應該牢牢抓住他們。不要讓他們溜了，要求他們採取具體行動！”1991年的8月政變中斷了我們的計劃，經濟改革也被迫中斷了。有趣的是，一向宣稱信奉自由市場的撒切爾夫人，開始懷疑“休克療法”和我們的激進派改革者選擇的方式。
我們後來見了不止一次，對“休克療法”和許多其他事情進行了討論，也有不少爭吵，但有一點始終是一致的，我們這一代政治人物被賦予了一項重大使命：結束冷戰，而我們完成了這項使命。
瑪格麗特·撒切爾是一位偉大的政治領袖，是一位傑出人物。她將永遠活在我們的記憶里，名垂青史。
米哈伊爾·戈爾巴喬夫(Mikhail Gorbachev)是蘇聯最後一任總統。他回憶了在契克斯別墅與撒切爾夫人的會面。其後，撒切爾夫人說：“我喜歡戈爾巴喬夫先生，我們可以合作。”本文由謝爾蓋·施梅曼(Serge Schmemann)從俄文譯為英文。
翻譯：梁英、陳亦亭
Lady Thatcher had strong connections to the Chelsea Pensioners, who will line the steps of St Paul's
The programme features lines from Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality and TS Eliot's Little Gidding.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people took part in a demonstration condemning Lady Thatcher in Trafalgar Square, London.
The protesters danced and sang around a large effigy of the late prime minister and chanted slogans.
Scotland Yard says nine people were arrested during Saturday's protest - five of them for being drunk and disorderly.
Chelsea link Fourteen Chelsea Pensioners - aged from 65 to 90 - will line the steps of St Paul's Cathedral on Wednesday as the cortege and military escort draw up to the sound of a half-muffled bell.
Lady Thatcher, who died at the age of 87 on 8 April, had strong connections to the Royal Hospital Chelsea, home of the Pensioners, over the last 10 years. The Margaret Thatcher Infirmary opened there in 2009.
The coffin will be carried into and out of the cathedral by bearers from military units closely associated with the Falklands campaign.
The processional band will be a band of the Royal Marines and there will be a gun salute at the Tower of London.
Senior politicians and foreign heads of state will take their seats under the dome of St Paul's before members of the Thatcher family followed by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh are escorted from the Great West Door.
In front of the coffin, her grandchildren Michael and Amanda Thatcher will carry cushions bearing the insignia of two orders she was appointed to - the Order of the Garter and the Order of Merit - and lay them on the Dome Altar.
At the foot of the lectern there will be arrangements of white lilies and greenery.
Amanda Thatcher and prime minister David Cameron will deliver the two readings from the King James Bible.
Downing Street said Lady Thatcher wanted the service to be "framed" by British music.
It will include compositions by Henry Purcell, Gustav Holst, John Ireland, Herbert Howells, Edward Elgar, Frank Bridge, Charles Stanford, Hubert Parry and Ralph Vaughan Williams - as well as Johannes Brahms, Gabriel Faure and Johann Sebastian Bach.
Archbishop's blessing The Bishop of London Richard Chartres will preach, and the blessing will be given by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.
翻譯：梁英、陳亦亭
Lady Thatcher: Well-known hymns and poems for funeral
Lady Thatcher had strong connections to the Chelsea Pensioners, who will line the steps of St Paul's
Well-known hymns and poems will mark next Wednesday's funeral of Baroness Thatcher, Downing Street says.
Latest details of the ceremony have been published including
the hymns To Be A Pilgrim, I Vow to Thee My Country and Love Divine, All
Loves Excelling.The programme features lines from Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality and TS Eliot's Little Gidding.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people took part in a demonstration condemning Lady Thatcher in Trafalgar Square, London.
The protesters danced and sang around a large effigy of the late prime minister and chanted slogans.
Scotland Yard says nine people were arrested during Saturday's protest - five of them for being drunk and disorderly.
Chelsea link Fourteen Chelsea Pensioners - aged from 65 to 90 - will line the steps of St Paul's Cathedral on Wednesday as the cortege and military escort draw up to the sound of a half-muffled bell.
Lady Thatcher, who died at the age of 87 on 8 April, had strong connections to the Royal Hospital Chelsea, home of the Pensioners, over the last 10 years. The Margaret Thatcher Infirmary opened there in 2009.
The coffin will be carried into and out of the cathedral by bearers from military units closely associated with the Falklands campaign.
The BBC's Tom Symonds reports on the protest in central London
Senior politicians and foreign heads of state will take their seats under the dome of St Paul's before members of the Thatcher family followed by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh are escorted from the Great West Door.
In front of the coffin, her grandchildren Michael and Amanda Thatcher will carry cushions bearing the insignia of two orders she was appointed to - the Order of the Garter and the Order of Merit - and lay them on the Dome Altar.
At the foot of the lectern there will be arrangements of white lilies and greenery.
Amanda Thatcher and prime minister David Cameron will deliver the two readings from the King James Bible.
Downing Street said Lady Thatcher wanted the service to be "framed" by British music.
It will include compositions by Henry Purcell, Gustav Holst, John Ireland, Herbert Howells, Edward Elgar, Frank Bridge, Charles Stanford, Hubert Parry and Ralph Vaughan Williams - as well as Johannes Brahms, Gabriel Faure and Johann Sebastian Bach.
Archbishop's blessing The Bishop of London Richard Chartres will preach, and the blessing will be given by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.
沒有留言:
張貼留言