Today, October 13, 2025, is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Margaret Thatcher. The daughter of a grocer and alderman in Grantham, she overcame both class a gender barriers to win election to the House of Commons and, in 1975, leadership of the Conservative Party.
Mrs. Thatcher led her party to victory in 1979, making her the first female prime minister in British history. Although this distinction, and with it her hair and fashion sense, make her memorable, it is not what makes her historically significant.
Margaret Thatcher is one of the key figures of the 20th Century because she refused to accept that Britain was in an inexorable decline. She saw the failings of the post-War socialist regime and reversed it – cutting taxes, selling off nationalized industries, and taking on labour unions. She restored a sense of pride on the world scene, leading a post-colonial Britain to victory in the 1983 Falklands War.
And, with her friend and ideological ally Ronald Reagan, Mrs. Thatcher led the western world as it confronted, and ultimately defeated, the evil of Soviet Communism. In a pivot from the detente policy of coexistence, Reagan had labeled the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire,” and Thatcher joined him in rallying the west, even as she memorably said of Mikhail Gorbachev that “we can do business together.” By the early 1990s, the Soviet Union was no more and Eastern Europe was free, a result unimaginable ten years before.
In one of the biggest propaganda blunders in history, Soviet newsmen attempted to insult her by calling her “The Iron Lady,” inadvertently giving her one of the great soubriquets in world history.
Mrs. Thatcher’s commitment to her convictions and strength of purpose also caused her to be rigid and argumentative, weaknesses in the clubby, relationship-based politics of the Tory Party. She stubbornly refused to admit mistakes, almost as if any show of weakness would allow the entitled men that surrounded her to throw her out. In the end, that’s exactly what happened, as a challenge from Michael Hesseltine in 1990 led her to stand down as party leader, and to leave 10 Downing Street to her ally and successor, John Major.
Mrs. Thatcher led Britain alongside its head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, who was just a few months younger. Though press gossip implied a strained relationship, the Queen appointed Thatcher a Member of the Order of Merit shortly after Thatcher’s resignation; it’s an honor that is given entirely at the discretion of the monarch. She received life peerage in 1992, taking the title Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, or more familiarly, Lady Thacther.
Ironically, among her legacies was the rise of Tony Blair, whose “third way” moderation ended the far-leftism of the Labour Party and implicitly acknowledged that Mrs. Thatcher and reset the terms of British politics.
Margaret Thatcher stood for individual liberty against state control, in her nation and on the world stage. She changed the course of history, and she is worth remembering on this, her 100th birthday.
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