The Passing of the Iron Lady

As someone who studied in the UK during the Thatcher years, I have utmost respect and admiration for her - a lady in what was essentially a man's world; determined; driven; and ultimately someone who led Britain out of despondency, industrial strife and economic stagnation into a country which was safe, relatively prosperous and attractive to live and work in. 

Internationally, she had recognised in Mikhail Gorbachev a leader who had the potential to change the Soviet Union and in so do, helped see an end to the Cold War.

So it was with some sorrow that I heard last week on 8 Apr  2013 about the death of Margaret Thatcher, after many years of decline.  The Iron Lady, who led her country, had left the world.  To mark this event, here are some extracts from the many obituaries about her: :

The BBC says:

She was, above all, that rare thing, a conviction politician who was prepared to stand by those convictions for good or ill.

The New York Times summarises these convictions:

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.

As does the Economist:

Mrs Thatcher believed that societies have to encourage and reward the risk-takers, the entrepreneurs, who alone create the wealth without which governments cannot do anything, let alone help the weak. A country can prosper only by encouraging people to save and to spend no more than they earn; profligacy (and even worse, borrowing) was her road to perdition. The essence of Thatcherism was a strong state and a free economy.

She was a divisive politician, with many from her own party ultimately turning against her.  But, as she herself said:

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

Find more great quotes by Margaret Thatcher here.

Ultimately, however, her funeral went off in a smooth and dignified manner.  After a week where perhaps too much attention was given to the noisy and angry voices, at the end, the street was lined with mourners, who wanted to pay their last respects to a woman who had transformed Britain:

This was a day, in short, of tributes untarnished. A day when, to a far greater degree than expected, abuse was overcome by respect, violence by decency, and hatred by love.

-Telegraph 

 Goodbye, Mrs Thatcher.