TOPIC FOR FINAL PAPER Most organization have no idea.docx

TOPIC FOR FINAL PAPER
Most organization have no idea that communication begins from
leadership. How the leaders
communicate with the rest of the employees determines the kind
of communication that will be
in that organization, (Krzyżanowski, 2018). This means that if
the leaders are good in
communication then the employees will be more involved in
whatever is happening in the
organization more which will encourage creativity and
innovation. This is the case because,
when employees are employed, they continue with the culture
that they see from others who
behave according to how leaders show them.
For this reason, leaders are the ones who should take it upon
themselves to make
communication a leadership function. Through constant
informing them what is happening in the
organization and including them when big decisions are being

made the effective communication
will be established, (Canary, & Taylor, 2017). When leaders do
not lead in effective
communication the employees are tied to not take part in a lot
of things which is why most
organizations fail. Normally, although the leaders are the ones
in charge of decision making, the
employees are the ones who do most interactions with clients
and other people.
This means that they are normally in a better position to know
what would be and would
not be good for the company. However, if their leaders have
shown them that it is not in their
position to come up with ideas or if their leaders have not
created an effective communication
channel, there is no way the employees can share these ideas
with them. This becomes big loss to
the company simply because of communication not being taken
as a leadership function.
References

- Canary, H. E., & Taylor, J. L. (2017). Policy communication.
The International
Encyclopedia of Organizational Communication
- Krzyżanowski, M. (2018). Social media in/and the politics of
the European Union:
Politico-organizational communication, institutional cultures
and self-inflicted elitism.
Journal of Language and Politics
Harvard Business School 9-497-018
Rev. May 13, 1998
Research Associate Jennifer M. Suesse prepared this case from
published sources under the supervision of Professor
Herminia Ibarra as the basis for class discussion rather than to
illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an
administrative situation.
Copyright © 1996 by the President and Fellows of Harvard
College. To order copies or request permission to
reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685 or write Harvard
Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163. No
part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in
any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the

permission of Harvard Business School.
1
Margaret Thatcher
When Margaret Thatcher became the Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland in 1979, she began a Conservative
revolution that would come to be known as
Thatcherism. Following her personal inclinations toward fiscal
rigor, freedom of choice, and
individual responsibility,1 Thatcher used her three consecutive
terms in office to radically change the
place of government in the lives of the ordinary citizens she had
been elected to represent.
From the Falkland Islands to education reform, Margaret
Thatcher presented her principles
with an unflinching conviction. Her strict policies were almost
always controversial, inciting
ferocious debate among colleagues, Party-members and citizens
alike. She reduced spending, tax
rates, inflation, and the size of the civil service, while
unemployment and the gap between wealth and
poverty increased. She battled with the trade unions, privatized
previously nationalized industries,
and encouraged free market economics. “The first woman to
lead a British political party or a major
Western nation,” write historians Juliet S. Thompson and
Wayne C. Thompson, “Thatcher had the
determination of a visionary and the ruthlessness of an outsider.
She did not come from the
establishment and never owed her success to it.”2
Indeed, when Thatcher was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, to

Alfred and Beatrice Roberts,
she was about as far from the insider’s world of the British
Parliament as possible. An early alliance
with her father’s political ambitions, however, would launch her
toward the leadership of the
Conservative party.
1 Principles of Thatcherism adapted from page 23 in Margaret
Thatcher: A Bibliography by Faysal Mikdadi
(Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1993).
2 Juliet S. Thompson and Wayne C. Thompson, “Thatcher’s
Leadership.” In Margaret Thatcher: Prime Minister
Indomitable, edited by Juliet S. Thompson and Wayne C.
Thompson (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1994),
page 3.
For the exclusive use of M. LEBRUN, 2015.
This document is authorized for use only by MARIE ANDREE.
LEBRUN in 2015.
497-018 Margaret Thatcher
2
Early Life: The Blooming of Margaret Thatcher (1925-1959)3
Her Father’s Daughter Alfred Roberts’s energies, those not
consumed by running his shop and
sub-post office, were all directed toward climbing the rungs of
political power and influence in his
town. Elected to the local authority when Margaret was two,
Councilor Roberts worked his way up
to alderman and finally, 18 years later, to mayor. Grim

Grantham, heavily bombed during World
War II because of its munitions factory, imposed curfews and
constant rationing. As chairman of the
town’s finance committee, and as local food officer during the
war, he was in charge of dispensing
jobs, government housing, and basic foodstuffs. By making
himself the provider of basic needs, he
gathered to himself the powers of a political boss.
Alderman Roberts gave his two daughters little license for fun
or luxury. No bikes, no
garden, no hot baths. The family seldom sat down to a meal
together and never shared a day off,
except Sundays, when, preacher Roberts decreed, they would
attend chapel three times. No
amusements, not even the Sunday papers, were permitted in the
house. There wasn’t much display
of affection. Life was deadly serious, all about self-
improvement and dedication to duty.
* * * * *
And so this fanatically upwardly mobile father chose his second
daughter to make an alliance
with—an alliance that worked because when he pushed
Margaret, she responded. His needs
coincided with her own temperament and ambition. It was
obvious at the time that men were the
only people who mattered. She would make herself into a
woman who would be just like her father
if he were a woman. Similarly, it enhanced Alderman Roberts
to show off his studious daughter. She
was a perfect little lady and served him well as companion and
substitute for his homebound wife.
He did not have to make a boy out of her, which allowed
Margaret to grow up maintaining her

femininity.
* * * * *
Education She vividly recalls things the girls at school had that
she didn’t have. “Some were
fantastic in sports, some were fantastic in arts. I could do
accurate drawing, but I just couldn’t do a
portrait, and I wasn’t talented.” In areas where her abilities
were merely ordinary—music, art, sports,
attracting boys—she gave up. If she couldn’t excel, she would
not compete.
When she was 10, her father saw to it that Margaret got into the
grammar school at the
“right” end of town, where he was on the board of governors.
The grammar school was competitive,
entered by examination, and represented a meritocracy in
English life, while the costly boarding
school stood for aristocracy. At the Kesteven and Grantham
Girls’ School, guest speakers were
invited to address the girls on anything from ornithology to
current events.
“Margaret could be guaranteed to get up on her hind legs and
ask penetrating questions,”
says Madeline Hellaby, with whom Margaret vied for top place
in the class. “The rest of us sort of
looked at each other.” She rolls her eyes. “’Oh, she is at it
again.’” Margaret Wickstead, who also
shared the status of “head girl,” remembers to this day the sober
teenager’s highly formal, even
parliamentary, style. “She seemed to have no trepidation. They
were serious questions, well put—
she must have worked hard on them before coming to school.”

3 “Her Father’s Daughter,” “Education,” and “Ambition” based
on research and writing by Gail Sheehy from
pages 110-112 in “The Blooming of Margaret Thatcher,” by
Gail Sheehy. Copyright © 1989 Gail Sheehy.
Originally published in Vanity Fair, June 1989. Reprinted with
permission of author. “The Dartford Contests”
written by casewriter with facts compiled from both Maggie:
An Intimate Portrait of a Woman in Power by Chris
Ogden (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990) and Margaret
Thatcher: A Bibliography.
LEBRUN in 2015.
Margaret Thatcher 497-018
3
What they didn’t know was that every Thursday evening
Alderman Roberts took his
precocious daughter with him to university extension lectures,
where he urged her to stand up and
ask the lecturer questions. Here, at last, was her forte.
“If I asked, Please, could I do something, everyone else was
doing it,” Mrs. Thatcher says,
recreating the voice of her father, which dominated her
adolescence: “’You don’t follow the crowd, you
make up your own mind.’ That was instilled very early,” she
says. Was it formative? Her eyes fix on
me like a tutor’s, assessing how much of the lesson has sunk in.
“Of course!”

She constantly discussed things with her father—the depression,
the rise of Hitler. He took
her to the library regularly and borrowed the latest books from
more prosperous friends. Mrs.
Thatcher remembers a book called Out of the Night, which
described the practice of Communism in
the Soviet Union and left a lifelong impression: “We could see
that socialism was just a version of
Communism.”
This was hardly the customary chatter of 11- and 12-year-old
girls. Which explains why
several of her classmates remember Margaret Roberts being
ridiculed as “priggish,” “bookish,” and
“ambitious.”
* * * * *
Ambition Young Margaret had no real friends as far as anyone
can tell. But she cultivated
relationships with the right girls—the vicar’s daughter and the
daughters of two factory owners—and
she got herself invited to their homes for tea. None of the three
women can remember being invited
back to the Robertses’ home. Catherine Barford, whose father
brought a steamroller factory to town
and sought out Councilor Roberts to help with housing his
workers, says, “I do remember her coming
to have tea with us.” Was the Barford home more prosperous
than the Robertses’? “I suppose one’s
got to say yes.” Much later, Catherine learned to her
amazement that the Roberts home had no
indoor toilet and no hot water.
The point here was not impoverishment but postponed

gratification. “Alderman Roberts
would become prosperous because he wouldn’t worry about
things like plumbing,” attests Mrs.
Bruce Lee. He stuck to the fundamentals. Indeed, by the time
Margaret was launched at university,
her father was able to move up to one of those fine Edwardian
houses across the street from his shop.
But first he planned his daughter’s climb to success. He paid for
elocution lessons to tame her
Lincolnshire twang. And when Maggie was 14, Roberts
consulted with the vicar of Corby Glen on
how to get his daughter into Oxford. The entrance exam
consisted of four essays in which one had to
discourse on classical literature and philosophy. “Margaret
knew nothing of these things,” says
Margaret Wickstead (née Goodrich), the vicar’s daughter.
“Ours was just a simple country school,
and she had no imagination. She was always very rational,
literal, concerned with solutions and
getting things done.” So it was arranged that Canon Goodrich
would coach the Roberts girl in the
classics.
The next hurdle was her ill-tempered Scottish headmistress,
Miss Gillies, who decreed that
Margaret was much too young, at 17, to go to university.
Besides, she hadn’t had the necessary Latin.
Full stop. Margaret flew at Miss Gillies in defiance. “You’re
thwarting my ambition!” she said,
according to one biographer, Penny Junor, and off she sailed to
get her father to pay for a Latin tutor.
But, according to Madeline Hellaby, who kept a diary, Margaret
did not pass the exam for a
scholarship to Oxford. It was a bitter blow. She had to crawl
back to Miss Gillies and start another

school year.
Then a telegram arrived that autumn of 1943 from Somerville,
indisputably the best women’s
college at Oxford. Would Miss Roberts care to take up a place
forfeited by someone else? In a
fortnight Margaret Roberts—always one to seize the main
chance—disappeared from Grantham.
LEBRUN in 2015.
4
Pulling up roots must have been painful. Arriving at Oxford, an
unpolished girl whose
homemade clothes and clunky shoes set her apart from the usual
posh town-and-country types,
Margaret was a social misfit. Moreover, as a woman, she was
barred from admission to the great
Oxford Union debating society. So she set her sights on the
next best thing, the Oxford University
Conservative Association, and became its president.
“Margaret was always well organized and well groomed, but
one never got really close to
her,” recalls Mary Mallinson Williamson, who shared digs with
her in their fourth year. She made
her only splash at Oxford by inviting the hierarchy of the Tory
Party, one by one, to address the O.U.

Conservative Association. Her social engagements, for which
she borrowed Mary Mallinson’s
evening dresses, consisted of entertaining these eminences,
contacts which proved enormously useful
later on.
“She certainly knew what she was doing and where she was
going,” says Mallinson
Williamson.
* * * * *
The Dartford Contests Thatcher graduated from Oxford in 1947
(see Exhibit 1) with a degree in
chemistry and an intense political interest. She accepted a
research position at British Xylonite
Plastics (BX) to pay the bills, and began attending local
Colchester Conservative party meetings.
When an invitation to represent the Oxford Graduates
Conservative Association at their party’s
annual conference arrived in 1948, her transformation from
chemist to politician picked up its pace.
At the conference, a friend introduced Thatcher to the chairman
of the Conservative party in
Dartford, a heavily industrial, Labor party stronghold east of
London who was in the midst of a
candidate search. Since British Members of Parliament (MPs)
are not bound to have ties to the
constituencies that they represent (see Exhibit 2), Thatcher
applied and was eventually nominated to
run for the Dartford seat in Parliament. Now, she would wait
for the general election to be called.
At a reception thrown by some Dartford Conservatives in
February 1949 to celebrate her

nomination, Margaret met Denis Thatcher, a divorced
accountant who would eventually become her
husband. A year later, she ran for the Dartford seat in
Parliament in 1950, losing to her Labor
opponent, but doubling the number of Dartford Tories who
voted in the election. Following her
defeat, Margaret enrolled as a part-time law student at the
Council for Legal education.
She ran and lost the Dartford seat again in October 1951, but
narrowed the Labor majority by
2,000. She and Denis were married two months later. Their
twins, Mark and Carol, were born in
August 1953, the year that Thatcher passed her Bar (law)
examinations, with a specialty in tax law.
Five years later, she entered her third political contest when she
became the Conservative candidate
for a new constituency: Finchley, a haven of Tory voters.
Into Parliament (1959-1961)4
The Third Campaign When Prime Minister Harold Macmillan
called the 1959 election (see Exhibit
3), no politician was more eager than Margaret Thatcher. The
moment he dropped the flag, she threw
herself full tilt into her third campaign—the first she had a
chance to win. Arriving in the 5½-square-
4 “The Third Campaign,” “Finchley MP,” and “Working Hard”
excerpted from pages 82-92 in Maggie: An
Intimate Portrait of a Woman in Power by Chris Ogden (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1990). In “Moving Up,” the
first paragraph written by the casewriter and the second
excerpted from page 92 in Maggie: An Intimate Portrait
of a Woman in Power by Chris Ogden (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1990).

LEBRUN in 2015.
5
mile constituency each morning shortly after 8 a.m., she
campaigned until after dark. Her technique
was simple—talk to everyone; don’t miss anything. She visited
shops, senior citizen homes, offices,
schools, and even union halls, where usually only Labor party
politicians showed up.
Her speed, efficiency, and knowledge bowled over most of her
Finchley constituents. She
also displayed a graceful charm that most people who do not
know her are surprised to discover. A
quarter-century later, she would use a more flirtatious variation
of the same charm to captivate such
opposites as Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. In the
1959 campaign she could whip in and out
of a house in less than 10 minutes, swallow a cup of tea, and
leave the family thinking she had
dropped by for a leisurely visit that spanned the afternoon.
With shopkeepers, she could rattle off
food prices and discuss their problems from the informed
perspective of a grocer’s daughter. They
never forgot her empathy. She never forgot their names—or
anything else about them. Even by
politician standards, she has always been exceptional for

remembering, without notes, personal
details. Although it was her first race in Finchley, she had been
working the constituency for a year,
ever since her selection at the Tory candidate. She was not only
calling constituents by name, but
making references to details like a car accident in which a
constituent’s cousin had broken a leg or
someone’s granddaughter who had been born in Florida.
* * * * *
By election day, October 8, 1959, Thatcher had canvassed
Finchley more thoroughly than
anyone ever before—and all on her own. Because the seat was
considered easy pickings, the party
organization had not been much help. But when the votes were
counted, even the locals were
impressed with her showing. There was a high, 81% turnout,
but even with two other candidates in
the race, Thatcher won more than half the vote and a huge
majority of 16,260—more than 3,500 votes
over her predecessor’s margin. It was the first of many times
that a divided opposition would
contribute to a big Thatcher victory. Five days short of her
thirty-fourth birthday she was off to
Westminster and the House of Commons, where she would
become the youngest member of
Parliament. But first, there was one bit of business. The
election had taken place, as usual, on a
Thursday. By the following Monday, 700 party workers had
received handwritten thank you notes—
a practice she has followed ever since.
* * * * *
Finchley MP The old-school, old-style old boys never rocked

the boat and never expected to find a
woman—especially this woman—in a position of significance.
The deck was thoroughly stacked
against her. Thatcher, however, was not intimidated. New to
the House, she was no neophyte
politically. She knew some Conservative MPs from Oxford and
had since slogged through the
trenches of the selection process in a skein of constituencies.
She knew, if not all, a lot of tricks,
including how to get noticed. On the very first day, she notified
photographers in advance when the
youngest MP would be arriving for her first day at Westminster.
A photo of her standing next to the
policeman guarding the MPs’ gate made the papers the next day.
She had no problem setting up an office because she didn’t have
one. None of the regular
members did. The 25 women in the then 630-seat House were
expected to leave their belongings in
the Lady Members’ room. Thatcher moved in with a vengeance.
Barbara Castle, a senior Labor party
MP, was flabbergasted to discover almost immediately a row of
pegs in the room filled with
Thatcher’s clothes and eight pairs of shoes for quick changes
between debates. Thatcher worked from
the corner of a desk of a secretary whom she shared with
another MP in a tiny room packed with
three other secretaries. It was cramped pandemonium—nothing
like the luxurious private offices
enjoyed by U.S. representatives. There were no private
telephones; parliamentarians shared a row of
phone booths. Incoming calls were shouted out and the MP
would scurry to answer. Virtually all
business was conducted publicly. The layout was a nightmare,
but everyone except the leadership
shared it and there was an unexpected advantage. In no time,

everyone witnessed the incredible
energy of the new member from Finchley.
LEBRUN in 2015.
6
* * * * *
Thatcher was more than ready for the rough and tumble, but her
first concern was getting her
maiden speech under her belt. The reception given to an MP’s
first speech often makes the difference
between a good or a dismal start—instant acceptance or an
equally quick dismissal. At the beginning
of each new Parliament, back-benchers are given a chance to
introduce noncontroversial legislation if
the government sees fit and there is an opening on the
legislative calendar. The new members
conduct a lottery to determine the order of their turn. Some end
up waiting interminably. Thatcher,
though, was lucky.
Out of scores of new names, she drew the second slot; she
would definitely get to speak early
in the new session. She did not have much time to pick a topic
but, after consulting the leadership,
decided to introduce a bill giving the press the right to attend
local government council meetings.

Until then, each individual council had the right to decide
whether to admit reporters, despite the fact
that all were funded by the public. Thatcher’s choice was not
based on any great love for the press,
but it did reveal an interesting combination of basic principles,
research, and clever political thinking.
She was promoted by a newspaper printing strike, which led to
several Labor-dominated councils
refusing, in a solidarity move, to allow strike-bearing reporters
in to cover their meetings. This was a
red flag to Thatcher, who had an antipathy to labor unions.
Launching the bill in her maiden speech
would give it an extra push. But she had a second motive that
demonstrated just how far ahead of
the game she was already: she knew that legislation and a
speech promoting increased press freedom
were bound to get widespread and positive press coverage.
She delivered the speech on a Friday afternoon, a time when
many private bills are scheduled
because most MPs have already scattered for the weekend. This
Friday, because of Thatcher’s
advance notices, a sizable audience of about 100 eyed her as she
rose. Typically, there was no
introductory buildup. She got straight to it. “I knew the
constituency of Finchley which I have the
honor to represent would not wish me to do other than come
straight to the point,” she began. Then,
without glancing at the notes in her hand, she delivered a
thoroughly researched and methodical
explanation of her bill. Over the next 27 minutes, without a
hint of nervousness—although speeches
are the one thing that terrify her—she built her argument with a
compelling array of data, a method
that would become her trademark. Her bill would allow the
press entry to meetings as a right, not a

favor, and would allow reporters the necessary background
information to conduct public scrutiny
professionally. “I hope that MPs will consider that a paramount
function of this house is to safeguard
civil liberties, rather than to think that administrative
convenience should take first place in law.”
The speech won Thatcher high praise. “Very impressive,” the
Daily Telegraph’s Bill Deedes
recalled 30 years later. At the time, he called her remarks
“front-bench quality” and said that they
suggested “an uncanny instinct for the mood of the House which
some members take years to
acquire—and many never acquire at all.” Not everyone was as
pleased with the legislation itself,
including the chairman of Finchley’s Tory-dominated local
council. His committee meetings, he said,
would most assuredly not be open to reporters. The council
declined to pass a motion congratulating
Thatcher on her efforts to spearhead the bill, which did
eventually pass, in amended form.
* * * * *
Working Hard Thatcher worked tremendously hard throughout
her early years in Parliament,
doing all her own research and huddling over books in the
House of Commons library for hours at a
time. Once in a rare display of frailty, she collapsed and was
sent home to rest. She was back the
next morning. Quick, thorough briefing became her trademark.
She was neither a genius nor an
intellectual, but she was bright. Whatever Thatcher missed in
pure brainpower—and with degrees in
chemistry and law, she didn’t miss much—she made up in hard
work. Others might be smarter,

might have greater knowledge in depth, might have more
experience, but no one could out-study or
out-prepare her. Her years of exploring tax law were good
training for skipping through thick
volumes assimilating essential nuggets.
LEBRUN in 2015.
7
Once she had her material together, Thatcher wrote her speeches
in longhand, revised them,
then wrote them again on small notecards she could hold in her
hand. The notes were a safeguard.
By the time she had her remarks on cards, she had them
committed to memory and only rarely, when
she had to recite a string of figures, referred to the notes.
Details tripped off her tongue, suggesting
an arsenal of facts in reserve. Critics who were less well
prepared were reluctant to counterattack. In
these early years, Thatcher was capable of putting MPs to sleep
with her statistics, but she knew how
to wake them up again, sometimes unintentionally. Once in
mid-barrage in a speech on pensions, an
aide handed her some fresh statistics. “Gentlemen, I have the
latest red hot figure,” she began. As
the House dissolved in hoots and catcalls, the blush rose from
her neck until she stood crimson.

As she established herself, Thatcher showed her strong Tory
colors, but she was not a
sycophant to the leadership. “She never cowered,” notes Sir
Clive Bossom, an early private secretary.
From the outset, she was more radically right than the
government and never shied from pointing out
where her views differed. Yet she never went so far that
questions were raised about her loyalty. She
voiced her opinions carefully: to have done otherwise would
have meant isolation and impeded her
future prospects. The parliamentary parties do not indulge
rebels. The House of Commons has
never, for example, accommodated the kind of freewheeling
independent grandstanding allowed in
the U.S. Congress. Mavericks in the Commons gain neither
power nor influence.
One area where she took exception was the Macmillan
government’s approach to public
spending. She was convinced that the Treasury kept too slack a
hand on the nation’s purse strings.
“Having been a member of Parliament for 18 months now, the
thing which still troubles me most of
all—and something which is fundamental to everything—is
control of government expenditure. We
are chasing after the hundreds and thousands, but tending to let
the millions go by.” She called for
stricter accountability. “The nation must present its accounts to
Parliament as a company does to its
shareholders.” Failure to do so would mean more waste and
delays in chopping the income tax rate,
an early and persistent objective. Until that was done, “it will
be extremely difficult to bring down
and control government expenditure and, therefore, the level of
taxation is not going to be
considerably reduced.”

Homing in on tax affairs was a natural pursuit for a tax
barrister. But in addition to her tax
experience, Thatcher has a compulsion about waste, another
legacy of the tight-fisted Alf. (Years
later, she would show the same obsession in bringing home
leftovers from formal dinners, freezing
and reheating them later for herself and Denis if he was
around.)
As she got involved in studying the budget, another core belief
surfaced: a bias for business
investors over speculators. She would support tax hikes on
speculative profit rather than profit
created by firms actually producing something. “It is the
speculators in shares we want to get at,” she
said, “the person who is making a business of buying and
selling shares, not to hold them for their
income-producing properties, but to live on the profit he makes
from the transactions.”
* * * * *
Moving Up Due to the extraordinary caliber of Thatcher’s work
in Parliament, her senior colleagues
in the Conservative party began to take notice. This recognition
was important for Thatcher’s
political career, since powerful ministry positions were
distributed solely at the whim of party
leaders. In 1961, Thatcher’s hard work began to pay off, when
Prime Minister Macmillan offered her
a post in the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance.
The post was junior, but she had been in Parliament only two
years. Suddenly she was “in
government” with an appointed post. She rushed back to tell

her sister. She wished the first offer
had not come so soon. The twins were only eight, and now,
caught up in the whirlwind of a ministry,
her time with them would be more limited still. But she didn’t
hesitate. She had little choice, she told
Muriel. “When you are offered a job, you either accept it or
you are out.” She was in.
LEBRUN in 2015.
8
Gathering Experience (1961-1969)5
First Appointed Post Thatcher, not surprisingly, aroused mixed
feelings when she arrived in 1961
at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance. But John
Boyd-Carpenter, the minister in charge,
was untroubled. A politician himself, he knew precisely what
Macmillan was up to. “She was very
junior, so it was quite exceptional, a bit of a gimmick,” he said.
“Here was a prime minister in power
a few years trying to brighten up his image by appointing a
good-looking woman.”
Sir Eric Bowyer, the ministry’s chief civil servant, was
incensed. Macmillan himself sat in
Parliament for 14 years before he got a government job.
Thatcher had been an MP for less than two

years. Not only that, she was a mother of two, lived out of
town, and her husband was rarely around.
She’d never be able to fill the job. “We shan’t get much work
out of her,” Bowyer grumbled. Quickly
both men discovered otherwise. As Boyd-Carpenter put it, “We
could not have been more wrong.”
They had not anticipated her routine: sleeping four hours a
night and working most of the other 20.
Four months after arriving, she was called on in Parliament to
defend the Tories for not
raising pensions. It was her first address to the MPs as a
member of the government. Having buried
herself in homework, she argued the case with such zeal that the
Commons was stunned into silence.
In a 44-minute speech, she had gone back 16 years to 1946 for
statistics. She knew how the situation
of British pensioners contrasted with those in Scandinavia in
1953. She knew how British pensions
compared to West Germans’ in 1959. She knew the cost of
living in a nonsmoking versus a smoking
home in 1951. It was just like old times trying to stump Alf
around the Grantham dinner table. The
Kesteven girls would have recognized the pattern as she started
to hit her stride.
Poised against her and the government was the shadow minister
on pensions, Richard
Crossman, the ablest intellect among Labor’s front-benchers.
Thatcher battered him into submission.
“Seeing Crossman knocked about was highly amusing,” Boyd-
Carpenter recalled. “It was obvious
she had done her homework and he had not done his.” On fact
and detail, she constantly corrected
him. It was the continuation of the pattern: she would never be
bested on detail or outworked.

* * * * *
Pensions lacked the pressure of a major ministry, so Thatcher
had time to explore the inner
workings of government. One of the first things she learned
was that civil servants tailored their
advice to ministers, giving them what it was thought they
wanted to hear rather than a range of
options. The discovery helped ingrain Thatcher’s mistrust of
most bureaucrats, who she felt made
more red tape than they cut.
* * * * *
Riding Out the Storm: Conservative Reshuffling When Prime
Minister Macmillan resigned as
leader of the Conservatives in 1963, Sir Alec Frederick
Douglas-Home took over. Macmillan’s
departure signaled a radical restructuring of internal party
alliances, since the members of each
Ministry are appointed by the current Prime Minister (see
Exhibit 3). Thatcher remained in her post
at Pensions until 1964 when the Conservatives lost their
majority in Parliament. She then switched to
become Opposition spokeswoman on Pensions, as her party
struggled to reorganize its leadership.
5 “First Appointed Post” excerpted from pages 93-94 in
Maggie: An Intimate Portrait of a Woman in Power by
Chris Ogden (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990). In “Riding
out the Storm: Conservative Reshuffling,” the
first paragraph written by the casewriter and the second
paragraph excerpted from page 101 in Maggie: An
Intimate Portrait of a Woman in Power by Chris Ogden (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1990). “Into the Treasury”

and the first paragraph of “Increasing Responsibilities”
excerpted from pages 101-103 in Maggie: An Intimate
Portrait of a Woman in Power by Chris Ogden (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1990). The final paragraph of this
section written by the casewriter.
LEBRUN in 2015.
9
Finally, in July 1965, Douglas-Home resigned as the leader of
the Conservatives and Edward Heath
took over. 6
* * * * *
Heath was almost completely indifferent to Thatcher, at first
ignoring her at meetings. She,
on the other hand, knew that despite Heath’s difficult
personality, the party boss held her future in
his hands. So she got on with her work, trying to maintain a
good professional relationship and
avoiding any potentially awkward situation. Luckily, there was
plenty of work for her. Few
politicians ever have the chance to get so much experience so
quickly. He let her remain chief
opposition spokeswoman on pensions, but in 1965 also assigned
her to the same post in the
Department of Housing and Land. Because the Conservatives

were in opposition, she had no actual
power, but she was acquiring knowledge and experience. Her
job, the job of all ministers in
opposition, was to attack and discredit the government,
constantly chipping away at their credibility.
To this end, she wielded every tool: scalpel, axe, and
sledgehammer.
* * * * *
Into the Treasury After the 1966 defeat, Heath switched her to
the number two spot on the shadow
Treasury team. The move was particularly welcome; it rescued
her from the kind of “social policy”
ministry where women were often confined and placed her at
the center of a varsity, all-comers
sector. Thatcher had no doubt that she could make something of
the new position. She knew budgets
lay at the very core of governance; one could not have too much
experience in Treasury matters. She
also liked the challenges involved in mastering budget
intricacies. She felt good about her progress.
In a Royal Albert Hall speech to 5,000 members of the National
Union of Townswomen’s Guilds, she
cast down her marker. “In politics, if you want anything said,
ask a man; if you want anything done,
ask a woman.” The women roared their approval.
* * * * *
Her spirit, obvious fearlessness, and intelligence won her
attention. “This one is different,”
said Iain Macleod, the shadow chancellor and thus her boss.
“Quite exceptionally able, a first-class
brain.” He told Heath and his colleagues that she was definitely
cabinet material, then took her under

his own wing. Macleod was dying, but the education he gave
her before he did was invaluable.
“Iain always got the politics of any problem right,” Thatcher
said. “He had an instinct for
how the ordinary person would react to situations and
proposals. He would look at a budget in
political terms first and establish what the consequences would
be of a certain course of action. He
believed you had to bring human nature into your calculations.
If you did not get it right politically,
the economics would turn out to be wrong.” Macleod also
taught her the value of having the right
specialists around. “Let them expound their arguments fully,
then go away and make the decision,”
he told her. Thatcher adopted the routine, absorbing it as
effortlessly as Macleod’s other tactical
lessons in the arts of the House of Commons. These included
the proper timing of difficult votes—a
priceless skill. “There is an art in timing clause by clause
debates,” Thatcher explained. “Many’s the
time I worked up a 20-minute speech involving great financial
complexities only to be told by Iain
6 Ogden writes: “Thatcher voted for Heath. He was not a close
friend, but they did have a certain amount in
common. Neither was a member of the establishment. Douglas-
Home, Macmillan, and Churchill were all
aristocrats, but Heath was the son of a lower-middle-class
builder, which should have given him a closer affinity
to the grocer’s daughter. Both Thatcher and Heath came from
backgrounds where personal advancement was
believed to be the result of hard work; both were also
puritanical. Both had gone to public grammar school and
had graduated from Oxford. The musical Heath attended Balliol
College on an organ fellowship. Nine years

older than Thatcher, he had also been president of the Oxford
University Conservative Association.” Page 99,
Maggie: An Intimate Portrait of a Woman in Power.
LEBRUN in 2015.
10
just before I got to my feet—‘you’ve got three minutes, not a
second more.’ My God, it taught me to
sort out what was the chief point and get straight to it.”
Day by day she loved her work at the Treasury more and more.
Her ultimate goal, she
decided, was to run the department as chancellor, but at the time
she doubted it would be possible in
her lifetime. “The Tory party will never allow a woman
chancellor of the exchequer,” she later told a
colleague.
Increasing Responsibilities After only 20 months at Treasury,
Heath moved her again, to the
Ministry of Fuel and Power. Again, the timing was propitious.
The Labor government was
launching a full-scale program to nationalize major industries.
The steel industry was the first to be
removed from the control of the private sector, and the
electricity and gas industries were scheduled
to follow. In addition, Thatcher’s new position gave her

exposure to another crucial issue. Seismic
exploration of the North Sea had revealed major oil and gas
deposits, deposits that would have a
huge impact on Britain’s economy over the next two decades.
She dug into those issues, but in
October 1967 Heath moved her once more. Mervyn Pike7 had
retired, and Peter Walker, Heath’s
campaign manager, recommended Thatcher take her place in the
shadow cabinet, the front bench.
Heath concurred and brought her in as shadow minister for
power. A year later she took over as
shadow minister for transport, and in [October] 1969, she was
assigned to the Ministry of Education.
Heath was unaware of it, but he was sowing the seeds of his
own destruction. Thatcher was
collecting enough experience to be dangerous.
* * * * *
Thatcher continued working on Education until the general
elections in June 1970, which the
Conservatives won with a majority of thirty-one. Suddenly,
Thatcher went from opposition
spokeswoman on education to secretary of state for education.
She was not merely in government,
but in the cabinet.
Thatcher, Milk Snatcher (1970-1974)8
Cabinet Post Heath had taken office with a pledge to cut
government spending and planned to
chop more than $700 million from his first budget. At
Education, Thatcher had no choice but to pick
up her own axe. She had turned down several budget-cutting
proposals, including one to put
entrance charges on libraries. Her father had considered the

public library his university. She would
not prevent anyone else from using it the same way, but
something had to go. She decided to end the
$19 million free milk program for primary schoolchildren aged
seven to eleven. Since poor children
would be exempt, Thatcher had a rationale. “I took the view
that most parents are able to pay for
milk for their children and that the job of government was to
provide such things in education which
they could not pay for, like new primary schools.” Wilson’s
Labor government, she pointed out, had
halted free milk to secondary schools and had met little
opposition. “The important thing was to
protect education and that’s what we did,” she said.
The explanation did her little good. The public was outraged.
Opponents charged that
Thatcher’s cuts would lead to a tripling of the numbers of
children with calcium deficiency and began
to consider ways to avoid implementing the policy. When some
administrators said they would use
property taxes to pay for milk, the government rushed through
legislation to make such moves
7 Former member of the Shadow Cabinet.
8 “Thatcher, Milk-Snatcher” excerpted from pages 109-113 in
Maggie: An Intimate Portrait of a Woman in Power by
Chris Ogden (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990).
LEBRUN in 2015.

11
illegal. Methyr Tydfil, a Welsh mining town, continued the free
distribution for all students, saying
the town was already too familiar with malnutrition and rickets.
The revolt collapsed when the
government, playing hardball, announced that the local
councilors would be personally responsible
for the $5,000 milk bill each term.
Demonstrators took to the streets throughout Britain, bellowing,
“Thatcher, Milk Snatcher.”
She was cast in Parliament and in the press as a mother taking
milk from the mouths of babes. The
fact that a woman was doing this made the policy seem more
unsympathetic. She was shouted down
at public meetings. At one school, students refused to accept
awards from her. In Liverpool, debris
thrown from the audience forced her off the podium. She took
refuge in the home of a local MP,
whose wife asked how the appearance had gone. “Very rowdy,”
Thatcher replied, pulling back her
blouse to reveal a huge, spreading bruise on her upper chest
where she had been hit with a rock. The
wife’s jaw dropped.
“Did it hurt?”
“It hurt like mad,” Thatcher conceded.
“What did you do?” the horrified hostess asked.
“I went on speaking. What else could I do?”

When the woman asked if she could call a doctor, Thatcher
declined. “I’ve got two more
engagements,” she said. “Give me a nice, hot cup of tea.”
Unpopular Decisions Milk wasn’t the only issue on the Thatcher
agenda. She also raised the price
of school meals, unchanged for several years, and rejected a
suggestion to renovate slum area schools,
claiming the money could be better spent on new schools. A $5
million subsidy to allow private
schools to cut tuitions further enraged her critics, who were fast
multiplying. Whenever she rose to
speak in Parliament, Labor back-benchers began a cadence:
“Ditch the bitch.”
The Left made her their number one target, portraying her as a
hard, middle-class
suburbanite, ambitious, ruthless, and unfeeling, fit only for
garden parties in her Tory hats and string
pearls. They called her a child hater and accused her on the
floor of the House of having her children
at the same time—the way most convenient for her career. The
twins were taunted at school, and the
criticism did not come solely from the Left. The staunchly pro-
Tory Sunday Express called her “the
Lady Nobody Loves.” Britain’s biggest daily paper, The Sun,
bannered the headline “The Most
Unpopular Woman in Britain” over an article that remarked:
“At a time when Mr. Heath’s
government is desperately seeking an image of compassion and
concern, Mrs. Thatcher is fast
emerging as a liability.”
Within the cabinet, she was unpopular. Because she headed a
minor ministry, she was not
part of the inner circle anyway, but the feeling against her went

beyond her fringe status. Home
Secretary Reginald Maudling could not stand Thatcher and
repeatedly called her “that bloody
woman.” He, like so many others, recognized that not only was
she not one of the boys, she was
causing the boys trouble. They were appalled at her single-
mindedness and worried about the
political price that the party would pay. At cabinet meetings,
where some of her critics sat, she said
little. When she did speak up, it was often not what her male
colleagues wanted to hear. Once, as
Heath was conducting a small meeting in Number 10 (Downing
Street, residence of the British Prime
Minister) to discuss the appointment of a new director of the
BBC, Geoffrey Howe suggested one
name. “He’s got much too high an opinion of himself,” Heath
rebutted. Thatcher jumped in with
“But, Prime Minister, most men do.” The men exchanged
glances and chuckled awkwardly.
* * * * *
LEBRUN in 2015.
12
Despite her impersonal relationship with Heath, the prime
minister, to his credit, resisted
repeated suggestions to dump her. The more insistent the calls,

the more determined Heath, well
aware of her talent, became to keep Thatcher.
* * * * *
She was in the midst of the worst six months of her life. Alf
had died earlier in the year, just
before she had gone into government, and she missed him
terribly. Denis was consoling. “Why don’t
you chuck it all in?” he asked. “You don’t have to put up with
this. Why go on?” Thatcher looked
up. Tears ran down her cheeks. “I’ll see them in hell first,” she
retorted. “I will never be driven
anywhere against my will.”
The milk episode toughened her tremendously. She developed a
calloused, protective skin
that would stand her in good stead. Years later, she conceded
that she had mishandled the situation.
She had forgotten Iain Macleod’s rule of working out the
politics of an action first. At the time,
chopping the milk allowance made sense, but she probably
should have done it in stages, she
thought. But, the experience had been a watershed. “The great
milk furor gave her a tremendous
object lesson in the proportions of political judgment,” said a
cabinet minister who served beside and
under her for years. “She learned very sharply that if you’re
going to do political battle, make sure
first it’s a big one or look to ways of finessing it. The milk
battle was not worth the frontal charge, but
it did teach her the importance of flanking maneuvers.
The milk controversy contributed to a great misunderstanding
about Thatcher—that she was
only a budget cutter. Quite the contrary. She was one of the

biggest spenders ever to preside over the
education ministry, an irony that her more perceptive critics
would point to later as evidence of cold-
blooded expediency. She was under orders to cut, but like all
ambitious politicians, Thatcher learned
early that shrinking a department is no way to be noticed.
Growth gets attention. When she took
office, education spending was at an all-time high. Milk
notwithstanding, she pushed it higher.
* * * * *
Throughout her three and a half years at Education, the only
cabinet post she ever held, her
style and pace remained the same: all out, no quarter. Sir Alec
Douglas-Home, who was then serving
as Heath’s foreign secretary, came home one day and told his
wife, “You know, she’s got the brains of
all of us put together, so we’d better look out.”
She took pains to juggle career and family. Once, hosting a
ministry meeting on a $50 million
budget cut proposal to be tabled at a cabinet meeting the next
day, she noticed it was getting dark
outside. “What time is it?” she asked. Ten to five was the
reply. “Oh, I must go and get some
bacon.” Asked what in the world she was talking about,
Thatcher explained that she needed to shop
for Denis’s breakfast. “One of the secretaries can get it for
you,” said an aide solicitously, while
nervously juggling the budget papers. “Oh, no, they won’t
know what kind he likes,” she said,
pushing back her chair, pulling on her coat, and leaving the
room. Fifteen minutes later she was back,
bacon in hand. “Now where were we?” she asked the astonished
civil servants before plunging back

into the columns of figures for hours.
LEBRUN in 2015.
13
The Coup (1974-1975)9
Heath’s Collapse In October 1974, Thatcher and the rest of the
Conservative Cabinet members
returned to the opposition. The Labor party had regained its
majority in Parliament. Ted Heath’s
time as leader of the Conservatives seemed to be over. The
Tories were back in opposition having
lost another election under Heath, and he was rapidly losing
support from within his own party.
A month after the election, he informed the 1922 Committee,
the organization of back-
benchers, that he would not step down but would stand again.
He was convinced that he had fought
the past two elections on the proper grounds with the right
policies. Once the postselection hysteria
died down, he believed the rest of the party would realize that,
too. In fact, his analysis was not far
off base. Most of the moderate, nonrisk-taking Conservatives in
the early 1970s had not only agreed
with his U-turn and the move toward consensus it implied, but
thought his wage and price policy

fair.
Margaret Thatcher was not among them. But unlike such
radical Tories as Enoch Powell,
Nicholas Ridley, and John Biffen, she had not spoken up. No
fellow cabinet member could recall her
registering concern privately, though she maintains that she was
deeply troubled. Her silence was
probably expedient politics—another example of pragmatism
and painstaking care to protect her
flanks. As the head of a minor ministry, removed from the
cabinet inner circle, she would have little
impact if she had tried to battle her leader in 1972. She could
only hurt herself and wreck her future
chances. Thatcher had voted for Heath as leader. She admired
his toughness and, for the most part,
his policies, but she was deeply disappointed in his
performance. When he refused to do what she
felt was the right thing—step down—Thatcher felt offended.
But now there was no clear candidate to challenge Heath.
Whitelaw had no intention of
challenging the leader; too loyal, he also figured that Heath
would manage another win when the
party gathered. But the right wing was not in the mood to
tolerate Heath another moment. They
were frantic to find almost any warm body and finally decided
that their best candidate would be
Keith Joseph, the former minister of social services.
* * * * *
Joseph never got out of the starting blocks. . . . [After making a
speech which destroyed his
credibility, he took himself out of the running. His] exit left the
dissidents casting about. Thatcher,

who had been approached by several back-benchers but who had
supported Joseph until his exit,
began to move out of the shadows. Somebody had to stand up
for a new approach, and no one was
stepping forward. “We just cannot allow it,” she told a friend.
“As a party, we must do something.”
For Heath to stay on, a tarred loser with discredited policies,
would mean further deterioration of the
Tories’ future chances. “To deny that we failed the people is
futile as well as arrogant,” she declared.
“Successful governments win elections. So do parties with
broadly acceptable policies. We lost.”
An Unexpected Candidate Thatcher was no one’s first choice.
“I don’t think anyone at that time
really thought that Margaret was a serious contender,” said
James Prior, who sat in Heath’s cabinet as
leader of the House of Commons. She was, however, leading
the opposition’s fight against the Labor
government’s finance bill and doing it brilliantly. She
dominated the parliamentary debate with her
grasp of the nuances of the bill as well as the numbers. That
was not enough to make her a candidate.
What tipped the scale was that she was the only Conservative
willing to challenge Heath.
9 Except for the first paragraph of “Heath’s Collapse” which
was written by the casewriter, “Heath’s Collapse,”
“An Unexpected Candidate,” “The Campaign,” and “Nearing the
Finish Line” excerpted from pages 115-128
Maggie: An Intimate Portrait of a Woman in Power by Chris
Ogden (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990). “Party
Leader” was written by the casewriter with factual information
adapted from Margaret Thatcher: A Bibliography
by Faysal Mikdadi (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press,
1993).

LEBRUN in 2015.
14
* * * * *
Thatcher was less than enthusiastic about a seemingly hopeless
challenge. She still wanted to
be chancellor of the exchequer, believing she’d be lucky to get
that. Six months earlier, she had told a
Liverpool newspaper that she thought it was impossible for a
woman to reach the top. “It will be
years before a woman either leads the party or becomes prime
minister. I don’t see it happening in
my time.”
* * * * *
Within the party, there was spirited criticism of Thatcher. She
was not liked, never had been.
And as to loyalty? If she were now so opposed to Heath and
what he stood for, why hadn’t she
spoken up before—or done the proper thing and resigned on
principle? Those who had watched her
spend heavily at Education wondered about all this budget-
cutting passion. She also retained a sour
odor from the “Milk Snatcher” days. Her colleagues considered
her a hard worker to be sure, but

hardly a champion riding forward on a white charger to rescue
Britain.
Thatcher scarcely registered on the national consciousness
meter. She knew nothing about
foreign policy and defense. Ian Gow, a right-wing Tory who
would later become a close adviser, said
there were profound doubts about Thatcher. “The patricians in
the party didn’t like her robustly
populist approach challenging the old orthodoxies. They and
others wondered whether it would be
possible, with the Cold War getting colder, for a woman to
represent the country internationally,
dealing with defense and foreign policy matters thought to be
the province of men.”
Thatcher made up her mind to challenge Heath on her own. She
discussed it with Denis, but
not the children, who were then 22. She weighed the costs. A
loss would affect her career for years to
come; as Ralph Waldo Emerson told Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Jr., “When you strike at a king, you
must kill him.” She was still inclined to risk it and strike.
Once she decided, she went straight to
Heath to tell him, meeting him in the leader of the opposition’s
office in the House of Commons.
What the confrontation lacked in cordiality, it made up in
brevity. Lasting barely 90 seconds, the
encounter was unfriendly even by Heath standards. Thatcher
was not invited to sit down. Nor did
Heath thank her for the courtesy of informing him. Instead, he
peremptorily dismissed her, taking
her challenge no more seriously than the old boys took
Joseph’s. Nor did anyone else. “I was
chairman of the party and I didn’t believe the challenge was
going to happen,” said Whitelaw. “None

of us did.”
Explaining why she had decided to challenge, Thatcher wasted
no time on false humility. “I
saw the Tory party going much too much to the left, and there
did not seem to be anyone who had
the thoughts and ideas I had,” she said. “It seemed to be
absolutely vital for the country that I stood.”
Absolutely vital. Life and death. She believed in her ideas
passionately and there was conviction in
her delivery; this was not just a political challenge. It was the
beginning of a crusade. Still, the
chances of her unseating the veteran leader were slim. Britain’s
bookies quoted 50-to-1 odds. Then a
surprising development changed Thatcher’s career and the
course of British history. Airey Neave
adopted her.
Neave was an obscure but respected back-bencher.
* * * * *
Neave had no problems with Thatcher, with whom he had
worked as a barrister-in-training
in Lincoln’s Inn in London. After persuading 15 of the 25
dissident back-benchers to support her,
Neave signed up as her campaign manager. He had a vision
about her, he said later. Calling her a
“philosopher as well as a politician,” Neave said she was “the
first real idealist politician in a long
time.”
LEBRUN in 2015.

15
The Campaign Neave’s vision wasn’t going to get Thatcher
elected, but his superb organizational
ability might. He hustled her around the Commons day and
night and introduced her to knots of
MPs at the Members Bar and Tea Room. As Heath struggled
awkwardly through lavish cocktail
parties and dinners, Thatcher waged a guerrilla battle, plugging
away from a borrowed office where
she stationed herself to answer questions over a modest glass of
claret.
Neave advised her to avoid strong policy stands, to listen well
and stress the general issue of
leadership. Thatcher learned fast and followed instructions.
She struck an ambivalent stance on the
controversial issue of Britain’s entry into the Common Market,
which a number of Conservatives
opposed. Her views on social issues, such as abortion and
capital punishment, were known to be
radically right, so she took pains not to dwell on them.
Generally playing down any hard ideological
sentiments, she emphasized instead her willingness to listen to
back-benchers if elected—a Heath
failing.
As Thatcher’s stock rose, so did attacks on her. She stirred up a
row by suggesting that
elderly people getting ready to retire should fight inflation and
stretch their pensions by stocking up

in advance on preservable groceries. She was doing it herself,
she admitted; her own nest egg
included 9 pounds of sugar, 6 jars each of jam, marmalade, and
honey, 4 tins of ham, 2 cans of tongue,
1 of mackerel, 4 of sardines, 20 tins of various fruits and
vegetables, plus sheets, towels, and other
items “which I know will be needed in 10 to 15 years’ time.”
Critics accused her of hoarding. She
dismissed the uproar. “They broke Keith,” she said referring to
Joseph’s withdrawal after the social
class speech. “But they won’t break me.”
If anything was going to break her, it was the work pace. In
addition to campaigning for the
leadership, Thatcher was number two in the shadow Treasury,
specializing in financial legislation.
With the Wilson government about to present its finance bill,
she had a target that could keep her in
the spotlight. By assigning her to the Treasury, Heath had
inadvertently given Thatcher the launch
pad from which she could destroy him. Now, the countdown
was underway.
The job of passing the government’s financial legislation
belonged to Denis Healey,
chancellor of the exchequer, and one of Labor’s most
impressive postwar politicians.
* * * * *
In mid-January, just after Parliament’s Christmas recess and
only two weeks before the
Tories’ first leadership ballot, Thatcher and Healey went head
to head in a debate that is still recalled
in Westminster. Following some withering repartee, she went
for his throat, belittling him for a

capital transfer tax which would be imposed on gifts, including
charitable donations, and on
proposed higher tax rates on inherited wealth. “You apparently
do not understand the effect your tax
will have on the lives of individuals, the economy, or indeed on
a free society in general,” she said.
Healey, who loves a fight, took off his gloves. “Mrs. Thatcher
has emerged from the debate
as La Pasionaria of privilege,” he told the House, making a
reference to Dolores Ibárruri, the Spanish
Civil War’s fiery Communist orator. “She has shown that she
had decided to see her party tagged as
the party of the rich few, and I believe she and her party will
regret it.”
Some might have retreated before his attack. That was Healey’s
intent. But Thatcher rose
calmly and strode purposefully back to the dispatch box.
Healey, huge bushy eyebrows bristling,
glared as she took aim. She had wanted to say that Healey’s
remarks had not done him justice, she
said, but unfortunately they had. Her opening, with the
sarcastic hint of insult to come, was intended
to get the listening MPs salivating, and it did. “Some
chancellors are microeconomic. Some
chancellors are fiscal. This one is just plain cheap,” she jibed.
“We on this side [of the aisle] were
amazed how one could possibly get to be chancellor knowing so
little about existing taxes and so little
about proposals coming before Parliament. If this chancellor
can be chancellor, anyone in the House
of Commons could be chancellor. I had hoped the right
honorable gentleman had learned a lot from

LEBRUN in 2015.
16
this debate. Clearly he learned nothing. He might at least
address himself to the practical effects
because it will affect everyone, including people born as I was,
with no privilege at all.” The House
erupted with cheers, jeers, and “Hear, hears.” Thatcher had
scored. She had taken on the town bully,
and, though “only a woman,” had sent him packing. Never
before had anyone dismissed Denis
Healey.
The press loved the battle. The Daily Telegraph weighed in
again: “Reluctant though I am to
risk the lady’s wrath by questioning her undoubted femininity,”
columnist Frank Johnson wrote, “let
it be said that the Tories need more men like her.” Suddenly
the party had a contender.
Gordon Reece, a television producer, began helping her with
media contacts. He and Neave
quickly set up a series of lunches with Fleet Street editors.
Feminine charm, which Thatcher can turn
on with impressive effect when she wants to, helped soften her
straight, no-frills explanations of her
populist vision and meritocratic policies. Converts soon began
turning up. In a signed op-ed piece in
the Daily Telegraph, she explained that “my kind of Tory party

would make no secret of its belief in
individual freedom and individual prosperity, in the
maintenance of law and order, in the wide
distribution of private property, in the rewards for energy, skill
and thrift, in diversity of choice, in
the preservation of local rights in local communities.”
Lobbying of the MPs picked up. Neave and Reece improvised
as they went along, borrowing
American campaign strategy and television tricks. She needed
51% of the MPs, but instead of aiming
for the minimum, the three of them decided to go for all the
membership. The strategy was
revolutionary; with the exception of Whips rounding up votes
for legislation, no one had ever lobbied
the entire membership systematically.
A partial Neave headcount 10 days before the vote showed
Thatcher with 64 votes, Heath
with 35, and Hugh Fraser, a senior back-bencher representing
those who wanted neither Thatcher nor
Heath, with none. Two days later, more complete numbers
showed Thatcher with 95, Heath with 64,
and Fraser with 6. There were 43 doubtfuls, 20 of whom Neave
believed would go for Thatcher.
Whatever happened, she was not going to be embarrassed.
* * * * *
Nearing the Finish Line She had made stunning progress. The
day before the vote, Neave told her
that, by his count, she had 120 supporters to Heath’s 84. But
newspaper polls showed up to 63% of
the party preferred keeping Heath to bringing in Thatcher. With
the exception of Keith Joseph, who
supported her, the entire cabinet backed Heath.

So, when Tory MPs began trickling into Room 14 of the House
of Commons on decision day,
Heath had every reason to believe that his grip on the party
would be extended. Peter Walker, his
campaign manager, told Heath he could count on 138 to 144 of
the 276 votes, a majority that would
obviate the need for a second round.
Thatcher voted at noon, left for a working lunch, returned, and
waited nervously in Airey
Neave’s room until the voting ended at 3:30 p.m. At 4 p.m.,
Edward du Cann emerged from the
committee room and announced the shock result. Thatcher had
130 votes; Heath 119, Fraser 16, with
11 abstentions. Neave raced to his room. “It’s good news,” he
blurted out. “You’re ahead. There’ll
be a second ballot.” She was astonished. In fact, it was
difficult to tell who was more stunned, Heath
or Thatcher. “We got it all wrong,” the numbed Heath told his
campaign aides. Quickly he
announced he was resigning. Thatcher had fallen only nine
votes short of an absolute majority, and
he would not be further humiliated.
Thatcher had no sympathy for the man who had trained her.
“I’ll always be fond of dear
Ted, but there’s no sympathy in politics,” she said sweetly but
lethally after his exit.
LEBRUN in 2015.

17
Once Heath bowed out, candidates who had not stood in the first
round out of loyalty rushed
to take on Thatcher in the second round a week later. Her
strongest opponent was Whitelaw.
* * * * *
Long before their contest, Thatcher and Whitelaw had agreed to
speak to a Young
Conservatives rally at Eastbourne on the south coast. Cleverly,
Thatcher worked out a deal. They
would not use the forum for campaigning but would instead
stick to the original schedule. For
Whitelaw, that meant conducting a question-and-answer session
on regional development, a topic
guaranteed to put his listeners to sleep, while Thatcher had clear
sailing. She was scheduled to give a
speech. Her torrid defense of basic Conservative ideals had the
crowd on its feet cheering and gave
her the next day’s headlines. When the BBC’s top current
affairs program asked her to participate in a
panel with other candidates, she refused. She had broken out of
the pack.
Throughout the day of the second balloting, the 276
Conservative MPs filed again in and out
of Room 14. Thatcher was fidgety. Dressed in a trim, two-piece
suit accented by a pink and white
tulip, she sat alone in Airey Neave’s tiny, windowless office.
Finally, just before 4 p.m., Neave came
in. “It’s all right,” he told her simply. “You’re leader of the

opposition.” She had 146 votes, 7 more
than she needed, to Whitelaw’s 79 and 19 each for Howe and
Prior.
Tears welled in her eyes. Then, quickly regaining her self-
control, she returned to business.
“Thank God it is decisive,” she said briskly. “We’ve got a lot
to do. We must get down to work
instantly.”
* * * * *
Party Leader With her election to Conservative leadership in
1975, Margaret Thatcher ascended to
the position which would enable her to become Prime Minister
four years later when the Tories
regained their Parliamentary majority. She was on her way to
one of the most powerful positions in
Britain. She would be the only Prime Minister elected to three
consecutive terms in office during this
century.
A strict monetarist, she would cut income taxes, curb union
powers and begin to privatize
public industries. She would preside over both a national civil
servant strike and the miners’ strike,
cut university funding, replace student grants with loans, and
pass the 1988 Education Reform Act
(ERA). Finally, in foreign affairs, she would become famous
for her involvement in the Falkland
Islands, her anti-Communist voice, her refusal to sanction South
Africa, the Anglo-Irish agreement,
the Hong Kong agreement, and her friendships with both Ronald
Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.

LEBRUN in 2015.
18
Exhibit 1 Personal Chronologya
Date Event
1925 October Margaret Thatcher (nee Roberts) born in
Grantham, Lincolnshire, England
1943 October Goes to Somerville College (Oxford University)
to study chemistry and joins the
Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA)
1946 Becomes president of the OUCA; graduates with a second-
class degree in
chemistry; gets a job as a research chemist at British Xylonite
Plastics in
Manningtree;
1950 February Stands and loses as Conservative candidate for
Dartford
1951 October Loses the Dartford seat again
December Marries Denis Thatcher
1953 August Gives birth to twins, Mark and Carol

December Passes her Bar (law) examinations, eventually joins
the Society of Conservative
Lawyers; called to the Bar in the next year
1959 October Elected as the Conservative Member of
Parliament for Finchley
1960 February Maiden speech introducing a private member’s
bill (the Public Bodies [Admission
to Meetings] Bill), which becomes the 1960 Act of the same
name
1961 October Becomes parliamentary secretary at the Ministry
of Pensions and National
Insurance
1965 October Becomes junior minister of Housing and Land
1966 April Becomes junior minister of the Treasury under Iain
Macleod
1967 October Joins shadow cabinet with portfolio for Fuel and
Power, followed by becoming
shadow minister for Transport
1968 November Becomes shadow minister for Education
1970 June Appointed Secretary of State for Education
1974 February Given shadow Environment post; moved to
shadow responsibility for Treasury
affairs
1974 November Enters contest for the leadership of the
Conservative Party

1975 February Elected leader of the Conservative party in
opposition
1979 May Becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain
1983 June Remains Prime Minister following Conservative
victory in general election
1987 June Remains Prime Minister when Conservatives win
third successive general
election
1990 November John Major becomes Prime Minister following
Thatcher’s resignation
aExhibit 1 adapted from pages 49-65 in Margaret Thatcher: A
Bibliography by Faysal Mikdadi (Westport, Connecticut:
Greenwood Press, 1993).
LEBRUN in 2015.
19
Exhibit 2 Parliamentary Vocabulary
Word Definition
Back-bench A member of Parliament who is not a leader in his
or her party; rank-and-file

membership
Cabinet Composed of Ministers appointed by the Prime
Minister; all Ministers must be
Members of Parliament (either in the House of Lords or the
House of Commons);
proposes bills and arranges the business of Parliament
Front-bench Either of the two benches nearest the chair in
Parliament occupied by
government and opposition leaders; also: the leaders themselves
General Election Called by Prime Minister who need give only
three weeks notice before the date
of the vote; must occur every five years, but usually occur more
frequently
Open Selection Policy, adopted by the Conservative Party under
Sir Alec Douglas-Home, which
reformed the process of leadership succession; a two-tier ballot,
in which a
contender needs at least a 15% spread over his or her next rival
to win the round.
Without this spread, there would be a second ballot in which
other contestants
could throw their hats into the ring, and then a third if
necessary until a 15% lead
opened up; this process allowed both Heath and Thatcher to
nominate
themselves without a preexisting power base
Opposition In the British two-party system, the party which
holds the second-largest majority
in the House of Commons; this party creates a mirror Cabinet
ministry “in
opposition” to the one in power, the “Shadow Cabinet”

House of Commons One house of Parliament with membership
elected by local constituencies, which
are drawn to contain roughly the same number of voters; each
election for a
maximum term of five years, although the exact term length is
determined by the
space between general elections; ratification of proposed
legislation depends
entirely on the votes of the House of Commons
House of Lords Membership appointed or hereditary
Prime Minister Leader of the political party that can command a
majority of votes in the House of
Commons; appoints members of the Cabinet from members of
his or her political
party in Parliament; elected by party membership, not in general
election
Tory Currently used as an Informal name for the Conservative
Party, although
historically a different party
Shadow Cabinet The group of senior Members of Parliament
formed by the party which is not in
the majority, but rather “in opposition” who present their
party’s position on each
issue
LEBRUN in 2015.

20
Exhibit 3 Prime Ministers Since 1957
Date Prime Minister Party
1957-1963 Harold Macmillan Conservative
1963-1964 Sir Alec Frederick Douglas-Home Conservative
1964-1970 Harold Wilson Labor
1970-1974 Edward Heath Conservative
1974-1976 Harold Wilson Labor
1976-1979 James Callaghan Labor
1979-1990 Margaret Thatcher Conservative
1990-1997 John Major Conservative
LEBRUN in 2015.
FINAL PAPER - Papers are due 5/5
Each student is required to submit a final paper (7 page
minimum to 8 page maximum) on a significant issue concerning
organizational communication. The topic, selected by the
student and approved by the professor, can focus on any of the

subjects listed on the syllabus.
Do NOT use Wikipedia
Rubric
Research Paper Assignment
Your final paper must include the following:
· Title page with your name, course, date etc.
· Executive summary (not more than one paragraph)
· Outline of paper
· Analytical essay with an introduction, a body of supporting
evidence and a conclusion
· Internal citations of sources OR footnotes to identify your
sources in the text of the paper
· Bibliography page (at least 10-15 credible sources)
1. Executive summary – in one or two brief paragraphs,
identifies, organizes and summarizes the major points in the
research assignment.
1. ______ Abstract present, focused, and informative. It
summarizes all major points of the paper.
2. ______ Abstract present, focused, and informative, but it is
missing one or two major points of the paper.
3. ______ Abstract present, but rambling, disorganized, or
gives no information about what was done and/or what was
found

4. ______ No abstract present
2.Outline of research paper’s content – uses correct outline
format to identify main ideas and supporting evidence
(introduction, body and conclusion). Synthesizes the material in
an outline.
1. ______ Outline is in correct format, identifies all main points
and supporting evidence including the introduction, body, and
conclusion.
2. ______ Outline presented, but it is not in the correct format
or is missing main points and/or supporting evidence.
3. ______ Outline presented, but it is not in the correct format
and is missing main points and/or supporting evidence.
4.______ Outline is not presented in any format.
3. Clear presentation and research of the thesis statement that
identifies the focus of the research assignment. Apply
appropriate research methods to study a question. Respond to
the research question with the terms that are relevant to the
discipline.
1. ______ Thesis statement is clear and focused, and the
research methods used to answer the question are appropriate.
2. ______ Thesis statement is slightly unclear and unfocused or
the research methods used to answer the question are slightly
inappropriate.
3. ______ Thesis statement is slightly unclear and unfocused
and the research methods used to answer the question are
slightly inappropriate.

4. ______ Thesis statement is completely unclear and unfocused
and the research methods used to answer the question are
inappropriate.
4. Accuracy of Facts: Evaluate the credibility and reliability of
sources
1.______All facts presented are accurate, credible, reliable and
relate back to the main point.
2. ______Almost all facts presented are accurate and credible
and occasionally relate back to the main point.
3. ______Most facts presented are accurate (at least 70%),
credible and reliable. Evidence is scattered about rather than
used to support the main point.
4.______There are several factual errors and there is no real
effort to make the piece cohesive or determine the credibility
and reliability of sources.
5. Internal citations – Cite sources correctly in the text. Locate
sources, find and collect data which are appropriate to address
the research topic. When you use examples, visual materials or
quotes to support your points, make sure your internal citations
correctly attribute all direct quotes, paraphrases, images and
facts etc. to the original source of the information.
1. ______ All material in correctly attributed to the original
source in the correct MLA/APA format.
2. ______ Most of the material is correctly attributed in the
correct format. There are only a few errors.
3. ______ Many facts, examples, visual materials, etc. are not
attributed to the original source.
4. ______ Material is not attributed to the original source. No
attempt to put sources in the correct format was made.

6. Bibliography –credible and substantive sources that you have
integrated into your research assignment; you must list them in
correct MLA or APA format, alphabetical order by author. Cite
sources correctly in the bibliography
1. ______ All sources are cited correctly in MLA or APA
format.
2. ______ Most of the sources are cited in the correct format.
There are only a few punctuation or style errors.
3. ______ Sources are missing from the bibliography, or there
are major mistakes in the format.
4. ______ Sources are missing, and those that are there are not
in the correct format.
Regarding the research you undertake for your assignment:
Research is an important aspect of good scholarly writing.
When you do research, please do not just go on the Internet and
start typing in or copying whatever results you find from a
Google search. Grant it there are some worthwhile sites on the
Internet that are credible. However, I want you to think a bit
beyond what you are reading.
Ask yourself these questions:
• Is it Authoritative? Is the site highly regarded that is
references and linked to by others? Is the information well
referenced, cited, and written by authors with expertise in the
content area?
• What's the Educational Value? Is the site a leading source of
content that exceeds instructional goals?
• What's the Intent? Is the site a highly regarded source of
information whose job is to inform?
• What is the Originality? Is the site a primary source of

original content and viewpoints?
• What's the Quality? Is the site content a good quality and
there is good content area coverage?
Do NOT use Wikipedia, ask.com, about.com or any other open
source that is not scholarly.
If in doubt, your best bet is to use the Library’s databases and if
articles are unavailable use Interlibrary Loan to obtain them.
They have excellent resources, which are viewed as scholarly,
educational, original, authoritative, etc.

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