On becoming prime minister after winning the 1979 general election, Thatcher introduced a series of economic policies intended to reverse high inflation and Britain's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an oncoming recession.

[32] After graduating, Roberts secured a position as a research chemist for British Xylonite (BX Plastics) following a series of interviews arranged by Oxford; she subsequently moved to Colchester in Essex to work at the firm.

[34] By her own account, she was initially enthusiastic about the position, as she had been intended to function as a personal assistant to the company's head of research and development, providing opportunities to learn about operations management: "But on my arrival it was decided that there was not enough to do in that capacity.

[13] In preparation for the election, Roberts moved to Dartford, while she supported herself by working as a research chemist for J. Lyons and Co. in Hammersmith, reportedly as part of a team developing emulsifiers for ice cream.

[21] In 1979, following his former assistant's election as prime minister, Jellinek, by then a professor of physical chemistry at Clarkson University in the United States, said she had done "a very good job" on the project, "showing great determination".

[65] At the 1966 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher criticised the high-tax policies of the Labour government as being steps "not only towards Socialism, but towards Communism", arguing that lower taxes served as an incentive to hard work.

The description helped Thatcher meet with prominent people during a busy itinerary focused on economic issues, including Paul Samuelson, Walt Rostow, Pierre-Paul Schweitzer and Nelson Rockefeller.

She gave priority to academic needs in schools,[82] while administering public expenditure cuts on the state education system, resulting in the abolition of free milk for schoolchildren aged seven to eleven.

[110] Britain's economy during the 1970s was so weak that then Foreign Secretary James Callaghan warned his fellow Labour Cabinet members in 1974 of the possibility of "a breakdown of democracy", telling them: "If I were a young man, I would emigrate.

[113] I stand before you tonight in my Red Star chiffon evening gown, my face softly made up and my fair hair gently waved, the Iron Lady of the Western world.

[134] She increased interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply, and thereby lower inflation;[133] introduced cash limits on public spending and reduced expenditure on social services such as education and housing.

[134] Cuts to higher education led to Thatcher being the first Oxonian post-war prime minister without an honorary doctorate from Oxford University after a 738–319 vote of the governing assembly and a student petition.

At the 1980 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher addressed the issue directly with a speech written by the playwright Ronald Millar,[137] that notably included the following lines:To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the "U" turn, I have only one thing to say.

Her strategy of preparing fuel stocks, appointing hardliner Ian MacGregor as NCB leader and ensuring that police were adequately trained and equipped with riot gear contributed to her triumph over the striking miners.

British Steel Corporation had made great gains in profitability while still a nationalised industry under the government-appointed MacGregor chairmanship, which faced down trade-union opposition to close plants and halve the workforce.

With the 1975 Portuguese collapse in the continent, South Africa (which had been Rhodesia's chief supporter) realised that their ally was a liability; black rule was inevitable, and the Thatcher government brokered a peaceful solution to end the Rhodesian Bush War in December 1979 via the Lancaster House Agreement.

[263]Sharing the concerns of French president François Mitterrand,[265] Thatcher was initially opposed to German reunification,[nb 9] telling Gorbachev that it "would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security".

[267] In March 1990, Thatcher held a Chequers seminar on the subject of German reunification that was attended by members of her cabinet and historians such as Norman Stone, George Urban, Timothy Garton Ash and Gordon A. Craig.

[276] In July 1989, Thatcher removed Geoffrey Howe as foreign secretary after he and Lawson had forced her to agree to a plan for Britain to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM).

On 1 November 1990, Howe, by then the last remaining member of Thatcher's original 1979 cabinet, resigned as deputy prime minister, ostensibly over her open hostility to moves towards European monetary union.

[300] In August 1992, she called for NATO to stop the Serbian assault on Goražde and Sarajevo to end ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian War, comparing the situation in Bosnia–Herzegovina to "the barbarities of Hitler's and Stalin's".

Her book also said that Israel must trade land for peace and that the European Union (EU) was a "fundamentally unreformable", "classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure".

[240] She celebrated her 80th birthday on 13 October at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hyde Park, London; guests included the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Alexandra and Tony Blair.

[329][better source needed] After collapsing at a House of Lords dinner, Thatcher, suffering low blood pressure,[330] was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital in central London on 7 March 2008 for tests.

[331] Thatcher returned to 10 Downing Street in late November 2009 for the unveiling of an official portrait by artist Richard Stone,[332] an unusual honour for a living former prime minister.

[346][347] Thatcherism represented a systematic and decisive overhaul of the post-war consensus, whereby the major political parties largely agreed on the central themes of Keynesianism, the welfare state, nationalised industry, and close regulation of the economy, and high taxes.

Thatcherism came to refer to her policies as well as aspects of her ethical outlook and personal style, including moral absolutism, nationalism, liberal individualism, and an uncompromising approach to achieving political goals.

[350][351][nb 11] Thatcher defined her political philosophy, in a major and controversial break with the one-nation conservatism[352] of her predecessor Edward Heath, in a 1987 interview published in Woman's Own magazine: I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand "I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!"

[403] In contrast to her relatively poor average approval rating as prime minister,[292] Thatcher has since ranked highly in retrospective opinion polling and, according to YouGov, is "see[n] in overall positive terms" by the British public.

He collaborated with Richard Ingrams on the spoof "Dear Bill" letters, which ran as a column in Private Eye magazine; they were also published in book form and became a West End stage revue titled Anyone for Denis?, with Wells in the role of Thatcher's husband.