FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER MARGARET THATCHER PASSES AWAY
[Britain's towering figure was loved and loathed in equal measure]Britain's first woman Prime Minister, known as the Iron Lady, passed away on April 8, 2013 in London following a stroke. She was 87. "It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher
announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke", Lord Bell, her spokes person said.
Thatcher was Conservative Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. Thatcher, born as Margaret Roberts became the Conservative MP for Finchley, north London in 1959, retiring from the Commons in 1992.
Having been education secretary, she successfully challenged former PM Edward Heath for her party's leadership in 1975. She won general elections in 1979, 1983 and 1987.
During her tenure, Britain went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982, which Britain won and resulted in her re-election in 1983. Major world events took place when she was
in office, including the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, and the end of the Cold War.
SNIPPETS FROM A LIFE LIFE IN POLITICS
Born on October 13, 1925 to parents who owned grocery shops in Lincolnshire, Thatcher was an Oxford graduate Margaret Thatcher joined the Conservative Party in 1948 and later on went on to
become Secretary of State in 1970, when the party came into power.
In 1971 she introduced legislation to abolish free milk for primary schoolchildren, earning her the moniker 'Margaret Thatcher, the milk snatcher'.
In 1976 she gave a speech in response to a withering attack on the Soviet Union, after which Russian defence ministry dubbed her the 'Iron Lady'. In 1979 Thatcher became UK's first ever
female Prime Minister after winning the general election. She attacked the opposition party's record on the economy and promised radical reforms to control inflation and curb the power of
the trade unions. Many worshipped her for her economic reforms, while some accused her of entrenching divide between rich and poor. In 1990 the Iron Lady decided she wont contest again.
Replaced by John Major as the party head in 1992 entered House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher.
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