this video is made possible by nordvpn take control of your internet experience today go to nordvpn.com forward slash biographics and use our coupon code biographics at checkout and you'll get a special deal every purchase of a two-year plan gets you 68 off plus four additional months for free and let's get into today's video [Music] she's one of the longest serving prime ministers in british history as head of the conservative party margaret thatcher led the uk from may 1979 right the way through to november of 1990. in that time she ushered in an era of reform unparalleled in the 20th century under her watch the post-war settlement was torn up state assets were privatized the financial market let rip and the cultural fabric of britain changed beyond recognition but the transformations didn't just stop at home alongside her u.s counterpart ronald reagan thatcher helped spread the gospel of economic liberty and individual freedom across the entire planet when she finally left office she was widely recognized as the most significant british leader since churchill yet while churchill is still widely loved in the uk margaret thatcher's legacy is hugely divisive taking over in ailing britain her economic shock therapy devastated entire regions even as it saved the country as a whole both worshipped and reviled at home this is the story of britain's most controversial leader [Music] when margaret hilda roberts was born on october 13 1925 there was nothing that suggested she would one day lead her nation her father was a grocer and young margaret grew up in achingly modest circumstances the family had no indoor toilet and warm water was an unknown luxury yet it wasn't a pati bourgeois lifestyle alone that made margaret an unlikely candidate for future pm it was the fact that she was a she right up until thatcher became education secretary in 1969 there have only ever been four female cabinet ministers in uk history and not a single prime minister as thatcher herself would say in a tv interview in 1973 the idea of a woman ever rising beyond the cabinet to become prime minister seemed impossible still despite living in a society that considered casual sexism a legitimate hobby margaret never really felt she needed to pursue ladylike interests her major passion was chemistry which she studied at oxford under the nobel prize winner dorothy hodgkin but even as she was winning plaudits for her science work thatcher was discovering her other lifelong love politics in 1945 the uk's first post-war election resulted in a shock win not for winston churchill's conservatives but for the left-wing labour party of clement atlee the labor landslide completely upended britain in his six years in power ackley created the nhs the welfare state and what became known as the post-war settlement an unspoken agreement between the parties that the state needed to interfere in the economy naturally thatcher hated this one year after atlee took power she became president of the oxford university conservative association from where she railed against the labor tide transforming britain so good was she at this that it soon convinced her to enter politics proper at the 1950 election batches stood as a conservative candidate for the seat of darfur while some in her party were appalled at the idea of a lady human running she still managed to increase her share of the local vote by 50 an early sign of her electoral prowess but it wasn't enough to win nor did she net enough votes in the 1951 election despite this being the election that saw churchill and the conservatives returned to power yet all was not lost it was through her campaigning in dartford that margaret met dennis thatcher a rich somewhat dopey guy dennis would turn out to be the ideal husband he was tremendously supportive of margaret's ambitions for public office and so hands off it was like he was permanently wearing a straitjacket although this did have some odd side effects such as when dennis went to the cricket rather than interfering the birth of their children he was the solid supportive rock that margaret needed especially now that her interest in politics was becoming an obsession in 1959 after a few years practicing as a barrister thatcher stood again for election this time in the conservative safe seat of finchley unsurprisingly she won more surprisingly she soon began to skyrocket up through the party's ranks by 1961 she'd been appointed secretary in the ministry of pensions and national insurance although her party lost power in 1964 its new leader ted heath invited her into the shadow cabinet sadly not the tory version of the council of doom but what us brits call the out-of-power party's highest-ranking members that meant that when heath unexpectedly won the 1970 election margaret thatcher became only the fifth female cabinet minister in british history despite working for a party full of men who'd never quite mentally removed the no girls allowed sign from their tree houses thatcher had ascended to one of the top positions in the land little could anyone have known this was only the start for anyone living in britain the 1970s were like being on the world's worst roller coaster it was a decade when britain teetered on the verge of bankruptcy when powerful unions called strikes that paralyzed the country but for margaret thatcher it was also the decade when everyone associated her primarily with milk in 1971 looking to make savings in the education budget thatcher eliminated a post-war policy a free school milk for children although it was justifiable the optics were so bad that it became a pr disaster for the rest of her tenure thatcher was followed everywhere by cries of thatcher milk snatcher but unpleasant as this was it was nothing compared to what was going on behind the scenes thatcher and ted heath hated one another while it was partly personal it was also thatcher being sick of defending her government's dreadful record it was under heath that the three-day week came in when businesses were only allowed electricity three days a week to conserve energy as a result the conservatives lost both 1974 elections suddenly thatcher was out of government but now the grocer's daughter from lincolnshire knew what she had to do she had to get rid of heath these days losing an election means stepping down as leader of your party but back then you could keep right on trucking so long as no one challenged you to a leadership contest the conservatives being the party of loyalty no one wanted to challenge heath except for thatcher the newspapers thought she was out of her mind when thatcher stood for leader of the tories it was assumed that heath would romp home to victory but thatcher went on the attack gathering the party's right wing around her she lambasted heath's dreadful record in february 1975 the shock results of the first ballot came in thatcher had won now under the conservative party's weird rules this didn't actually make her the leader but heath could see his position was untenable and he stepped aside and just like that thatcher became the first female leader of a major uk party not that anyone expected her to rise any further in 1975 the labor government was headed by the affable broadly popular harold wilson so what if thatcher was making barnstorming anti-communist speeches that earned her the nickname the iron lady so what if the tories were getting better at messaging with wilson leading the labour party she was probably doomed unfortunately for labor wilson wouldn't be around much longer in 1976 harold wilson abruptly resigned as prime minister a move now thought to have been brought on by the discovery that he had early stage alzheimer's his replacement was a charisma void known as james callaghan a guy so inept that he turned a mildly pro-labor country into rabid tories under callaghan britain collapsed into economic turmoil there were gigantic pay freezes nationwide battles with overpowered unions in late 1978 things culminated in the winter of discontent a period when uncollected refused piled high in the streets and bodies were left unburied it was likely the country's post-war low point the uk was an ungovernable mess it was also exactly what thatcher needed on march 28 margaret thatcher called a no-confidence vote in callaghan's government triggering an early election as the campaign heated up the conservatives played a blinder plastering london with posters of long dole cues under the caption labor isn't working callahan meanwhile gave the impression of someone who expected to win because well duh his opponent was a girl on may 3rd 1979 the conservatives won the election by a decent margin it wasn't a landslide but it was definitely enough to comfortably form a government on that day margaret thatcher became not only the uk's first female prime minister but the first female leader of any major western democracy as she entered 10 downing street the triumphant thatcher declared where there is discord may we bring harmony as you're about to see this wouldn't exactly happen now before we get on with the trials and tribulations of ms thatcher here's a quick word from our sponsor now if you're online you really should be using a vpn and that's when nordvpn comes in it's tempting not to bonus or just hype for the best but really those stories you read about people having their data stolen they do happen and you don't want to make it easy for anyone to do that to you whether it's a nefarious actor snooping for your private information or companies tracking your privacy but a vpn is about so much more for example nordvpn lets you access any of its thousands of servers in different countries all around the globe so if you've hit the end of your netflix queue simply try changing the location of your server and get access to content libraries that future licensing agreements are only available in specific geographic locations i ran into that in the past with mad men and a few other shows as well nordvpn is super fast so watching video is a breeze if you ever used vpns and thought they were slow well no more with nord and you can use it on all of your devices very easily android chrome windows linux and on six different devices with just one account also there are no logs because nord is based in panama unlike companies in the us and the uk they just don't have to keep logs at all so take control of your internet experience now go to nordvpn.com forward slash biographics and use our coupon biographics at checkout and you'll get a special deal every purchase of a two-year plan gets you 68 off plus four additional months for free and let's get back to today's video [Music] as 1982 dawned it looked like britain's first female pm was doomed to be a one-term wonder in her first years in power thatcher had set out her governing style antagonistic determined destructive in a weird way she was like a 2010 tech mogul someone who disrupted who broke stuff who assembled something from the wreckage of the old during her later terms the economic gains from this destruction would be enough to keep middle england on side but as her first term swept by those gains had yet to materialize all anyone could see was the destruction more businesses were failing than at any time since the great depression unemployment was at record-breaking highs privatization of state assets had so far cost tens of thousands of jobs but not yet brought visible benefits despite a famous declaration in october of 1980 that the ladies not for turning satcher's closest advisors were secretly urging her to make a gigantic u-turn lest the tories be stomped at the 1983 election and it was on to this sinking ship that argentina suddenly threw a gigantic lifesaver and okay let's just have a quick geography lesson now down in the south atlantic about 483 kilometers off the argentine coast lies the falkland islands despite being nearly 13 000 kilometers from london they've been a british territory since at least 1833. by 1982 though the falklands were only home to a declining population of 1800 people although britain still claimed the territory it refused to invest there and the private hope of successive governments had been that the islanders would voluntarily accept argentinian sovereignty at some point in the future but the military junta in buenos aires was tired of waiting on april 2nd 1982 they occupied the falklands a few days later they also took the british territory of south georgia the hunter assumed london was too broke too unwilling to send soldiers to die for the sake of a god forsaken rock on the other side of the world they were nearly right when news broke the cabinet's feeling was that the falklands would have to be surrendered but the junta hadn't countered on thatcher egged on by the navy thatcher declared war in argentina a royal navy flotilla was sent to retake the islands with that the falklands war began today it's almost impossible to overstate the effect the short war had on thatch's popularity remember how george w bush's approval rating hit 92 percent after 9 11. well something similar happened here thatcher's resolute defense of british territory struck a chord with ordinary citizens it helped that the war was short lasting a mere 74 days before argentina surrendered and that it was very one-sided 649 argentine troops were killed versus 255 british troops but make no mistake the iron will thatcher displayed in the face of foreign aggression made her a hero it elevated her profile on the international stage already allied with u.s president ronald reagan she now started to look like his equal come the 1983 election thatcher crushed labor in a landslide with a powerful new mandate the gloves were at last off over the next two terms margaret thatcher was going to change britain beyond all recognition sanchez's second term began with a powerful message appointing ian mcgregor head of the national coal board back in 1979 thatcher hired mcgregor to make the state-owned british steel profitable again mcgregor had achieved this at the loss of 95 000 jobs and at the economic devastation of entire towns now thatcher was asking him to do the same thing for the ailing coal industry but while british steel had folded to mcgregor's iron will coal was going to be much tougher the national union of miners was britain's most powerful union at a time when unions could break an entire premiership it was the num in 1973 that had exacerbated the three-day week leading to ted heath's downfall now they were looking to do the same to thatcher unfortunately for the num thatcher had brought to this figurative knife fight not just a gun but a goddamn bazooka on march 6 1984 a local strike at cortonwood coilery was used by num president arthur scargill to force a general strike across the nation but thatcher was prepared coal had been secretly stockpiled non-unionized firms were hired to do strike breaking police forces were primed to fight the battle was on and it really was a battle or rather a series of battles the worst took place at orgreave when a mounted police charge into a crowd of strikers led to 123 serious injuries but the main weapon thatcher deployed wasn't truncheons but time as the strike dragged on laws were passed that stopped the families of striking miners from receiving welfare in effect thatcher starved her enemies into submission and submit they did on march 3rd 1985 that strike was called off the miners returned to work broken over the next decade mcgregor and his successors closed all but 15 of britain's 174 deep pits the economic engine of entire regions was wiped out leaving jobless wastelands with num defeated the days of big unions bringing britain to a standstill were over but although thatcher won this war just as she had the falklands the other great war of her premiership would prove to be unwinnable the troubles were an undeclared civil war in northern ireland that pitted majority protestant unionists who wanted to stay in the uk against majority catholic republicans who wanted to join ireland proper when thatcher took power the troubles had already been running for a decade but they were about to get much worse things really kicked off on august 27 1979 when the ira first assassinated a member of the royal family lord mountbatten before killing 18 british soldiers in a double bomb attack but thatcher's biggest test came in march of 1981. that month ira prisoners including member of parliament bobby sands began a hunger strike to force the british state to treat them as prisoners of war the thought horrified thatcher who declared the men were common criminals saying crime is crime is crime it is not political by the time october rolled around 10 of the hunger strikers were dead and their mistreatment had turned them into international celebrities it had also turned thatcher into a republican hate figure on the 12th of october 1984 an ira bomb at the conservative conference in brighton killed five people thatcher escaped unharmed and made a speech the following day vowing to fight on she hoped to inflict a decisive victory on the forces of republicanism instead the troubles went supernova over the next few years the ira bombed civilians killed policemen with mortars and even assassinated thatcher's friend the conservative mp ian gao it wouldn't be until thatchell left office that the troubles would come to an end thanks to the work of her successors john major and tony blair although it was far from a defining theme of her premiership thatcher's failed attempt to defeat the ira showed the limits of the iron lady's power sometimes just sometimes perhaps the lady should have been for turning [Music] away from the wars and anti-union crusades maggie was also overseeing a social revolution thatcherism preached hard work personal responsibility and economic liberalism it promised a world in which anyone could become well-off provided they were happy to roll up their sleeves while this may have seemed a joke to those in depressed former mining towns it was true for enough people to keep her in power one of the most popular policies was right to buy which allowed those in council housing to save up and buy the place for themselves but the biggest rewards fell to those who profited from the big bang as early as 1979 thatcher had begun loosening regulations in london's financial sector leading to a lot of people becoming very rich but it was on october 27 1986 that things really took off that was the day the city was almost completely deregulated allowing things like foreign firms to own uk brokers and abolishing the fixed commission on trades overnight the big bang made 1 500 millionaires it created iconic districts like london's canary wharf skyscrapers began to sprout up money poured in it was the transformation of the financial sector from the bowler hat wearing old boys club of yesteryear into the turbo capitalist free for all of today yet thatcher's revolution went beyond the mere confines of britain under a watch the uk became a global player in a way it simply hadn't been since churchill left office in 1984 for example thatcher began courting mikhail gorbachev even before he became soviet leader during a visit to britain gorbachev famously had a six-hour argument with thatcher over the benefits and hills of communism when they were done thatcher declared we can do business together and set about becoming both gorbachev's best friend and worst enemy in the west urging a skeptical ronald reagan to work with the new soviet premier not that she'd let russia put her around though invited to the soviet union in 1987 thatcher went on live tv and spent an hour talking about all the ussr's failings for citizens in communist nations that speech was like seeing someone articulate everything they'd been feeling for decades thatcher became an overnight celebrity in the eastern bloc even today countries like the czech republic consider her a british hero on par with churchill but there were missteps too in the latter part of the 1980s thatcher vehemently opposed sanctions against south africa's apartheid regime she considered nelson mandela a typical terrorist and proudly boasted that britain was the only commonwealth nation still trading with the white supremacist state ouch yet there were also surprise moments when she broke her own party's line in the late 1980s she became one of the first world leaders to sound the alarm on climate change helping push for a world environment fund the preservation of rainforests and the introduction of emissions targets overall then there was enough popular stuff in the thatcher program to ensure that she cruised to an easy victory in 1987 becoming the uk's only 20th century leader to serve three terms and still she seemed destined to go on there was even talk of her winning a possible fourth term but it was not to be the woman who had overhauled britain had already sown the seeds of her own destruction when the end finally came it was going to be with a swiftness that shocked everybody in the end what brought thatcher down was what has brought down every single conservative prime minister since europe on january the 1st 1973 ted heath had taken britain into what was then the european economic community a move confirmed by a 1975 referendum come the 1980s the conservatives were still mostly a pro-europe party at least in theory unlike her mps thatcher was rabidly anti-europe at first this was something her mps managed as best they could it even occasionally brought benefits when thatcher reduced britain's budget contributions in 1984 but it soon became a major liability as the continent integrated further thatch became a vocal euro-skeptic rallying against the continent's leaders this would be fine if she had managed to get a party onside but official policy remained pro-europe in effect thatcher was sabotaging her own government the result was a string of senior ministers resigning all contributing to a perception that the tories were becoming dangerously incompetent then just as this gigantic pile of fertilizer was starting to look extremely combustible thatcher threw an unrelated match onto it the poll tax is why scotland is to this day passionately auntie tory a political move designed to deprive labor councils of revenue it abolished local tax rates instead levying a flat tax on every adult the upshot was that the rich saw their bills plummet while the middle class is the very backbone of the thatcherite revolutions all their costs go shooting up in 1989 thatcher piloted it in scotland ahead of a rollout across england and wales it was a disaster there were protests mass acts of civil disobedience by 1990 over 1 million had refused to pay ministers begged thatcher not to push ahead with the hated tax but like a latter-day george iii thatcher insisted on it on march 31 1990 central london was devastated by an anti-poll tax riot that summer discontent brewed across the nation sadly by now maggie had become a caricature of herself she was the iron lady not for turning even when turning would have saved her political career things finally came to a head in october following a european summit on integration thatcher gave an angry speech in which she replied to the idea with a shouted no no no in response the pro-europe cabinet member geoffrey howe resigned for such a measured man his resignation speech was devastating concluding that the party needed to question its loyalty to thatcher at another time patrick could have shrugged it off but in 1990 with poll tax riots burning across the country and a pro-european party fed up with a euroscepticism she was toast on november 15th the eurofr conservative michael hestantine did what thatcher had herself done to heath all those years ago he challenged her to a leadership contest and when the results came in thatcher was doomed although she got the most votes it had been by a pitiable margin as the two headed into the second round thatcher realized to her profound shock that she might lose so she jumped before she was pushed at 7 30 a.m on november 22 1990 margaret thatcher resigned as prime minister at the moment she stepped down she was the longest continuously serving prime minister since 1827. she was also one of the two most influential post-war pms setting an economic agenda that has pretty much lasted intact until today only clement atlee really comes close in terms of significance and it was his long-lasting post-war settlement that thatcher ripped up yet despite her continued significance despite her achievement opening the door to future female leaders thatcher spent her years out of office bitter and unhappy she fumed over her betrayal by her party fumed over the creation of the eu with nowhere left to channel her prodigious energies she turned inwards by 2000 she was showing signs of the dementia that would soon consume her just as alzheimer's had consumed harold wilson before her by the end the dementia rendered her mute almost incapable of doing even the simplest action it said she liked to spend her days staring at a painting of a victorian hunting party not really doing anything just watching the crowd of painted dogs for signs of life margaret thatcher passed away on april the 8th 2013. while the world mourned the death of a great leader the reaction in britain itself were towns devastated by her economic policies still haven't recovered it's more mixed that week the number two record in the british chart was ding dong which is dead yet for all the bile many heaped upon her for all the hatred she stirred up thatcher's legacy is all around us it's from her euro skepticism that the forces grew that would unleash brexit from her wave of deregulation that today's city of london was created almost every facet of modern life that we brits take for granted the depressed post-industrial towns the special relationship with america the lack of paralyzing french-style strikes all have their roots in thatcherism in the end then the good and the bad of her legacy are impossible to separate she was who she was with the blind faith to do both necessary things for britain's future and to commit screw-ups that still haunt the nation to this day in a world without maggie thatcher many would be worse off some would be better off but all would be able to agree on one thing they were living in a completely different world from us one in which britain europe and the former nations of the soviet union had very different fates if greatness is measured purely in terms of impact then that surely makes her one of the greatest prime ministers of all so i really hope you did find that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe i'll see you next time [Music] you