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Loading... The Downing Street Years (1994)| 1,211 | 6 | 17,240 | 
(3.6) | 17 | This first volume of Margaret Thatcher's memoirs encompasses the whole of her time as Prime Minister - the formation of her goals in the early 1980s, the Falklands, the General Election victories of 1983 and 1987 and, eventually, the circumstances of her fall from political power. She also gives frank accounts of her dealings with foreign statesmen and her own ministers.… (more) |
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We knew we had won by the early hours of Friday May 4, but it was not until the afternoon that we gained the clear majority of seats we needed--44 as it eventually turned out.  | |
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...in a market economy government does not--and cannot--know where jobs will come from: if it did know, all those interventionist policies for 'picking winners' and 'backing success' would not have picked losers and compounded failure. We were seeking to secure greater financial stability, within which business and individuals could operate with confidence. We knew that we could do this only by controlling those things which government could control--namely the money supply and public borrowing. Most post-war economic planning, by contrast, sought to control such things as output and employment, which ultimately government could not control, through batteries of regulations on investment, pay and prices, that distorted the operation of the economy and threatened personal liberty. ...what we were fighting for...was not only the territory and the people of the Falklands, important though they were. We were defending our honour as a nation, and principles of fundamental importance to the whole world--above all, that aggressors should never succeed and that international law should prevail over the use of force. ...the generalized approval of the silent majority is no match for the chorus of disapproval from the organized minority. ...even governments acting on the best of motives are wise to respect legal forms. Above all, democracies have to show their superiority to totalitarian governments which know no law. ...in foreign affairs, the underlying realities of power are not transformed by meetings and understandings between heads of government. A country with a weak economy, an unstable social base or an ineffective administration cannot compensate for these--at least for long--with an ambitious diplomatic programme. That said, my experience as Prime Minister did convince me that a skilfully conducted foreign policy based in strength can magnify a country's influence and allow progress to be made in dealing with thorny problems around the world. ...the root cause of our contemporary social problems--to the extent that these did not reflect the timeless influence and bottomless resources of old-fashioned human wickedness--was that the state had been doing too much. A Conservative social policy had to recognize this. Society was made up of individuals and communities. If individuals were discouraged and communities disorientated by the state stepping in to take decisions which should properly be made by people, families and neighbourhoods then society's problems would grow not diminish. If irresponsible behaviour does not involve penalty of some kind, irresponsibility will for a large number of people become the norm. More important still, the attitudes may be passed on to their children, setting them off in the wrong direction. In politics there are no final victories. Germany is...by its very nature a destabilizing rather than a stabilizing force in Europe. Only the military and political engagement of the United States in Europe and close relations between the other two strongest sovereign states in Europe--Britain and France--are sufficient to balance German power: and nothing of the sort would be possible within a European super-state. ...although I am a strong believer in international law, I did not like unnecessary resort to the UN, because it suggested that sovereign states lacked the moral authority to act on their own behalf. | |
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Information from the French Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language. | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English (5)
▾Book descriptions This first volume of Margaret Thatcher's memoirs encompasses the whole of her time as Prime Minister - the formation of her goals in the early 1980s, the Falklands, the General Election victories of 1983 and 1987 and, eventually, the circumstances of her fall from political power. She also gives frank accounts of her dealings with foreign statesmen and her own ministers. ▾Library descriptions No library descriptions found. ▾LibraryThing members' description |
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