Lady Margaret Thatcher, Baroness
...ter marrying Denis Thatcher she was able to continue her interest in politics when she entered parliament in 1959 under Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Her first parliamentary position was junior minister of pensions, which she held until the Labor victory in 1964 general elections. With the conservatives in power Thatcher became the education secretary in Edward Heaths cabinet. This was to be her only cabinet post before becoming Prime Minister. Under pressure for his liberal policies Edward Heath was forced to resign as Prime Minister in 1974 and the following year was disposed as head of the conservative party and was replaced by Margaret Thatcher. With the conservative party victories in 1979 Thatcher was installed as Prime Minister. Once in office she lent her name to a political and economic revolution designed to dismantle Britain’s welfare state. Her goals during the first few years were to remove economic controls, reduce spending and reform the trade unions. Her programs initially threatened to devastate the British economy with high interest rates, collapsed businesses and rising unemployment. Thatcher had little experience in foreign affairs. Therefore she held a simple outlook that was anticommunism and pro-American. In January 1976 she denounced communism as a “failure in human and economic terms” for this she was labeled by to Soviet news agency Tass as the Iron Lady. The high point of her first term was the regaining control of the Falkland Islands after Argentinean forces had invaded them. Thatcher’s attitude toward the European Economic Community was that she opposed closer ties to Europe fearing Britain would lose her identity and independence. Shortly after her inaugurati...