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Margaret Thatcher: A Swashbuckler on the Grandest Stage
WASHINGTON—When I met Margaret Thatcher she was out of office, watching with more than a touch of amusement as her successor, John Major, meandered from crisis to disappointment to sticky wicket. Major seemed in thrall to events, not in command of them. Thatcher, who had been ousted by her own Conservative Party, was feeling vindicated.
She leaned close to deliver a final verdict on Major: “If only he were a man.”
Thatcher, who died Monday at 87, was a towering but polarizing figure. Many aspects of her legacy—the transformation of Britain into a postindustrial society—will long be debated. But one of her greatest contributions is beyond dispute: She showed that a woman could be a bold, decisive, swashbuckling leader on the grandest of stages.
Thatcher never thought of herself as a feminist—she once reportedly told an aide that feminism was “poison”—and probably would be aghast at being considered an icon of the women’s movement. She didn’t believe in movements that coursed through society. “There is no such thing as society,” she said. “There are individual men and women, and there are families.”
But Thatcher also believed in paying attention to what people do, not what they say. And what she did to advance the cause of female empowerment was extraordinary.
Keep reading: Eugene Robinson: Margaret Thatcher: A Swashbuckler on the Grandest Stage – Truthdig.
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