642 Chapter 32
Margaret Thatcher and the
Conservative Revolution
European history was facing other great changes in the
mid-1970s. The most important harbinger of the new
Europe could be seen in Britain in 1975. In February
1975 Britain’s Conservative Party elected Margaret
Thatcher, a former minister of education, to lead the
party (see illustration 32.2). That event was a landmark
in European history for two reasons: (1) never in the
history of parliamentary democracy had one of the
great powers chosen a woman to lead them, and (2) her
policies provided the first vigorous challenge to the
growth of the welfare state. These dramatic changes
began in 1979 when Thatcher became the first woman
prime minister in British history, a post she held for the
longest period of any modern prime minister. Her suc-
cess began an era of women reaching the top in Euro-
pean politics (see chronology 32.2). In 1980 Norway
elected a woman prime minister, Iceland a woman pres-
ident, and Portugal a woman prime minister. By the
1990s even Ireland (1990), France (1991), and Turkey
(1993) had elected women as either prime minister or
president. Simultaneously, European women gained a
larger share of political power at lower levels. No coun-
try, however, has a Parliament in which 50 percent of
the representatives are women. Sweden, where women
won 41 percent of the seats in Parliament in 1994 has
the highest rate; Greece (5.3 percent) has the lowest
percentage. Despite the presence of a woman at 10
Downing Street, Britain had been among the nations
with a low percentage of women in Parliament during
the Thatcher years; the landslide Labour victory of
Tony Blair in 1997, however, included 102 women
M.P.s in the new majority—far higher than the partici-
pation of women in France, Germany, or the United
States.
Thatcher was not born to the British political elite.
She was the daughter of a successful small-town grocer
who twice was elected mayor. Her father was also a
Methodist lay preacher, and she was raised in strict
family virtues drawn from religion as well as business. It
was less typical of families in the 1930s that Thatcher’s
parents encouraged her to be ambitious and to develop
her intelligence. She attended Oxford University as a
scholarship student and chemistry major during the
Second World War, was drawn to British politics in the
late 1940s, and soon studied law to advance that career.
Elected to Parliament in 1959, she rose in Conservative
Party ranks by becoming an expert on social issues,
such as education and welfare, which were often
deemed the appropriate subjects for women in politics.
When Edward Heath formed a Conservative govern-
ment in 1970, Margaret Thatcher became minister of
education and science, the only woman in the cabinet.
Thatcher built her reputation during Heath’s trou-
bled Tory government. Conservatives struggled to re-
strict the power of the trade unions with only limited
success. Strikes by tens of thousands of dockworkers,
miners, and industrial workers protested plans to curb
wages or union powers. Simultaneously, the Heath gov-
ernment faced a worsening of the Irish question. Sec-
tarian riots, police battles, and terrorist bombing
became commonplace in the early 1970s. The Conser-
vative government responded by suspending the pow-
ers of the provincial government and Parliament in
Northern Ireland, establishing direct British rule of the
province, escalating the number of troops sent to main-
tain order, and finally governing under state of emer-
gency decrees that suspended many liberties. Amidst
these crises, the British public lost confidence in the
government, and Margaret Thatcher emerged as the
strongest Tory leader. She had the strength to cham-
pion the conservative program of severe budget cuts
even when they were immensely unpopular. As minister
of education she eliminated a national program of freeIllustration 32.2
The Conservative Revolution.Margaret Thatcher, the first
woman to become prime minister of Britain, was one of the
strongest and most successful prime ministers in British history.
She was the driving force behind a conservative revolution that
dismantled much of the welfare state and the nationalized econ-
omy created by the Labour government after World War II.
Here, she celebrates her landslide electoral victory of 1983,
which created the overwhelming majority in Parliament to adopt
her program.