The Downing Street Years

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Labour moved Britain towards statism; the Tories stood pat; and the next Labour Government moved the country a little further left. The Tories were the corset of socialism; they never removed it." After the death of Sir Knyvet and his wife, the building passed to their niece, Elizabeth Hampden and the house became known as Hampden House.

Downing Street refurbishment: What is the row about? - BBC News Downing Street refurbishment: What is the row about? - BBC News

Moral of the story: Mrs. Thatcher’s budgetary measures brought down inflation to a steady 4-5% throughout most of her premiership. Those same policies led to a fairly consistent unemployment rate that hovered around 10%. If you were middle class, upwardly mobile, and primarily concerned with matters of consumerism, then her policies dramatically improved your quality of life over the socialist codes of Labour. If you were lower class, employed in state-supported industries, or historically dependent upon the welfare system, Thatcherism was a harsh pill to swallow. Only one former Prime Minister has ever died at Number 10: Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Prime Minister from 1905 until his resignation on April 3 1908. He was too ill to be moved from the building and died 19 days later.Department of the Official Report (Hansard), House of Commons, Westminster. "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 25 Oct 1989". Publications.parliament.uk. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list ( link) In her book All Must Have Prizes, the journalist Melanie Phillips made what I once considered a very strange assertion for a right-winger: that is, essentially, that Margaret Thatcher was not really a conservative. Here it is important to note the lower case -c, as opposed to the proper noun Conservative Party. Indeed, there are plenty (perhaps even a majority) of Conservatives in the British Parliamentary Party who are not conservatives. But how could any astute political observer reach the conclusion that Mrs. Thatcher was anything but the archest of conservatives, if not the mother of the movement? In fact, after reading The Downing Street Years, I see that Ms. Phillips got it quite right—a point I’ll return to in the conclusion of this (far too lengthy) review.

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Both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan reached a fine old age, 87 and 93 respectively. After a productive life they both ended their final years and died from Alzheimer's disease. a b Green, David Allen. "What powers do the Downing Street police actually have?". New Statesman (blogs). Twenty-eight chapters including 'Over the Shop', 'The West and the Rest', (hmmm), 'The Falklands War: Follow the Fleet', 'Disarming the Left', 'Mr Scargill's Insurrection', 'Keeps Raining all the Time', 'Putting the World to Rights', 'To Cut and to Please', 'The World Turned Right Side Up', 'No Time to Go Wobbly', and 'Men in Lifeboats'. Mrs. Thatcher’s great battle with the coal miners union in 1984 is now the stuff of legend. She writes that “history intertwined with myth seemed to have made coal mining in Britain a special case: it had become an industry where reason simply did not apply.” She was unwilling to relent on coal pit closures on economic grounds, as indeed the Labour government had closed 32 pits between 1974-79. Suffice it to say that a similar strike had toppled the Conservative government of Ted Heath some 10 years earlier. By contrast, the miners gradually returned to work in 1985 having won no concessions from the Thatcher government. The union was permanently hobbled, uneconomic pits were closed, and Mrs. Thatcher won over the greater part of public opinion. As the years progressed (and due largely to the continued efforts of Norman Tebbit), the TUC was no longer in a position to cripple industry or public services with strikes. And despite the rhetoric which sough to cast Labour and the unions as noble defenders of the working man, many of the Thatcher government’s reforms were undeniably beneficial to workers’ rights—e.g., state-subsidized mail ballots, which prevented union leaders from intimidating workers into supporting strikes with public votes.Third, there is practically no sense of perspective, still less a reflective appraisal of her own successes and failures, strengths and weaknesses. Occasionally something might have been done better, but mainly by somebody else. The appearance of Margaret Thatcher's memoirs has been one of the most eagerly awaited publishing events in many years. As this book now shows, rarely has such a sense of anticipation been so amply justified." "The Downing Street Years is, first and foremost, a brilliant first-hand portrayal of the events and personalities of her years in power. She gives riveting accounts of the great and critical moments of her premiership - the three election victories, the Falklands War, the Miners' Strike, the Brighton Bomb, the Westland Affair, her battles abroad with foreign federalists and at home with faint-hearted or misguided ministers. Her judgements of the men and women she has encountered, whether world statesmen or Cabinet colleagues, are completely, sometimes brutally, frank. She is lavish with praise where it is due; devastating in her criticism when it is not. The book ends with an account of her last days which is as gripping as anything in thriller fiction." "But The Downing Street Years is as much an argument as it is a record or a series of character portraits. No prime minister of modern times has sought to change Britain and its place in the world as radically as she did. Her government, she says, was about the application of a philosophy, not the implementation of an administrative programme. She sets out here with forcefulness and conviction the reasons for her beliefs and how she sought to turn them into action." urn:lcp:downingstreetyea0000that_o3q4:epub:29a1f430-6294-414d-bf6d-f1a2a8c38777 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier downingstreetyea0000that_o3q4 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t4tj86v50 Invoice 1652 Isbn 0002550490 Downing Street is a street in Westminster in London that houses the official residences and offices of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Situated off Whitehall, it is 200 metres (660ft) long, and a few minutes' walk from the Houses of Parliament. Downing Street was built in the 1680s by Sir George Downing. It is a long book to read, but each chapter has a particular theme so taking breaks and reading over an extended period is quite possible. Helpfully the chapters are subdivided into smaller sections allowing a further break up of your reading.