The old aphorism is that all politics is local, but Meryl Streep – in a performance remarkable even for Meryl Streep – demonstrates that politics is personal, a reflection of the character of the person involved in it.
The Iron Lady begins with an elderly and frail Thatcher, unrecognized as she shops in a small grocery store, and periodically circles back to portray the career of the grocer’s daughter who changed the world, with the film always returning to Thatcher in the present, alone in the world. Perhaps the movie is intended as a slight to Thatcher – see, look at her now. Perhaps it is making a less tendentious point – power is ephemeral, we are all headed toward a lonely end. But almost in spite of itself, the film shows a deeper truth: the person may fade, but the accomplishments of character endure.
In her brilliant reflection on what Thatcher accomplished, “There is No Alternative” – Why Margaret Thatcher Matters, Claire Berlinski writes that “Margaret Thatcher often seemed like an exceptionally gifted actress playing the role of Margaret Thatcher.” If so, The Iron Lady reflects an exceptionally gifted actress playing the role of an exceptionally gifted actress playing the role of a lifetime. Thatcher was character in motion; Streep plays a character who exemplified character. It is an exhilarating performance. But the truth is even more amazing.
In 1979, the year Thatcher came to power, Western countries were struggling with crippling stagflation; they were burdened with oil prices that had quadrupled since 1973 and high levels of taxation; Soviet and Chinese proxies had expelled the United States from Vietnam, overthrown governments in Latin America, seized power in multiple countries in Africa and the Arabian peninsula; American diplomats were held hostage in Iran, and the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, a possible prelude to a further move into Saudi Arabia. Jimmy Carter’s responses were a malaise speech, a warning against “our inordinate fear of Communism,” and a boycott of the Moscow Olympics.
In Britain, the social and economic situation was especially dire. Unemployment was high and inflation out of control; people felt society was breaking down; the economy was controlled by unions, strikes were rampant, the currency had been devalued, public services were shabby, taxes were confiscatory, per capita income was half that of the countries Britain had saved or defeated in World War II. It was, as Thatcher had said in a 1976 speech, “close to midnight.”
In 1977, two years before she became prime minister, Margaret Thatcher gave a speech titled “The New Renaissance,” which presaged the themes she would use in her campaign two years later:
In spite of our present difficulties, Britain’s future need not be at all gloomy. For the very ills which beset us seem to be creating their own antidotes. People of all backgrounds are casting off socialist illusions in the light of socialist reality, and are coming round to our viewpoint. This is the end of the trend to the Left, and the starting point of a new renaissance. …
We need a free economy not only for the renewed material prosperity it will bring, but because it is indispensable to individual freedom, human dignity and to a more just, more honest society. We want a society where people are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. This is what we mean by a moral society; not a society where the State is responsible for everything …
Then Thatcher gave her view of “the fundamental change in direction which I believe is about to occur”:
I bring you optimism rooted in present-day experience. … It is becoming increasingly obvious to many people who were intellectual socialists that socialism has failed to fulfill its promises, both in its more extreme forms in the Communist world, and in its compromise versions. The tide flows away from failure. But it will not automatically float us to our desired destination. There have been tides before, which were not taken, opportunities which were lost, turning points which came and went. I do not believe that history is writ clear and unchallengeable. It doesn’t just happen. History is made by people: its movement depends on small currents as well as great tides, on ideas, perceptions, will and courage. … If we fail, the tide will be lost. But if it is taken, the last quarter of our century can initiate a new renaissance matching anything in our island’s long and outstanding history. …
[T]hough important, [material prosperity] is not the main issue. The main issues are moral. …The economic success of the Western world is a product of its moral philosophy and practice. The economic results are better because the moral philosophy is superior. It is superior because it starts with the individual, with his uniqueness, his responsibility, and his capacity to choose. … We have a ready audience … ready to examine our arguments on their merits. The opportunity is ours if we can grasp it instead of meeting the Socialists half-way.
During her 1979 campaign, Thatcher gave a speech that reached back to the Bible to inspire her supporters:
The Old Testament prophets didn’t go out into the highways saying, “Brothers, I want consensus.” They said, “This is my faith and my vision! This is what I passionately believe!” And they preached it. We have a message. Go out, preach it, practice it, fight for it – and the day will be ours!
How likely was it that a female in a male-dominated political world, a lower-middle class person in a class-controlled society, someone who learned her economics from her father’s grocery business (and whose policies were thus based “not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up on”), would successfully transform a socialist country, through free markets, deregulation, lower tax rates, reduced government spending, and privatization, defeating the stranglehold on the economy held by powerful unions, ultimately serving eleven years and living to see successors in both parties continue her policies? The Iron Lady gives a hint at what caused this result: her character.
In Britain today, she is widely regarded as one of the greatest prime ministers, a “giantess of our time,” but she is also still resented by miners and other workers whose union-guaranteed jobs she destroyed (or rather allowed a free economy to eliminate). The shift from a socialist society to a capitalist one was painful, and as Berlinski notes, the “collateral damage” was considerable, often consisting of people whose jobs or industries never came back. As the title of her book indicates, Berlinski argues persuasively that there was no alternative. But this short video of a 1990 Thatcher colloquy in the House of Commons shows the issues are still with us now.
Thatcher requires no hero worship; she was an iron lady, not sort of God. She did not run with three-word, content-free slogans promising hope and change, or that oceans would recede. She would have also scorned politicians who were essentially managers (particularly if their views varied with the particular office they hoped to manage). She was Churchillian in her willingness to tell the electorate what it faced, and thus what it needed to do. Her view was that “Utopia never comes, because we know we should not like it if it did,” and she trusted in a free economy even if, by definition, she could not control or predict where it would go.
In one of her last colloquies in the House of Commons, she summarized her years as follows:
Eleven years ago, we rescued Britain from the parlous state to which socialism had brought it. I remind the House that, under socialism, this country had come to such a pass that one of our most able and distinguished ambassadors felt compelled to write in a famous dispatch, a copy of which found its way into The Economist, the following words: “We talk of ourselves without shame as being one of the less prosperous countries of Europe. The prognosis for the foreseeable future,” he said in 1979, was “discouraging.”
Conservative government has changed all that. Once again, Britain stands tall in the councils of Europe and of the world, and our policies have brought unparalleled prosperity to our citizens at home. In the past decade, we have given power back to the people on an unprecedented scale. We have given back control to people over their own lives and over their livelihood—over the decisions that matter most to them and their families. We have done it by curbing the monopoly power of trade unions to control, even to victimize, the individual worker. … We have done it by giving people choice in public services—which school is right for their children, which training course is best for the school leaver, which doctor they choose to look after their health and which hospital they want for their treatment.
A later colloquy in that same session went as follows:
The Prime Minister: … Because individuals and families have more power and more choice, they have more opportunities to succeed—2 million more jobs than in 1979, better rewards for hard work, income tax down from 33p in the pound to 25p in the pound and no surcharge on savings income. Living standards are up by a third and 400,000 new businesses have been set up since 1979—more than 700 every week. There is a better future for our children, thanks to our hard work, success and enterprise. Our people are better off than ever before. The average pensioner——
Mr. Simon Hughes: Will the right hon. Lady give way?
The Prime Minister: If the hon. Gentleman will just listen, he might hear something that he did not know. The average pensioner now has twice as much to hand on to his children as he did 11 years ago. They are thinking about the future. This massive rise in our living standards reflects the extraordinary transformation of the private sector.
The video linked above is from this colloquy, and picks up right after the above statement by Thatcher, continuing with Mr. Simon Hughes’ response and Thatcher’s reply. If you watch it, you will appreciate how the transcript fails to convey fully her impact.
The Iron Lady, in between portrayals of Thatcher in her current condition, portrays the political challenges she faced and the courage it took to face them. In a reversal of what the filmmakers may have intended, it is the latter portrayals that will remain with viewers. The movie may or may not be a political film, but it demonstrates what politics needs above all: persons of character. Watch the video, see the movie, read the Berlinski book.
The first female president of the United States will be someone like Margaret Thatcher. Not only was she brilliant and a giant when it came to real conservative values, but she could also destroy an opponent in a debate. Once we find a woman like that here in America, she will become president. I don’t know if someone like Sarah Palin is in the same league as Thatcher, but at times she does seem to come close. Sometimes.
In “American by Heart,” Sarah Palin professed great admiration for Mrs. Thatcher, and claimed her as one of her role models, which has rendered Palin’s backing away from what I regard as the fight of our lifetimes all the more painful for me, and although I have tried to withhold judgment, it has caused me to re-think my original opinion of her.
It may be a little unfair to hold anyone up to Thatcher. My own view is the appropriate comparison for Sarah Palin was Paul Revere, for reasons set forth here: http://tinyurl.com/7452zd7. Historians have only recently realized that Paul Revere’s role in the American Revolution extended far beyond his Midnight Ride. Some of the themes he championed are the same ones Sarah Palin did two centuries later, receiving some of the same scorn Paul Revere did at the time.
Thank you, Mr. Richman! Another incisive piece that I somehow missed before (but this “uncanny” timing is much better)! It saves the day for me in my struggling to square my conviction about what she’s made of, with Mrs. Palin’s choice not to run (and makes it OK that I over-rode my normally loyal nature to submit the above, something that has caused me no small discomfort since posting it).
Curious that Hollywood was so quick off the mark to make a film about Margaret Thatcher,of whom the Hollywood Establishment and major decisions makers loudly and continuously proclaimed their virulent hatred. Hatred founded on world-wide admiration and influence as model of successful prinicpled behaviour in government office. In actual service to her citizens, or subjects showed up the self-serving pygmies surrounding her in politics throughout the Western World, with the rare exception of Ronald Reagan.
Those pygmies ballyhooed by bien-pensant and legacy media. To use Meryl Streep one of their magic bullets as imitator. Given the general behaviours of entertainment media in film and TV/TV “News” from the legacy Media most relevantly the BBC,cautious about the intent of this production is prudent., Even before public viewing in the United Kingdom piled with accolades from the bien pensant, similar to the Nobel Peace Price for Obama just for becoming President.
I suggest these denigrators of her simply want their interpretatin set in concrete as they have done with Richard Nixon, to assure present and future audiences take their views as “gospel”. Before any more reasoned assessements are made for the general non-political public of the West, and world.
“Thatcher was character in motion….” What a spectacular line. The brakes slammed on as soon as I read it and I simply can’t continue reading without first stopping to tell you so. It’s going into my quote book, along with such other gems as “All passion grows civilized in the cool embrace of the heroic couplet,” (anonymous, alas,) and a Eudora Welty beauty, “He made simple objects of immediate use, taking infinite pains.” Just in case you wonder what kind of company you’ll be keeping…..
Now back to relishing the rest of your piece.
This was much more than a simple movie review – I thoroughly enjoyed this, Rick.
Margaret Thatcher was a giant. My favorite world leader of my lifetime, by far.
As an aside, I have sometimes said that without Thatcher, Ronald Reagan may not have been “Ronald Reagan”. She had a very strong influence on him.
Thank you, Dikehopper – very much appreciated. You (and others) might be interested in going to http://www.margaretthatcher.org, which today summarizes Thatcher’s February 1981 visit to meet with Reagan, at a time when it took some political courage to stand by her side. Reagan made her his administration’s first state visitor. The 1981 Thatcher files were released yesterday by the UK National Archives, which every year releases another year of records (the requirement is that 30 years must pass before each release).
Last year, the release of the 1980 files included a letter to Thatcher from Jimmy Carter, informing her confidentially of his impending announcement of a boycott of the Moscow Olympics, as if this were a big deal. One can only imagine Thatcher’s reaction as she read this letter. A decade later, she would have to admonish another U.S. president not to go wobbly in the face of another invasion in the Middle East.
Thank you and Bravo for this thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening review, Mr. Richman.
In my unwillingness to have even the tiniest part of rewarding what, until now, I had feared and suspected might be an utterly inappropiate and disrespectful portrayal of Mrs. Thatcher in extremis, I had been steeling myself against slowly succumbing to the lure of another Streep performance in spite of myself. But your review has changed all that. (I’ve just ordered the Berlinski book as well.) Wouldn’t it be marvelous if the film moved large numbers of people to re-think the presumed morality of redistributionism and proved itself to be an inspiration to youth as well, at a time when America so desperately needs both?
One can only pray that this magnificent human being still enjoys the gift of periods of lucidity as she endures what for many has become an inevitable part of the aging process. Contemplating her condition, I’m comforted by remembering some words from my father not long before he died. (He was, as they say, “in and out.”) “People think I’m just an old man nodding off here in my chair, but actually I’m reviewing my whole life and getting all new meaning from it.” And what a life she’s had!
Thank you, Mayberry Lady, for your two generous comments. I think different viewers will have different reactions to the portrait of Thatcher in her present condition, which is roughly half the film. Some will see it as disrespectful, almost gloating, intended to hurt; others will see it as ironic, reflective of the disparity between what individuals can achieve in life and where life is ultimately headed, or as showing the tremendous personal cost of the love no longer in her life, or which she sacrificed to do what she did back when she was powerful.
Streep was recently asked what she hoped people would take away from the film, and her answer was a non-political one: that when you see an old lady on the subway, you think not about her current condition, but realize that there is a lifetime in there, that the woman seated in front of you went through so many things in her life that you can’t see, that she is due respect. Perhaps your father’s beautiful statement reflects that as well. Thank you for sharing it.
A “biopic” about one of the most courageous conservative ladies of our time made by caring and un-biased leftists in Hollywood… what’s not to like.
Not.
No, I will not be spending my money to see this film, nor will I encourage and support them to make more “biopics” in the future about more heroic conservative heroes. I will patiently wait until it comes out on the boob tube (preferably late late nite) to sadly confirm what I and many others already suspect.
Now if only a few more conservatives would vote with their wallets.
Ms. Thatcher dealt with a more physical form of political correctness than what we face now. Both in the UK and in America the same foe Thatcher faced has returned in force but it is driven by the idea that in fact the West doesn’t have a superior philosophy although the results are plain to see.
Through the excuse factory that is political correctness, one simply pushes around “facts” until one achieves the desired result. It is a relatively simple paradigm but an insidious one mostly based on race. In the PC world, there is no overarching philosophy but one that contradicts itself.
For example, when it suits them, black folks can claim to be unique and have created jazz and have soul and other things they consider endemic to being black. When it doesn’t suit them to be seen this way, the argument is reversed and skin means nothing and it is all content of character and everybody is the same.
In PC, justice is constantly redefined as in fact being whatever makes the desired target look good or bad according to need. PC is the greatest evil America has ever faced because it is so widely subscribed to. In the 30s Japan and Germany went mad from their own twisted cultural imperatives. We seem to be heading more in the meek (read incompetent) shall inherit the Earth but with what mad result no one knows.
However there is already plenty of blithering madness and doublethink to suggest it is nothing less than the destruction of America as we once knew it and its transformation into a fancy version of the Third World but with shanty towns coming where it’s each man for himself but at taxpayer expense.
Great Lady that Maggie…
My Dad, Reagan, and Her shaped the man I was to become.
I feel so utterly sorry for the kids who grew up after me, kids who’s nearly force-fed “role models” have been the likes of Al Gore, Jon Stewart, and Michael Moore…
You are a product of your environment, and how lucky indeed was I.
Would the Enlightened Ones make a biopic of Teddy Kennedy in which he was shown drooling and incoherent from his brain tumor? NO.
I saw my father descend into senile dementia. I did not make videos of it.
It would disgust me to see an actor mimic him, no matter how artfully, no matter the supposed intent.
There are some depictions and subjects that are best reserved for fictional characters, or at least for historical figures long dead.
Do the words PRIVACY and DECENCY no longer have any meaning?
I find Mr. Richman’s essay delightful, and if “Iron Lady” provokes such reflections, I suppose it is not entirely worthless. But I will NOT see it.
It was JPII, Reagan AND Thatcher that made such a difference in their time.
I have great HOPE that 2012~and beyond will repeat above:)
Yes~I will see the movie at some point. Happy New Year!
Just got in from seeing the film, after having read your review. Acting was indeed superb, especially Streep’s. However it was a poor vehicle for conveying the greatness of one of the 20th Century’s greatest public figures. Almost half the film devoted to her current dementia — seriously? The themes you describe are there if you know what you’re looking for, but overwhelmed by irrelevancies.
I live in Los Angeles, know the industry, and really expected nothing better. It will win awards, but the film-going public will have been given no idea about Thatcher’s true greatness.
A wonderful piece — wish I had caught up with it sooner. Still digging out from the holidays. I’m inspired to see the movie.
Thatcher is a most remarkable person. In some ways, she achieved things even Churchill didn’t. During her heyday, she had a European quality of being able to master debates on intricate subjects. In a political environment in which more fundamental concepts were up for grabs than in the United States, she could debate wonks on their terms and win.
She and Reagan were excellent foils for each other: Reagan’s strength was in transcending the terms of wonkish debate altogether and leaving the well-prepared ideologues wondering where the audience had gone.
I wonder if the West can still produce such individuals. We’ll see in the coming years, I guess.
On December 30, the Margaret Thatcher Foundation posted her files from 1981, when she came to the U.S. to meet Reagan, and received an honorary Doctor of Laws from Georgetown. In the files is the inscription on her award, which read in part as follows:
“The first woman elected to lead a European nation, Margaret Thatcher has explained her success simply: “What I have and where I am is the result of continuous effort and the courage to take the next step.” … She brought the party to victory in May 1979, with the most decisive margin in a generation of British politics.
“Margaret Thatcher accomplished this in spite of what her countrywoman Rebecca West has described as her two major handicaps: her sex and her beauty. Patiently she has endured commentary on her clothes, hair, eyes, and accent before the substance of her speech is analyzed; constantly scrutinized for weakness, she has earned the title “Iron Lady.” Her experiences as a woman and a political leader have confirmed her early faith in freedom, work, merit, and responsibility.
“Like Churchill, she has promised no “smooth and easy times” for Britain in dealing with stagflation, unemployment, taxation, and investment, exhorting rather: “Let us go down in history as the generation which not only understood what needed to be done but had the strength and self-discipline and the resolve to see it through.””
She also traveled on that trip to New York to receive another award presented at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. In her speech there, she ended with some lines from Kipling: “Dear-bought and clear, a thousand year/Our fathers’ title runs/Make we likewise their sacrifice/Defrauding not our sons.”
You are correct that we need such individuals now.