SENATORS’ STATEMENTS — The Late Right Honourable the Baroness Thatcher, L.G., O.M., P.C., F.R.S.

Honourable senators, on October 13, 1925, almost 100 years ago, in Grantham, England, Margaret Roberts was born. Many of you will know her by her married name, Margaret Thatcher. The daughter of a grocer, she rose to the heights of political power in Britain and in the world, serving as Great Britain’s first female prime minister from 1979 to 1990, the greatest prime minister since Sir Winston Churchill.

Like Churchill, she had a clarity of vision, an unwavering belief in the principles she championed, an undaunted sense of purpose, an encyclopedic command of the facts and a masterful command of the language. She was formidable. In two words, she was the Iron Lady.

In his biography of Thatcher, Charles Moore wrote of Thatcher’s first foray into politics as a Conservative candidate in Dartford, Kent, then a Labour stronghold. In her exchanges with her Labour opponent, Moore wrote: “. . . she had driven into the argument with a bulldozer of facts.” In a campaign debate on a recent devaluation of the British pound, she cut to the heart of the matter by calling for a new policy “by which ‘the pound can look the dollar in the face and not in the bootlaces’.”

But if her political ideology can be summed up at all, it is by her belief in the importance of individual responsibility, individual freedom and her staunch opposition to socialism. Much of what she had to say on these issues remains relevant today. Most famously she said: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

She also loathed socialism for its curtailing of individual freedom and responsibility:

The essence of socialism —

she said

— is that you surrender quite a bit of power over your own life to the state.

Socialism means you pay ever-higher taxes because socialists

. . . think that politicians can spend money better than the people can spend it. But the more you take away —

she argued

— the less there is for private industry, and that is where the creation of wealth comes.

She argued that:

Politicians . . . should . . . be a little more modest about their abilities. We can’t run everything and we shouldn’t try.

She believed that socialism by its very nature is central control over the lives of people. It results in less freedom for people to use their own talents and abilities and make their own decisions, and more power by the government over people.

Words were her superpower. My friend the Right Honourable Sir John Whittingdale, a current Conservative MP in the U.K., who served as Baroness Thatcher’s political secretary from 1988 through 1990, told me that he credits her for extending the golden era of speech making that began in the 1880s and lasted a hundred years.

Please join me in remembering Baroness Margaret Thatcher, a great prime minister, a defender of the West and someone who remains a beacon of hope for those who seek to advance freedom of the individual from the state.

Thank you, colleagues.