Exercising a powerful influence

MARGARET THATCHER was the most forceful and influential post-war British prime minister.

Sixty years after women won the vote in these islands, she became the first democratically elected woman leader in the western world, without the benefit of any hereditary advantages.

A male-dominated political world did not know how to handle her. In 1975, she challenged Ted Heath after two lost elections for the leadership of the Conservative party and won. He never forgave her.

As a note-taker at the European Council in Dublin Castle in Dec 1979, presided over by Jack Lynch, I remember that, as she held forth, chancellor Schmidt was studying a German newspaper, while Giscard d’Estaing maintained an icy hauteur.

In the 11 years she held power in Britain, winning three elections, not a single male colleague survived from start to finish in her cabinet.

Geoffrey Howe was the last to go, having been humiliated once too often, and pulled the rug from under her as he went, not quite the dead sheep Denis Healey had depicted him as.

She changed the British economy, and destroyed a good deal of the post-war consensus. In her championing of the free market, including privatisation, denial of collectivism, and her successful down-facing of union power, she shifted the parameters for many other countries as well.

In this country, watching the experience was part of the genesis of social partnership in 1987 as a more benign alternative.

It is all but forgotten that in the 1975 referendum on EEC membership she spoke out in favour of Britain’s remaining in.

While winning the rebate on the British financial contribution, she contributed to the completion of the single market, which is a very important part of the success of the EU.

Unfortunately, it is her euroscepticism, expressed in the Bruges speech, which has far more influence in Britain, creating some difficulties for a country like Ireland that is in the eurozone and that is committed to full membership.

She spotted early on the potential of Mikhail Gorbachev. She tried to muster opposition to German unity, fearing it would lead to German domination of Europe.

Her record in relation to Ireland is mixed. On the positive side, she was party to raising resolution of the conflict to an intergovernmental level, tentatively at first with the Anglo Irish Studies, and then much more deliberately with the Anglo Irish Agreement, which gave the constitutional nationalism of the SDLP breathing space and a role. She was firm in resisting unionist attempts to overturn the agreement, even if its effects did not come up to her expectations. When she appointed Tory grandee Peter Brooke to be secretary of state in 1989, he seems to have had more of a free hand than his predecessors to put out feelers to the republican movement, marking the beginnings of the peace process.

ON THE negative side, the handling of the Hunger Strikes came second only to Sir John Maxwell’s measures after the Easter Rising in fanning the flames of militant republicanism, but with the effect of encouraging it to develop a second, political, front. It is difficult overall to credit her with hastening peace, as her public attitude was simply too confrontational.

The Falkland Islands war cast her in the mould of Boadicea or Queen Elizabeth I confronting the Spanish Armada, where she had to overcome the grave doubts of cabinet colleagues and close allies, including Ronald Reagan. The effect it had in transforming her political future set an unfortunate example, with a later foreign war such as the one in Iraq turning out much more badly for the leaders who started it.

Thatcher continues to exercise a powerful influence, more than 20 years after leaving office. There are many parts of her legacy that her successors of any party in Britain would be slow to touch.

Women leaders are much more common, Angela Merkel dominating the EU, prime minister Julia Gillard holding on in Australia, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton poised perhaps to make a bid for the White House. They may not espouse her politics, but her example has made it far more natural for women to occupy the top political job. Indeed, our first woman president, Mary Robinson, took office the month Thatcher left Downing Street.